Sachsenhausen was located in the town of Oranienburg about 20 miles north of Berlin. The camp was opened in September, 1936. Built for 10,000, nearly 200,000 passed through the camp with about 100,000 dying. In the first few years, the most important work project was a brickyard that prisoners built on the Oder-Havel canal (the Klinker project). From 1943 on, the prisoners were employed primarily in various branches of the armaments industry. In 1944, 7,000 prisoners were assigned to the Heinkel Works in Oranienburg. When the Russians closed in on the area, Himmler ordered all the inmates to be evacuated. Notwithstanding pleas from Red Cross delegates, the commandant marched over 40,000 to the northwest. Very few survived the march, and only 3,000 inmates were still in the camp when the Russians entered.
Erik Lordahl, German Concentration Camps 1933-1945, History and Inmate Mail (2000). Referred to as
Lordahl.
Feig, Hitlers Death Camps (1979)
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/EasternGermany/Sachsenhausen/
http://jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/SachsenhausenEng.html
Copyright © 2002 Edward Victor