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The children of Bullenhuser Damm

The former school on Bullenhuser Damm in Hamburg, satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp, after it was cleared in May 1945. The damage caused by a bombing raid on 27/28 July 1943 and the subsequent fire can be seen.

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  • Fig. 1: Sergio De Simone - Sergio De Simone from Naples, around 1943. Yad Vashem Photo Collections, No. 14142831
  • Fig. 2: Alexander Hornemann - Alexander Hornemann from Eindhoven, around 1942. Yad Vashem Photo Collections, No. 14262100
  • Fig. 3: Eduard Hornemann - Eduard Hornemann from Eindhoven, around 1942. Yad Vashem Photo Collections, No. 14262099
  • Fig. 4: Marek and Adam James - Marek James from Radom with his father Adam, around 1943. Yad Vashem Photo Collections, No. 14265681
  • Fig. 5: Walter Jungleib - Walter Jungleib from Hlohovec, around 1942
  • Fig. 6: Georges André Kohn - Georges André Kohn from Paris, around 1944
  • Fig. 7: Jacqueline Morgenstern - Jacqueline Morgenstern from Paris at her first communion, 1944
  • Fig. 8: The defendants - The defendants in the main Neuengamme trial in the Curiohaus in Hamburg, 1946
  • Fig. 9: Entrance to the rose garden - Entrance to the rose garden, Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 10: Memorial to the murdered Soviet prisoners - Anatoli Mossitschuk: Memorial to the murdered Soviet prisoners, 1985. At the entrance to the rose garden, Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 11: Rose garden - Rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg, June 2022. View onto the fence with the memorial panels dedicated to the murdered children, doctors and caretakers
  • Fig. 12: Memorial plaque - Memorial plaque and fence with the granite panels for the murdered children. Rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 13: Memorial panel for Surcis Goldinger - Memorial panel for Surcis Goldinger from Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 14: Memorial panel for Lea Klygerman - Memorial panel for Lea Klygerman from Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 15: Memorial panel for H. Wasserman - Memorial panel for H. Wasserman from Poland, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 16: Memorial panel for Marek James - Memorial panel for Marek James from Radom, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 17: Memorial panel for Roman and Eleonora Witoński - Memorial panel for Eleonora and Roman Witoński from Radom, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 18: Memorial panel for R. Zeller - Memorial panel for R. Zeller from Poland, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 19: Memorial panel for Eduard and Alexander Hornemann - Memorial panel for Eduard and Alexander Hornemann from Eindhoven, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 20: Memorial panel for Riwka Herszberg - Memorial panel for Riwka Herszberg from Zduńska Wola, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 21: Memorial panel for Georges André Kohn - Memorial panel for Georges André Kohn from Paris, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 22: Memorial panel for Jacqueline Morgenstern - Memorial panel for Jacqueline Morgenstern from Paris, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 23: Memorial panel for Ruchla Zylberberg - Memorial panel for Ruchla Zylberberg from Zawichost, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 24: Memorial panel for Eduard Reichenbaum - Memorial panel for Eduard Reichenbaum from Kattowitz/Katowice, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 25: Memorial panel for Mania Altman - Memorial panel for Mania Altman from Radom, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 26: Memorial panel for Sergio De Simone - Memorial panel for Sergio De Simone from Naples, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 27: Memorial panel for Lelka Birnbaum - Memorial panel for Lelka Birnbaum from Poland, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 28: Memorial panel for Walter Jungleib - Memorial panel for Walter Jungleib from Hlohovec, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 29: Memorial panel for Bluma Mekler - Memorial panel for Bluma Mekler from Sandomierz, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 30: Memorial panel for Marek Steinbaum - Memorial panel for Marek Steinbaum from Radom, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 31: Memorial panel for the doctor Gabriel Florence - Memorial panel for the doctor Professor Gabriel Florence from Lyon, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 32: Memorial panel for the doctor René Quenouille - Memorial panel for the doctor René Quenouille from Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 33: Memorial panel for the caretaker Dirk Deutekom - Memorial panel for the caretaker Dirk Deutekom from Amsterdam, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 34: Memorial panel for the caretaker Anton Hölzel - Memorial panel for the caretaker Anton Hölzel from Deventer, rose garden at the Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 35: Painting by Jürgen Waller, 1987 - Jürgen Waller: 21. April 1945, 5 Uhr morgens, 1987. Oil on canvas, montage, Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 36: Memorial stele by Leon Mogilevski, 2000 - Leonid Mogilevski: Memorial stele for the children of Bullenhuser Damm. Roman-Zeller-Platz, Hamburg
  • Fig. 37: Former Janusz-Korczak school, Hamburg - Former Janusz-Korczak school on Bullenhuser Damm 92, Hamburg-Rothenburgsort
  • Fig. 38: Memorial panels for the former Janusz-Korczak school - Memorial panels for the Janusz-Korczak school on Bullenhuser Damm, Hamburg
  • Fig. 39: Memorial panel at the former Janusz-Korczak school - Memorial panel of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg for the former Janusz-Korczak school, Bullenhuser Damm 92, Hamburg-Rothenburgsort
  • Fig. 40: Exhibition room 1 - Exhibition room 1 with symbolic suitcases with biographies of the children, Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 41: Exhibition room 1 - Exhibition room 1 with symbolic suitcases with biographies of the children, Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 42: Suitcase for Riwka Herszberg - Symbolic suitcase with the biography of Riwka Herszberg from Zduńska Wola, Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 43: Suitcase for Ruchla Zylberberg - Symbolic suitcase with the biography of Ruchla Zylberberg from Zawichost, Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 44: Suitcase for Mania Altman - Symbolic suitcase with the biography of Mania Altman from Radom, Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 45: Suitcase for Eleonora Witońska - Symbolic suitcase with the biography of Eleonora Witońska from Radom, Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 46: Suitcase for Roman Witoński - Symbolic suitcase with the biography of Roman Witoński from Radom, Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 47: Suitcase for Professor Gabriel Florence - Suitcase for the doctor Professor Gabriel Florence from Lyon, Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 48: Exhibition room 2 - Exhibition room 2 with more in-depth materials on the biographies of the children and all aspects related to the crime, Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 49: The room where the murder took place - The room where the murder took place, with a partition in which the bodies of the children lay, Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
  • Fig. 50: Memorial room for the murdered victims - Inscription of 1979, Bullenhuser Damm memorial site, Hamburg
The former school on Bullenhuser Damm in Hamburg, satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp, after it was cleared in May 1945.
The former school on Bullenhuser Damm in Hamburg, satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp, after it was cleared in May 1945. The damage caused by a bombing raid on 27/28 July 1943 and the subsequent fire can be seen.

