KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme

Cemetery description

The Neuengamme concentration camp was established in December 1938 after the SS had moved a 100-person external kommando (working unit) from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp to an empty brickyard in the Hamburg district of Neuengamme. Initially, the camp functioned as a labour camp governed by the Sachsenhausen camp, but in early summer 1940, it became independent.
The prisoners’ task was to produce bricks and tiles. For this purpose, they were forced to dig a canal to make the transportation of the materials easier. Soon, almost 100 sub-camps and external kommandos were created around the camp. From 1942, part of the armaments production was based on its slave labour.
It was in Neuengamme that the first experiments with the Zyklon B gas were carried out. The gas was later used for the mass extermination of Jews. Neuengamme was also a place where doctor Kurt Heissmeyer conducted his medical experiments on infectious diseases on, among others, Jewish children under the age of twelve. All the children were murdered several days before the end of the war and the liberation of the camp.
In the spring of 1945, part of the camp was handed over to the Swedish Red Cross. Within the humanitarian ‘white buses’ action, the prisoners whose release from the camp was negotiated were gathered there before their transportation to Sweden.
On 18 April 1945, the evacuation of the camp began in the form of ‘death marches’, during which many thousands of prisoners died. Some prisoners were taken on board the ships: SS Cap Arcona (approx. 4,500), SS Thiebleck (approx. 2.800) and SS Athen (approx. 2.000), which sailed to the roadstead of the Hamburg port in the Bay of Lübeck. Unfortunately, the ships were spotted by the Royal Air Force and sunk. This action brought about the death of approximately 8,300 prisoners. Only about 350 prisoners survived from SS Cap Arcona and about 50 prisoners from SS Thiebleck. Fortuitously, all the prisoners from SS Athen survived. On 4 May 1945, the empty camp was liberated by the British troops.
In total, more than 100,000 prisoners, including 17,000 Poles, passed through the Neuengamme concentration camp and its 85 branches. The prisoners were citizens of various countries. These were Soviet prisoners of war (34,350), French (11,500), German (9,200), Danish (6,950) and Belgian (4,800) citizens. Approximately 55,000 prisoners died. The victims were buried in the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg, or burnt in the camp’s crematorium consisting of 2 ovens, later extended to 4. At the time when the death rate was at its highest level, the Ohlsdorf cemetery crematorium was also employed. The victims’ ashes were partly used as a fertiliser in the camp’s garden or were thrown into the canal (built at the cost of the lives of hundreds of victims) which connected the brickyard with the Elbe River.
After the war, the camp, most of whose buildings had remained untouched, became the place of internment for members of the NSDAP and SS and, in 1948, it was returned to the city. Later, an educational centre and a juvenile detention centre were created on the premises of the former camp. In the 1960s, the place was transformed into a prison.
The first memorial was erected in 1953 through the initiative of a group of former prisoners from France. This was followed by other memorials, among them ‘the Monument of Poles Deported from the Warsaw Uprising’, whose grand unveiling took place on 1 September 1999. The plinth of this monument-sculpture bears two identical texts in Polish and in German. The photo in the middle presents the Polish text that reads: ‘On Earth peace is granted to those who possess love and sacrifice. In memory of 6,000 Polish men and women who, during the Warsaw Uprising and after it was quelled, were deported to the Neuengamme concentration camp and its sub-camps, and in honour of all the victims. The Polish Diaspora, Hamburg, 1 Sept. 1999.’
It was only after the prison vacated the site in 2003 that it was possible to undertake the complete arrangement of the memorial site. The excavations in 2005 revealed the foundations of the roll-call square, and this is the only part of the memorial that has been reconstructed. The rubble coming from the destroyed buildings of the former concentration camp, placed in huge wiry baskets that reflect the layout of the former camp buildings, have been incorporated into the topography of this memorial site. Moreover, two brick buildings have been adapted for the museum and the educational centre.
The symbolic memorial and cemetery can be found by the road that leads to the museum and in the area of the former camp’s garden where the prisoners’ ashes used to be scattered. The Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, which has three branches in Hamburg Fühlsbüttel, Bullenhuser Damm and Poppenbüttel, is a municipal cultural institution that is governed by the Cultural Office of the Free City of Hamburg.

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