German concentration camp memorial unveils artifacts

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
The memorial at the former Nazi concentration of Sachsenhausen camp put scores of artifacts on display Thursday, including the camp's original gallows, a cart used to transport corpses and the block on which prisoners were flogged. The new exhibit is located in the camp's former prisoners' kitchen. It combines video, photographs, charts, maps and an interactive camp model along with original items from Sachsenhausen. Photos smuggled out of the camp by a Norwegian prisoner, as well as the Sachsenhausen "death book" with the names of some 20,500 victims, are also being put on display for the first time. The building's cellar, where inmates peeled potatoes, has been opened to allow the public a glimpse of the art drawn by the prisoners on the walls. The Sachsenhausen camp, in the Berlin suburb of Oranienburg, was built in 1936 and became a model for other camps. In 1938, the administrative headquarters for all concentration camps was relocated there from Berlin. The camp was liberated by the Soviet army, which took it over and used it as a camp itself between 1945 and 1950, imprisoning a total of some 60,000 people there, of whom at least 12,000 died of malnutrition and disease.