Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial

About

In 1937, Hitler declared five cities to be converted into Führer cities (German: Führerstädte ) in the new Nazi regime, one of which was Hamburg. The banks of the Elbe river of Hamburg, considered Germany's "Gateway to the World" for its large port, were to be redone in the clinker brick style characteristic of German Brick Expressionism.

To supply the bricks, the SS-owned company Deutsche Erd-und Steinwerke ( DEST ) (English: German Earth & Stone Works) purchased a defunct brick factory ( German: Klinkerwerk ) and 500,000 m 2 of land in Neuengamme in September 1938.

The SS established the Neuengamme concentration camp on 13 December 1938 as a subcamp ( German: Außenlager) of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and transported 100 prisoners from Sachsenhausen to begin constructing a camp and operate the brickworks.

In January 1940, Heinrich Himmler visited the site and deemed Neuengamme brick production below standard. In April 1940, the SS and the city of Hamburg signed a contract for the construction of a larger, more modern brick factory, an expanded connecting waterway, and a direct supply of bricks and prisoners for construction work in the city.

On 4 June, the Neuengamme concentration camp became an independent camp ( German: Stammlager), and transports began to arrive from all over Germany and soon the rest of Europe.

As the death rate climbed between 1940 and 1942, a crematorium was constructed in the camp. In the same year, the civilian corporations Messap and Jastram opened armament plants on the camp site and used concentration camp prisoners as their workforces. After the war turned in Stalingrad, Nazis imprisoned millions of Soviets in the concentration camp system and Soviet POWs became the largest prisoner group in the Neuengamme camp and received brutal treatment by SS guards.

The first satellite camp of Drütte was established in Salzgitter, and in less than a year close to 80 subcamps were constructed.

By the end of 1942, the death rate had risen to 10% per month. In 1943, the satellite camp on the Channel Island of Alderney was established. In July 1944, a special section of the camp was set up for prominent French prisoners, comprising political opponents and resistors against the German occupation of France. These prisoners included John William, who had participated in the sabotaging and bombing of a military factory in Montluçon. William discovered his singing voice while cheering his fellow prisoners at Neuengamme and went on to a prominent career as a singer of popular and gospel music.

By the end of 1944, the total number of prisoners grew to approximately 49,000, with 12,000 in Neuengamme and 37,000 in the subcamps, including nearly 10,000 women in the various subcamps for women.

Evacuations, death marches, and the bombings of Cap Arcona

On 15 March 1945, the transfer of Scandinavian prisoners from other German camps to Neuengamme began, as part of the White Buses program. German prisoners in Belgium, whose liberation had begun, were transferred to Neuengamme. The last train, nicknamed the "ghost train", was sabotaged, at great risk, by its driver, and returned to occupied Brussels after reaching Muizen, taking 30 minutes for the 40 km journey—the outward journey, delayed by the driver and fireman —had taken ten hours. The prisoners were ultimately released following agreement between the German Military Administration and the International Red Cross.

Neuengamme's subcamps were emptied later that month on death marches to the reception camps of Bergen-Belsen and Osnabrück, and, on 8 April, an air raid on a prisoner train transport led to the Celle massacre. Orders were issued for the evacuation of the main camp on 19 April. Between 20 and 26 April, over 9000 prisoners were taken from Neuengamme and loaded on four ships: the passenger liners Deutschland and Cap Arcona, and two large steamers, SS Thielbek and Athen.

The prisoners were in the ships' hold for several days with no food or water. Concluding that the ships contained Norway-bound fleeing Nazi officials rather than thousands of prisoners, the Royal Air Force (RAF) Hawker Typhoons bombed the Thielbek, Cap Arcona and Deutschland on May 3. Intelligence that the ships carried concentration camp prisoners did not reach the squadrons in time to halt the attack. Survivors who jumped into the water were strafed by cannon fire from the RAF aircraft or shot by Nazi officials. Thousands of dead washed ashore just as the British Army successfully occupied the area on land. The British forced German POWs and civilians to dig mass graves for the dead. Approximately 7,100 prisoners and officials died in the raid; only 450 prisoners survived. 600–700 concentration camp prisoners remained in the main camp under SS orders to destroy all incriminating documentation, dismantle many areas of the camp, and tidy the site. On 2 May 1945, the SS and the last of the prisoners left the Neuengamme concentration camp. The first British soldiers arrived the next day and, seeing a barren and clean site, reported the concentration camp as "empty".

In the first post-war months, the camp was used as a Soviet displaced persons camp, with German POWs held separately. In June, British forces began to use the site as an internment camp for witnesses, SS members and Nazi officials, called Civil Internment Camp No. 6.

The Civil Internment Camp No. 6 was closed on 13 August 1948, and the grounds were transferred to the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, which then built and opened a prison on the site of the former prisoners’ bunkers in 1950. Several original buildings from the former camp were used for various purposes by the prisons until their closing in February 2006.

In May 1945 the British military government began to construct DP Camps in Hamburg. Responsible for this was the unit "Displaced Persons Assembly Centre Staffs" (DPACS) which was supported by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). Displaced Persons received a special status under the British military government. It included people, who were in foreign countries because of the war and needed help returning home. This included former slave laborers and concentration camp inmates. On the site of former Concentration Camp Neuengamme about ten thousand Soviet slave laborers were housed. A different part of the site was used for German prisoners of war. Under the special requirement from the Soviet Union made in 1944 to take back all citizens, repatriation began on 9 May, only four days after the DP Camp was established. In general, the situation in the accommodations of DP's in Neuengamme is not well known. We only know from a war diary of the British 53rd (Welsh) Infantry Division about bad hygienic circumstances, which stemmed from the camp's time as a concentration camp. Men and women were separated, women were placed in former SS-guards accommodations. Survivors said even though food and clothing were hard to get, they felt treated well and enjoyed being free.

To get along with the difficulties of supply in the DP Camps, caused by the enormous number of survivors, on 27 May 1945 the British military government called on the citizens of Hamburg to donate clothes for men and women. Reactions were mixed, there were also acts of revenge. Because of these, some DPs were killed, the British military government imposed a curfew for several days.

In May 1945, the DP Assembly Centre "Zoo" was established in the Hamburg park "Planten un Blomen", for repatriations into the Soviet Union. In fact in 1950 six DP Camps still existed in Hamburg (Zoo, Funkturm, Radrennbahn, Alsterdorf, Fischbeck und Falkenberg) with 4,000 people. Because of the new administration under Hamburg's social authority the DPs were now labeled as "homeless foreigners".

On 18 March 1946, the trial of fourteen officials of the main Neuengamme concentration camp began before a British military tribunal, at the Curiohaus building in Hamburg, Germany, the first of 33 trials that would be held over a period of the next two years brought by the British against staff of the camp and its satellites. Former prisoners from six countries testified during the trial regarding the executions committed in the camp, including those of Soviet POWs murdered with poisonous gas, "medical" experiments conducted on inmates, and the brutal treatment and appalling conditions of the prisoners in general.

The defendants were found guilty of war crimes on 3 May 1946; eleven were sentenced to death and the other three to prison terms ranging from 10 to 20 years. On 8 October 1946, the eleven men found guilty in the Neuengamme Trials were executed by hanging by the British executioner Albert Pierrepoint. These men were former commandant Max Pauly, SS Dr. Bruno Kitt, Anton Thumann, Johann Reese, Willy Warnke, SS Dr. Alfred Trzebinski, Heinrich Ruge, Wilhem Bahr, Andreas Brems, Wilhelm Dreimann, and Adolf Speck.