As well as keeping 200,000 prisoners between 1936 - 1945, Sachsenhausen was the headquarters of the Nazi concentration camp system. It now houses a series of very thorough museums in original buildings spread out over the immense triangular site. Together they detail the history of the system (the town of Oranienburg was also home to the first concentration camp, built in 1933), medical care, and everyday life and death on the camp.

There are stone memorials laid out on the foundations of each of the barracks, and small stone signs marking the site of horrors all around. The most harrowing memorial is the newly designed white canvas block that covers the foundations of Station Z, where ruins of ovens can be seen.

The New Museum, built in 1961, outside the entrance offers a more removed exhibit detailing the history of the Nazi regime, and also houses temporary exhibitions. All texts, video-interviews and films are in English and German.