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Memorial Neuengamme

This memorial by Pierre Honoré from 13 November 1949 is in honor of victims who fell in the Neuengamme concentration camp. It is the second concentration camp monument to be unveiled at Père-Lachaise.
A sober stone in white granite with behind it a crouching figure without expression, reflecting the absence of feelings and thus a certain dehumanization, leans on a large stone with a red inscription.
It contains the following text:

"Sous cette pierre repose un peu de cendres des treize mille cinq cents martyrs français assassinés par les nazis au camp de Neuengamme. Ils sont morts pour que nous vivions libres. Leurs familles et leurs six cents camarades rescapés ont érigé ce monument à leur mémoire."

Translated it says:
"Under this stone lies a little ashes of the 13,500 French martyrs who were murdered by the Nazis in the Neuengamme camp. They died so that we could live free. Their families and their 600 surviving friends have erected this memorial in their memory."

Almost all of Neuengamme's administration has been destroyed. Because a prisoner hid the books from the sick barracks in the brick factory, thousands of names have been preserved. There is also a death book kept by prisoners and there are data from the Red Cross. Reconstruction of the administration is still being worked on, but it doesn't look like it's fully available yet.

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Source

  • Text: Geert-Jan van Glabbeek
  • Photos: Geert-Jan van Glabbeek

Related books

Leven met de dood
Hitlers gewillige beulen
The Third Reich
The Camp Men
Encyclopedia of the Third Reich