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22.04.2025

Commemorating Hamburg’s satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp on Spaldingstraße

Auf der rechteckigen Messingplatte steht: „Geschäfts- und Lagerhaus Spaldingstraße 156-162. Oktober 1944 bis April 1945. Außenlager des KZ Neuengamme für etwa 2000 Häftlinge aus vielen Ländern des von Deutschland besetzten Europas. Entrechtet – gedemütigt – misshandelt Zwangsarbeit im Stadtgebiet. Mindestens 800 verloren ihr Leben“. Um die Stolperschwelle sind Tulpen verteilt.
Stolperschwelle in front of the former Neuengamme concentration camp subcamp on Spaldingstraße
Foto: SHGL, 2025

A Stolperschwelle was laid in front of the A&O Hostel on Spaldingstraße 162 on 12. April, 2025 and an exhibition was unveiled. The event by the Stolperstein-Initiative Hamburg and the Italian Military Internees Project Group was in cooperation with the Foundation of Hamburg Memorials and Learning Centres.

Commemoration Ceremony

More than 60 people took part in the unveiling. Together, they remembered the more than 2000 prisoners of Neuengamme’s satellite camp on Spaldingstraße. It was constructed in October 1944 in the rear building of a heavily damaged office and camp warehouse complex, named St. Georgburg. The prisoners were victims of forced labor and forced to clean up the rubble of the city’s destroyed district. They came from Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Yugoslavia, Poland, the Netherlands, and the Soviet Union. More than 800 people lost their lives at the Spaldingstraße satellite camp.

Ingo Wille (Stolperstein-Initiative Hamburg) introduced the event. The speakers were Ralf Neubauer, head of the Hamburg-Mitte district authority, Rüdiger Siechau from the city cleaning service, which has taken over the sponsorship of the Stolperschwelle, Christian Römmer (Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial), Jan Krüger (Italian Military Internees Project Group) and Heike Lattekamp (Verdi trade union).

Stolperschwelle and Exhibition

The Stolperschwelle, which is as large as five stumbling stones, joins a commemorative sign on the outside of the A&O Hostel. Together with the black sign from the Department for Heritage Preservation, which remembers locations connected to Nazi persecution, it introduces the history of the building to the numerous international guests at the hostel.

Since 2012, there has been a bilingual exhibition presenting the history of the satellite camp inside the hostel. This exhibition, which comes from the initiative of the owners and was developed by the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, is being renovated for the 80. anniversary of the concentration camp’s liberation and is free for the public. The exhibition’s content will be presented in a bilingual brochure by the Foundation of Hamburg Memorials and Learning Centres this year.

Report in the Hamburg-Journal from 12. April, 2025 (available until 12.4.2027)

: Die Redner stehen vor dem Gebäude, einer hält ein historisches Foto in die Höhe, auf der das zerstörte Gebäude zu sehen ist, in dem 1944 das KZ-Außenlager eingerichtet wurde.
Commemoration event in front of the A&O-Hostel at Spaldingstraße 162, from left to right: Ingo Wille, Christian Römmer, Ralf Neubauer, Rüdiger Siechau
Foto: SHGL, 2025
Eine Frau und ein Mann lesen sich die Ausstellungstafeln durch. Die Tafeln sind dunkelblau und hellgrün und hängen hochkant an der Wand. Auf der rechten Tafel ist die Überschrift „Stimmen von Überlebenden“ zu erkennen.
Visitors at the permanent exhibition on the satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp on Spaldingstraße. The exhibition is in the hostel’s foyer and is free of charge to see.
Foto: SHGL, 2025