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Emergency panic buttons have been placed in former Nazi concentration camps as workers feel so threatened by levels abuse and intimidation from right wing extremists

Germany's former Nazi concentration-camp sites — which today operate as Holocaust memorials — have become so unsafe for staff that emergency panic buttons are now being installed. Guides, reception workers and general admin workers feel so threatened by levels of abuse and intimidation from right wing extremists they have demanded the new measures. It now means they can summon police at the touch of a button. Oliver von Wrochem, director of the notorious Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg admitted it was a shocking situation and that the situation is getting worse. He insisted that how Germany educates the young about the horrors if the holocaust must be improved. He said: “Across Germany graffiti, Hitler salutes and other attacks at concentration camp memorial sites have increased massively in recent years.

“At the Hamburg memorial site we have installed emergency buttons that can be used to alert the police. And staff members repeatedly come to me and say: ‘We need more security.’ But we must not allow ourselves to be intimidated.”

As well as heading the Neuengamme memorial von Wrochem chairs the Hamburg Foundation for Memorials and Learning Sites, and currently serves as spokesman for the association of concentration-camp memorials across Germany.

He warned that visits by school classes alone cannot be expected to counter extremist ideas.

“It must not be pretended that a two-hour visit to a memorial is enough — and then students are somehow immune to far-right parties or antisemitic ideas,” he said.

“In many European countries such far-right parties are gaining support. We Germans always believed we were better prepared because of our violent past and because so much effort was made to educate people about it. That it is now happening here as well is frightening.”

The Neuengamme site stands on the grounds of one of the largest Nazi camp complexes in northern Germany.Between 1938 and 1945 more than 100,000 prisoners passed through the camp system, including Jews deported from across Europe, political prisoners, Soviet prisoners of war and resistance fighters.

Historians estimate around 42,900 people lost their life as a result of executions, starvation, disease, forced labour and brutal camp conditions. Today the former camp operates as a memorial and education centre visited by thousands of school pupils each year.

There was recent outrage in Germany after a legendary leader’s grave was daubed with swastikas. Police investigated after horrendous graffiti was painted on the gravestone of Helmut Schmidt.

Schmidt served as West Germany’s Chancellor from 1974 to 1982 - as a senior figure he backed NATO and Germany’s duty to face its dark Nazi past — the values despised by the country’s far-right extremists.

Police confirmed the attack on the graves of Helmut, and wife Loki in the Ohlsdorf Cemetery in the northern port city of Hamburg, They said it was a near-identical copy of a previous attack back in December 2023. Officers covered the symbols yesterday while forensic teams combed the scene.