Children and Teenagers

Initially, Neuengamme concentration camp was intended to hold only adults, but eventually teenagers and, from 1944, even children were imprisoned there. A minimum age of 16 had been officially decreed for Polish prisoners and “eastern workers”, but some of the prisoners arriving at Neuengamme were younger than that. The first major transport from Auschwitz in April 1941 brought many teenagers to Neuengamme. From 1942, more and more teenage slave laborers were imprisoned there. Many young people were among the prisoners taken to Neuengamme on the transports from the Soviet Union, the Baltic States, France and from other countries in 1944. Many of the Jewish prisoners from Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland were also teenagers. In late 1944, the SS brought 20 Jewish children from different countries between the ages of five and twelve from Auschwitz to Neuengamme to carry out medical experiments on them.