Set up on the outskirts of Berlin, the Sachsenhausen lager was conceived, planned and built by the architects of the SS as a model camp based on their vision of what an ideal concentration camp should be. Between 1936 and 1945, 200,000 people from 22 different countries were interned in the camp. Tens of thousands of prisoners died there, among them Stalin’s oldest child, interned on orders from Hitler himself. In August 1945, a few months before the end of World War II, Sachsenhausen was back in service as a special camp run this time by the Soviets. The death toll was enormous due to the chronic conditions of physical and psychological deprivation forced on the prisoners. The Sachsenhausen special camp was finally closed in March 1950. For decades the world was aware of only one face of Sachsenhausen: that of a Nazi lager. Its other face, the Soviet special camp, remained a carefully kept secret for almost fifty years.