KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme – Audioguide

Jean-Dolidier-Weg 75, 21039 Hamburg, DE

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.

Jean-Dolidier-Weg 75, 21039 Hamburg, DE

We are starting our tour at the entrance of the Memorial.

Upon their arrival at the Neuengamme concentration camp, newcomers were often met with verbal abuse, beating and other forms of mistreatment by the guards. Leonid Kutko, a former prisoner from the Soviet Union, spoke about the arrival at the camp:

“We were first lined up in front of the barbed wire fence and then an SS guard arrived with an interpreter. Before they even reached us, he shouted: “Take your hats off!” And before the interpreter had the time to translate, the SS guard threw himself at us and began to beat us. Then he introduced us to the camp regulations, saying: “There is no life in this camp but mere existence. You will all die here.”

If you look around you can see rows of wire cages filled with stone on both sides of the large square. These mark the places where wooden barracks, which served different purposes, used to stand. In the process of the official admission into the camp, the prisoners were registered and photographed. In the storeroom, they were forced to hand in all of their belongings.

If you look to your right, while standing with your back to the entrance, you will see the place where the storeroom used to be – it is the second row of stones from the place where you are standing. Let us go there.

After the prisoners handed in their personal belongings, they were taken to showers, disinfected and finally had their whole bodies shaved. In the end, they were given special prisoner uniforms and ordered to affix pieces of fabric; displaying their prisoner number and a triangle patch onto them. The guards divided the prisoners into categories which were represented by these triangles. In addition to this, the prisoners wore metal tags with their prisoner numbers around their necks. From this moment on, their identities were replaced by their numbers.

A former French prisoner Louis Martin-Chauffier said the following about his arrival at the Neuengamme concentration camp: “The process of 'dehumanisation' started. We still wore the clothes we had been arrested in, but now they in a sorry state. […]. Naked, sometimes crouching, sometimes lying on our back, legs in the air, in positions which couldn’t be more humiliating, they completely shaved our heads, faces and bodies. In rags, wearing clogs, which wouldn’t stay on our feet – if one of us in our rank lost a clog, and this happened frequently, the culprit was punished with a blow. We looked like the poorest beggars. And he who lives amongst beggars adopts the appearance, and soul of a beggar. He gives up and becomes jetsam in a new world without dignity or hope. Finally he dies a dishonourable death."

After the standard processing procedure following their arrival, the prisoners were assigned to a work detail and that was when their difficult and precarious concentration camp routine began.

Let us go now –to your left- into the middle of the large square you saw directly in front of you as you entered the memorial. This is the former roll call square.

21039 Hamburg, DE

You are standing in the middle of a large square you find yourselves standing on upon entering. Take a look around! We were impressed by the sheer size of it and its atmosphere. The square covers 7000 square meters.

This is where roll calls took place several times a day, every day. The prisoners were gathered here in the morning, at noon and in the evening to be counted. In cases when the numbers were not correct, which happened often, they had to stand here for hours regardless of the weather. This is also the place where punishments and executions were carried out.

In late 1940 prisoners assigned to a special work detail paved the square themselves. It took them approximately six months to finish.

The roll call square is one of the few things which were rebuilt in the area. This was very significant for many former concentration camp prisoners because it was this place that played an essential role in their daily routine at the time and determined their lives to a great extent. A part of the original roll call square was uncovered after the demolition of a post-war era building and you can see it if you go forward, and to your left toward the third rows of stones. You can recognize the original stone slabs by the fact that they are bigger, rougher and partly broken. Look around slowly, you will recognize them when you see them.

Now walk towards the long rows of wire cages with stones located to your left when you are standing with your back to the entrance. Please play the next track when you are there.

21039 Hamburg, DE

You are now standing in front of the long rows of cages filled with stones.
They symbolically represent wooden barracks which used to stand here during the concentration camp period. The barracks had no insulation which meant that it was impossible for the prisoners to keep warm in winter. The insufficient number of stoves in the barracks, only two or three per barrack, could not warm them up.

The barracks consisted of two rooms. The smaller one was the so-called Tagesraum meaning common room or day room
and it contained benches and stools. This was also the room where the block leader and room leaders slept.
The rest of the prisoners slept in the bigger room, furnished with three-level bunk beds.

Due to the fact that the barracks were overcrowded, it often happened that three prisoners had to share the same bunk. The beds were dirty and it was the prisoners who had to clean the barracks. One of the tasks was to make their beds perfectly which was literally impossible given the conditions in the barracks.

