Sonnenburg symbolizes, like hardly any other place, the beginning and end of the twelve years of terror under the Nazi regime. Established in early April 1933, the Sonnenburg concentration camp became one of the largest early torture and detention sites in the German Reich. After its dissolution in the spring of 1934, the facility served as a penitentiary. From 1942 to 1944, over 1,500 prisoners from occupied Western Europe and Norway were held here, having been deported under the Night and Fog decree of December 7, 1941. As the Red Army approached, the evacuation of the detention facility was ordered. On the night of January 30 to 31, 1945, a 17-member SS command executed 819 prisoners. For the first time, a publication addresses the largely unknown history of the Sonnenburg concentration camp and penitentiary from 1933 to 1945 within German memory culture. The Polish community of Slonsk, formerly Sonnenburg, located one hundred kilometers from Berlin, has become a European memorial and reminder site, featuring a newly designed museum and a cemetery with 16 mass graves.