Neuengamme was a network of
Nazi concentration camps
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as con ...
in Northern
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
that consisted of the main camp, Neuengamme, and
more than 85 satellite camps. Established in 1938 near the village of
Neuengamme in the
Bergedorf
Bergedorf () is the largest of the seven boroughs of Hamburg, Germany, named after Bergedorf quarter within this borough. In 2020 the population of the borough was 130,994.
History
The city of Bergedorf received town privileges in 1275, then ...
district of
Hamburg
(male), (female) en, Hamburger(s),
Hamburgian(s)
, timezone1 = Central (CET)
, utc_offset1 = +1
, timezone1_DST = Central (CEST)
, utc_offset1_DST = +2
, postal ...
, the Neuengamme camp became the largest concentration camp in Northwest Germany. Over 100,000 prisoners came through Neuengamme and its
subcamps, 24 of which were for women. The verified death toll is 42,900: 14,000 in the main camp, 12,800 in the subcamps, and 16,100 in the
death marches
A death march is a forced march of prisoners of war or other captives or deportees in which individuals are left to die along the way. It is distinguished in this way from simple prisoner transport via foot march. Article 19 of the Geneva Conven ...
and bombings during the
final weeks of World War II.
Following Germany's defeat in 1945, the British Army used the site as an
internment camp
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...
for
SS and other
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
officials. In 1948, the British transferred the land to the Free Hanseatic City of Hamburg, which summarily demolished the camp's wooden barracks and built in its stead a prison cell block, converting the former concentration camp site into two state prisons operated by the Hamburg authorities from 1950 to 2004. Following protests by various groups of survivors and allies, the site now serves as a memorial. It is situated 15 km southeast of the centre of Hamburg.
History
Background
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
The Elbe (; cs, Labe ; nds, Ilv or ''Elv''; Upper and dsb, Łobjo) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Re ...
river of Hamburg, considered Germany's "Gateway to the World" for its large
port
A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as H ...
, was to be redone in the
clinker brick
Clinker bricks are partially-vitrified bricks used in the construction of buildings.
Clinker bricks are produced when wet clay bricks are exposed to excessive heat during the firing process, sintering the surface of the brick and forming a shin ...
style characteristic of German
Brick Expressionism.
To supply the bricks, the SS-owned company ''Deutsche Erd-und Steinwerke'' (
DESt
German Earth and Stone Works (german: Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke GmbH, ) was an SS-owned company created to procure and manufacture building materials for state construction projects in Nazi Germany. DEST was a subsidiary company of ''Amtsgru ...
) (English: German Earth & Stone Works) purchased a defunct brick factory (''German: Klinkerwerk'') and 500,000 m² of land in Neuengamme in September 1938.
Neuengamme camp
![2015 10 05 Brotrechnung IMG 3462](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/2015_10_05_Brotrechnung_IMG_3462.JPG)
The SS established the Neuengamme concentration camp on 13 December 1938 as a subcamp (''German: Außenlager)'' of the
Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoner ...
and transported 100 prisoners from Sachsenhausen to begin constructing a camp and operate the brickworks.
In January 1940,
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
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.
![Neungamme New Brick Factory](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Neungamme_New_Brick_Factory.jpg)
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
Salzgitter (; Eastphalian: ''Soltgitter'') is an independent city in southeast Lower Saxony, Germany, located between Hildesheim and Braunschweig. Together with Wolfsburg and Braunschweig, Salzgitter is one of the seven ''Oberzentren'' of Lower ...
, 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
Scandinavia
Scandinavia; Sámi languages: /. ( ) is a subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. In English usage, ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Swe ...
n prisoners from other German camps to Neuengamme began, as part of the
White Buses
White Buses was a Swedish humanitarian operation with the objective of freeing Scandinavians in German concentration camps in Nazi Germany during the final stages of World War II. Although the White Buses operation was envisioned to rescue Scan ...
program. Neuengamme's subcamps were emptied later that month on
death marches
A death march is a forced march of prisoners of war or other captives or deportees in which individuals are left to die along the way. It is distinguished in this way from simple prisoner transport via foot march. Article 19 of the Geneva Conven ...
to the
reception camps
Reception is a noun form of ''receiving'', or ''to receive'' something, such as art, experience, information, people, products, or vehicles. It may refer to:
Astrology
* Reception (astrology), when a planet is located in a sign ruled by another p ...
of
Bergen-Belsen
Bergen-Belsen , or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, in 1943, parts of it became a concentrati ...
and
Osnabrück
Osnabrück (; wep, Ossenbrügge; archaic ''Osnaburg'') is a city in the German state of Lower Saxony. It is situated on the river Hase in a valley penned between the Wiehen Hills and the northern tip of the Teutoburg Forest. With a population ...
