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The German campaigns in Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France created an immediate need for a large camp in western Germany to house the political prisoners. In June 1940 the concentration camp of Neuengamme was established. The camp name is named after the village and clearly visible from the town's center. It was meant for prisoners that were considered with less good records but were likely to benefit from education. Neuengamme was a center for medical research. The most important medical research done in Neuengamme focused on tuberculosis experiments. The origin of the emphasis on tuberculosis dated back to an accident happened three years before Hitler came into power. During that time, BCG vaccine was the most effective method for the prevention of tuberculosis. However, it was contaminated with the virulent Koch bacillus. Seventy-three babies who had taken it died. In Neuengamme physicians repeated the same event by experimenting with little children who showed some evidence of tuberculosis. | . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
Dr. Heissmeyer infected the experimental children with tubercular bacilli on their arm. After a few days redness and swelling appeared on the arm and the children's temperature rose for a few days. The process was repeated several times. Then the doctor made an incision under the armpit to remove the lymphatic nodes of each child. The technicians bred new cultures of tubercular bacilli from the lymphatic node and made an emulsion. Every two weeks each child got injection of the vaccine from his own lymphatic node. The worsened sickness of the children could be seen from the high temperature of the children and from their enlarged lymph nodes. Near the end of the experiment, cavities had formed in the lungs of almost every child. Another similar experiment was conducted on twenty-five male prisoners. Approximately 90,000 prisoners passed through Neuengamme, and 40,000 of them died. This camp is perhaps best know for the unusually tragic end of most of its prisoners immediately before liberation. Since April 14, 10,000 prisoners were loaded on three ships and sent out to sea. On May 3 RAF Typhoons sank all three ships and took the lives of 8,000. |
