Neuengamme concentration camp

Neuengamme was a German concentration camp to the south of Hamburg, from 1938 to 1945.^[1] Neuengamme was a village located about twenty kilometres south-east of Hamburg, where a sub-camp of Sachsenhausen concentration camp had been established since 1938. In June 1940, Neuengamme camp was enlarged and organised as an independent concentration camp.^[2]

The camp commander of Neuengamme from 1942 was SS-Sturmbannführer Max Pauly (1907-1946). Pauly commanded a total of 2,600 SS men who had to guard Neuengamme and the sub-camps and supervise forced labour. In October 1942, a gas chamber was set up in one of the camp's bunkers.^[3]

The concentration camp aimed to intern political opponents and other 'enemies' of the Nazi regime, such as Jews, Roma and Sinti, Jehovah's Witnesses and homosexuals. It also held Russian prisoners of war and labour draft evaders from German-occupied territories. The prisoners had to perform forced labour under harsh conditions.^[4]

Until 1945, over 100,000 people were imprisoned in Neuengamme and the outer camps, almost half of whom, at least 42,900, would not survive due to poor living conditions, ill-treatment or because they were killed directly. Fritz Pfeffer also died in Neuengamme on 20 December 1944.^[5]