- darkometer rating:  9 -

The site of Hamburg's own former concentration camp during the Nazi era in Germany – a less well-known name than Auschwitz or Dachau perhaps, but it was still one of the big camps. Today the memorial complex and its five topical exhibitions offer some of the richest sources of information of its type that I know of. And parts of the site are also visually impressive (especially the former brickworks).

  

More background info: Set up by the Nazis in 1938, originally as a satellite camp of Sachsenhausen, but from 1940 as a separate full-scale concentration camp in its own right, its original purpose, apart from incarceration of 'undesirables', of course, was to revive an old brickworks. Once expanded, these brickworks were supposed to provide the millions of bricks needed for the planned reconstruction of Hamburg's harbour front – this city's equivalent of the Nazis' similarly megalomaniacal plans for the transformation of Berlin into "Germania" (fortunately for both Berlin’s and Hamburg’s cityscape the war got in the way and the plans were never realized as other goals took priority).

 

Increasingly, forced labour included all manner of other tasks, from gardening to construction work. The hardest labour consisted of digging out a new canal that was to connect the camp and its brickworks to Hamburg’s waterways. More skilled labour was required in the Walther-Werke, a branch of the well-known makers of handguns of that name, for whom parts were manufactured at Neuengamme.

 

Neuengamme also had a large number of satellite camps closer to various workplaces for its inmates, including shipyards in Hamburg's harbour, at the warehouses on Dessauer Ufer (see under Hamburg) or at Fuhlsbüttel.

 

Between 1938 and the eventual evacuation of the camp in 1945, over 100,000 people passed through Neuengamme in total. Almost half of them perished in the process, which makes the death toll one of the worst of all the Nazi labour camps, proportionally similar to that of Sachsenhausen. Also similar to Sachsenhausen is the fact that in autumn 1943 "tests" were conducted on Soviet POWs – who were gassed using Zyklon B (the most infamous killing agent of the Holocaust that was primarily used in Auschwitz and Majdanek). Most deaths at Neuengamme, though, were due to the atrocious living and working conditions.   

  

Neuengamme was also a particularly multinational camp, with large numbers of inmates from the various Nazi-occupied countries. Just before the liberation of the camp, the thousands of remaining inmates were evacuated – including those who ended up on the ship Cap Arcona.

 

The Cap Arcona made additional tragic history: only days before the end of World War Two, the ship was sunk in an air raid by the British Royal Air Force, who mistook the vessel for a military cargo ship, killing all on board except for a few hundred survivors. Over 5000 people are believed to have perished in this tragedy. This makes it one of the greatest losses of life in any sea disaster in history.

  

Another Neuengamme connection is the story of the children of Bullenhuser Damm. These were a group of children who had been used in medical experiments at Neuengamme and who were then murdered by hanging in the basement of the school at Bullenhuser Damm as the camp was dissolved before the British and Allied troops reached Hamburg.

 

After the cby now virtually empty amp's liberation on 2 May 1945, by Belgian and then British troops, the site was used for about three years by the British as a camp for displaced persons and as a prison, especially for the internment of suspected war criminals. 

   

After the British left, the premises were handed back to German authorities – who promptly decided to use the area to build a prison! This first prison for male inmates, which started operating in 1950, was built where the concentration camp inmates’ wooden barracks had stood, which were demolished for this purpose. The old ancillary buildings were also used for the prison, e.g. for accommodation of prison guards. Even the old camp commandant’s house was used in this way, while some of the workshop buildings were rented out to businesses and for storage. For a time the brickworks housed a boat repair yard.

 

Access to the original site was thus largely impossible for members of the public. And returning survivors of Neuengamme duly protested against this insensitive use of the former camp. But all they initially managed to achieve was the installation, in 1953, of a modest first memorial monument just north of the former camp’s site. That the pressure for a better commemoration came almost entirely from foreigners in those years has been attributed to the fact that only a few of the camp’s inmates had been locals – and those locals, mostly political prisoners, were more interested in preserving the memory of the Fuhlsbüttel satellite camp.

