Built in 1936 to house high-ranking political prisoners, Sachsenhausen is the camp where the Nazis perfected killing methods that were scaled up and used to murder millions at larger and more notorious camps such as Auschwitz.
Early executions at Sachsenhausen were done by putting prisoners into a room and asking them to stand against a wall to have their height measured, before they were shot in the back of the neck through a hidden hatch.
This proved effective but time-consuming, so the Nazis began piling people into a ditch where they were either shot or hanged.
While this proved better at killing large numbers of people, it caused prisoners to panic and made the process more difficult.
It was after these trials that Nazi executioners landed on the idea of using poison gas with some of the earliest experiments carried out at Sachsenhausen using small chambers or vans.
In 1945 Soviet troops liberated the unguarded, weak and ill prisoners who were too unwell to join the forced death march and were left behind a day before (pictured: some of the prisoners at the camp)
Like most other camps, Sachsenhausen was used to house and kill Jews, homosexuals and other ‘undesirables’ – but it also housed a large number of notable politicians and political figures.
Among its inmates were Yakov Dzhugashvili, Joseph Stalin’s eldest son, Paul Reynaud, the penultimate Prime Minister of France, Francisco Largo Caballero, Prime Minister of the Second Spanish Republic, and the wife and children of the Crown Prince of Bavaria.
It operated as a Nazi camp until 1945 when it was liberated by the Soviets.
During that time some 200,000 prisoners were sent there, about half of whom died – in-part due to executions, but also from disease and over-work.
After the war the camp continued to function, this time as a Soviet prison, and continued to house political prisoners.
Some 60,000 people were locked up there by the Red Army, including formers Nazis, Russian who had collaborated with them, and anti-Communist opponents of Stalin’s regime.
One of the men running the camp during this time was Roman Rudenko, the Soviet’s chief prosecutor during the Nuremburg Trials.
It is thought some 12,000 people died in Sachsenhausen under the Soviets before the camp was permanently closed in 1950.
After it was closed, excavations were carried out to try and recover the remains of some of those who died there.
In total, the bodies of some 12,500 victims were recovered – mostly children, adolescents and elderly people.
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