11/08/2018 Commemorative ceremony

Dutch and French Amicale Visit the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial

Delegations from the Netherlands and France visited the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial on November 2, 2018 as a part of their commemorative journey (pèlerinage). Jean-Michel Gaussot, President of Amicale Internationale KZ Neuengamme, Martine Letterie, President of Stichting Vriendenkring Neuengamme and Jean-Michel Clère, President of Amicale de Neuengamme et de ses Kommandos accompanied the groups. Approximately 100 people took part in the journey.

Among the visitors, there were many relatives of former concentration camp prisoners, who used this opportunity to search the archives for information on their family members. The Dutch group included a group of 22 students of the Zwolle University. Moreover, there was a public reading of family stories of the Dutch group. The two delegations met at Neuengamme, but this was not the only stop in their journey – they visited the Bullenhuser Damm Memorial, a memorial to 20 Jewish children who were murdered there, including two children from France and two brothers from the Netherlands. The Stichting Vriendenkring Neuengamme group visited the Fuhlsbüttel Memorial and the Hannoverscher Bahnhof Memorial as well as the Dutch honorary cemetery at Ohlsdorf. French Amicale de Neuengamme visited the mass grave of murdered concentration camp prisoners at the Tiergarten Cemetery in Lüneburg as well as the Bergen-Belsen, Salzgitter, Wolfsburg-Fallersleben and Lübeck memorials. The Director of the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial welcomed the visitors who were then shown around the Memorial. There were also ceremonies at the international monument and the former site of the crematorium while flowers were laid at the House of Remembrance and several commemorative plaques.