 

Yet in 1965 a better memorial was constructed at the site of the first one, with a tall column, numerous memorial plaques set into the ground and a specially commissioned sculpture by French artist Françoise Salmon.

 

Most controversially, in the 1970s a brand-new additional modern prison was constructed for juvenile delinquents, namely in between the former camp area and the brickworks. This separated the two main halves of the Neuengamme site from each other and further restricted access to the original locations of the camp.

   

It took until 1981 for a first documentation centre to be opened in a specially constructed building near the 1965 memorial site. Later a larger exhibition was opened in the former Walther-Werke building.

  

By that time campaigns for a proper comprehensive commemoration of Hamburg’s concentration camp were slowly gaining momentum also among local associations, journalists and political parties. The resistance by the local government was eventually broken in the 1990s when it was agreed to demolish the modern prisons and move their inmates elsewhere. This happened in the mid 2000s. Only one small part of each of the prison buildings was preserved to document this chapter of the site’s post-war history.

 

The former roll-call square was restored and the locations of the former wooden barracks for the camp’s inmates were marked by large fields of broken stones within narrow “fences” where the walls would have been. The location of the former crematorium and the foundations of the camp’s isolation cell block were also marked. A new, comprehensive main exhibition was set up in the large brick block between the former barracks and the Walther-Werke. Additional exhibitions in other buildings (see below) were put together to augment the main documentation centre. The initial documentation centre by the 1965 memorial monument was then turned into a simple ‘House of Memory’, where the names of all known victims are listed.

 

It has been a long, slow and at times painful journey to achieve the current memorial site. But the result is more than laudable. I remember distinctly how impressed I was with what I found on my second visit to the site in 2008, after my first one in the late 1990s when the stark and jarring contrast with the modern prison’s concrete walls was still conspicuous and the coverage in the exhibition comparatively meagre.

 

I have since been to Neuengamme a third time, on 1 May 2025, just a day before the celebrations to mark the 80th anniversary of the camp’s liberation. I didn’t find all that much that was new. The exhibitions were basically in the same form that I had seen them during my visit in 2008, except for a few extra additions (see below).

 

Some may see the style of the exhibition as a bit “ageing” by now. In a way that is true, but I actually find it a good thing that the memorial site is still sticking with the excellent exhibition it has – rather than succumbing to any calls for modernization, which these days usually means putting more information into the form of interactive screens (see e.g. Buchenwald). And that’s a trend I am no great fan of. It may appeal more to a younger clientele of visitors, but I for one do not want to go to a site like this only to have to scroll down screens like I could do at home. So I hope that Neuengamme’s commodification will remain in its current form for many years to come.

 

One aspect, however, does leave much room for improvement: while the main intro panels and labels are in four languages (German, English, French and Russian), too large a proportion of the additional texts and folders are in German only. So there’s scope for making the site more accessible to international visitors by translating more of the material, at least into the world’s lingua franca English.

 

 

What there is to see: Lots!!! The grounds may not have the iconic instant recognizability of concentration camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau, nor is there anything here to match the gruesome original traces of the Holocaust, the Nazis' mass murder of the Jews and others at those sites. However, for the sheer amount of information to be gleaned from the various exhibitions, Neuengamme stands out as one of the best memorial sites of its kind.

 

For the open-air parts the site’s management suggests two walks around the premises of different length, the longer one estimated as taking two hours, the shorter one just one hour. Mind you, though, that's just the walking time. If you want to read all the text panels and also see everything in the various indoor exhibitions, you'll need an awful lot more time than that. I reckon that it could take up to perhaps a whole week to really take in everything that's on offer (if you can read German, that is!). Obviously that's way too much for more than the exceptionally hardened visitors who have serious research interests. Normally, then, visitors will have to prioritize and skip and/or skim some parts of the exhibitions. Here's what there is to see:

 

Through the main entrance lies the area which has been reconstructed, including the former roll-call square, and the areas where the barracks housing most of the inmates would have been. Their locations are now indicated by knee-high 'baskets' of broken stones. Particular parts, such as the camp’s infirmary have information panels.