The search for traces, documentation, remembrance. The erection of a memorial site
 

During the years that followed the Curiohaus trials, the memory of the murders at Bullenhuser Damm began to fade among the wider general public. In August 1948, the building was re-opened as a school. From the late 1950s onwards, former prisoners of the Neuengamme concentration camp regularly gathered at the school building to remember the events that took place there. In 1963, after many years of lobbying, the Hamburg Senate agreed to mount a memorial plaque dedicated to the murdered children and their four carers. No mention was made on the plaque of the Soviet prisoners who were executed there, however. In 1977, a journalist, Günther Schwarberg (1926–2008), drew attention to what had happened at Bullenhuser Damm. Schwarberg had first worked for the “Bremer Weserkurier” newspaper before moving on to “Radio Bremen” and a Düsseldorf-based agency for the Hamburg weekly magazine “Stern”.[40] After taking part in a memorial event in the cellar of the school, he began searching for traces of the murdered children. In Frankfurt/Main, in the archive of the Association of the Victims of the Nazi Regime (Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes), he discovered photographs of all 20 children, which had been taken for Heißmeyer by an SS photographer. He used these photos on search posters, which he had printed in Polish, Italian, Serbo-Croat and German, as well as in French, Dutch and English, and which he sent to different countries in the hope of finding the children’s relatives.[41]

