NKVD special camp Nr. 7

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.^[1] It was used by the Stalinist 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.^{[citation needed]} 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.^[2] Others were Nazi functionaries, anti-Communists and Russians, including Nazi collaborators and soldiers who contracted sexually transmitted diseases in Germany.^{[citation needed]}

With the fall of the communist east Germany it was possible to do excavations in the former camps, in Sachsenhousen the bodies of 12,500 victims were found, most were children, adolescents and elderly people.^[3]

One of the camps commandants was Roman Rudenko,^[4] the Soviet Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.

By the closing of the camp in the spring of 1950, at least 12,000 had died of malnutrition and disease.^[5]

References

1. ^ Kai Cornelius, Vom spurlosen Verschwindenlassen zur Benachrichtigungspflicht bei Festnahmen, BWV Verlag, 2004, p.126, ISBN 3830511655
2. ^ Butler, Desmond (2001-12-17). "Ex-Death Camp Tells Story Of Nazi and Soviet Horrors". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/17/world/ex-death-camp-tells-story-of-nazi-and-soviet-horrors.html. Retrieved 2009-04-22. 
3. ^ Kinzer, Stephen (1992-09-14). "Germans Find Mass Graves at an Ex-Soviet Camp". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/24/world/germans-find-mass-graves-at-an-ex-soviet-camp.html?sec=&spon=&scp=13&sq=Sachsenhausen&st=cse. Retrieved 2009-04-22. 
4. ^ "The Nuremberg Judgments". http://www.fredautley.com/nuremberg.htm. Retrieved 2009-04-22. 
5. ^ "The Soviet special camp No.7 / No. 1 1945 - 1950". http://www.stiftung-bg.de/gums/en/geschichte/speziallager/spezial01.htm. Retrieved 2009-04-22.