 

Just to the right of the main entrance is a small bungalow where you can pick up some leaflets and also view a large map panel that provides a helpful overview of the locations of the various parts of the site. To the left of the entrance is a museum shop. The large red-brick building beyond houses the site’s administration and archives.

 

The other long red-brick building at the far end of the field of former barracks is where the main exhibition is located. The 135m-long building was erected in 1943/44 it and was originally intended for housing inmates in four separate sections.

 

You are free to explore the vast site in any order you like, but for first-time visitors it might be a good idea to start at this main exhibition.

 

This is entitled “Traces of History: Neuengamme Concentration Camp and its Post-War History”. It’s subdivided into thematically separate subsections. To the left of the entrance beyond the information desk, the first section is about the concentration camp as such, from its inception as a satellite camp of Sachsenhausen, it becoming a full-size independent concentration camp in 1940 and its expansion and adaptations. The main text panels and artefact labels are all in four languages (German, English, French and Russian), but the detailed panels are often in German only. However, at many stations card boards with foreign-language versions can be taken from holders for more in-depth study by international visitors. Some materials, though, remain in German only.

  

In addition, there are various electronic information points where you can sit at a screen and watch and listen to interviews and survivors' recollections over headphones. These are what can require the most time, but at least a sample is recommended. Normally you can switch between an English-language sound track and the original (often German, but also e.g. Lithuanian …, so even German-speakers will occasionally have to switch).

 

Artefacts on display include the former camp gate and a large scale model of the entire camp as it would have looked towards the end of the war. It provides a good impression of the vast size of the area and the multiple functions of its different parts.

 

Stairs at the far end lead upstairs to the next section, which is about the various groups of prisoners, a truly multinational lot. There are general intro panels for each of them, plus numerous panels and extra folders with information about individual persons’ stories. This goes into great depth and it’s near impossible to read all the material on display or those extras accessible from additional drawers. Amongst the usual nationalities of inmates from the Nazi-occupied countries such as Poland, the USSR, France, etc. are also a few unexpected cases. To pick out just one, there’s the story of a man from Suriname – a wealthy businessman’s son who had been sent to the Netherlands to study. It was there that he was eventually arrested and imprisoned by the Nazis for having secretly sheltered Jews. First imprisoned at Vught, he was eventually transferred to Neuengamme. He died on board of the evacuation ship Cap Arcona (see above). But this one (much shortened) example of the many personal stories has to suffice here.

 

The next section focuses on life and work in the camp. Large objects on display here include one three-tier bunk bed, various tools used by inmates and pieces of camp inmates’ typical striped clothing. Another short section illustrates “cultural and resistance activities”, yet another “extermination and death”.

 

Another large section is about Neuengamme’s various satellite camps, and here the largest artefacts on display are some parts of wooden barracks’ walls that survived (unlike the main camp’s barracks that were destroyed after the war).

 

The last section on the upper floor deals with the final phase of the camp, its evacuation and the case of the requisitioned cruise ships onto which thousands of evacuated camp inmates were loaded in Lübeck Bay in the Baltic Sea, including the Cap Arcona, which was tragically bombed and sunk by RAF planes (see above). On display are some wreck pieces of the Cap Arcona and a brass bell with the ship’s name on it.

 

Downstairs back on the ground level, the exhibition continues with sections about the liberation of the camp and former inmates’ life stories afterwards, including emigration. One subsection focuses on the commemoration efforts especially through the survivors’ association “Amicale Internationale”.

 

Another subsection details the “Nachnutzung”, i.e the use of the camp structures after the war and in particular the controversial construction of a new prison on the camp’s grounds only a few years after the war and then the erection of an all-new prison for juvenile delinquents in 1970 between the camp grounds and the Klinkerwerk (brickworks – see below). On display is a photo of a graffito that someone had left on one of the modern prison’s five-metre-high outer concrete wall, reading “Und hier stand mal ein KZ” (‘literally: ‘and here used to stand a concentration camp’), as an expression of disapproval of this unsavoury juxtaposition of a historically significant dark place and a working modern correctional facility on its grounds.