The first person to contact Schwarberg was a civil servant at the state attorney’s office in Tel Aviv, who had recognised her cousin Riwka Herszberg from Zduńska Wola in Poland on one of the posters. According to Schwarberg,[42] one researcher found the Kohn and Morgenstern families in Paris. At a meeting in the Paris office of the attorney Serge Klarsfeld, the businessman Philippe Kohn recognised his brother Georges on one of the photographs. Dorothéa Morgenstern found her niece Jacqueline among the faces shown.[43] In the Netherlands, relatives were found of the murdered nurses Hölzel and Deutekom. From March 1979 onwards, Schwarberg published a six-part series in the “Stern” magazine entitled “The SS Doctor and the Children” (Der SS-Arzt und die Kinder), which described the full sequence of events from the deportation of the Kohn family in Paris in August 1944 through to the trial of Heißmeyer and the failed attempts to indict Strippel. In addition to conducting his own research, Schwarberg had access to the list published by Dr. Henry Meyer in Denmark, a brochure published in 1978 by the former prisoner at Neuengamme concentration camp, Fritz Bringmann, entitled “The Murder of the Children at Bullenhuser Damm” (Kindermord am Bullenhuser Damm), as well as the documents and results of the trial against Heißmeyer in the GDR. The series ended with a report of his latest contact with Michael Zylberberg, a 16-year-old living in Hamburg whose parents had recognised their niece Ruchla from Zawichost in Poland among the photographs published in “Stern”[44].

On 20 April 1979, over 2,000 people gathered for a memorial event to mark the 34th anniversary of the death of the victims of Bullenhuser Damm. Philippe Kohn and Dorothéa’s son, Henri Morgenstern, came from Paris, while the Zylberberg family from Hamburg also attended the event, as did the widow of Anton Hölzel, who travelled from the Netherlands. Together with former inmates of the Neuengamme concentration camp and members of the public living in Hamburg, they founded the Children of Bullenhuser Damm Association (Vereinigung Kinder vom Bullenhuser Damm e.V.) and submitted a formal request for a new criminal investigation against Strippel. In 1980, the association formally opened a memorial site in the cellar rooms of the school with a small exhibition. In a formal ceremony in April of the same year, the Hamburg Senate renamed the school the Janusz-Korczak School (Janusz-Korczak-Schule) (Fig. 37–39) in honour of the Polish doctor and educationalist Janusz Korczak, who in 1942 had voluntarily accompanied the Jewish children from an orphanage who were in his care to Treblinka concentration camp, and who went with them to his and their death.[45]

 

[40] Schwarberg: Kinder 1996 (see Bibliography), page 135 f., names his first sources as being the book by Edward Lord Russell of Liverpool, a brigadier responsible for the military courts of the British Army after 1945: Geißel der Menschheit. Kurze Geschichte der Nazikriegsverbrechen, Berlin 1960, (original English title: The Scourge of the Swastika: a Short History of Nazi War Crimes, 1954) and the book published in the same year by the GDR writer Willi Bredel: Unter Türmen und Masten. Geschichte einer Stadt in Geschichte, Schwerin 1960

[41] Reproduction of the poster in the file “Günther Schwarbergs Spurensuche”, http://media.offenes-archiv.de/10mal_gruen_Plakat_28.03.11_klein.pdf 

[42] Schwarberg: Kinder 1996 (see Bibliography), page 137

[43] On the families of the murdered children, see also: http://www.kinder-vom-bullenhuser-damm.de/die_angehoerigen.php

[44] Reproductions of the “Stern” article by Günther Schwarberg in the “Stern” series file: “Der SS-Arzt und die Kinder”, at: http://media.offenes-archiv.de/04_gruen_SternSerie_31.03.11_klein.pdf

[45] Am Gedenktag: “Der muss viel durchlitten haben”. Janusz Korczak gab der Schule seinen Namen, in: Hamburger Abendblatt, 21. April 1980, shown in copy in the file Dokumente und Fotos, at: http://media.offenes-archiv.de/05_gruen_DokumenteFotos_30.06.11_nachkorrektur.pdf