Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler, who was second in command to Adolf Hitler in the Third Reich, regarded Sachsenhausen concentration camp, built in 1936, as a prototype for all other concentration camps that followed. The administrative headquarters of the entire concentration camp system were transferred from nearby Berlin to Sachsenhausen, underscoring its importance. And it was here that individuals like Rudolf Höß operated. Höß was later to become the commander of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

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Between 1936 and 1945, over 200,000 people from across Europe were incarcerated at Sachsenhausen. They were humiliated and tortured, or forced to work for German industry. When Polish and Russian soldiers began closing in on the camp, most remaining inmates were sent on grueling death marches. Many died from exhaustion or were shot by their captors. And Sachsenhausen was also an extermination camp, in which thousands of Soviet soldiers were executed and where experimental gassings were carried out.

As the Russians closed in at the end of the war, prisoners were sent on death marches

On April 22, 1945, about two weeks before Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender, the few remaining camp prisoners were liberated. Over time, many former Sachsenhausen prisoners have grown old and passed away, with fewer and fewer returning to participate in annual remembrance ceremonies. Soon, there will be no witnesses left to tell of these past horrors. Günter Morsch, who has been the director of the Sachsenhausen memorial and museum since 1997, says this marks a significant turning point which "requires us to fundamentally reflect on the past."

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Memorial director warns of political instrumentalization

For Morsch, a historian, this also includes current questions, such as "how to counteract political instrumentalization, which occurs repeatedly?" In an interview with DW, he stressed that the German Nazi ideology can never be compared to other totalitarian ideologies, saying that the Communist dictatorships had long since distanced themselves from totalitarian Stalinism by the time the Cold War ended. Morsch's argument is that they were not thoroughly criminal regimes. National Socialism, Morsch insists, was the opposite: "The longer it went on, the more radical its extermination program became."

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In light of recent developments, Morsch is keen to make a distinction between the anti-Semitism of the far right and that brought into the country by migrants. He stresses surveys have shown refugees to be far less anti-Semitic than was expected. And, he notes, 90 percent of anti-Semitic attacks are perpetrated by German far-right extremists, "not by migrants or refugees."

Morsch is also concerned by the rise of right-wing populist groups. He thinks that the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party's presence in the German parliament signals a political movement that "wants to shatter and negate the foundations of our democracy."

Turning the attention to the perpetrators

This is why the Sachsenhausen museum and other places of remembrance run by the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation, which was established in 1993, have begun turning their attention to the role of the perpetrators. "We want to keep honoring the victims," Morsch insists. And most exhibitions are about their fate.

But it has become clear that the emphasis must be shifted to the perpetrators' motives and the structures that enabled these crimes to be committed. More and more visitors were rightly asking, "How could such a thing happen?" and "Is it possible today?" Unfortunately, the second question had to be answered in the affirmative, because "National Socialism actually showed in its most radical form what people are capable of – even today."

Since 1993, the systematic extermination policy of the Nazis has been the subject of permanent and special exhibitions at the various memorial sites of the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation. Some 90 publications, ranging from testimonials of survivors to academic studies and conference reports, have been produced. In addition to discussions with contemporary witnesses, there are theater performances, concerts, lectures and readings.

An ink drawing by a Sachsenhausen survivor

Concentration camp artwork

As of August, the Sachsenhausen Memorial's New Museum will exhibit paintings, prints and sketches by eight former prisoners. The works from German, Dutch, Austrian, Polish and Czech artists were created while they were interned at the camp and also after its liberation. The exhibition will later move on to the Theresienstadt concentration camp memorial site, and to Krakow, among other places.

That way, the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation will be able to make its vast collection of artworks available to an international audience. It encompasses some 1,000 works of art, letters with sketches, and carvings made of everyday objects. The Center for Persecuted Arts in Solingen (North Rhine-Westphalia) and the Osnabruck Institute for Modern History and Historical Migration Research are cooperating on this project.

Nazi concentration camp later used by Soviets

Established in 1993, the Brandenburg Memorial Foundation was the first of its kind in Germany. It served as a model for other German states, such as Bavaria and Lower Saxony, with their concentration camp memorials Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. After 1945, when Germany was split in two, former concentration camps in what became the German Democratic Republic (GDR) were temporarily repurposed into Soviet-run special camps for suspected Nazis. Few prisoners survived.