 

Beyond the cafeteria (unstaffed when I was there on 1 May) there’s one further part in the main building to see, namely a section of the basement. This was used as a “Schonkommando” (‘Convalescence Commando’), where weakened inmates who couldn’t be used in the main forced-labour compounds still had to perform “lighter” tasks. The basement also served as an air-raid shelter during aerial attacks.

 

There was one section that I had definitely not seen on my previous visit back in 2008, namely a photo exhibition that is the result of a study project at Neuengamme by a group of photography students. They addressed questions such as “Can photographic aesthetics be combined with the historic suffering at this place? Is that a contradiction? How can emotions and memories of this place be depicted? What does commemoration look like? And what do we want to convey for the future?” (my translations from the original German). They openly admit that they do not have answers to some of these questions (without specifying which in particular). The photos selected for the exhibition include several of artistic merit – and a couple are in fact quite similar to the ones I have taken at sites like this myself (e.g. at the gate of the commandant’s house – see the gallery below). Apparently, some things universally invite creative photography ...

 

At the end of the regular exhibition space there’s a panel on the wall, also new to me, simply saying “Was hättest du getan? heißt jetzt Was tust du?”, meaning the old question “what would you have done?” should now be “what are you doing?” … namely to fend off resurgent anti-Semitism and growing right-wing extremism and its taking over of/taking part in power in some countries (e.g. the USA, Slovakia, Italy, the Netherlands, and if the trend continues perhaps before long also in Germany, Austria or France …).

 

Back outside in the open-air compound you can then head south. The first thing you pass is the site of the so-called “bunker”, the camp’s own separate prison with solitary confinement cells for punishment. Today, only some vague remnants of foundations are left, but these do indicate how small those cells were.

 

Further along the path you get to the site of the former crematorium of the camp, demolished in 1947. It wasn't until 1970 that the survivors' association "Amicale International" successed in having a memorial plaque installed at this spot.

 

Yet further to the south a single railway carriage serves as a memorial to the inhumane transport conditions deportees had to endure. The sliding door on one side is open to reveal a blow-up of a crude drawing showing deportees in striped camp clothing crammed tightly into the confined space inside the carriage.

 

To the north-east is a large red-brick building complex that used to house the various forced-labour workshops run by German industries taking advantage of this cheap source of labour. That includes the Walther-Werke, a branch of the well-known manufacturer of handguns. Here inmates produced parts for these guns. Another workshop made detonators for German shells and grenades. One of the wings these days is home to another permanent exhibition with the topical focus on forced labour. It’s mostly text-and-photo panels – some in German only. The only artefacts on display are some tools, narrow-gauge railway tracks, a big machine of some description and a small foundry.

 

In another part of the workshop complex is a space for temporary exhibitions. On my latest visit in May 2025 this part was locked, so presumably no exhibition was on at that time, but I remember well the special exhibition I saw back in 2008. This was specifically about the homosexual victims of Nazism and was as detailed at the main permanent exhibition’s sections.

 

There’s yet another permanent indoor exhibition, namely in the former SS garages to the north of the block with the main exhibition. Here the focus is on the perpetrators, their work and life in the camp, and the efforts to bring them to justice (or not) after the war. This included the 1942-45 camp commandant Max Pauly. He was swiftly tried by a British tribunal in 1946 and sentenced to death. But so many others got away. Included in the coverage in minute detail are also the cases of Arnold Strippel and Kurt Heißmeyer, the main perpetrators in the Bullenhuser Damm case. Again there is a lot of material, both on panels and in numerous folders one can peruse, much of it in German only, however. There aren’t many artefacts on display, but those that are there include a set of chairs from the officers’ mess, an SS wardrobe and some furniture taken from the commandant’s house.

 

The latter still stands to the east of the former SS garages. It’s a tranquil-looking little villa, where camp commandant Max Pauly lived together with his family. Take note of the elaborate gate featuring the silhouette of a house. The inside of the commandant’s house is not accessible to the public, though.

