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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.

At the end of April 1944, Heißmeyer and Dr. Enno Lolling, formerly a camp doctor at Dachau and Sachsenhausen concentration camps and now head of the Office for Medical Services and Camp Hygiene (Amt für Sanitätswesen und Lagerhygiene) of the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office, travelled to Neuengamme for the first time. The camp commander, Max Pauly, had arranged for a barracks to be specially prepared for Heißmeyer’s experiments. The windows were painted white and a wooden plank fence was erected to prevent anyone from being able to see what was happening inside. At Neuengamme, Heißmeyer was introduced to the camp doctor, Dr. Alfred Trzebinski, who was assigned the task of monitoring the experiments. 

The trials began in June 1944, and were initially mainly conducted on Polish and Soviet prisoners. The test subjects were first chosen from three groups of sick prisoners: those with double-sided lung tuberculosis, those with just one infected lung, and those with tuberculosis in other organs. Next, healthy prisoners were infected with tuberculosis as a “control”. The highly infectious living tuberculosis bacilli used by Heißmeyer came from a bacteriological institute in Berlin which had no knowledge of the human experiments. Even the creation of the injection solutions in the barracks in Neuengamme took place under unprofessional and therefore life-threatening conditions. The prisoners were injected with living bacilli strains in the area of the heart muscle. After one week, lymph nodes were removed from their bodies and sent to Berlin and used to obtain new TB cultures. These cultures were again injected into the test subjects every 14 days. At the same time, their own infected saliva was rubbed into scratches on their skin. Tuberculosis serum was introduced into the lungs of the healthy subjects via a rubber tube. 

Initially, two imprisoned Polish doctors, Dr. Tadeusz Kowalski, who had previously been interned at Auschwitz, and Dr. Zygmunt Szafrański, were assigned the task of monitoring the progress of the test subjects. Both survived the war and were able to testify before the courts in 1946, Kowalski before the British military court in Hamburg during the main Neuengamme trial, and Szafrański before the examining magistrate in Radom, Kazimierz Borys.[8] Heißmeyer later replaced Kowalski and Szafrański with two imprisoned French doctors, Prof. Gabriel Florence and Dr. René Quenouille, who were hanged together with the children on 20 April 1945 in order to prevent them from testifying in the courts. It is not known how many adults were subjected to Heißmeyer’s pseudo-medical experiments. Overall, the figure is probably more than a hundred. The medical records of 32 test subjects have been preserved. At least 16 healthy prisoners were infected with tuberculosis.[9] They suffered from high fever, swelling of the lymph nodes, infections, and the formation of abscesses. After the experiments had been completed, several of the prisoners were executed and dissected, and the findings were analysed by Heißmeyer. Others died days or weeks afterwards. The survivors remained severely ill.[10]

On 22 March 1946, Dr. Tadeusz Kowalski gave the following statement in the main Neuengamme trial in Hamburg, also known as the Curiohaus Trial: “He [Heißmeyer] first came in the summer of 1944 and ordered the SDG [the SS medical service, SS-Sanitätsdienstgrad] to bring 50 sick prisoners from area II [...]. Of these 50, he selected 20 or 25 with single-lung TB. [...] They were Russians and Poles. […] Dr. Schrapansky [Szafrański] was interned with them for six days. He was strictly forbidden to go out. His food was brought by the SDG. He was required to record the state of the ill prisoners and to make clinical observations, while ensuring that cleanliness and order were maintained. [...] I have seen photographs with rubber tubes that were guided through the bronchi into the lungs. The photographs were taken by Prof. Heißmeyer. Quenouille was also present and said that he had injected either TB sputum or special TB into the healthy lung. [...] After a few weeks, Quenouille showed new X-ray images on which large, specific infiltrates could be seen. They also conducted inunctions on other sick prisoners, and a few weeks later, glands were removed from them. These patients later became extremely ill, and I know for a fact that by 18 April [1945], 50 % of them had died”.[11]

 

[8] “Vor Gericht machte [Kowalski] detaillierte Angaben zu den Menschenversuchen, die der Arzt Dr. Kurt Heißmeyer dort an Häftlingen durchführte.” (“Before the court, [Kowalski] gave detailed information about the human experiments conducted there by Dr. Kurt Heißmeyer.”) / exhibition panel, Die Zeugen im Hauptprozess zum KZ Neuengamme (The Witnesses in the Main Neuengamme Concentration Camp Trial), http://media.offenes-archiv.de/Rathausausstellung_2017_Curio_10.pdf. In Poland, Kowalski gave a lecture before the local medical community in Kowary on 27/6/1946, during which he reported on the experiments. A summary appeared in the journal Śląska Gazeta Lekarska, Volume 2, 1946, No. 11, page 712; online resource: https://sbc.org.pl/dlibra/publication/391232/edition/368708/content. – Witness Szafrański Zygmunt, at: Zapisy terroru, https://www.zapisyterroru.pl/dlibra/publication/2017/edition/1999/content?&navref=MWswOzFqaSAyeDE7MndpIDFrMTsxamo

[9] Schwarberg: SS-Arzt 1997 (see Bibliography), page 33–36, and Sterkowicz 1977/2021, see Bibliography and Online

[10] Medizinische Experimente an Häftlingen: Die Tuberkuloseexperimente des SS-Arztes Dr. Kurt Heißmeyer, at: Mediathek Ausstellungen Neuengammehttp://www.neuengamme-ausstellungen.info/content/documents/thm/ha3_5_1_2_thm_2523.pdf 

[11] Curiohaus-Prozess 1969 (see Bibliography), page 100 f., quoted from: Medizinische Experimente an Häftlingen (see footnote 10)