There were up to 300 prisoners in each block. The sanitary conditions were horrible. The toilet consisted of a simple hole in the ground covered with a plank. A hand pump next to it offered the only possibility for the prisoners to wash themselves. The result of these conditions was the unbearable stench in the camp.

You can see that the cages are filled with two different kinds of stone representing two significant periods in connection to this place. The reddish stones on the outer side of heaps symbolize the walls of the barracks. They are clinker bricks produced by the prisoners of the Neuengamme concentration camp under forced labor. The grayish stones in the middle represent the prison era. After the war, the City of Hamburg began using the site as a prison. For this purpose, the barracks were torn down and replaced by a large new building.
The stones you can see in the cages were collected after the prison building was eventually torn down in 2007.

Let us now go to the next station. Move away from the place where the barracks used to be and cross the roll call square. Behind the metal posts which symbolize the former fence, you will see a small open house with a glass roof. This is where the so-called detention bunker used to be. Play the next track when you reach it.

Jean-Dolidier-Weg 75, 21039 Hamburg, DE

This used to be the concentration camp's prison, also referred to as the ‘detention bunker’ by the prisoners. The bunker consisted of five tiny cells and a corridor, which you can recognize if you take a look at the remaining foundations. This was the place where unishments, such as detention in dark cells, food deprivation and flogging were carried out. There was also something called night detention, which meant locking up 6 to 8 prisoners overnight in one cell which was so small that they had no other possibility but to stand.

It was in the corridor outside the cells that hangings took place, most of them during the last week of the war. Approximately two thousand people were either hanged or shot here.

In September 1940 the bunker was rebuilt for the purpose of gassing. Special openings were made in the roof and the windows and doors hermetically sealed. During the gassing, all the prisoners were summoned to the roll call square. Fritz Bringmann, a communist resistance fighter and a prisoner of the Neuengamme concentration camp recalls:

“On a late afternoon in September 1942, 197 Soviet prisoners of war arrived in Neuengamme from the POW camp in Fallingbostel. We heard that they were 'inspectors'. All the prisoners were on the roll call square, standing in the rows of five and were forced to watch.

The prisoners of war were told they needed to be disinfected and washed in order to prevent epidemics. Therefore, they needed to take their clothes off on the roll coll square and go into the bunker, where the showers allegedly were. When the prisoners realized there were in fact no showers there, the door had already closed behind them. The prisoners standing on the roll call square had to listen to the screams coming from the bunker. “

Altogether 448 Soviet Prisoners of War were gassed in the detention bunker.

There are, however, positive stories connected to this place, stories of human virtues such as solidarity, courage and selflessness. We would like to tell you another story about Fritz Bringmann.

Fritz Bringmann was employed as a medical orderly in the infirmary. In January 1942 he received an order from the SS to kill a group of around 15 Soviet prisoners of war by injecting them with petrol. Bringmann refused even though this meant putting his own life at risk
because disobedience of a prisoner was punished severely, sometimes even with death. When he was released from the bunker
where he had been put as a punishment, the Soviet prisoners carved a wooden heart for him in order to thank him for his selfless act.
In the fall of 1942, Bringmann was transfered from the Neuengamme concentration camp to one of its satellite camps in Osnabrück.
There he gave the heart to one of the boys from a neighboring school, who sometimes gave food to the prisoners, as a token of gratitude. Fritz Bringmann survived the war and went on to give public testimonies about his experiences. On one such occasion, fifty years later, he met a man who turned out to be the boy he gave the heart to. He gave Bringmann the heart back and it is now a part of the main exhibition at the Memorial.

The next station is the kitchen barrack. Please go to your left, back in the direction of the roll call square. The kitchen barrack is located directly opposite the main entrance. When you are there, please play the next track.

Hamburg, DE

The roof of the former kitchen barrack visible from the main entrance used to be decorated with a cynical statement:
“There is only one road leading to freedom! It is paved with obedience, diligence, honesty, order, cleanliness, sobriety, veracity, self-sacrifice and the love for one's country.“

The little food the prisoners received in the kitchen was of bad quality and barely edible. At five o'clock in the morning, the prisoners received a cup of brown, watery drink which was supposed to be coffee. For lunch they were usually given turnip soup which was again mostly water with a little bit of fat. In the evening, after roll call, they got some bread with a bit of margarine or cheese. Given the hard physical work that the prisoners had to perform daily, these portions were not nearly enough. Due to rapid physical decline numerous prisoners died or stood on the brink of death.

