Last Saturday, I woke up bright and early to meet my Holocaust and Genocide class for our trip to Hamburg, Germany. We hopped on a bus and rode for two hours and then our bus, along with an actual passenger train next to us, drove straight onto a giant ferry. (How cool is that, people?) We had a 45 minute boat ride, during which the entire class loaded up on the cheap chocolate in the grocery store on the ferry. Grocery store? Yep. The ferry basically had a little mall on it. But I just went for the duty-free chocolate and not the shoes. (I am the “candy girl,” remember?) After the ferry ride, we loaded back onto our bus for two more hours and finished our journey to Hamburg.
Before heading to our hostel, we stopped at Bullenhuser Damm School. This was a school during WWII that was used by the Nazis as a sub-camp of Neuengamme concentration camp. The entire city of Hamburg was bombed by the Allies, but this building remained standing. A Nazi doctor wanted to publish something that would make him important in his field. He chose to study Tuberculosis and used Jewish children. The doctor ordered 20 Jewish children and 4 Jewish adults from another camp to be brought to this place. The children were as young as six and had no idea why they had been brought to a different camp. They didn’t speak German. Pictures show that the children were injected with Tuberculosis into their arm pits. One month before the end of the war, the Nazis decided that the children knew too much information. The 20 children and 4 adult caregivers were hung, one-by-one, in the cellar of the school. While our teacher was speaking, we were standing where the kids used to play. I’ve read so many things about the Holocaust during my life, but I’ve never been so close to the actual event. It was surreal. I can’t really put the feelings I felt into words, but immense sadness comes close.
Today the building is being used once again as a school.
In the back of the school, a rose garden has been constructed in memory of those who died in the school. This sign gives a brief history of the event.
After the war, attempts were made to discover who exactly these children were. Some families were located and some were not. This picture shows a brother and sister, and their mother, who survived a camp, dedicated this plaque to them. The pictures used in these plaques (which almost all the children had) were taken by the Nazis during the experiments. The pictures are cropped in on their faces here, but all the children have one arm raised in order to be injected.
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One rose blooming in all it’s glory for the children
After visiting the school, we headed into Hamburg. We had dinner, unlimited steak (Germans LOVE their meat) and also got to explore the city on our own. I got to try a legitimate German pretzel which was a major highlight! Hamburg is a really beautiful town, but during WWII, it was severely bombed by the Allies, and the city was never quite the same. In one night, 35,000 civilians were killed in the mass bombings. On Sunday morning, we visited Nicolai Kirche (St. Nikolai Church), which miraculously remained partially standing, while every other building was demolished. Since my class’s topic is genocidal studies, my teacher asked us if mass bombings should be considered genocide. After about five minutes of blank stares at our teacher because we had no clue what to answer (or maybe we were scared to give the wrong answer), he told us that they can’t be considered genocide, but might be classified as “genocidal.” The reason the Allies’ mass bombing of Hamburg is not a genocide is because the Allies did not have the intent of eliminating the German race. A genocide is only considered a genocide if the intention is to kill in whole or part an entire national, ethnic, racial or religious group. After our short lesson, we took an elevator to the top of the old bell tower, and we could see the entire city of Hamburg. A happy moment during a very sad day of learning.
Oktoberfest cookie things that everyone is currently wearing around their neck in Munich!
Fountains, fountains everywhere
STEAK…too expensive in Copenhagen to eat
The Church—I was standing outside, but it used to be the inside of the church.
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The last thing we did on our trip (and the thing I’ve been looking forward to the most) was visiting Neuengamme concentration camp. Despite what everyone thinks, concentration camps, for the most part, did not hold Jews. Concentration camps were for political prisoners and criminals. Jews were sent to extermination camps, which were tiny compared to concentration camps because Jews only survived on average two hours, thus no need for housing. Jews were also sent to work camps. So three different types of camps: concentration, extermination and work. All bad.
Side note: So after I learned this fact, I felt mislead/kind of lied to my entire life. We always hear about the Jews in the concentration camps, but that’s not the truth. So now you know as well.
This a brick barrack that remains standing. The rectangular piles are crushed up brick representing where wooden barracks used to stand. This camp was actually turned into a normal prison after the war until 2001, which caused much controversy. How can you properly honor the dead if a prison has over taken the place?
This is a memorial for the Internal Prison at the camp. Prisoners were sent here for punishment for 1 to 2 weeks at a time. They were made to stand in one cell (can you see the outline?) with 8 to 10 men. This was a common feature at every concentration camp.
This is where the crematorium stood. 50,000 men died at this camp and cremation was the easiest way to discard and hide the remains.
Our professor Tørben is sitting on a train that transported prisoners into the camp. 80 men would need to fit into one car with one bucket of water and one bucket for the bathroom. Once the men were thrown from the train, they had an average life span of 6 weeks.
This is the canal that was dug by the prisoners. The land had perfect brick making soil, so a brick making factory was the main job at the camp. The canal was used to ship the gravel in (to form the bricks) and ship the bricks out to build but what else…more camps like this. The average death rate at a the typical concentration camp was 35%. This camp: 50%. The wet conditions of digging the canal and digging for clay were the reasons.
This is a map of all the Nazi camps (concentration, extermination and work). I never realized how many there actually were.
This is where the title of this post comes in. When there was a prison on the site of the concentration camp, people did not like it. Somebody wrote this on the prison wall in the middle of the night: “And here there was once a concentration camp…” Thankfully, German officials finally listened to the protests and the prison was torn down and now the concentration camp will never be forgotten.
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My favorite subject to study and read about has always been the Holocaust. Like I said earlier, it’s really difficult for me to describe how I was feeling during this tour. When I reread this post to myself, I found it quite dry. It’s almost impossible to properly describe what I experienced and put it into words. I feel like my words would not do any justice to the victims. I think the best sources to read about the Holocaust are from actual survivors. Historians do a pretty good job, but survivors of camps were there. Nobody but an actual survivor can describe the emotions and feelings of living and watching those all around you die day after day.
When I read from a history book about the Holocaust, these thoughts went through my head: The Holocaust was so long ago. I don’t know anybody that died. Thank goodness I wasn’t there. There’s nothing I can do about it now. But being in an actual concentration camp changes everything. I see what the prisoners had to endure. I can picture them digging holes. I can picture Nazi guards dumping bodies into the crematorium. I can see their frail bodies attempting to remain standing on Roll Call Square. The images evoked anger more than sadness to me. Along with anger, I walked away feeling confused and disturbed. It’s difficult to wrap your head around the fact that the Holocaust happened, and it was allowed to happen for so many years. Human life meant nothing to the Nazis. The Jews and other “undesirables” were just mosquitoes to the Nazis; one quick swat and they were gone with no remorse from the swatter.
I am so thankful that I got the opportunity to visit these sites. I recommend any travelers to Europe to visit a concentration camp. It’s a life altering experience.
Hej Hej,
Hannah