The camp plan
Demolished buildings marked in stone.
Pauli-Pirat — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Ajepbah — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Gudrun Meyer — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Benoît Prieur — CC0
S-Bahn to Bergedorf, then bus 227 or 327 to the site — about an hour each way in total. Buses are infrequent, especially out of season, so check the timetable before setting out and plan the return too, since waiting at an exposed site with no nearby facilities is uncomfortable.
Sign in to write your review of this place.
No reviews yet — be the first.
Neuengamme was the largest Nazi concentration camp in north-west Germany: more than a hundred thousand people passed through it between 1938 and 1945, and tens of thousands died here and in its satellite camps. Prisoners were forced to work in a huge brickworks and on digging a canal — labour that was lethal by design rather than by accident. The site today is a broad memorial covering the whole of the original camp ground. Surviving buildings are preserved and demolished ones marked out on the ground with stone outlines, so you walk the actual plan and grasp its scale. The site's post-war history is itself striking: the land was used as a prison until 2003, and only became a full memorial after long public argument. The main exhibition focuses on individuals rather than numbers: names, photographs and biographies of hundreds of prisoners from dozens of nationalities, alongside archival documents. Entry is entirely free. The site lies south-east outside the city, about an hour by public transport, and a serious visit takes half a day.
Demolished buildings marked in stone.
Names, photographs and biographies.
Jean-Dolidier-Weg 75, 21039 Hamburg