Dealing with Multiple Pasts: Conflicts and Memory Politics in the Sachsenhausen Memorial Since 1989

Abstract

This article gives a brief introduction into conflicts over the memory of theNazi Concentration Camp Sachsenhausen (1936–1945) and the Soviet SpecialCamp No. 7 / No. 1 (1945–1950), which was built using parts of the latter. Suchconflicts evolved in the years after the collapse of communism in the GDR.Following an outline of the history of the Concentration Camp and the SpecialCamp, with references back to the controversies of the Cold War, the text considersinterpretations of the struggle since 1989 to find a reasonable assessmentof the Soviet camps. Neither the one nor the other can be trivialized, or whitewashedas a result of this comparison. This discussion looks to navigate throughsensitive questions regarding appropriate memory policies of the Nazi crimes,the involvement of a significant number of the Special Camp detainees in theNational Socialist system, a high number of deaths in the camps after 1945 andlater developments in the East German one-party state.