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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.

Heißmeyer, who initially managed to escape detection after the war, ran his own medical practice in the GDR until 1963 and was also the director of the private Klinik des Westens in Magdeburg. He was arrested in Magdeburg on 13 December 1963. In the preliminary hearings prior to the main trial, during which Dr. Szafrański also issued witness statements, Heißmeyer admitted that: “I knew that the serum was toxic, but I wanted to find out more about immunobiological behaviour in humans. I was aware that such experiments with a virulent serum were never permitted to be conducted on humans. However, on the other hand, I also knew that experiments on guinea pigs were of no use, since by nature, these animals do not contract tuberculosis. That is why I took my experiments to a concentration camp, where a sufficient number of test subjects were available, and where I was not required to take their welfare into account. I was aware of the risks arising from my experiments, and of their potentially lethal consequences, but I wanted to publish an academic paper. [...] To me, the prisoners at Neuengamme concentration camp, and the children brought there at my request in the autumn of 1944, were no more than test subjects...”[12]. After Heißmeyer realised in the autumn of 1944 that his attempts to cure tuberculosis among adults through artificial infection had failed, and that instead, the physical state of the prisoners had worsened, he “abandoned the experiments and requested that 20 children be brought, on which I conducted experiments related to immunisation against TB using the same serum, as well as to determine any already existing immunity”.[13]

In an interview transcript from 1956, the dentist Dr. Haja (Paulina) Trocki-Musnicki, who was born in Kishinev (today: Chișinău) in 1905, who studied in Belgium and who was deported from there to Auschwitz as a resistance fighter, reported on the transportation of the children from Auschwitz to Neuengamme on 28/29 November 1944. The interview was stenographed in Israel by the contemporary historian Kurt-Jacob Ball-Kaduri, originally from Berlin, for the Yad Vashem Remembrance Center: “From September or October 1944, when it [the war] was already nearing its end, children arriving at Auschwitz were no longer killed (or not all of them?). When I arrived in August, all of the children from my train were discarded. But afterwards, they remained alive, and at the end of the year, there were around 300 children in Auschwitz, in one block. [...] The children had it good, since all the adults somehow took care of them, i.e. all the prisoners. One day at midday, I was called to the camp leader, and was told that I would have to board a train with the children, to accompany them. Apart from me, there were three nurses, one of which was a laboratory assistant from Hungary. There were ten boys and ten girls, aged between six and twelve, all Jews, but from all kinds of different countries. Two of them were from Paris. I asked why the children were being sent away. I was told: all children without parents. I learned from the children that, in the labour camp, many of the parents had been sent away on trains”.[14]

The children, who were accompanied by the SS, were transported in a special train car, which was hitched to a normal passenger train. It travelled from Auschwitz right through Poland, and on to Neuengamme via Berlin. At 10 pm on 29 November 1944, it arrived at a side track at Neuengamme which led straight into the camp. During the journey, the children were “excellently” cared for, according to Trocki, and were given milk and chocolate. When they arrived, she witnessed someone beginning to cry when he saw the children. A Belgian medical student who worked in the pharmacy was afraid that the children would be used for experiments. However, there was a French doctor in the camp who tried to save the children. After that, though, she didn’t see the children again. They were taken to the barracks where the experiments were due to take place, and given bunk beds there. Dr. Trocki was later moved to the Helmstedt-Beendorf women’s satellite camp. The three nurses on the train, two of whom were Poles, according to a witness, “headed towards the bunker” with their few possessions.[15] Later, another witness in the main Neuengamme trial reported that four Polish women were executed in the bunker at Neuengamme[16]. However, nothing is known of their identity.

 

[12] Statement by Kurt Heißmeyer in custody, 20/3/1964, BStU file [Federal Commissioners for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic, Die Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik], MfS [Ministry of State Security, Ministerium für Staatssicherheit] 8924/66, Volume 152; quoted from: Medizinische Experimente an Häftlingen (see footnote 10); see also: Der Prozess gegen Dr. Kurt Heißmeyer. Dokumente, at: Gedenkstätte Bullenhuser Damm (see Online), http://media.offenes-archiv.de/03_gruen_01.04.11_klein.pdf 

[13] Interrogation of Heißmeyer in custody on 11/3/1964, Sheet 108 of the court files; quoted from Schwarberg: SS-Arzt 1997 (see Bibliography), page 37

[14] Interview transcript from 30/12/1956, document 01/166 - 117/37 - 1066, Yad Vashem; partial copy online: http://media.offenes-archiv.de/beige_VerfolgungDeportation_04.04.11_klein.pdf; Transcript at Geteuigen. Breendonk - Mechelen - Andere kampen - Bij derdenhttp://www.getuigen.be/Getuigenis/3den/Ball-Kaduri/tkst.htm 

[15] Schwarberg: SS-Arzt 1997 (see Bibliography), page 39 f.

[16] Curiohaus-Prozess 1969 (siehe Bibliography), Volume I, page 188. Citations in Schwarberg: SS-Arzt 1997 (see Bibliography), page 40