Qualla: Oranienburg

Oranienburg: Introduction

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jo Vert, CC BY-SA 3.0. Somewhere under the streets and gardens of Oranienburg, between 350 and 400 unexploded bombs are still waiting. About 200 have been found and defused; the town runs a search programme unlike any other in Germany, working from wartime aerial photographs and sweeping the ground with magnetometers and radar. When a big one turns up, the town empties — one evacuation moved 12,000 people out of their homes for a day. This is an ordinary commuter town of 49,000 people, an hour north of Berlin, and it is still, quite literally, at war with 1945.

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Image: Jo Vert | CC BY-SA 3.0

Oranienburg: A Princess, a Palace, and a Uranium Plant

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Singlespeedfahrer, CC0. The place was called Bötzow when it first appears in the records in 1216. In 1646 Frederick William of Brandenburg — the Great Elector, who would beat the Swedes at Fehrbellin thirty years later — married Louise Henriette of Orange-Nassau and gave her the district. She built a pa...

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Image: Singlespeedfahrer | CC0

Oranienburg: Sachsenhausen

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit (WT-en) Jpatokal at English Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 3.0. The first camp came fast. In March 1933 the SA took over a disused brewery on the Berlin road and turned it into one of the very first Nazi camps, holding Communists and Social Democrats from the capital. Among them was the anarchist poet Erich Mühsam. On the night of 9 July 1934...

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Image: (WT-en) Jpatokal at English Wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 3.0

Oranienburg: The Work

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit (WT-en) Jpatokal at English Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sachsenhausen was principally a labour camp, and the labour was designed to consume the people doing it. At the Klinkerwerk brickworks, prisoners made bricks for Albert Speer's rebuilding of Berlin. On the Schuhprüfstrecke — the shoe-testing track — men walked between 25 and 40 k...

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Image: (WT-en) Jpatokal at English Wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 3.0

Oranienburg: The Road North

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 44penguins (Angela M. Arnold), CC BY-SA 3.0. As the Red Army closed in during April 1945, the SS drove roughly 33,000 prisoners out of the gates and northwest on foot, heading for the Baltic. They were already starving, and anyone who fell behind was shot at the roadside. Thousands died. The route is still marked — the cros...

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Image: 44penguins (Angela M. Arnold) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Oranienburg: An Argument About Memory

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A.Savin, FAL. From 1945 to 1950 Sachsenhausen operated as Soviet Special Camp No. 7, holding former Nazi functionaries alongside people the occupation considered politically dangerous. Some 60,000 were imprisoned; about 12,000 died. In 1952 the East German police blew up the building containin...

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Image: A.Savin | FAL