Ahead of you, you can see several brick buildings behind the kitchen barrack, where the former workshops of the Walther factory were located. In 1942, the SS decided to focus more on the arms production in the camp. In 1944, an arms manufacturing company called Carl Walther moved to Neuengamme. During the last years of the war, a semi-automatic rifle, was produced here. The construction of the brick buildings in which the production was to take place began a year earlier, in 1943. In the beginning, 250 prisoners worked in the main building, but by mid-1944, the number grew to 1000. The work at the Walther factory was the prisoners' favorite because they were protected from bad weather and mostly safe from the attacks by the SS guards because the production process was supposed to run smoothly. However, this work presented a moral dilemma for the prisoners, especially the non-German ones, because they had to produce weapons for the Nazis.

You can now go to the Walther factory in front of you, where you can take a look at the exhibition called “Mobilisation for the War-Time Economy…” Or you can go into the large brick building on your left, where you can see the main exhibition “Traces of History”.
If you wish to continue following the audio guide and go to the SS camp, follow the path to your left and go past the large brick building which houses the main exhibition. Then continue straight ahead until you reach another, smaller brick building with a cobble-stone courtyard and big white doors.

Jean-Dolidier-Weg 65, 21039 Hamburg, DE

You are now standing on the courtyard of the former SS garage.
It served as a roll call square for the guards – the so-called Totenkopfverbände meaning Death's Head Units.
On your right, you can see a building with white doors which was used as a garage for the trucks belonging to the SS.
In October 1944, between 50 and 60 Soviet prisoners of war were housed here before being executed.

On your left, you can see a large green area, which is where the guards' barracks used to be during the concentration camp period. The area was surrounded by an impressive fence. It stood in stark contrast to the barbed wire fence surrounding the prisoners' barracks and was supposed to make the SS camp seem more pleasant. At the end of the SS camp, right next to the street, there was a flower garden, a so-called oasis. This haven of peace, where the SS guards used to relax, even contained a fountain which stood in the middle of the garden. The remains of the fountain can still be seen today. Due to its proximity to the street, the garden served another purpose, namely, to keep up the illusion of normalcy presented to the outside world.

A former Danish prisoner, Jörgen Barfod, who was liberated by the Swedish Red Cross in April 1945, said the following about the construction of the SS camp: “The prisoners involved in the building of new buildings for the SS were treated in an unusually rough manner. The work consisted of digging a sewer trench and the construction of new buildings. Beatings were a daily occurrence. I saw, among other things, a foreman standing on a centrifugal pump and flogging 12 prisoners while they were trying to get the pump out of the mud. The more they were pulling, the deeper they were sinking into the mud. Four of them fainted and fell down before the foreman stopped beating them.”

The SS or the Schutzstaffel were a militant political organization which perceived itself as the elite of the Nazi movement. One's professional qualifications were not a determining factor when it came to a career with the SS. New members were admitted upon their own request but only after having provided a proof of their so-called Aryan ancestry. Moreover, the members had to be fully committed to the racist Nazi ideology. One of their beliefs was that all prisoners were dangerous enemies of the state, far inferior to them.

Most SS guards working in concentration camps had direct contact with prisoners. There was harassment, mistreatment and death every day. There were around 4500 SS guards employed at the Neuengamme concentration camp and its more than 80 satellite camps. Most of the documents about the perpetrators were destroyed and only few were brought to trial.

You can go into the former SS garage and take a look at the exhibition there. Otherwise, follow the audio guide to the camp's canal. In order to get there, turn around, putting your back to the courtyard. On your left you can see a path going around, behind the former SS garage. Follow this path for a while. You are on the right way if you come across the remnants of the white walls.Stay on the right, pass them by and keep going until you reach the canal, which is to the right of the large brick building.

Hamburg, DE

You are standing next to the Neuengamme's canal. Please look around! Can you imagine that, before its expansion, this canal used to be an overgrown and silty stream not more than 5 meters wide? The Dove-Elbe expansion was to enable the transportation of the bricks produced in the camp into Hamburg by boats. On the edge of the dock, you can see one of the boats which were used at the time.

