SS Bakery

Baking for concentration camps

It’s incredible to think that a bakery where concentration camp inmates toiled to feed their fellow victims is now decaying stoically behind trees hiding it from the neighboring canal.

On one hand it’s hard to believe it’s simply sitting there, disused, abandoned and forgotten. On the other, it’s almost impossible to believe Berlin hasn’t flogged it to property developers or speculators for redevelopment as luxury apartments. Perhaps it’s just that bit too far from the city center.

The SS Bakery was used as a normal bakery – without forced laborers from the nearby Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp – from 1948 to 1991, when it was run by the Konsum-Großbäckerei Oranienburg. I presume that went out of business due to Mauerfall, like everything else.

Before that, the bakery only went out of business because the Nazis did. These people, for this is lamentably what they were, ordered prisoners at Sachsenhausen to build the bakery just north of the Lehnitz Lock for Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke, an SS holding company, in 1939.

It didn’t open until 1941 due to the scarcity of raw materials. War is a hungry beast. About six months after production began it was taken over by the innocuously-named Deutsche Lebensmittel GmbH (German Groceries Corporation), which not only supplied the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp but other SS units in Berlin and its surrounds.

Around 80 concentration camp prisoners worked here, baking and then distributing the bread. Germans, Poles, Latvians, Dutch, others, they were made march the 2.5 kilometers from Sachsenhausen each day.

They were moved to the closer Klinkerwerk External Camp in 1943. The lucky sods. Things were as bad, if not worse, there. This was the Nazis’ brickworks, concocted to build Albert Speer’s dream of Welthauptstadt Germania (World Capital Germania). I won’t get into all that. Every time I write about Nazis I get drawn into another can of tentacles groping and feeling their way into places I’d no intention of going…

Back to the bakery. The prisoners started off baking 10,000 loaves a day but production was ramped up after shift-work was introduced, working hours extended and two new ovens installed to around 40,000 a day. Forty thousand! That’s 500 loaves per prisoner, and some of them weren’t even baking.

With that output, the SS Bakery could supply the Mittelbau-Dora, Groß Rosen and Ravensbrück Concentration Camps as well. The Nazis had plenty of them.

“We had to bake 43,000 coarse bread loaves every day, plus 200 wheat breads for diabetics. The Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp and the neighboring Klinkerwerk camp were supplied with these breads on Tuesdays and Fridays,” former prisoner Wilhelm Nagel said in 2005.

Nagel, who died the following year, wrote a book called “Kriechen hab ich nie gelernt” (I never learned to crawl) about his experiences, including his work at the SS Bakery.

“The important thing was that no time went to waste, for example if the oven could not be used because the bread wasn’t baked enough,” he said.

Nagel’s predecessor had been beaten and nearly killed after being held responsible for a half hour delay.

“Before me and the previous one that they beat up, there was a Pole there, a lawyer from Warsaw, and he destroyed his lungs there. There were temperatures of 60 degrees in the baking room,” Nagel wrote.

The prisoners’ work was done with the end of the war, though that didn’t come easily either. Many prisoners at the Klinkerwerk camp died in bombing raids to “liberate” them, before the whole camp was closed down and moved back to Sachsenhausen.

The Russians took over the bakery after the war, keeping production going to feed sick and weak survivors of the liberated camp. In 1946 it was taken over by the Konsumgenossenschaft Kreis Niederbarnim (Niederbarnim District Consumers’ Co-Op), extended and refurbished, before resuming life under Konsum-Großbäckerei Oranienburg.

There wasn’t much life when I was there. The only inhabitant I encountered was dead. A mole, perhaps he’d been found out and executed. The poor little critter was lying on his back with his hands up. Fat lot of good it did him.

I’d never seen a mole before, dead or alive. This was the last place I’d have expected to find one – in an abandoned concentration camp bakery. But then you never know what to expect when you start digging around places like these – as the mole found to his cost.

Location and access (How to find guide)

• What: SS Bakery, associated with the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, where forced laborers made bread for their fellow inmates, other SS units and, eventually, other concentration camps further afield too.

• Where: An der Lehnitzschleuse, 16515 Oranienburg, Germany.

• How to get there: Get the S-Bahn or a regional train to Oranienburg, turn right out of the station, right again onto Bernauer Straße and follow that along, past the woods and a fine abandoned house on the right hand side until you come to a bridge. That’ll be the canal right under you there. Go over the bridge, take your first left, and the bakery isn’t far up on the right hand side. Here’s a map to assist you.
  You could take a trip up to Heilstätte Grabowsee just up the canal while you’re there. Watch out for your man and his dog if you venture that far.

• Getting in: It’s pretty damn easy. Just walk up to the left of the building and you’ll find a large inviting gap. To get into the building itself go around the back. A bit more effort is required to get into the rooms with the ovens but it’s worth it.

• When to go: Given the history I don’t think this is a good place for a party. Likewise, it’s not a place for romance. Best to go during the day so you can see it.

• Difficulty rating: 3/10 Pretty damn easy as mentioned already.

• Who to bring: Just bring a like-minded individual. As mentioned before, it’s not the place for parties and/or romance.

• What to bring: They’re not baking bread anymore so bring your own if you don’t want to get hungry. Otherwise just the usual stuff: camera, beer, torch, mobile phone in case you need to call for help.

• Dangers: The buildings are in OK condition – they’re sturdy enough – but still some care is required. Don’t do anything crazy or stupid and you should be fine. Nosy neighbors do pass by and some will even take it upon themselves to shout at you if they see you from the road. A shout out in return to the guy shouting at me as I was trying to film on the last visit.

Filed 23/5/2014 | Updated 6/12/2021