Neuengamme concentration camp

Neuengamme concentration camp - 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 > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos 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.