For this purpose, a five-kilometer-long navigable canal was required, which would connect the brickworks with the Dove-Elbe, a secondary-channel of the Elbe River. From 1940 until 1943, the prisoners assigned to the so-called Elbe work detail worked on the widening and deepening of the existing stream to make it the average 25 meters. Regardless of the weather, they had to perform grueling work: shoveling the earth they had previously dug out into wheelbarrows and flattening and consolidating the bank. Apart from the horrible working conditions, they had to endure constant mistreatment by the SS guards so it is no wonder that death was a daily occurrence. This work detail was considered one of the deadliest at the Neuengamme concentration camp.

Joseph Händler, a former prisoner from Austria said the following about the Elbe work detail: “In February 1942 I started working on the excavation of the Dove-Elbe canal which was done by primitive tools. I worked there for nine months. There were two work details, one with 1500, the other with 2000 people, who had to dig the canal which will connect the Dove-Elbe with the canal next to the brickworks. We had to stand knee-deep in water and shovel the mud into the wheelbarrows which then had to be pushed onto ships over a thin plank. Many prisoners fell off of the plank and into the Elbe, together with the wheelbarrows. Every day we had at least two or three dead and 20 or 30 injured.”

Next to the dock and close to the boat, you can see a tipper wagon. They represent another work detail, the clay pit.

This will be our next station.

Hamburg, DE

Next to the canal, you can see a tipper wagon. Such wagons were used to transport the clay dug out of this clay pit into the brickworks. The entire area behind the wagon, between the brickworks and the SS camp, all the way to the remaining prison walls consisted of clay pits. The field railway connecting the pits was laid by the prisoners. The clay shoveled into the wagons had to be pushed all the way to the brickworks. This work was one the prisoners dreaded the most due to the immense physical strain it demanded of them and the fact that they were exposed to all kinds of weather with no protection. Working with tipper wagons often meant severe injuries because the rails were not professionally laid and the wagons often ran off of them. Whenever this happened, the prisoners had to load the clay back onto the wagons while being beaten by the SS guards.

After the liberation, Josef Händler told us about the difficult work with the tipper wagons:

"The work in the clay pits was the most difficult, the hardest physical labour, as we had to remove the first forty centimetres before reaching the clay in these two by four metre pits. There was just sand and sludge before the clay started. The clay pits were dug out two metres deep, we often stood up to our knees in water and still had to shovel up clay. We had to load the clay into the tipper wagons; we scooped the clay out of the pit into the wagon, which stood, above our heads on the edge of the pit. It was not always easy. Meanwhile, the next wagon was already arriving from the previous pit since they followed one another, and, if possible, one wagon shouldn’t delay the next."

In late 1943, steam locomotives were supposed to be used for transportation of tipper wagons. However, they could not run on the makeshift rails so the prisoners were forced to keep doing this difficult work despite their ever-decreasing strength.

There are more tipper wagons at the ramp of the brickworks. If you go there, you will see the rails going up the ramp. Whenever the motor-driven winch broke down, the prisoners had to push the wagons up the ramp themselves.

The brickworks is our next station and there we will tell you more about it.

Jean-Dolidier-Weg 47, 21039 Hamburg, DE

Looking at the brickworks, you can see a concrete ramp going up to the top of the central part of the building. The clay dug out of the clay pits was pushed up this ramp into the brickworks. The right wing of the building is open to the public, and contains an exhibition about the factory. You are welcome to take a look inside while the audio plays.

Hamburg was supposed to become a so-called “Führerstadt” or Fuhrer city. In connection to this, large-scale construction works were planned on the banks of the River Elbe and in the Altona borough. The City of Hamburg signed an agreement with the SS, which stated that bricks for the construction were to be produced in Neuengamme. There was already a small old brick factory here but the SS did not want to compromise their image by using such an old and technologically outdated factory for production. That's why they decided to have a new factory built.

This is how the brickworks you are standing in now came into existence. At the same time, this event marked the 'birth' of the Neuengamme concentration camp. Around 1200 prisoners were assigned to the so-called brickworks work detail. They either worked in the old factory or were involved in constructing the new one and working in it later on. The new factory started working in 1942 and was highly technologically advanced for the time.

Today you can see this large empty room hosting the exhibition on the brickworks and learn what the working conditions were like. Back then, this room was very hot, and full of people, huge kilns and machines. The work, usually done by 160 to 180 prisoners,was strenuous and exhausting, especially due to high temperatures and stifling air. Despite that, it was still one of the prisoners' favorites because they could work in a closed space and not fear the mistreatment from the SS guards on account of the type of work they performed.

