Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Private Tour from Berlin
Explore the harrowing Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp on this sobering private tour of one of the infamous Nazi concentration camps, situated in Oranienburg, just forty-five minutes from Berlin by train with a short bus ride. On your private tour you will:
- Enjoy the personal attention and expertise of your private guide.
- Tour the remains of the camp, the barracks, the museum exhibits, and the burial ground with ashes of the victims killed inside the camp.
- Experience the harrowing reality of Sachsenhausen, the former concentration camp used during the Third Reich for political, ethnic, and religious prisoners.
- Learn about the terrible hardships the prisoners faced at the camp, and the appalling methods and experiments conducted on prisoners, to formulate a perfect ‘Aryan’ race.
- Hear how the Soviets adopted the camp after the War, to house 60,000 political prisoners.
- Pay your respects at the "National Memorial" inside the camp
The Sachsenhausen concentration camp was built in 1936 by internees from other camps and was the first to be built under the New Chief of Police, the infamous SS Leader Heinrich Himmler. It was designed to be the standard for other camps – both in its escape-proof layout, and its abusive treatment of prisoners. Over 200,000 people were imprisoned there between 1936-45. Prisoners included opponents of the Nazis, peoples who the Nazis considered racially inferior like the Jews, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, and “anti-socials”.
Thousands of prisoners died in Sachsenhausen concentration camp as a result of disease, forced labour, hunger, brutal medical experiments, mistreatment and torture, or were the victims of systematic extermination by the SS troops. You will tour the camp, and see the entrance called Tower A; later your guide will show you the extermination unit and crematorium built in 1943, chillingly dubbed Station Z by the SS guards.
You will learn about the horrifying treatment of prisoners, the disgusting experiments and torture conducted on them, and the shocking ‘Sachsenhausen salute,’ the death strip, and the ‘shoe running detail’ where prisoners were forced to march around a parade ground for days, with full backpacks, in order to test the durability of various boot soles. You will hear some harrowing stories about the real horrors of the Holocaust conducted at Sachsenhausen concentration camp and its satellite camps, including the death marches. On an emotional tour, you will be able to pay your respects at the National Memorial created in 1961 inside the camp, before returning to Berlin.