Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp: Private Day Trip from Berlin

Explore Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp on this private day trip from Berlin to one of the infamous Nazi concentration camps, a training site for camp staff as well as an experimental site located in Oranienburg, just forty-five minutes from Germany's capital.

On your private tour you will:

• Travel by train from Central Berlin with your expert guide to experience an immersive historical tour;
• Tour the remains of the camp, the barracks, the museum exhibits, and the burial ground;
• Learn how this former concentration camp was used during the Third Reich for political, ethnic, and religious prisoners;
• Hear about the hardships that prisoners faced at the camp, and the appalling methods and experiments conducted on prisoners, to formulate a perfect ‘Aryan’ race;
• Hear how the Soviets adopted the camp after the War to house 60,000 political prisoners;
• Pay your respects at the "National Memorial" inside the camp.

The Sachsenhausen concentration camp was built in 1936 by internees from other camps and was the first to be built under the New Chief of Police, the infamous SS Leader Heinrich Himmler.

It was designed to be the standard for other camps – both in its escape-proof layout, and its abusive treatment of prisoners with over 200,000 people imprisoned there between 1936-45. At first, prisoners included opponents of the Nazis, and later it received Jews, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, and “anti-socials”.

Thousands of prisoners died in Sachsenhausen concentration camps as a result of disease, forced labour, hunger, brutal medical experiments, mistreatment and torture, or were the victims of systematic extermination by the SS troops.

You will tour the camp, and see the entrance called Tower A; later your guide will show you the extermination unit and crematorium built in 1943, chillingly dubbed Station Z by the SS guards.

You will learn about the appaling treatment of prisoners, the experiments and torture conducted on them, and the shocking ‘Sachsenhausen salute,’ the death strip, and the ‘shoe running detail’ where prisoners were forced to march around a parade ground for days, with full backpacks, in order to test the durability of various boot soles.

After a very emotional tour, you will be able to pay your respects at the National Memorial created in 1961 inside the camp, before returning to Berlin.


Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Regulations

- Avoid group interactions that are not in keeping with a commemorative site.
- Do not smoke.
- Do not use flash photography or any other light source.
- Do not touch any relics or objects. They are of irreplaceable value.
- Visitors are liable for any damage that they cause.
- It is not advisable for children under the age of 12 to visit the Memorial site, the museums and the former crematoriums

Tour duration
5.5 hours 30 minutes

Type of tour
Walking tour: including public transportation between sights

Attractions along this route:

Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
A former concentration camp used during the Third Reich to hold political prisoners.

Sachsenhausen Memorial
The memorial obelisk contains eighteen red triangles representing the symbol the Nazi's gave to political prisoners.

Sachsenhausen Museum
The museum features a 30cm high pile of gold teeth extracted from the prisoners, scale models of the camp, pictures, documents and other artefacts illustrating life in the camp.

Barracks
The standard barrack layout had a central washing area, a separate room with toilet bowls and a right and left wing for the overcrowded sleeping rooms.