The Sachsenhausen Camp Tour - Five Hour Private Guided Van Tour

Visit the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial & Museum and learn about life and death in a Nazi ‘Protective Custody Camp’; the architecture of total control, and what inhumanity, humanity is capable of in its darkest moments.

An opportunity to assess Sachsenhausen’s role as the nucleus of the entire Nazi concentration camp industry; a prison to many notable figures; but also a proving ground for the methods and practices that would lead to the horror of industrial mass murder across Europe.

ABOUT BERLIN EXPERIENCES

With over 17 years experience offering unique historical adventures in Berlin and the surrounding area, our tours are educational, entertaining, and unlike any stuffy academic-led tour you’ve been on before. We believe history is best experienced and understood outside the classroom and should be available for everyone interpid enough to travel.

SITES INCLUDED:

• the Tower A entrance & ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ lettering
• the Appelplatz roll call area
• the Jewish barracks
• the special SS/Gestapo prison
• the post-war KGB/NKVD camp
• the ruins of Station Z... and much more…

TOUR DESCRIPTION

Despite the passage of time, the Tower A entrance to the Sachsenhausen Camp Memorial – emblazoned with its infamous “Arbeit Macht Frei” lettering – still stands as a threshold to another domain.

Missing are the sights, sounds, and smells of casual brutality. Instead of the cramped suffocating architecture of totalitarianism, a vast open field graced with rows of stone markers – where barracks houses once stood – exists in its place.

Constructed by the Nazis, inherited by the Soviet authorities, and transformed into a memorial by the East German government –Sachsenhausen is a startling example of how different regimes chose to use the same land for purposes of punishment and propaganda.

Most people, when asked about Nazi camps, would point East – to the extermination camps that gained notoriety through the Holocaust: to Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek etc.

The truth is, however, that these camps came relatively late in the history of the Third Reich. Their predecessors – the concentration camps – such as Sachsenhausen, were constructed within Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

Devised as a so-called ‘protective custody camp’ to house political prisoners, Sachsenhausen grew to become not only the nucleus of the entire Nazi concentration camp industry; but also a proving ground for the methods and practices that would lead to the ultimate horror of industrial mass murder and genocide.

Writer Hannah Arendt referred to the concentration camp as the ‘true central institution of totalitarian organisational power’ – designed for the systematised dehumanisation and destruction of human personality. The ‘theory and practice of hell’ materialised.

A thought-provoking and often uncomfortable journey –the former Nazi concentration camp of Sachsenhausen stands as a warning from the past and a recommended excursion from Berlin to all interested in learning more about the conditions where gratuitous cruelty flourished and experiments to cultivate inhumanity succeeded.

Sachsenhausen now is a place to pay respects, to reflect, and to bear witness. To observe the preservation of memory as a vital tool against the tyranny of forgetting what humanity is capable of in its darkest moments.

PICKUP & DROP OFF

• This tour can start and finish at your accomodation - or anywhere you would prefer within the city limits
• Starting time we usually recommend as 10am - which gives you the chance to enjoy a relaxed breakfast before your tour starts - although other starting times can also be selected

INCLUSIONS

• Private guided tour in English language with air-conditioned van transportation (Mercedes Benz V-class or Volkswagen Vito) - group size maximum 6 people
• 19% VAT, guide fee, booking fee, admin fee, private transportation and driver costs, and the mandatory German tourism insurances
• Entrance donation to the Sachsenhausen Memorial

EXCLUSIONS

• Lunch & Coffee Break Costs
• Gratuities (optional)

ADDITIONAL INFO

• Maximum group size is 6 people
  
• This tour operates rain or shine - as we say in Germany, there is no such thing as bad weather, just poorly dressed people!

CANCELLATION POLICY

• At least 1 calendar month in advance, full refund
• No refunds for cancellations within one month of the tour

QUESTIONS

Please use one of the contacts below in case you have a question or an emergency:

• Phone: +49 17624162526
  
• WhatsApp: +49 17624162526
  
• E-mail: info@berlinexperiences.com