The story of this place
Built in 1936 north of Berlin, Sachsenhausen was designed as the ideal SS concentration camp, a triangular blueprint meant to be watched from a single machine-gun tower, and it became the administrative centre for the entire camp system. Over 200,000 people were imprisoned here; tens of thousands died from forced labour, execution, disease and murder. It ran Operation Bernhard, the largest counterfeiting scheme in history, forcing inmate printers to forge millions of British banknotes to wreck the UK economy. After liberation in 1945, the Soviets used it as a special camp where a further 12,000 died. The preserved gate still reads 'Arbeit macht frei', and the grounds, execution trench and pathology building form one of Germany's principal memorials.