, 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
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) an ...
(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
The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...
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".
After the war
In the first post-war months, the camp was used as a Soviet
displaced persons camp
A refugee camp is a temporary settlement built to receive refugees and people in refugee-like situations. Refugee camps usually accommodate displaced people who have fled their home country, but camps are also made for internally displaced peop ...
, 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.
Displaced Persons Camp Neuengamme
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
United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) was an international relief agency, largely dominated by the United States but representing 44 nations. Founded in November 1943, it was dissolved in September 1948. it became part o ...
(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 includes 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 piece 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 53rd British 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".
War crimes trial
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
Albert Pierrepoint (; 30 March 1905 – 10 July 1992) was an English hangman who executed between 435 and 600 people in a 25-year career that ended in 1956. His father Henry and uncle Thomas were official hangmen before him.
Pierrepoin ...
. These men were former commandant
Max Pauly
Max Pauly (1 June 1907 – 8 October 1946) was an SS Standartenführer who was the commandant of Stutthof concentration camp from September 1939 to August 1942 and commandant of Neuengamme concentration camp and the associated subcamps from Septem ...
, SS Dr. Bruno Kitt,
Anton Thumann
Anton Thumann (31 October 1912 – 8 October 1946) was a member of the SS of Nazi Germany who served in various Nazi concentration camps during World War II. After the war, Thumann was arrested by British occupation forces and charged with w ...
, Johann Reese, Willy Warnke, SS Dr.
Alfred Trzebinski, Heinrich Ruge, Wilhem Bahr, Andreas Brems, Wilhelm Dreimann, and Adolf Speck.
[
]
Cap Arcona
The order to transfer the prisoners from the camps to the prison ships came from the Hamburg Gauleiter
A ''Gauleiter'' () was a regional leader of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) who served as the head of a '' Gau'' or '' Reichsgau''. ''Gauleiter'' was the third-highest rank in the Nazi political leadership, subordinate only to '' Reichsleiter'' and to ...
Karl Kaufmann
Karl Kaufmann (10 October 1900 – 4 December 1969) was a German politician who served as a Nazi Party ''Gauleiter'' from 1925 to 1945 and as the ''Reichsstatthalter'' (Reich Governor) of Hamburg from 1933 to 1945.
Early life
Kaufmann was the ...
who was himself acting on orders from Berlin. Although Kaufmann later claimed during the war crimes tribunal that the prisoners were destined for Sweden, the Higher SS and Police Leader of Hamburg, Georg-Henning Graf von Bassewitz-Behr
Georg-Henning Graf von Bassewitz-Behr (21 March 1900 – 31 January 1949) was an SS-''Gruppenführer'' who served as an SS and Police Leader in Dnepropetrovsk, Mogilev and Hamburg during the Second World War.
Early life
Bassewitz-Behr was born ...
, said at the same trial that the prisoners were, in fact, slated to be killed in compliance with Himmler's orders. It has been suggested that the plan itself called for scuttling the ships with the prisoners still aboard.
Camp operation
Hunger reigned supreme. The food given to prisoners was so terribly insufficient that most died within three months of arrival. The meager portions available were of poor quality and were often inedible. The most lethal disease in the camp was dysentery
Dysentery (UK pronunciation: , US: ), historically known as the bloody flux, is a type of gastroenteritis that results in bloody diarrhea. Other symptoms may include fever, abdominal pain, and a feeling of incomplete defecation. Complications ...
. Many prisoners attempted to acquire food illegally, and others managed to survive through food packages from relatives and the Red Cross. Only certain groups of prisoners, however, were even allowed to receive any mail from family or international organizations.
Life in the camp was a constant struggle for survival, down to the smallest of details. One of the few possessions the prisoners were allowed to have, their bowls, were rusty and could only be washed in cold water.
At the start of the building of the camp, prisoners slept on the floor of their crowded wooden barracks. In 1941, three-tier bunk beds were installed. From 1944, bunks were shared by two or three prisoners. The smell and overcrowding meant sleep was impossible after the 10–12 hour workday, and the bathrooms were always overcrowded in the mornings.
Prisoners clung to friendships and relationships in small groups. Intellectual activities as well as the rare opportunities for cultural activities like drawing, woodcarving, talking about literature, and reciting poetry or songs helped them maintain their will to survive.
