The Sachsenhausen Memorial and Muse-
um is a 25-minute train ride from downtown
Berlin. We engaged tour guide Nick Jack-
son, somewhat by chance, and later found
out that he was Rick Steves's top pick as a
Berlin guide, as well as Viator's. They were
not wrong. Jackson, an archaeologist by
training, met us at our hotel and started the
discussion about Sachsenshausen on the
walk to the train station. He explained that
the role of the concentration camp was not
to exterminate mass numbers of people—
that was left to extermination camps--but
to literally work to death those thought
racially and biologically inferior. The propa-
ganda element sold the entire system un-
der the concept of "Arbeit Macht Frei," or
work sets you free, the infamous words that
appear over the entrance gate at Sachsen-
hausen, Auschwitz, Dachau, and others.
A R B E I T M A C H T F R E I : W O R K S E T S YO U F R E E .
T H E I N FA M O U S W O R D S A P P E A R O V E R T H E
E N T R A N C E G AT E AT S A C H S E N H A U S E N ,
A U S C H W I T Z , D A C H A U , A N D O T H E R C A M P S .
