Current news about the memorials

From September 12 to 14, 2025, Hamburg's monuments invite visitors to explore them. Visitors will have the opportunity to discover the diversity of Hamburg's monument landscape. Guided tours, walking tours, and a colorful family and cultural program will allow interested visitors to explore monuments, including some that are not usually accessible. Click here for the program.

Following extensive renovations, the new permanent exhibition “Jewish Children's Worlds – The History of the Jewish Girls' School” moved into the expanded rooms at the Jewish Girls’ School Memorial and Educational Site in July 2025. It is now open again to school classes and visitors on Thursdays from 2 to 5 p.m., Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and by appointment. Link to the report of NDR television (in german).
 

On May 16, 1940, police officers arrested around 1,000 Sinti and Roma in Hamburg and northern Germany, locked them up in Fruchtschuppen C in Hamburg's free port (now HafenCity) and deported them to the Belzec forced labour camp in German-occupied Poland on May 20, 1940. Further deportations to Auschwitz-Birkenau followed. This is commemorated 85 years later at the historical site with the denk.mal Fruchtschuppen C in today's Überseequartier. The visible memorial sign provides information about the persecution and deportations of the Sinti and Roma from northern Germany with texts, pictures and quotations.

To mark the 80th anniversary of liberation, the Hamburg Memorials and Learning Centres Foundation and the St. Nikolai Memorial want to bring the voices of those who were persecuted by the Nazi regime to the public with a Hamburg-wide campaign. All civil society actors are invited to participate in the campaign with a wide variety of contributions so that the voices of the liberated can be heard and their stories told. Would you also like to take part in the campaign? You can find more information here.

On Saturday, April 26, 2025, Hamburg's museums will open their doors to interested visitors from 6 pm to 1 am. Numerous museums and memorials will once again be hosting a diverse program of exhibitions and special events. Visitors can travel between the museums on specially arranged shuttle bus lines, a barge shuttle and the regular lines of public transport (hvv).
More information on the program will follow soon at https://www.langenachtdermuseen-hamburg.de/

Even before the trains of the Deutsche Reichsbahn transported deportees from Hamburg to ghettos and extermination camps, the Nazi state gradually plundered the persecuted. Hamburg finance and customs officials were also involved in this robbing. Their role is the theme of the new exhibition about the Hamburg tax authorities under National Socialism.
The exhibition of the Foundation of Hamburg Memorials and Learning Centres is being shown in Hamburg City Hall from 22 January to 20 February 2025. More information and an accompanying programme can be found here.

On Thursday, October 31, #seeforfree will take place again! Many different museums, exhibition venues and memorials can be visited free of charge. A total of 47 locations are opening their doors and offering a wide range of tours, lectures and hands-on activities. Various memorial sites of the Foundation of Hamburg Memorials and Learning centers are also taking part. More information and the program can be found here.

Under the motto “Wahr-Zeichen. Contemporary Witnesses of History”, Hamburg will host the Open Monument Day from September 6 to 8, 2024. On this weekend, visitors can explore Hamburg's monument landscape on guided tours or on their own. Over 160 museums, memorials and monuments offer a varied program and insights behind doors that are otherwise closed. To the program as pdf (in german)

The exhibition Hamburg Football under National Socialism - Insights into a History Glorified for Decades will be shown from 8 June to 14 July 2024. The exhibition documents Hamburg football in all its facets. How did National Socialism and later the war change sporting and club life? Individual fates of athletes and club officials as well as the presentation of individual clubs show the effects of the NSDAP's sports policy, of bans and persecution, but also of sympathy. The exhibition will be on display at two locations within walking distance of each other, the Stadthaus Remembrance Site and the St. Nikolai Memorial.

A memorial for Sinti and Roma was dedicated at the Diebsteich cemetery on November 26, 2023. The three-metre-high stele, surrounded by a circular area with benches and pillars, commemorates the thousands of Sinti and Roma who were persecuted and murdered during the Nazi era. However, the site is also intended to commemorate the resistance and vitality of the Sinti and Roma during the Nazi era and become a place of encounter in the present.

The ‘denk.mal Hannoverscher Bahnhof’ memorial site has been located at Lohsepark since 2017. But where exactly was the Hannoverscher Bahnhof railway station situated, and why was it used to dispatch deportation trains as of 1940? And how was it able to disappear from public consciousness after 1945?

From 22 April to 15 July 2023 a two-part installation will be providing insights into the history of the location. A two-part installation will provide insights into the history of the site. More information at WHY HERE? History and commemoration at Lohsepark (kz-gedenkstaette-neuengamme.de)

80 years ago, the British and U.S. Air Forces bombed Hamburg under the code name "Operation Gomorrah." After the attacks, prisoners from Neuengamme concentration camp were also deployed for cleanup work. Their experiences in the destroyed city are the focus of the exhibition. The exhibition at the St. Nikolai Memorial is open daily (except Tuesday) between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. from March 24 to May 3, 2023. Free admission to the special exhibition. More information at www.mahnmal-st-nikolai.de. 

On November 17, 2022, a memorial stele was inaugurated in Hamburg-Lokstedt at the site of the former forced labor camp on Stresemannallee (then Horst-Wessel-Allee). The girls and women called 
"Eastern workers" had been deported from the Soviet Union and forced to perform forced labor under inhumane conditions for the armaments industry at Philips Valvo-Werke and the Hamburg battery factory Otto Gross (Habafa).

The Hamburg Ministry for Culture and the Media, the Stadthöfe GmbH & Co. KG and the Foundation of Hamburg Memorials and Learning Centres have signed an agreement on the future operation of the Stadthaus Remembrance Site. Read more...

At a few of the destinations of national socialist deportations from Hamburg and Northern Germany the deportees were allowed to write postcards. This was the only opportunity to make contact with Hamburg from the ghettos and concentration camps. The temporary outdoor exhibition at the Lohse Park in the HafenCity shows these (last) testimonies/records and their stories.
More information: (Last) Signs of Life (kz-gedenkstaette-neuengamme.de)
Where: At the Lohsepark, 20457 Hamburg 
When: 8th July – 31st October 2022

On November 13 2020, the "Space to Remember, Connect and Support" was ceremonially opened on the grounds of the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial. From now on, relatives can design posters for their relatives imprisoned at the Neuengamme Concentration Camp. The „Space to Remember“ consists of an on-site presentation in the form of printing plates, a billboard, a printing workshop, and a website with a digital archive: www.ort-der-verbundenheit.org