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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.

R. Zeller, a boy from Poland aged twelve, was probably born in 1933. His surname, age, gender, and place of origin are only known from the list published by Dr. Henry Meyer in Copenhagen in 1945 in the book “Rapport fra Neuengamme”. The camp doctor Kurt Heißmeyer also noted the initials R.Z. on one of his records, and used them to label one of the photos documenting his experiments with the children.

Ruchla Zylberberg was born on 6 May 1936. She was the daughter of Fajga, née Rosenblum, and Nison Zylberberg, a shoemaker, in the small Polish town of Zawichost, to the north of Sandomierz. Her sister Ester was born two years later. When the German Wehrmacht occupied Poland in 1939, her father fled to Russia with his brother and sister-in-law. He had originally planned to bring his family there at a later date, but this became impossible when the Germans attacked the Soviet Union. In 1942, the mother and daughters were taken to Auschwitz concentration camp, where Fajga and Ester were murdered. Ruchla was eight years old when she was taken to Neuengamme on 28 November 1944. Her father returned to Poland in 1946, and emigrated to the US in 1951. In 1979, his brother Henryk, who lived in Hamburg, was the first person to recognise Ruchla from a photograph in a press report about the children of Bullenhuser Damm. Nison Zylberberg confirmed the identity of his daughter. He died in 2002. 

 

Human experiments on prisoners and children in the Neuengamme concentration camp
 

In the spring of 1944, leading medical experts from the German Reich government and members of the SS gathered for an informal meeting in the casino of the Heilanstalten Hohenlychen complex, which, from 1902 to 1945, was used as a clinic, in the town of Lychen in the Uckermark region of north Brandenburg. As well as housing the clinic itself, which originally specialised in the treatment of lung diseases, and more recently sports and occupational injuries, Hohenlychen also became a fashionable destination for prominent figures in the Nazi party, including Hitler and his ministers, as well as high-ranking members of the SS, generals and officers from the Waffen-SS, Reich officials, Reich sports leaders, state secretaries, and army officers. International delegations travelled there, too. The meeting in the spring of 1944 was attended by the Reich Health Leader Dr. Leonardo Conti, the Reich physicians’ leader for the SS and police, Dr. Ernst-Robert Grawitz, and the head physician at Hohenlychen, Prof. Dr. Karl Gebhardt, among others. At the meeting, a senior physician at the clinic, Dr. Kurt Heißmeyer, was invited to give a brief lecture.

Heißmeyer, who was born in Lamspringe in 1905, had earned his doctorate in Freiburg and had worked at Hohenlychen since 1938. His uncle, August Heißmeyer, was a Waffen-SS general. He was a friend of Oswald Pohl, a Waffen-SS general in the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office (SS-Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt), who was responsible for the concentration camps. In order to gain his professorship, he was required to write a habilitation paper in which he aimed to tackle the treatment of tuberculosis. In his lecture, he suggested conducting a series of experiments on humans, in which patients suffering from tuberculosis were to be artificially infected with another tuberculosis pathogen. This was to be done by rubbing killed tuberculosis bacilli into a scratch on the skin, similar to administering a vaccine. This long-since debunked research approach originated from the Austrian doctor Hans Kutschera-Aichbergen, and was intended to improve immunity and healing in the lungs. Conti, Grawitz, and Gebhardt agreed that Heißmeyer should conduct the planned experiments on prisoners at the Ravensbrück concentration camp, where Gebhardt had already experimented in various ways on prisoners, most of them women, since July 1942. However, approval was required from Reich Minister of the Interior Heinrich Himmler, who had reserved the right to issue permission for all human experiments, before the plan could go ahead. Finally, Pohl received Himmler’s consent, but only on condition that the tests were not conducted in Ravensbrück, since news had already reached the international community about Gebhardt’s experiments there. He and Heißmeyer decided that the Neuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg would be a somewhat “more discreet” place in which to conduct the trials.[7]

 

[7] Schwarberg: SS-Arzt 1997 (see Bibliography), page 9–14. See also Sterkowicz 1977/2021, see Bibliography and Online)