Overview

• At a weekend ceremony, Berlin’s economy senator Franziska Giffey and Brandenburg justice minister Benjamin Grimm honored victims of the Soviet special camp that operated on the former Nazi site from 1945 to 1950.
• Speakers cited an estimated 60,000 detainees, including women, men and children, held in Sachsenhausen and nearby Weesow until the camp’s dissolution in spring 1950.
• The memorial statements emphasized that the location embodies overlapping periods of oppression that require careful, differentiated public memory and scholarship.
• According to the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation, the Soviet Army set up ten special camps in its occupation zone after the war, one of which was moved to Sachsenhausen in 1945.
• Reports noted that those imprisoned were largely lower‑ranking Nazi functionaries along with personnel from administration, police, justice, industry and SS staff from concentration camps, and no new policy measures were announced.