Obj. ID: 52104
Memorials Pieta Holocaust Memorial in the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp in Oranienburg, Germany
Memorial Name
Pietá, at Crematorium Site, Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
Who/What is Commemorated?
Victims of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
Description:
The sculpture is set off-center in front of a large wall, one side of a courtyard of a memorial building constructed over the site of the camp crematorium and execution site at the
edge of the prisoners’ compound. A dedicatory inscription in German and English is on the wall.
The sculpture depicts two standing and bent inmates, holding a cloth that supports the corpse of another. The scene is compatible with the Communist-emphasized theme of the comradeship of the prisoners. The faces of the figures are undifferentiated, the figures’ forms and actions are emphasized over any aspect of individuality. The scene recalls Christian imagery of the Deposition, Pietá, and Entombment of Christ, especially in the detail ofthe corpse being lifted and carried on a cloth, such as in the well-known works of Raphael, Titian, and Caravaggio.
Inscriptions:
In German and English:
DEN OPFERN DES KZ SACHSENHAUSEN
IN MEMORY OF THE VICTIMS OF SACHSENHAUSEN CENCENTRATION CAMP
1936-1945
Commissioned by
Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (German: Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands).
sub-set tree: 
The sculpture is one of many components of the Sachsenhausen Memorial developed in the 1950s and opened in former East Germany in 1961. It was placed within a covered court created where the crematorium of the camp stood. This space was rebuilt in 2004 and a new exhibition opened in the area surrounding the court.
The sculpture, tucked away on the site of the crematorium and near where ashes of the dead were buried or scattered is the most emotionally expressive of all of the works on the site. In its direct depiction of suffering and death, it stands in stark contrast to the heroic statues of “anti-fascist” heroes depicted on the central monument. Like the memorial at Ravensbrock, its form deliberately harks back to Christian religious sculpture, especially depictions of the Pieta and Entombment of Christ.
Harold Marcuse has described the figures as more abstract in “contrast with the heroic group on the main Sachsenhausen memorial,” (Marcuse, p. 79 while Caroline Wiedmer described the sculpture as “a more realistic depiction of the prisoners’ suffering, although here too the figures are exclusively male.” (Wiedmer, p. 185).
Becker, Stefan. “Zur künstlerischen Gestaltung der Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen.” In Von der Erinnerung zum Monument: Die Entstehungsgeschichte der Nationalen Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen, edited by Günter Morsch, Oranienburg, Germany: Schriftenreihe der Stiftung Brandenburgische Gedenkstätten, (Band Nr. 8, 1996)
Farmer, Sarah. “Symbols that Face Two Ways: Commemorating the Victims of Nazism and Stalinism at Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen.” Representations 49 Special Issue: Identifying Histories: Eastern Europe Before and after 1989. (1995): 97-
119.
"Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen", https://www.sachsenhausen-sbg.de/ (accessed February 6, 2025)
Marcuse, Harold. “Holocaust Memorials: The Emergence of a Genre,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 115, No. 1 (February 2010), pp. 53-89.
Morsch, Günter, and Astrid Ley, eds. Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp 1936–1945: Events and Developments. (Berlin: Metropol, 2013)
Morsch, Günter, ed. Von der Erinnerung zum Monument: Die Entstehungsgeschichte der Nationalen Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen. Oranienburg, Germany: Schriftenreihe der Stiftung Brandenburgische Gedenkstätten, (Band Nr. 8, 1996)
Zur Nieden, Susanne “Erste Initiative fur Mahnmale in Oranienburg und Sachsenhausen,”
in Morsch, Von der Erinnerung zum Monument, 125 –132, esp. 128 –130. with photographs. Wiedmer, Caroline, The Claims of Memory: Representations of the Holocaust in Contemporary Germany and France (Ithaca, NY and London: C
“Murder and Mass Murder in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp 1936–1945,” Sachsenhausen Memorial (Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen), https://www.sachsenhausen-sbg.de/en/exhibitions/permanent-exhibitions/murder-and-mass-murder/ (accessed February 6, 2025)