February 26, 2012

We started today with breakfast at the hostel. It was big German breakfast with everything imaginable for breakfast.

We then left the hostel and we went to Nicolai Kirche. This church was one of the highest points in the city, so all of the Allied bombings aimed for this church. This church was one of the only things to survive the firestorm, known as "Operation Gommorah" on July 24, 1943. It is now a memorial to the death a destruction of WWII. It was really interesting to see this church and it was easy to see that the bottom of the church had been scorched as it was a darker color than the top of the spire. We were able to take the elevator to the top of the spire and look out over Hamburg. There were pictures of how the city looked after the bombing in the different sections of spire looking over different portions of the city. It was interesting to see the difference and to see how well the city has been rebuilt since the war.

After the church we went to brunch at a place called Roxie. The food was really good and there was a lot of it. We all ate a lot of food. It was a HUGE brunch buffet with everything.

It was then time to go to Neuengamme Concentration Camp. This concentration camp is located about 45 minutes outside of Hamburg. It was used as a labor camp from December 13, 1938 to May 4, 1945, when it was liberated by British troops. It was then used by the British as Civil Internment Camp number 6 for suspected German war criminals. Neuengamme was a subcamp of Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Neuengamme was located on the grounds of an abandoned brickworks factory. Our professor seemed to know everything about it since he is a scholor of the Holocaust and has been running this trip so many times. He gave us a guided tour of the entire grounds, and that took us about 2 hours. It was really depressing to see it, but I definitely have a much deeper understanding of the types of things that occurred there. After we finished walking around the grounds of the camp we went into the museum/vistors center. That was very informative and there were a number of artifacts and pictures, and it was really interesting to see the map of all the concentration camps and extermination camps. This visit was a very informative visit and an eye-opening experience.

After the concentration camp we loaded back onto the bus and returned to Copenhagen.