In the immediate vicinity of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp is the Szczypiorski House, today a youth hostel. The house was built in 1938 as the official place of residence of the director of the German concentration camps Theodor Eicke. At the same time as the IKL concentration camp inspection building in Oranienburg was being built, Eicke ordered the construction of an official residence next to his new workplace.
After the liberation of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in April 1945, the site was occupied by the Soviet NKVD. Later in the 1950s, the house passed into the hands of the NVA, the German People's Army. Finally, in the 1990s and after German reunification, the house was rehabilitated and converted into a youth hostel. The house was renamed in honor of Andrzej Szczypiorski, a member of the Polish resistance, captured after the 1944 Warsaw uprising and a survivor of Sachsenhausen.
How to get to the Szczypiorski House
The Szczypiorski house is located in the immediate vicinity of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp memorial in the city of Oranienburg. To arrive by public transport there are two options:
- S-bahn line S1 . Oranienburg stop. This is the most reliable option, since the line runs through the entire center of Berlin and has a frequency of 20 minutes. The most central stops are Potsdamer Platz, Brandemburger Tor and Friedrichstrasse. You can consult the transport map of Berlin HERE to see the whole line
- The second option, faster but less reliable, is to take the RE5 regional train line address Rostock. This train only takes 25 minutes to get to Oranienburg from the center of Berlin, but it usually has quite a few delays and, especially in summer, it is always full due to the Berliners who take it to spend the day on the Baltic beaches. The RE5 can be taken at Potsdamer Platz, Hauptbahnhof or Gesundbrunnen. You can check the schedules HERE.
Once at Oranienburg main station, the place is 1800 meters away. You can walk there, following the signs related to the Sachsenhausen camp. The building is marked DJH Jugendherberge Sachsenhausen , since it is its main function today.
What can you see
The interior of the house is closed to visitors as it is a youth hostel. The garden around the main building is accessible to visitors. In one of the walls of the garden there are some information panels about the history of the place.
Recommendations
Due to its remoteness from the center of Berlin and the small size of the exhibition, we recommend that you visit the building in combination with the visit to the Sachsenhausen memorial, as they are only a few hundred meters away.