The Structure Under The Soviets
Further information: NKVD special campsIn August 1945 the Soviet Special Camp No. 7 was moved to the area of the former concentration camp. Nazi functionaries were held in the camp, as were political prisoners and inmates sentenced by Soviet Military Tribunals. By 1948, Sachsenhausen, now renamed "Special Camp No. 1", was the largest of three special camps in the Soviet Occupation Zone. The 60,000 people interned over five years included 6,000 German officers transferred from Western Allied camps. Others were Nazi functionaries, anti-Communists and Russians, including Nazi collaborators.
One of the camp's commandants was Roman Rudenko, the Soviet Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.
By the time the camp was closed in the spring of 1950, at least 12,000 had died of malnutrition and disease.
With the fall of the communist East Germany it was possible to do excavations in the former camps. At Sachsenhausen, the bodies of 12,500 victims were found, most were children, adolescents and elderly people.
Read more about this topic: Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
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