Never Can We Forget

I went to the Nuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial last summer during my trip to Hamburg.

It's hard to describe what the experience was like, but I'm sure you can imagine. My main takeaway was this: No matter how much you read about or watch movies or read articles relevant to genocide, you still won't be prepared to see where it took place in person. Regardless of how many decades have passed and how much restoration has been done.
Not because there are any graphic visual remnants or because being there will paint disturbing images in your head. Its more just the concept of being on the same soil where human life was brutually discarded for...well, reasons we'll never understand. It's the idea that will get you.

Entrance to the memorial.

The camp was called "The Brickworks" because prisoners were forced to create the bricks that Hitler later intended to use in his reconstuction of Berlin, or Germania, as he came to call it.

One of the tombstones marking the various nationalities of the deceased. There were more than twenty of these.

Statue dedicated to the deceased.

My friend Jenny looking at the memorial grounds map.

Roster of the dead. I believe there were more than 50,000 names documented.

The place where the prisoners were held. At the end of the hall were the gas chambers- they were blocked off.

Guards' watch tower.

Part of the outside wall. Most of it has been torn down, but one side has been left standing for the memorial. 

Seated are my friends Raabia, Raheel and Jenny (Left - Right).

Another hall where they housed the prisoners has now been transformed into an area where visitors can hear audio transcripts from the War Crime trials of the SS Officers who ran the camp.