 

A path heading north then takes visitors to the end of the canal dug by prisoners to connect the camp and its brickworks to the Dove Elbe River and thus to Hamburg’s waterways as such. One barge used on the canal is on display on dry land to the west of the canal.

 

To the south-west of the canal, in the middle of an empty field, stands a fragment of grey concrete walls and a watchtower on top, with gleaming silver barbed wire running along the top of the walls. This is all that is left of the modern prison for juvenile delinquents built in 1970. The rest was demolished in the 2000s (see above).

  

On the prison wall facing south is a small open-air exhibition, a series of text-and-photo panels chronicling the history of the controversy over the prison's location, and how it was eventually resolved. 

 

Further south-west from there are some remnants of the clay pits from which the raw material for the brickworks used to be extracted and transported there by a narrow-gauge railway. Prisoners usually had to push the carts manually. Some rusty specimens of these carts are still on display.

 

One of the most impressive parts of the site, in my view, is the huge Klinkerwerk, i.e. the brickworks buildings themselves. It consists of three red-brick wings connected at the back, and the middle one still has a ramp that inmates had to push carts up for emptying. You can climb the steps leading up to the top between the two tracks. When I was there on the 1st of May in 2025 I could see the preparations under way for the ceremonies planned to mark the 80th anniversary of the camp’s liberation (see above) the next day.

 

The eastern wing of the Klinkerwerk is accessible and houses a small text-and-photo-panel exhibition (largely in German only) in one corner. This focuses on the brickworks as such as well as on Hitler's reconstruction plans for Hamburg (fortunately never realized), which provided the original demand for the mass-production of bricks. A couple of the brickworks’ products are also on display. In the back you can see remnants of the enormous brick-drying racks and ovens.

 

But it's rather the huge empty room-feel of this place that leaves the deepest impression. Light filters through little windows in the wooden roof and makes patterns on the concrete floor – very good for creative photography. Roughly in the middle of the hall stands a chimney and you can actually look out to the top from the inside. There are also a couple of chairs dotted around, probably for study groups. At times the enormous hall has also been used for concerts and memorial events.

 

To the west of the Klinkerwerk stands another, smaller brick building, which used to house parts of the plant’s administration and later employees of the post-WWII modern prisons. This too is not accessible inside.

 

Last but not least, there's the oldest part of the memorial site dating back to 1965 (see above), north of the brickworks and for many years the only publicly accessible small part. It's a classic memorial place, with a large column-like 'international' memorial, a drastic sculpture entitle “Le Deporté” (often rendered as ‘The Fallen’ in English) and a string of small plaques for various nationalities/groups of victims within a park-like landscaped area. Within this park there's the first proper exhibition building from 1981, which, now that the main exhibition has moved into one of the original camp buildings, serves as a "Haus des Gedenkens" ('house of remembrance') where the names of known victims are listed on walls. Here and there some individuals are picked out by little portrait photos and extra labels. Also on display here are two more camp models, one depicting Neuengamme as it was just after the war, and another monochrome white one showing the site as it was in the 1980s/90s, i.e. with the large modern prisons still in place.

 

Finally there's the excavated foundations of the former camp's greenhouses to the north of the memorials complex – and one open-air exhibit to the south is a so-called "Plattenhaus", a simple emergency housing structure, for Hamburg's bombed-out citizens during the latter years of the war. The concrete components for these small buildings were made by Neuengamme forced labourers – hence the additional exhibit at this spot (another example has been preserved in its original location in the district of Poppenbüttel).    

 

All in all, Neuengamme is one of the most rewarding concentration-camp memorial sites you can visit – at least if you can read German it’s second to none in the amount of detailed information provided, including the minutiae of countless individuals’ stories. This, however, is an area where the commodification could be improved – with more provision of English for international visitors who may not know German sufficiently.

 

The surviving camp buildings and structures are different from the “expected look” of a concentration camp, and its history is also less well known than, say, Dachau’s or Buchenwald’s, but it too deserves to be better known. Of the original structures it’s the former Klinkerwerk (the brickworks) that stands out the most visually. Do not miss this (the shorter of the two officially suggested circuits does). It’s a highlight!