A special exhibition at Sachsenhausen on the 'descent into darkness' in 1938

In Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald (Thuringia), this dark postwar chapter is part of the overall memorial concept. The complex, multifaceted past poses a challenge for Brandenburg Memorials Foundation – conceptually, in terms of personnel, and financially too. For this reason, Günter Morsch, who is retiring in May, has mixed feelings. His pride in what has been achieved is mixed with concern about how the level can be maintained, or even improved.

These days, the number of visitors to the former Sachsenhausen concentration camp are almost too large to manage. That is why Morsch, who is grateful for the support his organization has received so far, is urging the state to provide more funding. He says not even 10 percent of the 700,000 annual visitors are able to participate in guided tours, due to a lack of trained staff. And without volunteers, it would be even more difficult to cope with the many foreign visitors, he stresses.

Axel Drecoll to replace Günter Morsch

And the site's infrastructure is far from perfect, despite investments amounting to €60 million ($74 million) since 1993, says Morsch. The funds were used to renovate historical buildings and erect new ones where camp buildings had once stood. On average, the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation has had hardly more than €2 million per year. Morsch wants to secure greater state support for the future before he retires. His designated successor, Axel Drecoll, who currently runs the Obersalzberg Memorial and Education Center — Hitler's former private Bavarian retreat — would certainly welcome that.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Dachau The Nazi regime opened the first concentration camp in Dauchau, not far from Munich. Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power it was used by the paramilitary SS "Schutzstaffel" to imprison, torture and kill political opponents to the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Wannsee House The villa on Berlin's Wannsee lake was pivotal in planning the Holocaust. Fifteen members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to plan what became known as the "Final Solution," the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In 1992, the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held was turned into a memorial and museum.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Bergen-Belsen The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony was initially established as a prisoner of war camp before becoming a concentration camp. Prisoners too sick to work were brought here from other concentration camps, so many also died of disease. One of the 50,000 killed here was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who gained international fame posthumously after her diary was published.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Buchenwald Memorial Buchenwald near the Thuringian town of Weimar was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. From 1937 to April 1945, the National Socialists deported about 270,000 people from all over Europe here and murdered 64,000 of them.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Nazi party rally grounds Nuremberg hosted the biggest Nazi party propaganda rallies from 1933 until the start of the Second World War. The annual Nazi party congress as well as rallies with as many as 200,000 participants took place on the 11-km² (4.25 square miles) area. Today, the unfinished Congress Hall building serves as a documentation center and a museum.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Memorial to the German Resistance The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler that failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock, which is today the German Resistance Memorial Center.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Hadamar Euthanasia Center From 1941 people with physical and mental disabilities were killed at a psychiatric hospital in Hadamar in Hesse. Declared "undesirables" by the Nazis, some 15,000 people were murdered here by asphyxiation with carbon monoxide or by being injected with lethal drug overdoses. Across Germany some 70,000 were killed as part of the Nazi euthanasia program. Today Hadamar is a memorial to those victims.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Holocaust Memorial Located next to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated sixty years after the end of World War II on May 10, 2005, and opened to the public two days later. Architect Peter Eisenman created a field with 2,711 concrete slabs. An attached underground "Place of Information" holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Memorial to persecuted homosexuals Not too far from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, another concrete memorial honors the thousands of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The four-meter high monument, which has a window showing alternately a film of two men or two women kissing, was inaugurated in Berlin's Tiergarten on May 27, 2008.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Sinti and Roma Memorial Opposite the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, a park inaugurated in 2012 serves as a memorial to the 500,000 Sinti and Roma people killed by the Nazi regime. Around a memorial pool the poem "Auschwitz" by Roma poet Santino Spinelli is written in English, Germany and Romani: "gaunt face, dead eyes, cold lips, quiet, a broken heart, out of breath, without words, no tears."

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust 'Stolpersteine' - stumbling blocks as memorials In the 1990s, the artist Gunther Demnig began a project to confront Germany's Nazi past. Brass-covered concrete cubes placed in front of the former houses of Nazi victims, provide details about the people and their date of deportation and death, if known. More than 45,000 "Stolpersteine" have been laid in 18 countries in Europe - it's the world's largest decentralized Holocaust memorial.

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust Brown House in Munich Right next to the "Führerbau" where Adolf Hitler had his office, was the headquarters of the Nazi Party in Germany, in the "Brown House" in Munich. A white cube now occupies its former location. A new "Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism" opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the liberation from the Nazi regime, uncovering further dark chapters of history. Author: Max Zander, Ille Simon



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