Fragmented Memories: New online exhibition on the Hamburg satellite camps for women of the Neuengamme Concentration Camp
Sasel, Wandsbek, Veddel, Eidelstedt, Neugraben, Tiefstack, Langenhorn – in these districts of Hamburg, as well as Wedel, women's satellite camps of the Neuengamme Concentration Camp were located. Around 3,000 female prisoners were used for forced labour in the Hamburg city area – clearing rubble, building temporary housing, and working in the armaments industry. Most of them were Jewish women who had been deported to Hamburg from the Auschwitz Extermination Camp. Other women had been arrested for being Sinti or for political reasons. They came from various German-occupied countries in Eastern and Western Europe.
Since 1985, a prefabricated building in Hamburg-Poppenbüttel, built by these prisoners, has served as a memorial to the women's satellite camps. Since 2008, many of the life stories of the women imprisoned there have been on display. A short guide to the exhibition is available in German and, since 2025, also in English.
On this basis, Casey Senett a former volunteer with Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste (Action Reconciliation Service for Peace) at the Foundation of Hamburg Memorials and Learning Centres has developed a new online exhibition in English, which is now available.
The website "Fragmented Memories" presents exemplary prisoner biographies that illustrate the range of life paths of the persecuted women. It also presents the prisoners' work and conditions of detention in the satellite camps, the prosecution of perpetrators after 1945, and the memorialization processes of the sites.
The title Casey Senett chose for her online presentation comes from the writer and Holocaust survivor Lucille Eichengreen (1925–2020). Born in Hamburg, she was imprisoned in the Neuengamme Concentration Camp satellite camps in Veddel and Sasel and was put to work clearing rubble. In her memoirs, "From Ashes to Life”, she wrote: "The rubble, it struck me, resembled my own life. Nothing remained of the past but irreparably damaged bits and pieces and fragmented memories."
Lucille Eichengreen emigrated to the USA after her liberation. Other survivors of the Hamburg satellite camps moved to Sweden, Great Britain or Israel, for example. The children and grandchildren of the survivors live in many countries around the world and the new online exhibition is now available to all of them. We wish the new exhibition a large and interested audience!
