Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp: Private Day Trip from Berlin

What your day looks like

Explore Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp on this private day trip from Berlin to one of the infamous Nazi concentration camps, a training site for camp staff as well as an experimental site located in Oranienburg, just forty-five minutes from Germany's capital. 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 with over 200,000 people imprisoned there between 1936-45. At first, prisoners included opponents of the Nazis, and later it received Jews, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, and “anti-socials”. Thousands of prisoners died in Sachsenhausen concentration camps 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 appaling treatment of prisoners, the 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. After a very emotional tour, you will be able to pay your respects at the National Memorial created in 1961 inside the camp, before returning to Berlin.