NKVD special camp Nr. 7

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Museum NKVD special camp Nr. 7, Sachsenhausen

NKVD special camp Nr. 7 was a NKVD special camp that operated in Weesow until August 1945 and in Sachsenhausen from August 1945 until the spring of 1950. It was used by the Soviet occupying forces to detain political prisoners.

In August 1945, the Special Camp Nr. 7 was moved to Sachsenhausen, the area of the former Nazi Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Under the NKVD, Nazi functionaries were held in the camp, as were political prisoners and inmates sentenced by the Soviet Military Tribunal. 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.

With the fall of the communist East Germany it was possible to do excavations in the former camps, in Sachsenhausen the bodies of 12,500 victims were found, most were children, adolescents and elderly people.

One of the camp's commandants was Roman Rudenko, the Soviet Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.

By the time the camp closed in the spring of 1950, at least 12,000 had died of malnutrition and disease.

Inmates

• Heinrich George, actor (1893 – 25 September 1946)
• Hans Heinze, psychiatrist (Aktion T4)
• Giwi Margwelaschwili, author (born 1927)
• Karl August Nerger, Admiral (1875 – 12 January 1947)
• Otto Nerz, football coach (1892 – 19 April 1949)
• Eduard Stadtler (1886 – 5 October 1945)
• Ernst Schlange (September 1, 1888 – 1947)