Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Tour from Berlin
Address
Berlin
GPS
52.5170365, 13.3888599
Discover the dark history of Nazi concentration camps on a Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp tour from Berlin. The best day trips from Berlin.
Highlights
- Guided tour of Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial
- See the Jewish barracks
- The ignominious Station Z
- Learn about tragic history of Nazi concentration camps
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Tour from Berlin
Berlin – Sachsenhausen – Berlin
The day begins in central Berlin. We’ll take the train 25 minutes north of Berlin to the town of Oranienburg, where we will walk to the memorial site. When we arrive your licensed guide will explain how the Nazis began using concentration camps in 1933, opening Sachsenhausen in 1936.
You will then be led through the site, as your guide explains to you how various victim groups were persecuted: Jehova’s Witnesses, the Jewish, political prisoners, and Soviet soldiers among others. Between 1936 and 1945 around 200,000 people were imprisoned at Sachsenhausen.
You will learn the history of the site as your expert guide takes you to the Jewish barracks, the shoe-testing track, the camp prison, and the execution center Station Z. Your guide will also tell you how the camp was liberated by Soviet soldiers in 1945, only to be turned into a Soviet internment camp that secretly remained in use up to 1950.
Begin your tour at the Zoologischer Garten or Hackescher Markt train stations with a guide meet and greet. In Oranienburg, visit the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum.
Between 1936 and 1945, over 200,000 people were detained in Sachsenhausen. Initially, the detainees were mainly Nazi regime political rivals. People who were deemed racially or biologically inferior by the National Socialists were later included.
By 1939, a significant number of people from conquered European countries had been incarcerated here. Hundreds of thousands of citizens perished as a result of malnutrition, illness, forced labor, and mistreatment, or as a result of the Schutzstaffel’s systematic extermination.
Thousands of other inmates died as a result of the “death marches” that accompanied the camp’s evacuation in April 1945. Around 3,000 sick inmates, as well as the doctors and nurses who had remained in the camp, were liberated by Soviet and Polish soldiers at the time.
This tour includes visits to the prison’s execution cells, gallows, gas chambers, and burial pits. Hear tales of prisoner courage as well as chilling crimes committed at the camp, which now serves as a national monument to the prisoners who lived and died there. Your tour concludes with a train ride back to Berlin.
