Hamburg

This past weekend I went with my Holocaust and Genocide class to Hamburg, Germany to tour concentration camps from the Holocaust.  Not exactly one of my more fun trips but I'm definitely glad I went.  I learned a lot and it was definitely something else actually walking through all the buildings where it all happened as opposed to just reading about it on a sheet of paper.

Day One:

We left early Saturday morning by bus for Hamburg.  The total trip was 6 hours from Copenhagen to Hamburg and included a 45 minute ferry ride.  I slept for most of it - the only good thing about early morning trips.  Our bus came with us on the ferry and everything which was nice because we were then given everywhere around Hamburg.

Our first stop was what is currently a kindergarten.  During WWII the building was abandoned and was therefore the "perfect" place for the execution of twenty Jewish children: ten girls and ten boys between the ages of five and twelve.

Picture of the house taken from Wikipedia because I didn't know if it was appropriate to  bring a camera.

**If you have a weak stomach feel free to skip this paragraph.  A "doctor" named Kurt Heissmeyer wanted to do experiments involving tuberculosis.  These experiments had no real medical value.  He first conducted them on guinea pigs but then decided to conduct them on humans.  He ordered twenty children from Auschwitz to be sent to Neuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg.  There, these children were infected with tuberculosis of the skin and later of the lungs via a catheter which was put down their throats into their lungs.  Heissmeyer then cut out the lymph nodes from under their armpits for further study.  He said the children's skin was melting like cheese (this is when I started to get nauseous).  Nothing conclusive was found from these experiments and he decided to have the children murdered so no one would find out about the experiments.  That is when they were transported to the Bullenhuser Damm school were they were hung in the basement.  But the children weren't heavy enough to die from their own weight so members of the SS basically hug the children in order to hang them.  Later when asked on trial how they could do such a thing the SS members said it was quite simple and described how they physically accomplished it.  Of course the judge was talking about how they could do it emotionally.  Just goes to show how messed up these people were.

There was a rose garden out back which was a memorial for all the children.  It didn't look like too much now because it's basically winter time but it's still pretty neat that people are still planting flowers for the children so many years later.

There were plaques for each of the children.

After leaving the school we checked into the hostel and then went to a group dinner at a traditional German restaurant where we had tomato soup, schnitzel and lemon sorbet.  So that was a fun end to a rather depressing day.

Day Two:

Our second (and last - it was a short trip) day in Hamburg started out at a church.  At first I was confused as to why we were going to a church because it didn't really seem relevant.  I was wrong.  Apparently this church was used as a target for Allied bombers during the war.

The tower was used as a target for the bombings

They were bombing the city of Hamburg and the civilians in particular in an attempt to demoralize the country.  Apparently they succeeded in bombing pretty much everything except their target.  Pretty much everything around the church was leveled except the church's tower.  It was pretty powerful to see.  Then we got to go up inside the church to the top of the tower which was also unreal because it was completely hollowed out (I think from the bombings).

At the exhibition there were pictures of what the town looked like after the bombings.

I love going up to the top of things (feel free to look back at those pictures from the top of Notre Dame) so I was excited.  Hamburg is a surprisingly beautiful city.

View of Hamburg from the top of the tower.

After spending some time at exhibitions there we went to a delicious brunch.  Then it was off to our main stop of the trip: Neuengamme concentration camp.  This camp had about 100,000 prisoners come through and about 55,000 die, making it the concentration camp with the highest mortality rate (not included death camps like Auschwitz).

Our professor gave us a tour of the grounds which were huge.

Buildings where the prisoners would've slept.  Most of them are burned down by now

What used to be the crematorium.

The best jobs to have were jobs that were indoors because prisoners didn't have proper clothing for outdoor jobs and the outdoor jobs generally required greater manual labor.  The worst jobs, according to our professor, were those involving creating this canal.  The prisoners were forced to dig all day in the cold water with just clogs on.  If they clogs fell off (which could happen easily since they were backless and could easily get stuck in the mud) the prisoners were at risk of being shot on the spot for losing the "property" of the SS.

Beautiful canal until you realize how it was made.

After walking around the grounds for a couple hours we went to the exhibition then headed back toward Copenhagen and I got home around 10 pm.  Again, it wasn't the most fun or exciting trip I've had but it was definitely a sobering experience that I'm really glad I had.