This private tour with a vehicle takes you to the memorial site at Neuengamme – one of the largest networks of concentration camps in the north of Nazi Germany – to witness the crimes of National Socialism.
Established in 1938 by the SS as a satellite to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp outside of Berlin, Neuengamme would become the nucleus of a network of 85 sub-camps aimed at exploiting racial and political enemies of the Nazi regime and prisoners of war for forced labour. Brutality, starvation, and dehumanisation were daily routine for prisoners, many of whom were subjected to medical experiments. Over 40,000 people died in Neuengamme, or on death marches as the camp and its satellites were evacuated in 1945 after prisoner ships were destroyed by Allied bombing raids.
Your professional, local guide will meet you at your hotel, or a pre-arranged meeting point, and you will then be transferred, in a private vehicle, to the memorial grounds – roughly a one hour drive from Hamburg city centre.
Starting in the main camp you will visit the former Prisoners’ Barracks, the SS Guardhouse and Watchtower, the House of Remembrance, and the main camp exhibition: ‘Traces of History’. You will then visit three of Neuengamme’s preserved satellite camps: Bullenhuser Damm – where SS physician Dr Kurt Heißmeyer conducted tuberculosis experiments on prisoners, most of them children aged between five and twelve; Poppenbüttel, where forced labourers who cleared the streets after Allied bombing raids were imprisoned; and Fuhlsbüttel, the first camp opened in the Neuengamme network. Sites visited in the subcamps include the Rose Garden for the Children of Bullenhuser Damm and the Peace Tree Memorial.
As always, your expert guide will provide an in-depth commentary throughout and contextualise all sites visited on the tour. They will then accompany you on your vehicle transfer back to Hamburg.
