Nazi death camp

Ukrainian Vladimir Voyevodchenko was 16 years old when he was taken as a prisoner to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp north of Berlin. When the horrors of the Nazi regime ended, the young man was 19. Now, at 84, he's an old and fragile figure - deeply moved to have returned to the place that he says stole his youth.

"Sixty-five years have passed. And my attitude towards Sachsenhausen has changed. It is an accursed place - but for me it's also a holy place."

In 1994 he attended the annual commemoration ceremony for the first time. Each year, the surviving victims of Sachsenhausen meet - and Voyevodchenko says the shared experience has made them into a tight group.

"No matter which country they are from - they all are brothers for me. And I'm very happy that I can come here."

But each year the number of survivors who meet to commemorate the anniversary of the liberation is dwindling. This year, just over 100 made the trip.

Among those who attended ceremonies held over the weekend ahead of the liberation anniversary on April 22 were groups of students from Berlin.

"For the younger generation it is important that the survivors can pass on what they've been through," historian Guenter Morsch said on Saturday. Morsch is the head of the museum and memorial site at Sachsenhausen.

"For the students it's very important that they can meet the survivors and that they can listen and talk to them. They can ask questions that no one can answer except those who have been witness to what happened here."

The 'death march'

Voyevodchenko was still a prisoner in the camp in 1945 as the Red Army moved closer. Yet when, on April 22, Soviet and Polish soldiers arrived at the camp, they found only around 3,000 prisoners.

They'd come one day too late. On April 21, the SS guards had evacuated most of the camp - around 33,000 prisoners were forced to leave on what later became known as the 'death march.' Voyevodchenko was one of them.

Thousands died during the march of starvation, cold and weakness - or were simply shot by the guards. 84-year-old Voyevodchenko was one of the few younger inmates who survived and was later picked up by the Red Army.

At the commemoration ceremony he spoke through a translator, describing what he had seen and experienced. A Russian prisoner, he recalled, was given 50 lashes as punishment for stealing a piece of leather from a saddle.

"He was quiet, he was already dead. But the two SS men continued with the whipping - simply because that was their order," Voyevodchenko said, adding that the guards afterwards even went on to hang the dead man.

Neonazi arson attacks

But part of the history of Sachsenhausen is also the post-Second World War Soviet camp that the Red Army temporarily operated there, where more than 10,000 prisoners perished.

Tours of the museum also mention the more recent history of the site. In 1992 some of the barracks were burned down in a Neonazi arson attack. The traces of the fire are still visible - they've been kept deliberately.

"We basically said that this is a new level. This is not the past, this takes it into the present," a young student explained. She's a member of a group that helps maintain the site.

"The part further to the back of the barracks has been fully renovated; that's also where the biographies of some of the prisoners are." she added.

Today, the site of the former concentration camp hosts a memorial set up under communist rule in East Germany. After Germany's reunification, a museum was added, documenting the horrors of what happened in the camp between 1936 and its liberation in April 1945.

Around 30,000 prisoners are believed to have perished at Sachsenhausen, hundreds of thousands passed through the camp, many of whom were transported to the extermination camps further to the east.

Author: Marcel Fuerstenau/ai
Editor: Chuck Penfold