Hamburg, Germany

This weekend I headed to Hamburg with my Holocaust & Genocide class to visit some sites in the city and the Neuengamme concentration camp. The trip was really interesting although some what depressing considering the circumstances.

We first visited a building in Hamburg that had once been a sort of satellite camp used by the SS and was the spot where 20 Jewish children were hanged to hide the evidence that they had been used for medical experimentation. Now, parts of the building have been turned into a kindergarten and we were asked to express how we felt about this. I think it seems both eerie and fitting. While many assume a building like this should be turned into a memorial or a museum, if that were to occur for all buildings associated with the Nazi regime, too many buildings would be out of commission. I think having a kindergarten seems like a sort of tribute to the children who lost their lives and who would have wanted other kids to survive even if they did not. Although not everyone probably feels this way.

The next stop was at the town hall where we walked to Nicolai Kirche which is the remains of a bombed out church from when Hamburg was firebombed. This resulted in the deaths of close to 40,000 residents of the city and the destruction of a large majority of the buildings.

Last and most important to our class trip was the concentration camp. Here we were given a 2 hour guided tour and another hour to wander around the exhibit and the grounds on our own. It was surprising to learn that after WWII this camp held the grounds for 2 prisons and only recently was completely opened to the public. I was also taken aback to see the clear swastika decorations on the windows and to be told that the cement boarders of the flower gardens were former poles that surrounded the camp. You could clearly see the holes where the barbed wire had ran through them. We also saw an original cattle car and a cement square depicting how 80+ people would fit into such a car and the clay pits where prisoners were often worked to death.

The experience I had here was similar to ones I've had at the two other camp sites I've been too and was no less moving. I'm glad these pieces of history still exist and hope that people will continue to visit them and learn from them.