Station: [1] Introduction

Hello and welcome to the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial audio tour. My name is Ana Buka, and my name is Emily Mohney, and we will show you around the Memorial today.

This tour was created by six students of the Christian Albrechts University of Kiel in cooperation with the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial. The students have paid a visit to the Memorial in order to get an idea of what exactly there is to see here and have chosen several places which they believed were most interesting and most suitable for a tour.

This is how this tour came into existence. It will take you around the former concentration camp area and end at the House of Remembrance. We hope it will help you get to know this place! 

The Neuengamme concentration camp was in operation from 1938 until 1945. Due to the fact that this was a labor camp, the prisoners were assigned to various work details. The main reason for establishing the concentration camp was brick production. As a result of the inhumane living and working conditions at the camp, 42,900 prisoners died either due to starvation and exhaustion or to brutal mistreatment by the SS guards.

People were arrested for different reasons. They were victims of racial and religious persecution or other forms of discrimination. The reasons were often purely arbitrary. Some people were imprisoned because they were members of resistance against the German occupiers in their countries, while others were deported as retaliation victims because they had different political views or belonged to a different religion.

More than 100,000 prisoners from 27 countries were imprisoned in the Neuengamme concentration camp and its subcamps altogether. Almost one fourth of the prisoners came from the former Soviet Union. Jewish prisoners constituted a tenth of the total number of prisoners. Another 10% were German prisoners.

In May 2005, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the end of the war and the liberation of  concentration camps, the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial as we know it today was opened.

Now, let us start with the tour.