If you go to the middle of the room, you can see a yellow outline behind the chimney, marking the place where a zig-zag kiln used to stand. At the end of the room, behind the metal partition, you can see the kilns.

When you leave the brickworks, go right until you've passed the entire building complex. Then follow the path that goes around the brickworks, parallel to the street and through a small grove of trees. Keep walking until you see a tall column surrounded by a wall. Please go around the right side of the wall, so that you come across the column and a sculpture first. Our next station is the international Monument where we will touch upon the commemorative aspect of this memorial.

Jean-Dolidier-Weg 39, 21039 Hamburg, DE

Looking at the brickworks, you can see a concrete ramp going up to the top of the central part of the building. The clay dug out of the clay pits was pushed up this ramp into the brickworks. The right wing of the building is open to the public, and contains an exhibition about the factory. You are welcome to take a look inside while the audio plays.

Hamburg was supposed to become a so-called “Führerstadt” or Fuhrer city. In connection to this, large-scale construction works were planned on the banks of the River Elbe and in the Altona borough. The City of Hamburg signed an agreement with the SS, which stated that bricks for the construction were to be produced in Neuengamme. There was already a small old brick factory here but the SS did not want to compromise their image by using such an old and technologically outdated factory for production. That's why they decided to have a new factory built.

This is how the brickworks you are standing in now came into existence. At the same time, this event marked the 'birth' of the Neuengamme concentration camp. Around 1200 prisoners were assigned to the so-called brickworks work detail. They either worked in the old factory or were involved in constructing the new one and working in it later on. The new factory started working in 1942 and was highly technologically advanced for the time.

Today you can see this large empty room hosting the exhibition on the brickworks and learn what the working conditions were like. Back then, this room was very hot, and full of people, huge kilns and machines. The work, usually done by 160 to 180 prisoners,was strenuous and exhausting, especially due to high temperatures and stifling air. Despite that, it was still one of the prisoners' favorites because they could work in a closed space and not fear the mistreatment from the SS guards on account of the type of work they performed.

If you go to the middle of the room, you can see a yellow outline behind the chimney, marking the place where a zig-zag kiln used to stand. At the end of the room, behind the metal partition, you can see the kilns.

When you leave the brickworks, go right until you've passed the entire building complex. Then follow the path that goes around the brickworks, parallel to the street and through a small grove of trees. Keep walking until you see a tall column surrounded by a wall. Please go around the right side of the wall, so that you come across the column and a sculpture first. Our next station is the international Monument where we will touch upon the commemorative aspect of this memorial.

21039 Hamburg, DE

“Behind the staggering number of victims there are people, people who had thought and felt, suffered and hoped. We want to [...] give their faces and their personal stories back to them.”

Quote from: Klaus von Dohnanyi, the First Mayor of Hamburg on the occasion of the opening of the document center and the first exhibition building in 1981.

In 1995, the document center was transformed into the so-called House of Remembrance. On the pieces of fabric hanging on the walls, you can see the names of all the prisoners that died in the Neuengamme concentration camp, who have been identified. There are approximately 27,000 names and they are ordered according to the date of the prisoners' death. The empty pieces of fabric stand as a symbol for all the dead prisoners who have not been identified. Given the steadily deteriorating conditions in the camp, the lists of names towards the end of the war got longer and longer.

Many prisoners died shortly after their arrival at the camp due to the difficult work and horrible living conditions on the one hand and mistreatment and executions on the other. More than 42,900 people are estimated to have died in the Neuengamme concentration camp and its subcamps, 14,000 of whom died in the main camp. In other words, half of the prisoners did not survive.

In one of the rooms on the ground floor, you can find the Neuengamme concentration camp death register. It is one of the few remaining original documents. During the evacuation of the camp the SS had ordered the prisoners to burn the documentation, however these books were hidden by the prisoners and thus saved from burning. If you look closely, you can see that in some places the causes of death had been written down before the names of the prisoners were added to them. Therefore it is not clear if the information in the register, such as the cause of death or the time of death, is indeed correct.

This is the end of our audio tour around the memorial. Thank you for your visit and for using the audio tour. We hope it has given you a good insight into the history of the Neuengamme concentration camp and the Memorial.