First elements of the Place to Remember, Connect and Support were installed on the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial grounds in early June.

The Place to Remember, Connect and Support was initiated by the relatives of the former prisoners of the Neuengamme concentration camp and volunteers. Together with a group of students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg, they developed a participatory and ever-growing memorial in Neuengamme. This is where people from all over the world can express their personal relationships with their family members who were imprisoned in the Neuengamme concentration camp on the place of their suffering.

By creating their own customized posters, former prisoners’ relatives can share their memories of their family members in a very personal way and in their native languages. The posters are collected and transformed into laser-engraved printing plates which will be displayed outside the prefabricated house and near the former brick factory on the Memorial grounds. The plates containing the names of the former prisoners will thus be visible and accessible to visitors of the Memorial. In the printing studio set up in the prefabricated house, visitors will have the possibility to reproduce the posters and to either have them displayed at the Memorial or take the posters with them and share them outside the Memorial. In this way, the stories and memories of the people imprisoned in the Neuengamme concentration camp will be made visible and kept alive.

The inauguration of the Place to Remember was planned to take place on May 2, 2020 during the commemorative week to mark the 75^th anniversary of the liberation (learn more about this in a video post by Bernhard Esser on Neuengamme’s virtual commemoration website), but due to the measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, it was rescheduled for November 13, 2020.

Relatives from all over the world have already created posters which will be displayed at the Place to Remember. The students of Experimental Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg are currently working on the printing plates and developing a website with a digital archive containing all the poster designs and background information.

At the moment, a printing plate storage rack and a display board are being set up on the way to the prefabricated house. You can find out more about the project on the blog “Family History Affected by Nazi Crimes”. Contact:  ort_der_verbundenheit@gmx.de