JUNG FOUNDATION STRENGTHENS RESEARCH AND REMEMBRANCE IN NEUENGAMME

JUNG FOUNDATION STRENGTHENS RESEARCH AND REMEMBRANCE IN NEUENGAMME

With €477,000, the Jung Foundation has been funding a research project on medical care at the Neuengamme concentration camp since 2024. The project focuses on the prisoners’ infirmary as a key to understanding violence, exploitation, and survival in the camp.

The prisoners’ infirmary was the central place where the development of the concentration camp system can be traced—from minimal care in the early years, to dealing with epidemics as prisoner numbers rose in the early 1940s, through to the rationalization and economization of medical care in the final years of the war. At the same time, it reflects the radicalization of Nazi society: medical experiments, selection, and the killing of prisoners deemed “no longer fit for work.”

Because the medical departments and the prisoners serving as orderlies and doctors had comparatively wide room for manoeuvre, these spaces concentrated information about everyday life in the camp. Protection from the heaviest forced labour enabled some to preserve records and, after 1945, to testify—central sources for understanding the Nazi system. Despite this, research gaps remain: the infirmary has often been marginal in scholarship; systematic biographies of prisoner orderlies and doctors are largely lacking.

To close these gaps in a targeted way and preserve survivor testimony, the research project addresses exactly these points. Its findings will feed into a new permanent exhibition.

Key points at a glance

The infirmary is examined as a site of action where SS violence, roles of prisoner functionaries, and limited room for medical decisions intersected—with immediate consequences for prisoners.
Sources: approx. 2,250 survivor accounts and over 100 interviews held by the memorial, plus administrative, investigative, and trial records in Hamburg, Berlin, and the UK.
Next milestones: complete survey of relevant archival holdings in Neuengamme (by early 2026); workshop “Infirmaries in Concentration Camps – Dealing with Illness and Death in the Nazi Camp System” (02/2026); subsequent research in external archives.
Subproject on SS physicians: a manuscript with 24 short biographies is available; publication (approx. 250 pages) planned for early 2026.
Transfer: a monograph on the infirmary is planned by 2028; in parallel, a concept for “Medicine, Illness and Dying” is being developed for a new permanent exhibition (2027/2028).

The project comprises two subprojects: Anett Dremel, research associate at the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, is investigating the infirmary on the basis of extensive archival sources; in parallel, the independent historian Dr Sven Fritz is preparing a monograph on the camp’s SS physicians. In the first months, the team reviewed the state of research, surveyed initial holdings, and established a solid work plan. Dremel’s publication will be submitted as a doctoral thesis at the University of Siegen, supervised by Prof. Dr Noyan Dinçkal, chair of the German Society for the History of Sciences, Medicine and Technology (GWMT)—an important element for quality assurance and medical-historical context.

This research turns responsibility into practice: it creates robust, source-based foundations for remembrance, education, and public debate. With this programme, the Jung Foundation links research and historical accountability. In 2023, in response to findings from a study it initiated on Ernst Jung and his companies during the Nazi era, the Foundation adopted a package of measures to address its own history, assume responsibility, raise awareness, and help people in need. This includes supporting the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial.