Img. ID: 446477

Name

Neuengamme monument

Who is Commemorated?

Victims of the Neuengamme concentration camp

Description

The monument is in section 97 of the cemetery in an area of other collective monuments.

The monument consists of a vertical block off white granite carved to represent a kneeling woman resting her arms on a smoothed stone block. The figure of the woman is a familiar motif from funerary monuments and memorials commemorating the First World War.  In 2022, the website of the Amicale describes the kneeling figure as having “a collected face, the image of courage and willpower, symbolizes the spirit that has dominated brute force." The carved figure kneels on a square stone base which in turn sits upon another slightly larger flat square stone.

On the top third of the front-facing surface of the monument is a carved a low relief design of two seated prisoners, slumped on the ground with knees up and heads bowed forward. A separate rectangular stone plaque with a dedicatory inscription, rests upon the bottom base, and is attached vertically with corner fasteners to the base and front of the carved stele with the top of the plaque set just below the carved relief. The letters of the inscription are highlighted in red.

Inscription

Sous cette pierre
Repose
Un peu des cendres
Des sept mille
Martyrs Française
Assassinés par les Nazis
Au camp de
Neuengamme

 Ils sont morts
Pour que
Nous vivions libres

 Leurs familles
Et leurs camarades rescapés
Ont erigéce monument
A leur mémoire

XIII Novembre MCMXLIX 

Translation: Under this stone / Rests / A little from the ashes / of the seven thousand / French Martyrs / Murdered by the Nazis / At the camp of / Neuengamme / They are dead / So that / We lived free / Their families / And their surviving comrades / Have erected a monument /In their memory / XIII November MCMXLIX

Commissioned by

Amicale de Neuengamme et de ses Kommandos