Extermination through labour
The Neuengamme concentration camp was run under the SS practice of "extermination through labour" (German: Vernichtung durch Arbeit). Prisoners worked for 10–12 hours per day and were killed both due to the inhumane conditions in the camp as well as active violence from the guards. 42,900 prisoners died from difficult slave labour combined with insufficient nutrition, extremely unhygienic conditions contributing to widespread disease, and arbitrary brutal punishments from the guards. Although hospitals existed in the camp, medicine was scarce and entrance into the hospital was almost always a death sentence. In 1942, a typhus epidemic entreated the SS to allow former doctors imprisoned in the camp to work at the camp hospitals; prior to this reversal, the hospital staff comprised almost no former medical professionals. The hospitals were also used as a place to murder large groups of weakened Soviet prisoners via lethal injection.
Work at the main camp centered around brick production for the first half of the war. This included the construction of a canal on the small offshoot of the Elbe river located at the campsite in order to transport raw materials from Hamburg. Inmates were forced to excavate the heavy, peaty soil with inadequate tools, regardless of weather conditions or the state of their health. Once the prisoners finished building the new brick factory in 1942, one of the most populated assignment was working in the clay pit, extracting and transporting clay from the main camp for brick production. Constructing the canal, digging the clay, and transporting the soil were known as the three "death commandos". Skilled labour was almost always given to prisoners on upper rungs of the Aryan hierarchy.
From 1942 until the end of the war, armaments production became the central focus of Neuengamme, with private business ventures profiting financially from the free labour of the prisoners. Several armaments companies, including Messap, Jastram, Walter-Werke and the SS-owned Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke German Equipment Works (, ) was a Nazi German defense contractor with headquarters in Berlin during World War II, owned and operated by the '' Schutzstaffel'' (SS). It consisted of a network of requisitioned factories and camp workshops across Ge ...
(DAW), established facilities inside the Neuengamme concentration camp following negotiations with the Nazi regime. Walther
Walther is a masculine given name and a surname. It is a German form of Walter, which is derived from the Old High German ''Walthari'', containing the elements ''wald'' -"power", "brightness" or "forest" and ''hari'' -"warrior".
The name was fir ...
used their factory to manufacture Gewehr 43
The Gewehr 43 or Karabiner 43 (abbreviated G43, K43, Gew 43, Kar 43) is a 7.92×57mm Mauser caliber semi-automatic rifle developed by Germany during World War II. The design was based on that of the earlier G41(W), but incorporated an improved ...
semi-automatic rifles. While conditions for prisoners working in these privately owned factories were better than those working in other kommandos, all prisoners worked under the constant threat of being transferred to the death kommandos. According to the testimony of Wilhelm Bahr, an ex-medical orderly, during the trial against Bruno Tesch
Bruno Emil Tesch (14 August 1890 – 16 May 1946) was a German chemist and entrepreneur. Together with Gerhard Peters and Walter Heerdt, he invented the insecticide Zyklon B. He was the owner of Tesch & Stabenow (called ''Testa''), a pest contro ...
, 200 Russian prisoners of war were gassed by prussic acid
Hydrogen cyanide, sometimes called prussic acid, is a chemical compound with the formula HCN and structure . It is a colorless, extremely poisonous, and flammable liquid that boils slightly above room temperature, at . HCN is produced on an in ...
in 1942. In April 1942, a crematorium
A crematorium or crematory is a venue for the cremation of the dead. Modern crematoria contain at least one cremator (also known as a crematory, retort or cremation chamber), a purpose-built furnace. In some countries a crematorium can also b ...
was constructed at the camp. Prior to that all bodies were taken to Hamburg for cremation.
Known death rates and population numbers
Because prisoners were forced to clear the site at the end of the war, only 10% of original documentation survives from the period. From this evidence, scholars have been able to conclusively prove exact numbers for some months of the entire 1938–1945 period. It is known exactly that by the end of 1940, 2,900 were imprisoned at Neuengamme and the known death toll was over 432. In 1941, the prisoners completed the barracks, and transports arrived from Auschwitz carrying 1002 prisoners as well as various other transports carrying 1000 Soviet POWs. The total number of prisoners grew to 4500. 495 known deaths occurred in 1941 alone.
