Fruchtschuppen C Memorial
The Fruchtschuppen C Memorial inaugurated on 16 May 2025 in the HafenCity is a reminder that, under the Nazi regime, the Fruchtschuppen C warehouse was a pivotal crime scene for the genocide perpetrated on the Sinti and Roma from across northern Germany. It complements the denk.mal Hannoverscher Bahnhof memorial site, which was established in 2017 and commemorates the deportation of over 8000 Jews, Sinti and Roma.
The Fruchtschuppen C warehouse had been commissioned in 1911 and equipped with modern heating technology for the storage of tropical fruits at Magdeburger Hafen. On 16 May 1940, some 1,000 Sinti and Roma were arrested in Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Bremerhaven and the Weser-Ems region. They were held under inhumane conditions in the Fruchtschuppen C warehouse in the former free port. A few days later, on 20 May 1940, the families were taken by a Deutsche Reichsbahn train to the Belzec forced labour camp in German-occupied Poland, close to the Soviet border. More deportations followed. In March 1943, more than 300 Sinti and Roma were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and in April 1944, around 30 more.
In 1949, the building was razed to the ground to make way for the expansion of the neighbouring gasworks. After its closure in 1976, the area was built on once again. The southern Überseequartier (Overseas Quarter) of the HafenCity is now located there.
The memorial sign is located on today's promenade at Magdeburg Hafen. Among the row of trees, one tree has deliberately been omitted. The gap created as a result is meant to symbolise the loss of those people who were deported. There the denk.mal Fruchtschuppen C memorial is offset from the axis of the row of trees, intentionally placing itself in the way of passers-by.
Six concrete steles have been erected parallel to one another on a ground area measuring four-by-four metres. The silhouettes of people – women, men and children – are dimly discernible on the outer surfaces. The wording ‘Fruchtschuppen C’ and the profile of the concrete stele arrangement refer to the historic Fruchtschuppen C.
Inside, the memorial gives details of the persecution and deportation of the Sinti and Roma from northern Germany. Panels with texts, images, quotations and biographies of the persecuted are embedded in the steles, providing information about the crimes and their aftermath.
The associations Rom und Cinti Union e.V. and Landesverein der Sinti in Hamburg e.V., the Ministry for Culture and Media, HafenCity Hamburg GmbH, the Unibail- Rodamco-Westfield Germany GmbH and the Foundation of Hamburg Memorials and Learning Centres Commemorating the Victims of Nazi Crimes were all involved in creating the memorial. The design itself was undertaken by BBS Landscape Engineering GmbH and Michael Tessmer/gwf-ausstellungen.
The Fruchtschuppen C Memorial is flanked by a plaque in the “Sites of Persecution and Resistance 1933–1945” program of the Office for the Protection of Monuments of the Ministry of Culture and Media. The first plaque in this program was placed on the Baakenbrücke (now Magdeburger Brücke) in 2001. It was initiated by the student Viviane Wünsche. The text at that time has been updated.