page_title: Sachsenhausen concentration camp
section_title: Slave labour
hierarchical_section_title: Sachsenhausen concentration camp / Slave labour
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Zentralbild 9.12.1960 Zur Einweihung der Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen am 23. April 1961. - Vor den Toren Berlins, auf dem Gelände des ehemaligen faschistischen Konzentrationslagers Sachsenhausen bei Oranienburg, in das von 1936 bis Kriegsende 200 000 Menschen verschleppt wurden, entsteht - wie in Buchenwald und Ravensbrück - eine würdige Mahn- und Gedenkstätte. Jeder Quadratmeter Boden ist hier vom Blut der 100 000 Toten durchtränkt, die im KZ Sachsenhausen mit seinen 73 Aussenkommandos erschlagen, erhängt, erschossen, zu Tode geprügelt, durch erbarmunslose Sklavenarbeit zu Grunde gerichtet und vergast wurden. Doch gelang es den SS-Mördern nicht, den Widerstandswillen der politischen Häftlinge zu brechen. So wurde Sachsenhausen auch zur Stätte der großen internationalen Solidarität und des mutigen Kampfes gegen Faschismus und Krieg. UBz: Das Klinkerwerk, das mörderischste Arbeitskommando. Zuerst brannte man Klinkersteine, aber dann wurden in den riesigen Hallen Granaten gedreht und anderes Kriegsmaterial prduziert.
context_page_description: Sachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany used from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May 1945. It mainly held political prisoners throughout World War II. Prominent prisoners include Joseph Stalin's oldest son Yakov Dzhugashvili, assassin Herschel Grynszpan, Paul Reynaud the penultimate Prime Minister of France, the wife and children of the Crown Prince of Bavaria, Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera, and several enemy soldiers and political dissidents.
  Sachsenhausen was a labor camp outfitted with several subcamps, a gas chamber, and a medical experimentation area. Prisoners were treated harshly, fed sparingly, and killed openly. Those held captive in Sachsenhausen were the men and women which the Third Reich wanted dead, not just because of their religion, but because of their political beliefs and their power over those who listened to them. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used by the NKVD as NKVD special camp Nr. 7. Today, Sachsenhausen is open to the public as a memorial for the crimes committed within its walls.
context_section_description: Sachsenhausen was the site of Operation Bernhard, one of the largest currency counterfeiting operations ever recorded. The Germans forced inmate artisans to produce forged American and British currency, as part of a plan to undermine the British and American economies, courtesy of Sicherheitsdienst (SD) chief Reinhard Heydrich. Over one billion pounds in counterfeit banknotes were recovered. The Germans introduced fake British £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes into circulation in 1943: the Bank of England never found them. Plans had been made to drop British pounds over London by plane. Today, these notes are considered very valuable by collectors.
  An industrial area, outside the western camp perimeter, contained SS workshops in which prisoners were forced to work; those unable to work had to stand at attention for the duration of the working day. Heinkel, the aircraft manufacturer, was a major user of Sachsenhausen labour, using between 6,000 and 8,000 prisoners on their He 177 bomber. Although official German reports claimed the prisoners were "working without fault", some of these aircraft crashed unexpectedly around Stalingrad and it is suspected that prisoners had sabotaged them. Other firms included AEG and Siemens. Prisoners also worked in a brick factory, which some say was supposed to supply the building blocks for Hitler's dream city, Welthauptstadt Germania, which was to be the capital of the world once the Nazis took over.
caption: Brickworks prisoners
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