Until the end of 1940, the majority of prisoners were of German nationality and contained a mix of Asocials, political opponents to the Nazi regime, and various other German national groups. After Neuengamme became an independent concentration camp, the prisoner population grew more diverse, and in the following years the Soviet group followed by the Polish prisoners made up the largest percentage of camp prisoners by nationality. Inmates were from 28 nationalities: Soviets
Soviet people ( rus, сове́тский наро́д, r=sovyétsky naród), or citizens of the USSR ( rus, гра́ждане СССР, grázhdanye SSSR), was an umbrella demonym for the population of the Soviet Union.
Nationality policy in ...
(34,350), Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles
Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
(16,900), French (11,500), German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
(9,200), Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
(6,950), Belgian
Belgian may refer to:
* Something of, or related to, Belgium
* Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent
* Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, such as Dutch, French, and German
*Ancient Belgian language, an extinct languag ...
(4,800), and Danish
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...
(4,800). The prisoner groups included those from the local Jew
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...
ish community, communists, prostitutes, Gypsies
The Romani (also spelled Romany or Rromani , ), colloquially known as the Roma, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic itinerants. They live in Europe and Anatolia, and have diaspora populations located worldwide, with sign ...
, Jehovah's Witnesses, prisoners of war and many other persecuted groups. Of 106,000 inmates, almost half died. 23,394 victims of Neuengamme and the subcamps can be found listed by name in the Neuengamme Memorial Site's House of Remembrance. In reality, however, it is estimated that there were 26,800 victims of daily camp horrors and about 17,000 victims of the death marches and reception camps. At least 42,900 victims can be verified, even if not by name.
According to the testimony of Wilhelm Bahr, an ex-medical orderly, during the trial against Bruno Tesch
Bruno Emil Tesch (14 August 1890 – 16 May 1946) was a German chemist and entrepreneur. Together with Gerhard Peters and Walter Heerdt, he invented the insecticide Zyklon B. He was the owner of Tesch & Stabenow (called ''Testa''), a pest contro ...
, 197 Soviet prisoners of war were gassed by prussic acid (Zyklon B) in the arrest bunker of the camp on 25 September 1942. Four weeks later, 251 additional Soviet POWs were gassed in the bunker. There were also 20 Jewish children specifically brought to Neuengamme from Auschwitz in order to be experimented on by Dr. Kurt Heissmeyer from Berlin.
Camp personnel and commandants
No SS women were stationed at Neuengamme permanently. Female guards were trained at Neuengamme and assigned to its female subcamps. Many of these SS women are known by name, including Käthe Becker, Erna Dickmann, Johanna Freund, Angelika Grass, Kommandoführerin Loni Gutzeit (who was nicknamed "The Dragon of Wandsbek" by the prisoners while serving at Hamburg-Wandsbek
Wandsbek () is the second-largest of seven boroughs that make up the city and state of Hamburg, Germany. The name of the district is derived from the river Wandse which passes through here. Wandsbek, which was formerly an independent city, is ur ...
), Gertrud Heise, Frieda Ignatowitz, Gertrud Möller, who also served at the Boizenburg subcamp, Lotte Johanna Radtke, Chief Wardress Annemie von der Huelst, and Inge Marga Marggot Weber. Many of the women were later dispersed to female subcamps throughout northern Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
. Today it is known that female guards staffed the subcamps of Neuengamme at Boizenburg
Boizenburg () is a municipality in the Ludwigslust-Parchim district in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany. It is situated on the right bank of the Elbe, 53 km west of Ludwigslust, 25 km northeast of Lüneburg and 50 km east of ...
, Braunschweig
Braunschweig () or Brunswick ( , from Low German ''Brunswiek'' , Braunschweig dialect: ''Bronswiek'') is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany, north of the Harz Mountains at the farthest navigable point of the river Oker, which connects it to the ...
SS-Reitschule, Hamburg-Sasel, Hamburg-Wandsbek, Helmstedt-Beendorf, Langenhorn, Neugraben, Obernheide, Salzwedel
Salzwedel (, officially known as Hansestadt Salzwedel; Low German: ''Soltwedel'') is a town in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. It is the capital of the district (''Kreis'') of Altmarkkreis Salzwedel, and has a population of approximately 21,500. Salz ...
, and Unterluss (Vuterluss). Only a few have been tried for war crimes, and these include Anneliese Kohlmann, who served as one of six women-guards at Neugraben, and Gertrud Heise, Oberaufseherin at Obernheide.[ ''Source:'']
The administration of Neuengamme was headed by SS-Sturmführer Alfons Bentele (September 1942 – March 1943). Alfred Trzebinski (1902–1946) was the SS-physician for the Neuengamme subcamps. Most SS officers had direct contact with the prisoners, and their harassment and mistreatment were daily markers of camp routine. In Neuengamme, there were three or four guard forces that would form a Sturmbann to guard the camp and the work details outside the camp. The prisoners’ barracks were surrounded by a barbed wire fence electrically charged at night.
