Oranienburg Travel Guide

 alancollins Says:  This is one of the small Soviet Cemetries and memorials that you see around Brandenburg and Berlin. It is close to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp but it is largely unknown to most visitors because it is not on the route to the camp. 

 alancollins Says:  If you continue walking past the Klinkerwerk Camp with the Hohenzollern Canal on your left you will eventually come to this site. It has a number of plain walls that have a complete history of the Klinkerwerk. It is nothing spectacular but this may improve when the... 

 alancollins Says:  Work started on the Klinkerwerk in 1938 and it became the largest brick works in the world. The aim of the camp was to create bricks and other building material for the new Germania. Up to 1,500 prisoners were originally marched from the main camp to the brick works and back... 

 alancollins Says:  As you walk down the lane towards where the Klinkerwerk was located, the first original building that you can see is the former bakery. Built in 1941 it was used to supply the main camp with bread and the local population with bread and cakes. At its height it was producing... 

 alancollins Says:  One of the satellite camps of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp was the Klinkerwerk. Opened in April 1938, working there was regarded as a punishment and a death sentence due to the harsh conditions and prisoners from the minority groups were used as labour. Prisoners... 

 alancollins Says:  On the outskirts of Oranienburg is a disused airfield which was the Heinkel Flugzeugwerke. It was used by Ernst Heinkel to test hundreds of fighters and bombers during WW2 including jet powered aircraft. Prisoners from Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp were used as unpaid... 

 alancollins Says:  Most people travel to Oranienburg to visit the former concentration camp at Sachsenhausen but as you walk from the railway station instead of turning right towards Sachsenhausen, under the railway bridge, turn left along Bernauer Strasse and after about 1km you will reach... 

 alancollins Says:  For most travellers a visit to Oranienburg usually means visiting the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. Unless you carefully read the information you may be unaware that this was not the first concentration in Oranienburg. The original camp in the town centre was one of the... 

 alancollins Says:  This rather plain building was used as the offices of the Commandant of the camp from 1936 to 1945. Working in the Commandant’s House was considered a good career move by SS Officers and the way to advancement. After the war its function remained the same but it was now used... 

 alancollins Says:  This original stone building was built in 1937. It was used as a laundry to wash the prisoner’s clothes on a commercial scale and also housed a smaller area for ironing. Behind the laundry was another barracks which was used for the drying the clothes, it was also used for... 

 tigerjapan Says:  The Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp (1936 - 1945) was built by concentration camp prisoners from the Emsland camps. It was the first new camp to be established after Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler was appointed Chief of the German Police.More than 200,000 people were... 

 alancollins Says:  The prisoners’ kitchen is one of the few surviving original buildings in the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. The ingredients provided for the prisoners’ meals was sparse; hunger and starvation common place. The prisoners drew humorous pictures on the walls of the kitchen... 

 alancollins Says:  The former SS Camp is now used by the Oranienburg Police Department. In the inmates’ camp the main feature was the Appell Platz. In the SS Camp this translated into the enormous parade ground around which all the Barracks were located together with other important buildings.... 

 alancollins Says:  The Sachsenhausen complex was huge at approximately 500 acres and only a small part was used by the inmates in their triangular shaped camp. There was a large training camp for the SS Garrison which numbered about 4,000 of which nearly 400 were women. As you walk along the... 

 alancollins Says:  Inside the SS Camp and around the edge of the parade ground there were a large number of garages and workshops, where vehicles were stored and repaired. A large number of the garages still survive and are in use today. 

 alancollins Says:  The SS Barracks were built around a large parade ground. They were built of wood but were disguised to have the appearance of a more substantial building by being rendered with plaster and render. A number of the buildings still survive but looking at the broken windows and... 

 alancollins Says:  This building is located in the former SS Camp. In it heyday it was a grand building, for its purpose, which was a shower block and boiler room. The officers had better showers and space than the other ranks. Unfortunately the building has been left to decay and be... 

 7 Opinions

 DrexlUK Says:  Oranienburg can be reached very easily from Berlin via the main north/south train line. Take the train to the stop 'Oranienburg' and from the main railway station the museum is a 20-30 minute walk and well signposted.