The crimes of the National Socialists are remembered all over Hamburg. Though the past was suppressed for a long time, memorials have sprung up in nearly every part of the city particularly since the 1980s – in the grounds of former camps and other places of persecution, on the sites of Jewish suffering and political repression, and in places that document the horrors of wartime bombing. These sites are visible testaments to memory and evidence of Germany’s historical legacy.

The portal at www.gedenkstaetten-in-hamburg.de is a guide to the memorial sites in Hamburg. The artworks, monuments, plaques and exhibitions listed here commemorate the victims of the National Socialist regime. There are more than 110 memorial sites, including 15 places of learning with exhibitions. Over 200 memorial plaques have been installed through private or municipal initiatives. Some of these plaques are part of the city’s programmes for documenting ‘Sites of Jewish Life’ and ‘Sites of Persecution and Resistance’. In addition, over 5,900 inscribed Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) in the city’s footpaths are dedicated to individual victims (www.stolpersteine-hamburg.de). All of these places document the dimensions of the persecution, terror and suffering experienced under the Nazis and during the war. They also show that, after a tentative start, Hamburg has now developed a multifaceted memory culture.