Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial – Monuments for individual groups of victims
Additional monuments and memorial stones for victims of the Neuengamme concentration camp are located in a memorial grove near the International Monument. They include symbolic gravestones placed by family members for individual victims as well as memorial complexes dedicated to specific groups of victims. Most of these monuments and memorials were erected on the initiative of the groups themselves.
Groups of victims
In May 1985, a memorial stone for the homosexual victims of National Socialism was dedicated on the initiative of the association known as the Independent Homosexual Alternative, with the support of the Hamburg Cultural Authority. It was the first memorial stone at a German concentration camp memorial to commemorate homosexual victims of Nazi persecution. The memorial site was redesigned in 1996 and an information panel was added.
In 1988, a monument was erected for the 540 victims from the town of Putten in the Netherlands who were deported to Neuengamme following a reprisal raid by the Wehrmacht in October 1944.
A sculpture entitled ‘Die Verzweiflung’ (Desperation), which was created by May Claerhout (born 1939) and erected in 1998, is dedicated to the 53 victims from the Belgian village of Meensel-Kiezegem.
A monument created by Jan de Weryha-Wysoczanski (born 1950) in 1999 commemorates the several thousand people who were deported to Neuengamme after the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.
In April 2006, a monument was erected for the Jehovah’s Witnesses who were imprisoned in the camp.
In June 2012, the sculpture ‘Murat dans la Tourmente’ (Murat in Torment) was dedicated in the memorial grove. It was created by Christian Pichot-Duclos (the grandson of a deportee) using French basalt and commemorates the victims of a German reprisal operation in France in July 1944, when over 100 men from the town of Murat were deported to the Neuengamme concentration camp.
Since 2022, a memorial created on the initiative of the Spanish Amical commemorates the Spanish resistance fighters and members of the International Brigades who were imprisoned in the Neuengamme concentration camp. The memorial was designed by sculptor and descendant of a deportee Serge Castillo and consists of a large stele made of clinker bricks with a bronze relief and a plaque with a dedication.
Since 2023, a memorial commemorates 20 men who were deported from the village of Staphorst in the Netherlands to the Neuengamme concentration camp. None of them survived their imprisonment.
The memorial grove is freely accessible to the public at all times.
Contact
KZ-Gedenkstätte Neuengamme
Exhibitions:
Monday to Friday 9.30am to 4pm,
Saturday and Sunday 10pm to 5pm
The grounds are always accessible.
Guiding tours:
Bookable at Museumsdienst Hamburg. Mail: info(a)museumsdienst-hamburg.de and Phone: 040-428 131 0