Online Encyclopedia
Neuengamme
During World War 2 Neuengamme was a concentration camp near Hamburg, Germany.
The site is one of the few concentration camps in Germany where most of the buildings have been conserved and serves as a memorial today. It is situated 15km southeast of the centre of Hamburg at Jean-Dolidier-Weg in the Vierlande area.
The Camp existed from 1940 through 1945 and had a total of 106,000 inmates during this time. These were spread over the main camp and 80 outposts across the north German area. Inmates were mainly from the local Jewish community, but also included communists, homosexuals, prostitutes, gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, prisoners of war and many other groups. 55,000 fell victim to the subhuman conditions in the camp consisting of hard manual work with insufficient nutrition, very unhygienic conditions and violence from the guards.
Work at the mother camp was centered on the production of bricks. This included the construction of a canal to transport the bricks to and from the site. Inmates had to excavate the heavy, peaty soil with inadequate tools and regardless of weather conditions or their health state.
Several original buildings of the camp continued to serve as a prison until 2003. There is a good museum located at the south end of the site. In the summer of 1944, Neuengamme received many women prisoners from Auschwitz, as well as some SS matrons, or Aufseherin. Many of the women were later dispersed to female subcamps throughout northern Germany.
Three of the camp's outposts also serve as public memorials. These are located at Bullenhuser Damm , Kritenbarg 8 and Suhrenkamp 98 . The first of these is a memorial to the murder of 20 children from Auschwitz concentration camp that had been taken to Hamburg and abused for medical experiments. On April 20, 1945, only weeks before the war was over, they were killed to cover up that crime. The second is an outpost of Neuengamme concentration camp where Jewish women from the Lodz Ghetto in Poland were forced to do construction work. The third one is located inside the gatehouse of the Fuhlsbüttel penitentiary . Parts of this complex served as concentration camp for communists, opponents of the regime and many other groups. About 450 inmates were murdered here during the Nazi reign.
On May 3 1945, in a bid to destroy evidence of the concentration camp, the ships Cap Arcona, Thielbek, Athen and Deutschland were loaded with inmates from the camp and left to float defenselessly in the Lübeck bay between Neustadt (Holstein) and Scharbeutz . Allied aircraft sank the ships. Approximately 7,000 to 8,000 passengers drowned or were shot upon reaching the shore by the SS.