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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.

Mediathek Sorted

Media library
  • 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.

Georges André Kohn (Fig. 6 . ) was born on 23 April 1932 in Paris in a family related to the Rothschild banking dynasty from England. His mother Suzanne (1895–1945) née Nêtre, was the daughter of a tobacco factory owner and was related by marriage to the Rothschild family via a first cousin. His father, Armand Edouard Kohn (1894–1962), a descendant of one of the oldest and most established Jewish families in France, was a banker and, from 1940, Secretary General of the Hôpital Fondation Adolphe de Rothschild and managing director of the Hôpital Rothschild, the first Jewish hospital in Paris.[2] During the German occupation, ill people from the Drancy collection camp were sent to this hospital before being transported to the death camps. The family had three other children, Antoinette, Rose Marie, and Philippe, who at the time of deportation were 22, 18, and 21 years old respectively. The family home was shared with the 72-year-old grandmother Marie Jeanne, née Weisweiler, from Frankfurt/Main. In 1942, the mother, Suzanne, converted to Catholicism together with the children in an attempt to escape persecution by the Nazis. Even so, in July 1944, the family was arrested together with a group of prominent Jews who until that time had not been exposed to such great danger as other members of the Jewish community. They were interned in Drancy transit camp and on 17 August, just one week before the liberation of Paris, they were taken to Germany on the last transport train. On the train, in which SS Hauptsturmführer Alois Brunner and his military personnel were also travelling, the group of 51 deportees were used as hostages. While the train was still travelling in French territory, Georges André’s siblings, Rose Marie and Philippe, together with 30 others, managed to escape from the train and were hidden in Saint-Quentin until France was liberated. His father, Armand, was taken to Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, was liberated in April 1945, and returned to France. The remaining family members were transported onwards to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Some time later, Suzanne Kohn and her daughter Antoinette were taken to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they died shortly afterwards. The grandmother Marie Jeanne was killed in a gas chamber after arriving in Auschwitz. According to an account later given by a fellow French prisoner, after arriving at the camp, Georges André was taken to work camp D and was employed as a transport worker for the rolling carts. Before his mother was taken from the camp, he was able to remain in contact with her by writing secret letters. At that time, he was twelve years old.

Bluma (Blumel) Mekler was born in Sandomierz, Poland, in 1934. Her parents, Sara, née Taitelbaum, born in 1903 in Koćmierzów in the district of Sandomierz, and Herszel/Hershel Mekler, born in 1889 in Sandomierz, ran a trade in agricultural supplies. Her father was also taught religion in the cheder, a primary school class in which boys learned about Jewish religion and culture. Blumel had two sisters, Gita and Szifra, and two brothers, Berl and Alter. After the closed ghetto was established by the German occupiers in Sandomierz in June 1942, the family were forced to move there. When the ghetto[3] was brutally liquidated on 29 October 1942 and 4 January 1943, the family became separated. During a raid in October 1942, her sister, Szifra/Shifra fled at the insistence of her mother. She was hidden by Polish neighbours until the end of the war, and emigrated to a kibbutz in Israel in 1947 after being taken in by a Jewish orphanage in Lublin.[4] Her brother Alter, who was born in 1929, was taken to Auschwitz via Majdanek concentration camp. He managed to survive, and was reunited with his sister Shifra in Israel. It is not known how Bluma Mekler came to Auschwitz, or what happened to her parents and other siblings. She too was taken to Neuengamme on 28 November 1944. She was ten or eleven years old. 

Jacqueline Morgenstern (Fig. 7 . ) was born in Paris on 26 May 1932. Her mother, Suzanne, was a secretary; her father, Charles, owned a hairdressing salon together with his brother, Leopold. After the occupation of Paris by the German Wehrmacht, the Morgenstern brothers were forced to relinquish their salon to non-Jews. In 1943, the family fled to Marseille in Vichy France. There, they were arrested and taken to Drancy collection camp near Paris. On 20 May 1944, they were deported to Auschwitz concentration camp, where Suzanne was murdered. On 28 November 1944, Jacqueline and the other children were transferred to Neuengamme. She was twelve years old. When Auschwitz was cleared, her father was taken to Dachau concentration camp on the last transport train. He died there after liberation in May 1945.

 

[2] Jeremy Josephs: Swastika over Paris, London 1990, page 43

[3] On the history of the Sandomierz ghetto, see Polin. Virtuelles Schtetl, https://sztetl.org.pl/de/stadte/s/697-sandomierz/116-orte-der-martyrologie/50395-ghetto-sandomierz-sandomir, see also bibliography on the same page

[4] Günther Schwarberg: Renn, Shifra, renn!, in: Ossietzky. Zweiwochenschrift für Politik, Kultur und Wissenschaft, Berlin, No. 8/2005; online: https://www.sopos.org/aufsaetze/429a0f70ad33e/1.phtml.html