in detail
The SS doctor Kurt Heißmeyer performed tuberculosis experiments on prisoners in the Neuengamme concentration camp. For this purpose, he had twenty Jewish children, ten boys and ten girls from the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, delivered to Neuengamme. The children were looked after by two French prisoner-doctors, Professors René Quenouille and Gabriel Florence, and by two Dutch prisoners, Anton Hölzel and Dirk Deutekom. In order to conceal their crimes, shortly before the end of the war, the SS commanders had the children and their caretakers brought to a school building and murdered. The school, situated in a war-damaged section of Rothenburgsort had been used since October 1944 as a satellite concentration camp. On the night of April 20, 1945, the children were hanged by SS men in the cellar of the former school on Bullenhuser Damm. A few hours later, at least twenty-four Soviet concentration camp prisoners were hanged there as well.
The memorial, which opened in 1980, is located in the cellar of the former school. The memorial's exhibition (german / english) details the history of the site as a school and a satellite camp of Neuengamme, the medical experiments, the victims, the murders and the way these crimes were dealt with after 1945. In the respective rooms, statements made by the perpetrators illustrate how events unfolded here on the night of the murders. A corridor leads to the basement rooms where the murders were committed. A large mural in the stairwell entitled "April 21, 1945, 5 o`clock in the Morning", by Professor Jürgen Waller, depicts the scene of the murder on the morning after the crime was committed. The association "Children from Bullenhuser Damm" planted a rose garden behind the school house. Anyone may plant a rose to honor the victims. There is also a memorial by the Moscow sculptor Anatolij Mossijtschuk dedicated to the murdered Soviet prisoners.
November 1944
Twenty Jewish children from the Auschwitz Concentration Camp are brought to Neuengamme to be used for medical experiments.
April 20, 1945
The children, their carers plus 24 Soviet concentration camp prisoners are hanged by SS men in the cellar of the Bullenhuser Damm School.
1980
The memorial museum opens.
1994
The redesigned exhibit opens.
January 2000
New opening of the memorial museum. Sponsorship is transferred to the Hamburg Office for Cultural Affairs
April 2011
The new exhibition (German, English) opens in two new rooms
The former school building Bullenhuser Damm. The memorial is located in the basement, 2013 (Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial)
Hamburg, 1990s, View of the rose garden for the children of Bullenhuser Damm (Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial)
First room of the exhibition with biographies of the murdered children, 2012 (Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial)
