Kaltenkirchen


This camp was established in August 1944 and was a satellite camp to Neuengamme. It was not big and the prisoners came from different countries and they were forced to work on extending the runway at a nearby military airport. The camp was evacuated after heavy allied bombings in mid-April 1945. During the eight months the camp existed, about 700 people died. The camp was destroyed at the end of the war.

Current status: Demolished with museum (2007).

Location: 53° 50' 3.5" N, 9° 53' 9" E

Get there: Car.

My comment:

The official and larger concentration camps such as Sachsenhausen, Dachau, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Mauthausen and others are much more famous and talked about. But it was satellite camps like Kaltenkirchen that contributed to the large scale of the concentration camp system.

Follow up in books: Kogon, Eugen: The Theory and Practice of Hell: The German Concentration Camps and the System Behind Them (2006).