The Nazi Concentration Camp Neuengamme
Neuengamme's Role Before and During the Second World War
Oct 26, 2009
In 1938 prisoners from Sachsenhausen camp began construction of the Neuengamme sub-camp. The camp was located just north of Hamburg at an abandoned brick works factory, the intention was to resurrect the brick works and have prisoners from Sachsenhausen working there.
Neuengamme Camp during the Second World War
As Neuengamme was a sub-camp before the war only prisoners from Sachsenhausen were held there. When it was transformed into a main concentration camp in 1940 its population rose rapidly. Through 1940 the inmates were mostly of German nationality and consisted of political prisoners, criminals, anti-socials, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews and others. From 1941 onwards Neuengamme received prisoners from several territories that the Wehrmacht had occupied, such as the Soviet Union, Poland, and France. The Jewish population remained very low at Neuengamme camp and in 1942 the SS transported all the Jews from the camp to Auschwitz. However, in 1944 Neuengamme received a huge influx of Hungarian and Polish Jews as the SS evacuated a number of ghettoes in these territories.
Conditions in the Camp
As with all other camps conditions for prisoners in Neuengamme were abhorrent; inadequate rations, squalid living areas, basic – if any – medical provision. The prisoners were forced into labour making bricks, regulation projects on the nearby river Elbe, and were deployed into Hamburg to clear up rubble and other debris after Allied air raids. Disease from malnutrition and unsanitary conditions was rife in the camp and spread rapidly, many inmates died from cholera and typhus outbreaks.
In 1942 a crematorium was built at Neuengamme although the camp never had a gas chamber, in this year prisoners deemed unfit to work were transferred to a medical institution equipped with a gas chamber used in the T4 Euthanasia programme. After 1942 any weak or sick prisoners were instead killed by lethal injection. Similarly to other camps inmates at Neuengamme were subjected to horrific scientific experiments, one of which included giving prisoners water containing fatal amounts of arsenic to test a new water filter being developed.
Liberation of Neuengamme 1945
Although Neuengamme itself was firstly a sub-camp, towards the end of the war it had its own sprawling system of sub-camps containing thousands of prisoners. Due to the horrendously overcrowded conditions in the camp around 1,000-3,000 prisoners were dying every month in the last stages of the Second World War. As British forces advanced towards the camp the SS began evacuating some of the prisoners, either murdering those who remained or leaving them to die. They also transported thousands of other prisoners onto ships anchored off the north German coast in the Baltic Sea. However two of these ships were sunk during a British raid on the harbour – there were not many survivors. Estimates have put the number of fatalities at Neuengamme to be around 40,000-50,000 people although a lot of documents relating to the camp were destroyed during its evacuation.
Sources:
Burleigh, M. The Third Reich: A New History. London: Macmillan, 2001.
 |