 

Overall, one of the best concentration-camp memorial sites. Highly recommended!

 

 

Location: far out in the outskirts of Hamburg, in the marshes of the River Elbe, about five miles (8 km) south of the suburb town of Bergedorf.

 

Google Maps locators:

  

Main entrance: [53.42756, 10.22662]

  

Main historical exhibition: [53.4277, 10.2301]

 

Isolation cells foundations: [53.4265, 10.2289]

 

Site of the crematorium: [53.4257, 10.2287]

  

Deportation rail car: [53.4252, 10.2269]

 

Walther-Werke and exhibitions: [53.4264, 10.2305]

 

Former SS garages and exhibition: [53.4291, 10.2309]

  

Commandant’s villa: [53.4291, 10.2331]

 

Remnants of the former men’s prison: [53.4283, 10.2296]

 

Part of a wall and a watchtower of the former 1970s modern prison: [53.4307, 10.23355]

 

Former clay pits: [53.4301, 10.2319]

 

Canal: [53.4308, 10.2346]

  

Klinkerwerk (brickworks): [53.4321, 10.2325]

  

Plattenhaus: [53.4336, 10.2311]

  

1965 memorial: [53.4347, 10.2329]

  

 

Access and costs: getting there is a bit tedious, but entrance is free.

 

Details: The grounds of the former concentration camp are freely accessible at all times

 

The opening times of the exhibitions (also free) are: weekdays 9.30 a.m. to 4 p.m., weekends and holidays 12 noon to 5 p.m. October to March and to 7 p.m. the rest of the year. Closed on Christmas Eve/Day and New Year's Eve/Day. Access to the library and archives is more restricted, and should best be prearranged.

 

Guided tours are available by prior arrangement for groups only and do cost a fee. But these are primarily aimed at school groups and are available in a range of languages (for details contact: info[at]museumsdienst-hamburg.de). 

 

These days you can also access additional guiding and background information by smartphone using the QR codes posted all over the site and in its brochures (you can pick them up at the entrance). There’s even a dedicated app that you can download if you prefer this way of exploring with smartphone in hand (I wouldn’t, as I find that approach too distracting from the place authenticity of the real-world site – but I’ve downloaded the app for in-depth use at home or elsewhere; and I can confirm that it is indeed very informative).

 

Getting to Neuengamme is possible by public transport, but takes a while. First get the S-Bahn metro train (S2) to Bergedorf (typically every 10 mins.) and from there bus 127 or 227 to Neuengamme. Total journey time from Hamburg’s main central station (Hauptbahnhof) is ca. one hour. There are three bus stops along the main road that runs parallel to the site – if you want to do it all, starting at the main entrance, as described above, get out at the first stop "Neuengamme Ausstellung", and at the end catch the bus back from "Neuengamme Mahnmal" or "Neuengamme Klinkerwerk". Note that these buses are quite infrequent, though – much of the time no more than one bus hourly, half-hourly at weekends on the 127, but best to check ahead before setting off – in particular you should check the return journey times in advance, preferably on getting off the bus when you arrive. 

 

Of course you can also use your own means of transport. The site is well signposted these days – when coming by car from the motorway take the exit Curslack on the A25 between Hamburg and Geesthacht and follow the signs. There is roadside car parking, but you may have to walk quite a bit from a parking space to the entrance if the place is busy. (Coach parking is separate to the south of the complex.)

 

 

Time required: Anything from between a couple of hours to several days. Since for most visitors an in-depth study trip of several days is unlikely to be an option, a sensible compromise will be a whole-day excursion.

 

 

Combinations with other dark destinations: nothing in the immediate vicinity, but you wouldn't have time for more anyway. For more dark sites in the city, see Hamburg.

 

 

Combinations with non-dark destinations: in general, see Hamburg – the area around Neuengamme is typical Elbe marshland, and as such is quite popular with cyclists. En route to the site from Bergedorf the bus passes through some rather picturesque villages on or behind the old Elbe dykes, a highlight on this route is the ancient Rieck Haus and its surrounding open-air museum at Curslacker Deich 284.