Hamburg was one of the German cities most severely damaged during the Second World War. The air raids that took place between 25 July and 3 August 1943 in particular – codenamed ‘Operation Gomorrah’ by the Allies – caused destruction on an unprecedented scale: 34,000 people were killed; 125,000 were left wounded. Eastern parts of the city were burned to the ground, declared uninhabitable, and closed off. The city was in a state of emergency.
‘They thought it was the end of the world.’
(Zbigniew Piper)
The shock and the state of emergency in the wake of Operation Gomorrha prompted a sudden change in the actions and thinking of the SS leadership. Until then it had insisted that any forced labour by concentration camp prisoners – always regarded as ‘dangerous enemies of the state’ – should be carried out exclusively within strictly guarded camps. But now, increasing numbers of concentration camp prisoners were to be made available for clear-up operations. Immediately after the first large-scale bombing raid on the night of 25 July 1943 the City of Hamburg started using Neuengamme concentration camp prisoners as labour to clear away rubble and find unexploded bombs in the city centre.
Indeed, hundreds of concentration camp prisoners were deployed throughout the city centre. The Hamburg municipal authorities were not the only ones to put in requests for concentration camp prisoners: the Gau Economic Chamber and individual companies also asked for forced labour to help build temporary shelters, extract raw materials, and work on the armaments production and in the shipyards. There was almost a genuine scramble for prisoners and their labour.
In April 1944 SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler offered to put 20,000 Jewish prisoners at the service of Reich Housing Commissioner Robert Ley to help with the construction of temporary housing. Ley forwarded the offer to the City of Hamburg authorities, who pounced upon it.
‘It was a strange feeling to leave Auschwitz.’
(Dagmar Fantlová)
The first 1,000 Jewish women arrived in Hamburg from Auschwitz in July 1944. Most of them were from Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Four weeks later they were joined by another 500 Polish Jewish women, also from Auschwitz. The warehouse in the free port (Freihafen) of Hamburg-Veddel where they were housed became the first Neuengamme satellite camp for women. 23 other satellite camps for women were set up across northern Germany. Jewish prisoners were used for labour at many of these camps. By the end of the war Neuengamme concentration camp had a total of more than 80 satellite camps, 15 of them in the Hamburg metropolitan area alone. Hamburg-based companies and the municipal authorities were the main driving force. Two thirds of the Hamburg satellite camps were used to clear bomb damage and build temporary shelters, and one third in the armaments industry.
2019: Exhibition “A City and its Concentration Camp”. Photo: Neuengamme Memorial