Nazi concentration camp Neuengamme liberated 70 years ago today (May 4 1945)


Video: 'KZ Neuengamme Concentration Camp (Short Film)'

(Friday, May 4, 1945; part of The Holocaust during World War II) — The Neuengamme concentration camp, a subcamp of Sachsenhausen concentration camp located near the village of Neuengamme in the Bergedorf district of Hamburg, Germany, was liberated today by British forces.

An estimated 106,000 prisoners were held at Neuegamme and at its subcamps. More than half of them perished there since it opened in December 1938.

In early May 1945, the SS loaded some 9,000-10,000 prisoners, most of them evacuated from Neuengamme and its subcamps, onto three ships anchored in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Neustadt in Schleswig-Holstein. Some 7,000 lost their lives when the British attacked two of the ships in the course of a raid on the harbor on May 3, 1945.