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View of Neuengamme concentration camp. Germany, wartime. See more photographs |
NEUENGAMME |
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The SS established the Neuengamme camp in December 1938 as a subcamp of Sachsenhausen, close to Hamburg in northern Germany. Using the German Earth and Stone Works Corporation as a front for SS operations at Neuengamme, the SS brought about 100 prisoners from Sachsenhausen to the site to begin construction of the camp. The SS planned to use concentration camp labor to reopen and modernize a defunct brick works in the area. Prisoners from Neuengamme were also later used in forced-labor projects such as the regulation of Elbe River flooding and the construction of the Dove-Elbe canal in northern Germany. Neuengamme became an independent concentration camp in June 1940. Its prisoner population that month was over 1,100. By July 1941, the number of prisoners increased to over 5,000. Typhus was an ongoing problem because of primitive sanitary conditions and chronic overcrowding in the camp. Over 1,000 prisoners died during an outbreak of typhus that began in December 1941. In April 1942, the SS completed construction of a crematorium at Neuengamme. Bodies of prisoners who died in the camp had usually been taken to Hamburg for cremation. From April 1942 the bodies were cremated in the camp itself and the ashes spread in the camp gardens. The prisoner death rate continued to rise, and the SS later constructed a second crematorium. |
In October 1942, the SS established the Druette concentration camp in the town of Watenstedt-Salzgitter, near Brunswick. One of the first and largest satellite camps of Neuengamme, Druette was to provide forced laborers for the Hermann Goering Works, an armaments factory. As the labor shortage in Germany worsened, the SS expanded the use of concentration camp prisoners in armaments production. More than 3,000 male prisoners from Neuengamme camp were forced to work in the armaments factory in the manufacture of ammunition and bombs for Germany's armed forces. The SS also established a satellite camp of Neuengamme in Bremen in October 1942. On April 17, 1943, six Neuengamme camp prisoners died during an Allied air raid on the city of Bremen. The prisoners were among 700 prisoners from Neuengamme forced to clean up bomb damage and to remove unexploded munitions from the debris caused during air raids. Prisoners were forbidden to use air raid shelters during Allied air attacks on German cities. |
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As of mid-January 1945, there were about 50,000 prisoners in the Neuengamme concentration camp system. This figure included almost 10,000 women. The Neuengamme camp system included about 60 subcamps spread over northwestern Germany, with more than 20 camps in Hamburg alone. |
Prisoners in the Neuengamme camp were also used as subjects for medical experiments. Dr. Ludwig-Werner Haase, for example, tested a new water filter by adding 100 times the safe dose of arsenic to water. He then filtered the water using the new machine, and gave it to more than 150 prisoners over a 13-day period. The heavy doses involved in the test probably caused long-term injury to the prisoners. SS doctors also subjected some Neuengamme prisoners, including children, to medical experiments involving tuberculosis. As British forces approached the Neuengamme camp in late April 1945, the SS began the forcible evacuation of the camp. They also burned the records from the camp offices. About 10,000 prisoners were forced to begin a death march toward Luebeck in northern Germany. Thousands of other prisoners had already been transferred to the nearby Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Over 6,000 prisoners were forced onto two ships in a small bay near Hamburg during the evacuation from Neuengamme. British fighter-bombers, unaware that the SS had forced prisoners onto the ships, attacked them. The "Thielbek," carrying about 2,000 prisoners, sank quickly. The "Cap Arcona," carrying more than 4,500 prisoners, burned and capsized during the attack. Only about 600 prisoners from both ships survived. British forces liberated the Neuengamme concentration camp on May 4, 1945. The death register at Neuengamme indicates that about 40,000 prisoners died in the camp by April 10, 1945. Thousands more died before the liberation of the camp in May 1945. In all, more than 50,000 prisoners, almost half of all those imprisoned in the camp during its existence, died in Neuengamme before liberation. |
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