The SS commandant (German: Lagerführer) was in charge of the entire Neuengamme concentration camp network. There were only three commandants of Neuengamme, and over the years they were in charge of 4,500 SS men, with as many as 500 SS officers working at any given time.
As a subcamp of Sachsenhausen, the following men were commandants of Neuengamme:
• SS Sturmbannführer Walter Eisfeld Walter Eisfeld (born 11 July 1905 in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt – died 3 April 1940 in Dachau) was a German SS functionary and concentration camp commandant during the Nazi era.
Eisfeld had been a member of the Artamanen-Gesellschaft, a völkisch ba ...
• SS Hauptsturmführer Martin Gottfried Weiß, April 1940 – June 1940
Erich Frommhagen (SS member from May 1933, ID No. 73754) became adjutant to the commandant of the Neuengamme camp in early 1940. He was killed in action on 17 March 1945.
As an independent concentration camp, the following were commandants of Neuengamme:
• SS Hauptsturmführer Martin Gottfried Weiß, June 1940 – September 1942. His adjutant was Karl-Friedrich Höcker.
• SS Obersturmbannführer Max Pauly
Max Pauly (1 June 1907 – 8 October 1946) was an SS Standartenführer who was the commandant of Stutthof concentration camp from September 1939 to August 1942 and commandant of Neuengamme concentration camp and the associated subcamps from Septem ...
, September 1942 – until liberation. His adjutant from May 1943 was Karl Totzauer.
Subcamps
See also: List of subcamps of Neuengamme
Below is an incomplete list of SS subcamps of Neuengamme camp system operating from 1938 until 1945. The Neuengamme concentration camp established by the SS in Hamburg, Germany, became a massive Nazi concentration camp complex using prisoner for ...
More than 80 subcamps were part of the Neuengamme concentration camp system. The first Neuengamme satellite opened in 1942, when inmates of Neuengamme were transported to the Arbeitsdorf Arbeitsdorf ("work-village") was a Nazi concentration camp in Stadt des KdF-Wagens bei Fallersleben 1942.
History and the purpose of the camp
In 1936, a Czech engineer by the name of Ferdinand Porsche designed a prototype of a car that would be a ...
subcamp. The number of prisoners within the subcamps drastically differed from camp to camp with as many as 3,000 inmates to as few as 10 or less.
Almost all women imprisoned at Neuengamme were interned in subcamps. In late 1943, most likely November, Neuengamme recorded its first female prisoners according to camp records. In the summer of 1944, Neuengamme received numerous transports of female prisoners from Auschwitz, as well other camps in the East. All of the women were eventually shipped out to one of its twenty-four female subcamps.
Several of the former satellite camps have been converted into memorials or at least feature commemorative plaques on-site. In 2000, however, 28 locations still displayed nothing to indicate the past presence of a camp.[ ] Dr. Garbe, from the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, wrote, "The importance of the satellite camps is further highlighted by the fact that toward the ends of the war three times more prisoners were in satellite camps than in the main camp."
Neuengamme subcamps on Alderney Island
The Channel Islands
The Channel Islands ( nrf, Îles d'la Manche; french: îles Anglo-Normandes or ''îles de la Manche'') are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two Crown Dependencies: the Bailiwick of Jersey, ...
were the only part of the British Commonwealth
The Commonwealth of Nations, simply referred to as the Commonwealth, is a political association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former territories of the British Empire. The chief institutions of the organisation are the Co ...
occupied by Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
. The Germans built four camps on the island of Alderney, two of which later became Neuengamme subcamps. The Alderney camps were named after the Frisian Islands
The Frisian Islands, also known as the Wadden Islands or the Wadden Sea Islands, form an archipelago at the eastern edge of the North Sea in northwestern Europe, stretching from the northwest of the Netherlands through Germany to the west of Denma ...
: ''Lager Norderney
Lager Norderney was a Nazi concentration camp on Alderney, in the Channel Islands, named after the East Frisian island of Norderney.
The German Organisation Todt (OT) built four labour camps in Alderney to house workers for the planned fortifi ...
'', '' Lager Borkum'', '' Lager Sylt'' and ''Lager Helgoland
Lager Helgoland was a labour camp on Alderney in the Channel Islands, named after the Frisian Islands, Frisian Island of Heligoland (in German, Helgoland), formerly a Danish and then British possession located off the German North Sea coastline a ...
''. The Nazi Organisation Todt
Organisation Todt (OT; ) was a civil and military engineering organisation in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, named for its founder, Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior Nazi. The organisation was responsible for a huge range of engineering pr ...
(OT) operated each subcamp and used forced labourers to build bunker
A bunker is a defensive military fortification designed to protect people and valued materials from falling bombs, artillery, or other attacks. Bunkers are almost always underground, in contrast to blockhouses which are mostly above ground. T ...
s, gun emplacements, air-raid shelters, and concrete fortifications. The Alderney camps had a total inmate population of about 6,000.
The prisoners in ''Lager Norderney'' and ''Lager Sylt'' were slave labourers forced to build the many military fortifications and installations throughout Alderney. ''Norderney'' housed slave labourers mostly from eastern Europe and a smattering from Russia and Spain. ''Sylt'' held Jew
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...
ish forced labourers. ''Lager Borkum'' was used for German technicians and volunteers from different countries of Europe. ''Lager Helgoland'' was filled with Russian OT workers.
In March 1943, ''Lager Norderney'' with its Russian and Polish POWs and ''Lager Sylt'' and its Jews, were placed under the control of the SS ''Hauptsturmführer
__NOTOC__
(, ; short: ''Hstuf'') was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that was used in several Nazi organizations such as the SS, NSKK and the NSFK. The rank of ''Hauptsturmführer'' was a mid-level commander and had equivalent seniority to a ...
'' (an SS rank equivalent to captain) Max List. Over 700 of the OT workers lost their lives on the island or while travelling to or from it in the one year under List's leadership. The camps were then closed and the remaining inmates transferred to Germany in 1944.
Victims
Memorial
Background
As the former concentration camp site was used directly after the war as an internment camp and then as a prison, the history of the atrocities that occurred in Neuengamme and its subcamps was largely forgotten in Hamburg and the rest of Germany. The establishment of the memorial was thus a gradual process that faced strong opposition from citizens and the Hamburg City Council.
The first memorial is a simple monument erected on the leftmost (northernmost) edge of the grounds on the site of the former SS plant nursery that had used ashes from the crematorium as fertilizer, far from the contemporaneous prison and the former prisoners compound of the concentration camp. Following intense pressure from the Amicale Internationale de Neuengamme, the main organization representing all former camp prisoners, the memorial was then expanded in 1965. In 1981, an exhibition building (German: Dokumentenhaus) was added, and the first exhibition on the history of the Neuengamme camp was inaugurated. All memorialization is still cut off from the main portion of the former concentration camp that included the barracks, brickworks, and death commandos. In 1984, protests successfully halted the demolition of the former brickworks and several important historical buildings from the former camp were designated as heritage sites. In 1995, the former armaments factory of the Walther company was altered into a permanent exhibition and the Dokumentenhaus remodeled into the House of Remembrance. A new museum was opened in 2005. While decades of pressure from survivors and activists managed to convince the Hamburg Senate to relocate the two prisons standing on the former concentration camp site in 1989, it was in 2003 and 2006 they were officially moved off-site. The entirety of the grounds was thus only incorporated into the memorial site in 2007.
Location
The Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (German: KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme), opened in 2008, is located in Hamburg-Bergedorf at Jean-Dolidier-Weg 75, named for a French activist integral to the creation of the memorial, and renamed from Camp (German: Lager) road. At 57 hectares, the Neuengamme Memorial site is one of the largest memorials in Germany.
The memorial is located southeast of the center of Hamburg-Bergedorf in Hamburg-Neuengamme, halfway in the direction of Zollenspieker. Leading to it is the highway A 25, exit Hamburg Curslack or the Bundesstraße (German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
for "federal highway") 5 via the street Curslacker Heerweg. A map of situation and structure is available.
International mourning place
The Dokumentenhaus (House of Remembrance) is in the northern part of the ground. There are files of death, models of the camp and the administration. The Internationales Mahnmal (International mourning place) is a entity of a column (symbol of the crematory). A footpath leads to it, At the right side are plates with the names of all countries wherefrom the camp inmates came from. A sculpture of a dying prisoner by Françoise Salmon gets an impression of the pain.
