1945 - Soviet Special Camp Sachsenhausen

In the evening of 16 August 1945 over 5,000 inmates had reached the barracks of the former concentration camp Sachsenhausen, weakened by their imprisonment and having had to walk over 40 km. This happened in the course of the transfer of the Soviet Special Camp No. 7 from Weesow (near Werneuchen) to Sachsenhausen. From the early 1990s on, the anniversary of the first inmates’ arrival at Sachsenhausen has been honoured by former prisoners and their relatives as a remembrance day for the victims of the special camp.

Up until the closure of the camp, which took place in springtime 1950, NKVD, the Soviet secret service, had interned approx. 60,000 people at Sachsenhausen Special Camp. 12,000 of these died of hunger and disease. For the large part, it was the lower-rank functionaries of the National-Socialist regime interned at the camp, but also staff of the administrative offices, police, judiciary and economic sector, as well as SS staff from concentration camps. Also among the prisoners were those who became politically undesirable and those who were arbitrarily arrested, as well as people convicted by Soviet Military Tribunals: men and women, old and young, those with a National-Socialist past and those without.

For many years, Sachsenhausen Memorial has been marking this day by conducting joint memorial events together with the Working Group Sachsenhausen 1945-1950. This year, a conference on how to deal with the topic of special camps in future, was planned. However, it had to be cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Sachsenhausen Memorial has developed a commemorative online program thanks to the financial support both of the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship, and the Commissioner for the Reappraisal of the Consequences of the Communist Dictatorship for the Federal State of Brandenburg.

Sjoma Liederwald provides an insight into the history of the Soviet Special Camp No. 7/No. 1, where 60,000 people were imprisoned, 12,000 of whom died. He explains the different groups that were imprisoned there by the Soviet secret service after the occupation of Germany. Liederwald also tells of the liquidation of the camp in 1950, when 4,800 convicts were handed over to the GDR for imprisonment, and more than 700 people who had been imprisoned until then without a verdict were handed over for sentencing in the unlawful "Waldheim Trials", in which some received the death penalty.

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The "Soviet Special Camp" museum is located at the northern tip of the former camp triangle. From the museum's location, views point to the largest mass grave of the special camp on the "Cemetery by the Kommandantenhof" and to 15 stone barracks, two of which visitors can walk through. Enrico Heitzer introduces the museum, which presents the history of the special camp on more than 350 square metres of exhibition space with 700 exhibits.

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Enrico Heitzer talks about the graves of the Soviet Special Camp No. 7/No. 1 in Sachsenhausen. In this camp, which was initially located briefly in Weesow, the Sovieet secret service imprisoned about 60,000 people from 1945 to 1950. It was thus the largest of a total of 10 special camps that existed in the Soviet occupation zone and early GDR. About 12,000 people died from the inhumane prison conditions. Dying and death are central aspects of the history of this camp, which have been researched, documented and remembered at the Memorial for years.

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In the school year of 2016/2017, Sachsenhausen Memorial collaborated with Waidak Media e.V. and Georg Mendheim Oberstufenzentrum School, Oranienburg, to make a film. The film focuses on Reinhard Wolff, who as a young man was imprisoned for three years in the Soviet Special Camp in Sachsenhausen.

Reinhard Wolff, the 88 years old man portrayed in the film, had been wrongly imprisoned in the Soviet Special Camp No. 7 in Sachsenhausen from 1945 to 1948, as an alleged underground fighter of the National Socialist “Werwolfs“. He remains active in remembrance work focusing on the post-war Soviet camps. Throughout the whole school year, 18 students from the history course created a cinematic portrait of an eyewitness, using the advice of Sachsenhausen Memorial and working under the guidance of the filmmaker and Grimme award winner Loretta Walz and her colleague Knut Gerwers, and memorial teacher Uwe Graf. The film documents both the life and work of Reinhard Wolff as well as how these young people dealt with the topic of special camps. 

