“Work hard, free” is the first thing we see on the gates of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. This inscription, a symbol of the Nazi regime’s cynicism, remains a propaganda lie here, at Dachau, Neuengamme, and Auschwitz: no one who entered these gates was freed by labor. Geometrically and architecturally perfect, the Sachsenhausen concentration camp became a model, a command and training center for the Nazi camp system across Europe. Two hundred thousand prisoners from 1936 to 1945. Tens of thousands died. 3,000 prisoners liberated by Soviet and Polish soldiers, many of whom died of exhaustion and disease shortly after liberation.
Appellplatz, the execution ditch, the medical barracks, the gas chambers and crematorium ovens, the death march, Operation Bernhard—this is a story of mindless submission to the Nazi system, directed against the very foundations of life. It’s about what historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil.” Man-made evil. Hundreds of people come here to learn the truth, to see everything with their own eyes, to try to comprehend what happened. To understand the value of human life and the peacetime we live in today.
4-hour visit
