On the afternoon of March 5, 1933, as polling stations were closed throughout Germany, the Nazis took over the Hamburg city hall. In an operation to gain control of the city, the authorities of the nascent Nazi Germany appointed SA Alfred Richter as Police Commissioner of the port city. Political violence against opponents of the regime began that same night.
In March 1932 alone, more than 500 people associated with left-wing groups were locked up. The most punished group was that of the members and sympathizers of the KPD, the German Communist Party. To carry out this crackdown, the regular police were purged of members suspected of left-wing sympathies. Their ranks were also reinforced with the creation of auxiliary police patrols. , SA members with authority to crack down on dissidents.
Most of those arrested in the first few days were locked up in the city's police headquarters, where many died from brutal beatings by the SA and SS. Due to the zeal of the Nazi agents, the capacity of the police headquarters and other stations was soon overwhelmed, so that already at the end of March it became necessary to create a special space for these political prisoners.
At the end of March 1933 it was decided to dedicate a part of the Fuhlsbüttel correctional facility as a prison camp. A workshop would also be established in the same area so that these prisoners could work. The camp became more important when in October of that same year the Wittmoor concentration camp was closed and its inmates were taken to Fuhlsbüttel.
The camp, like many others run by the SA, changed hands in the summer of 1934. After the Brownshirts' fall from grace after the Night of the Long Knives, all concentration camps came to be guarded solely by SS forces. Fuhlsbüttel would not be an exception.
The Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp had unique characteristics within the complex camp system of Nazi Germany. By express order of Theodor Eicke, Inspector General of Concentration Camps, Fuhlsbüttel was to be a pass-through concentration camp, where prisoners were locked up before being brought to justice or transferred to a Prussian concentration camp .
Fuhlsbüttel finally became a common concentration camp in 1944, when it became part of the Neuengamme Concentration Camp system as its outer camp. Until 1945 it served this purpose.
After the Second World War the camp was used as a prison for political prisoners of Nazism. Currently the place is a memorial that can be visited by the general public.
How to get to the Fuhlsbüttel Concentration Camp Memorial
The Fuhlsbüttel Concentration Camp Memorial is located north of the city of Hamburg. To get there, the best way is to get around the metro. We can take the subway line U1 to Klein Borstel station.