Hanover Stöcken

Members of the Boys were slave labourers in the Hanover-Ahlem labour camp, a subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp.

Neuengamme concentration camp was operated by Nazi Germany. The camp had 99 subcamps.

The Boys were teenage and child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after the war for rest and rehabilitation.

The camp was in the Stöcken district of Hannover. It was established next to what was then the Accumulatoren-Fabrik AG, a battery factory (now Varta AG).

History

From 17 July 1943, a prisoner commando was forced to set up the camp on fallow land between Marienwerder Wald and Rossbruchgraben, around 120 metres south of the battery factory. When the first huts were completed, additional transports of prisoners arrived from the Neuengamme main camp. In July 1944, there were around 1,500 men in the camp. Survivors reported that each month, sick prisoners were exchanged for new ones from the Neuengamme main camp.

In addition to completing and expanding the camp, the prisoners were used to manufacture U-boat batteries in the factory. This involved casting lead and working in the acid section and on the hot counter-rotating rollers. The lack of safety measures led to accidents and health problems. 402 deaths were registered in the Stöcken camp, and an unknown number of prisoners were taken back to the Neuengamme main camp, where they died of disease or exhaustion.

Dissolution

When the satellite camp was cleared, those prisoners “able to march” left Stöcken on the night of 6 April 1945 and headed on foot to Bergen-Belsen, where they arrived on 8 April. Prisoners who could not keep up were shot by SS guards.

Sick prisoners were taken from Stöcken by train on 8 April. The train travelled via Fallersleben and Wolfsburg to Mieste, from where the prisoners marched on to Gardelegen. On 13 April, these prisoners and a larger group of prisoners from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp were led into a barn in Gardelegen which was then set on fire.