Memorial sculpture garden
North of the International mourning place (in German: Internationales Mahnmal), a circular path leads through the memorial sculpture garden
A sculpture garden or sculpture park is an outdoor garden or park which includes the presentation of sculpture, usually several permanently sited works in durable materials in landscaped surroundings.
A sculpture garden may be private, owned by ...
on the gardening area of former concentration camp. Memorial stones, sculptures and monuments are there erected. On plaques information is given in the languages German, French and English. They witness and are sign of the mourning for persecuted groups, persons deported, inmates and those murdered by action of retaliation.
The columns of basalt remember July 1944, when the Maquisards from Murat Murat may refer to:
Places Australia
* Murat Bay, a bay in South Australia
* Murat Marine Park, a marine protected area
France
* Murat, Allier, a commune in the department of Allier
* Murat, Cantal, a commune in the department of Cantal
Elsewhe ...
were deported and afterwards murdered in the Neuengamme concentration camp and its affiliates. In total 75 men of 103 died in the concentration camp.
Cemeteries and memorials outside the former concentration camp grounds
Three of the Neuengamme satellite camps also serve as public memorials: Bullenhuser Damm, Poppenbüttel, and Fuhlsbüttel. The first of these is a memorial for the 20 children murdered following medical experimentation in the main camp. The second is a former subcamp of Neuengamme in Hamburg-Sasel, where Jewish women from the Lodz Ghetto in Poland were transferred and forced to work in construction. The third is located inside the gatehouse of the Fuhlsbüttel penitentiary. Parts of this complex served as a concentration camp for communists, opponents of the regime and many other groups. About 450 inmates were murdered there during Nazi rule.
A memorial specifically to the French victims of Neuengamme stands in Pere Lachaise Cemetery Pere may refer to:
*Pere, Hungary, a village in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county
* Rangimārie Te Turuki Arikirangi Rose Pere (1937–2020), Māori New Zealand educationalist and spiritual leader
* Wi Pere (1837–1915), a Māori Member of Parliament ...
in Paris.
Notable inmates
* Reinder "Rein" Boomsma, Dutch footballer/ Colonel Dutch Army Retd, Commander of Ordedienst Vesting Veluwe.
*Claude Bourdet
Claude Bourdet (28 October 1909 – 20 March 1996) was a writer, journalist, polemist, and militant French politician.
Peronal life
Bourdet was a son of the dramatic author Édouard Bourdet and the poet Catherine Pozzi, was born and died in Pari ...
, French writer and politician
*Emil František Burian
Emil František Burian (11 June 1904 – 9 August 1959) was a Czech poet, journalist, singer, actor, musician, composer, dramatic adviser, playwright and director. He was also active in Communist Party of Czechoslovakia politics.
Early life an ...
, Czech poet, journalist, singer, actor, musician, composer, dramatic adviser, playwright and director
* Jan Campert, Dutch journalist, theater critic, writer and member of the Dutch Resistance
*Robert Domany
Robert Domany (also spelled Domani; 16 February 19083 March 1942) was a Croatian Yugoslav Partisans, Partisan and a People's Hero of Yugoslavia.
Domany was born in Orahovica on 16 February 1908 to a Sephardi Jews, Sephardic Jews in Croatia, Jewis ...
, Croatian communist, Partisan and national hero of SFR Yugoslavia
*Ernst Goldenbaum
Ernst Goldenbaum (15 December 1898, Parchim, Mecklenburg-Schwerin – 13 March 1990) was an East German politician.
Biography
Goldenbaum was born in Parchim. During World War I he served in the military and he participated in the German ...
, East German politician
*René Gimpel
René Albert Gimpel (4 October 1881–3 January 1945) was a prominent French art dealer of Alsatian Jewish descent who died in 1945 in Neuengamme concentration camp, near Hamburg, Germany. Friend and patron of living artists and collectors, he ...
, French art dealer and collector
* Per Johan Græsli, Norwegian physician
*Coen Hissink
Johan Coenraad "Coen" Hissink (5 October 1878 – 17 February 1942) was a Dutch film actor of the silent era. He appeared in 25 films between 1914 and 1942. He also wrote short stories and books about controversial topics such as homosexua ...
, Dutch actor
*Michel Hollard
Michel Hollard (10 July 1898 – 16 July 1993) was a French engineer and member of the French Resistance, French wartime resistance who founded the Espionage#Espionage in World War II, espionage group Réseau AGIR during the World War II, Second W ...
, French colonel and member of the French Resistance
The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régim ...
*Georges Journois
Georges Henri Journois (13 November 1896 – 26 September 1944) was a French resistance fighter and Brigadier General who died in a subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp in Wilhelmshaven, Germany.
