Sachsenhausen concentration camp

52°45′57″N 13°15′51″E / 52.76583°N 13.26417°E / 52.76583; 13.26417

Sachsenhausen
Nazi concentration camp
Prisoners in the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, Germany, 19 December 1938.
Location	Oranienburg, Germany
Operated by	Schutzstaffel
Commandant	See list
Operational	July 1936 – 22 April 1945
Inmates	Initially German Jews and varied German citizens (divided between racial, political, "career criminal" and "antisocial" inmates), later overwhelmingly (90% by 1944) foreign forced laborers and political prisoners (mostly Polish and Soviet citizens)[1]
Number of inmates	More than 200,000, including around 20,000 women[1]
Killed	Tens of thousands, including at least 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war executed in late 1941[1]
Liberated by	Polish Army's 2nd Infantry Division
Notable inmates	List of prisoners of Sachsenhausen

Sachsenhausen (German pronunciation: [zaksn̩ˈhaʊzn̩]) or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year.^[2][3] It mainly held political prisoners throughout World War II. Prominent prisoners included Joseph Stalin's oldest son, Yakov Dzhugashvili; assassin Herschel Grynszpan; Paul Reynaud, the penultimate prime minister of the French Third Republic; Francisco Largo Caballero, prime minister of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War; the wife and children of the crown prince of Bavaria; Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera; and several enemy soldiers and political dissidents.

Sachsenhausen was a labour camp, outfitted with several subcamps, a gas chamber, and a medical experimentation area. Prisoners were treated inhumanely, fed inadequately, and killed openly. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used by the NKVD as NKVD special camp Nr. 7. Today, Sachsenhausen is open to the public as a memorial.