Hamburg, Germany

It was finally time for the day I had been dreading yet eager to experience. It was time to travel to Hamburg, Germany to see a concentration camp with my Holocaust and Genocide class.

We would leave Friday at 5:30 and arrive in Hamburg at 11 that night. This included about 4 hours of driving and a 45-minute ferry ride. Saturday morning we woke up at 8 (some people hung over from going out with the teachers the night before- I was smart enough to know it would be a long enough day as it was) and first went to a school where 20 children were murdered right before the end of the war (the Germans killed them because they did not want any trace of the medical experiments they had performed on them during the war). There was a museum inside but we did not have enough time to go in so we just stood outside and had a 15-minute lecture.

Next we made a short stop to see a building that still had punctures from the bombing during World War II. We then went to the city square to see a church, and had a little over an hour to walk around and grab lunch.

At 12 we headed to Nuengamme, the concentration camp we would be visiting. It was not what I expected at all. First off out your guide was great but I’m not sure she knew we were a Holocaust and genocide class; I did not learn as much as I thought I would. She is a historian and has a very interesting background. Her grandfather was an SS soldier. She also informed us that it is complete bull shit if anyone tells us people were forced into the position, it was a chosen profession. She used the term bullshit once more, it is the response she stressed to anyone in the town would claim they did not know about the camp during its existence.

Anyway, it was s beautiful day and there where a few beautiful flower bushes, which confused me- it was not the feeling one should get when visiting a concentration camp. The barracks had been taken down after the war because the camp was turned into a prison until 20 years later when it became a memorial for the Holocaust. There were extensive exhibits that were well done with a lot of material about the camp but nothing too much to see, or at least not as much as I though I would see.

I think it is good that they still have the camp in its somewhat presence because I saw a few other tours that I assumed to be “class trips.” I think for schools in the area it is a very important trip to take and I was glad to see it was there for them to visit, especially because our tour guide informed us of the 5 percent of Neo Nazis that still exist in Germany. Additionally, there are conservatives who agree with some of their standpoints; which is why I think it was good for other schools in the area to be visiting.

One girl on my class described her reaction well, “it was hard to connect with.” Another point to explain my feelings towards the camp was that my teacher said one year he was at another camp and there was a survivor who said, “they have grass here now? I don’t remember there being any grass, if there was grass back then we would have ate it.” However, I would like to mention that my teacher said the camps in Poland are very different than the ones in Germany.