Leonore Fink was born on 26.06.1925 in Königsberg. Her father, Karl Fink, was a gynaecologist and held a position as a professor at the University of Königsberg. Shortly before the end of the war, Leonore Fink fled the city and went to Mecklenburg. She had received information about the situation in her city of birth and had described it in clear words in a letter to her friend who was living in the British occupation zone. The letter ended up in the hands of the Soviet secret service, as a result of which she was arrested on 26 June 1946. Two months later, her mother Frieda Fink was also arrested. On 4 October 1946, both women were convicted of ‘Anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation’ and ‘defamation of the Red Army’ by the Soviet Military Tribunal in Schwerin and each sentenced to five years at the Soviet Special Camp in Sachsenhausen. Both women were released in February 1950.

Friedrich Klausch, born in Potsdam in 1929, did an apprenticeship as a toolmaker in Mainz-Kastel and Berlin-Spandau from 1943 to 1945. In 1945 he was deployed by the “Volkssturm” and was briefly taken prisoner by the Soviets, where he escaped. In 1948, he was a metal worker in Marl-Hüls/Ruhrgebiet. On 6 April 1948, he was arrested by the Soviet secret service at the sector border near Potsdam. On 4 September 1948, he was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment by the Special Council of the Ministry for State Security (MGB) in Moscow for alleged espionage. He was held in Leistikowstraße prison in Potsdam until the beginning of October 1948, before he was taken to the Soviet Special Camp in Sachsenhausen. After a few weeks he was sent to the GULag camps in the Soviet Union. He was imprisoned in camps and prisons in Brest-Litovsk, Moscow, Vologda and Inta, among others. On 12 January 1956, he was released via the Friedland camp to the Federal Republic of Germany. He later worked as a mechanical engineer. The Chief Military Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation exonerated him on 28 November 1997. The film tells his story.

As a part of the 2015 program marking the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the Soviet Special Camp No. 7/No. 1 in Sachsenhausen, a dance performance by Johanne Timm "Barracks and the Waltz of the Flowers ­– A Choreographic Search for Traces of Grandparents’ Imprisonment" was presented at the memorial site.

Johanne Timm, choreographer and dancer, searched for traces of the imprisonment of her grandparents at the Soviet Special camp in Sachsenhausen. Dietlinde and Tilmann Timm were interned there from 1946 to 1950 and fell in love in the camp theatre.

Dr. Irina Shcherbakova, historian and specialist in German Studies, is one of the founding members of Memorial, a human rights organisation in Moscow. Since the latter days of the Soviet Union, Memorial has been dedicated to the reappraisal of Stalinist crimes and has in its possession large collections of firsthand accounts as well as artefacts from the camps. Irina Shcherbakova is head of the education program at Memorial International. She is editor-in-chief of the web portal "Lessons from History". She was one of the first Russian historians to make a significant contribution to the historical reappraisal of the Soviet special camps in Germany.

https://urokiistorii.ru/node/53877

Dr. Andrew Beattie is Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales, where he teaches German and European Studies. He is an expert on the German culture of remembrance and has been focusing his studies on the reappraisal of the National Socialist and GDR past, as well as on the internment practices of the Allies in post-war Germany. His latest book Allied Internment Camps in Occupied Germany: Extrajudicial Detention in the Name of Denazification, 1945–1950 was published in 2019 by Cambridge University Press.

https://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/our-people/andrew-beattie

The Gulag Museum in Moscow was founded in 2001 by the former Soviet dissident Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko, who himself had been held prisoner in a camp. The museum in the centre of Moscow focuses on the history of the Gulag utilising different means, one of which is a film studio where interviews with eyewitnesses and online content are produced. Dr. Ilya Udovenko from the Research Department presents the work of the museum, with a special focus on the "Gulagmaps"project – an online maps-based resource, where information and sources on the Soviet special camps in Germany can be found.

http://www.gmig.ru/ & https://gulagmap.ru/