Neuengamme

Everyone knows about it, but no one wants to talk about it.   Echoes of the Second World War still ring through Europe, and especially Germany.  Yes, buildings, even cities were destroyed, but most have been rebuilt.  Those that remain in ruins give silent testimony to the destruction.  But there are scars that run even deeper: those left by the destruction of human life.  The Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial in Hamburg was sobering and eye-opening.

Not a "death camp" or "extermination camp" like notorious Treblinka or Auschwitz, Neuengamme was a Konzentrationslager (concentration camp, abbreviated KZ) for containing and controlling a large forced-labor workforce.  Those held at Neuengamme and its satellite camps worked on public works projects (canals, streets, etc.) as well as in weapons factories supporting the German military.  Very few of the people held in the Neuengamme system were Jewish.  Most were political prisoners and POWs from regions the German army invaded and controlled.

Unlike many camps, Neuengamme was never "liberated."  Arriving troops found newly-painted, empty buildings, no documentation, and very little other evidence of what had happened.  As such, facilities at Neuengamme continued to be used after World War II, first as a British containment facility and then as a prison for the city of Hamburg.  Not until 2003 were associations of survivors and relatives of those held at Neuengamme successful in turning the site into a memorial, following the closing of the prison.  Today, the wooden barracks from the war-time KZ are represented by rectangular piles of rubble taken from the demolished Hamburg prison.  The duplicity of the monuments pays homage to the diverse history of the grounds.  The remaining buildings are filled with museum exhibits and classrooms, intended to increase awareness about this time period.  Among the original architecture still present is the foundation of the camp "bunker " (shown below).  Instead of representing the building with the prison rubble, as other KZ buildings are, the bunker's actual foundations were uncovered, physically showing that places like this should not be buried and ignored, though revealing and acknowledging them can be painful.

It is true that Neuengamme was not a "death camp." Still, over 50,000 died there.  In the early years, a private Hamburg undertaker cremated the bodies.  In early 1945, a crematorium was built on the camp grounds.  Today, Neuengamme is not just a memorial or a collection of museums.  It is also a cemetery.  There are no headstones, no defined plots, but the ground holds the ashes of thousands of men, women, and children.  Camps like Neuengamme will forever be a part of Germany's history, part of the past that shaped the present.  For the future, the memorials exist to reveal and remind.