Early life
Journois was born on 13 Nov ...
, French Brigadier General and member of the French Resistance
*Anton de Kom
Cornelis Gerhard Anton de Kom (22 February 1898 – 24 April 1945) was a Surinamese resistance fighter and anti-colonialist author. He was arrested in Suriname and the protest against his arrest resulted in two deaths. De Kom was subsequently ...
, Surinamese resistance fighter
* Henry Wilhelm Kristiansen, Norwegian newspaper editor and politician
*Léonel de Moustier
Marquis Léonel de Moustier (5 April 1882, in Paris – 10 May 1945) was a French businessman and politician.
Léonel Marie Ghislain Alfred de Moustier, son of Marquis Pierre de Moustier, was born in Paris. His father represented Doubs in the C ...
, French politician
* Sergei Nabokov, brother of writer Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bor ...
*Fritz Pfeffer
Friedrich "Fritz" Pfeffer (30 April 1889 – 20 December 1944) was a German dentist and Jewish refugee who hid with Anne Frank and her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. He perished in the Neuengamme concentration camp in ...
, German Jew, occupant of the Anne Frank House
The Anne Frank House ( nl, Anne Frank Huis) is a writer's house and biographical museum dedicated to Jewish wartime diarist Anne Frank. The building is located on a canal called the Prinsengracht, close to the Westerkerk, in central Amsterda ...
*Tadeusz "Teddy" Pietrzykowski, Polish Boxing champion of Auschwitz, transferred in 1943.
* Chava Rosenfarb, Polish Yiddish writer
*David Rousset
David Rousset (18 January 1912 in Roanne, Loire – 13 December 1997) was a French writer and political activist, a recipient of Prix Renaudot, a French literary award. A survivor of the Neuengamme concentration camp and the Buchenwald Nazi ...
, French writer and political activist
*Zuzana Růžičková
Zuzana Růžičková () (14 January 1927 – 27 September 2017) was a Czech harpsichordist. An interpreter of Classical music, classical and Baroque music, baroque music, Růžičková was the first harpsichordist to record Johann Sebastian Bach' ...
, Czech harpsichordist
*Karl Säre
Karl Säre (July 2, 1903 – March 14, 1945) was a Soviet and Estonian communist politician. He was the first first secretary of the Central Committee of the Estonian Communist Party.
During World War II, he was arrested by Nazi Germany and t ...
, Estonian politician
*Kurt Schumacher
Curt Ernst Carl Schumacher, better known as Kurt Schumacher (13 October 1895 – 20 August 1952), was a German politician who became chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany from 1946 and the first Leader of the Opposition in the Wes ...
, German politician
*Johann Trollmann
Johann Wilhelm "Rukeli" Trollmann (27 December 1907 – April 1944) was a German Sinto boxer.
Trollmann became famous in the late 1920s. On 9 June 1933, he fought for the German light-heavyweight title and although he clearly led by poin ...
, Sinti
The Sinti (also ''Sinta'' or ''Sinte''; masc. sing. ''Sinto''; fem. sing. ''Sintesa'') are a subgroup of Romani people mostly found in Germany and Central Europe that number around 200,000 people. They were traditionally itinerant, but today o ...
-German boxer
* Hans van Walsem, Dutch Olympic rower
Ongoing historical research
Due to the clearing of the Neuengamme camp and the destruction of its records by the SS and the transportation of inmates to other subcamps or other working locations in 1945, the historical work is difficult and ongoing. For example: in 1967 the German Federal Ministry of Justice stated the camp existed from 1 September 1938 until 5 May 1945. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust hi ...
states that the camp was established on 13 December 1938 and liberated on 4 May 1945.
See also
* List of Nazi concentration camps
According to the ''Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos'', there were 23 main concentration camps (german: Stammlager), of which most had a system of satellite camps. Including the satellite camps, the total number of Nazi concentration camps that ...
* '' Celler Hasenjagd'' (Massacre in Celle after an air raid)
Notes
Further reading
*
External links
Official website of the memorial Neuengamme
ushmm.org Neuengamme page
Stichting Vriendenkring Neuengamme
{{DEFAULTSORT:Neuengamme Concentration Camp
Heritage sites in Hamburg
1930s in Hamburg
Buildings and structures in Bergedorf
Nazi concentration camps in Germany
1938 establishments in Germany
Museums in Hamburg
World War II museums in Germany
1940s in Hamburg