Tell ye your children… A book about the Holocaust in Europe 1933–1945 The Living History project about the Holocaust was launched by the Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson during a parliamen- tary debate in June 1997. His initiative aimed to raise issues such as humanitarianism, democracy and the equality of peo- ple, starting with the Holocaust during the Second World War. Living History focuses on educational and information activi- ties in schools and for parents about the Holocaust, public manifestations, support for universities and research. This book is one of the project activities, aimed primarily at adults. STÉPHANE BRUCHFELD AND PAUL A. LEVINE Tell ye your children… A book about the Holocaust in Europe 1933–1945 THE SWEDISH GOVERNMENT OFFICES LIVING HISTORY PROJECT Foreword were victims of genocide. Nazism’s other victims inclu- sible and all have done more than duty called for: Lena ded well over a hundred thousand handicapped, men- Albihn (Natur och Kultur Publishing), Anna-Karin tally retarded and “asocial” elements, thousands of homo- Johansson (Information Rosenbad and project leader), This book was commissioned by the Swedish govern- sexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses, millions of Polish civi- Sanna Johansson (photo editor), Jakob Wegelius (maps), ment as part of its education project “Living History”. It lians and millions of Soviet civilians and prisoners of war. Elsa Wohlfahrt (graphic designer), Marita Zonabend and is not easy to put together a book about so vast and dif- But what do these figures mean? They are so immen- Eva Åkerberg (translations). Finally we would like to ficult a subject as the Holocaust, within such a limited se that they quickly become abstract, making it easy to thank our editorial assistants Anita Karp and Mia format and the shortest imaginable space of time. lose their real meaning. It is therefore necessary to try to Löwengart. They did a bit of everything and without Nevertheless, we accepted the commission since we are understand that behind each number there is a name, a their help this book would never have been completed. convinced that the Holocaust must be treated in a seri- face and a loved one, a future lost. Children, parents, ous way. Knowledge about the Holocaust neither can nor relatives. That is why we begin with the story of the Stockholm, January 1998 should be treated as a political commodity or created children of Bullenhuser Damm. It is a story without a Stéphane Bruchfeld and Paul A. Levine with marketing methods. We received considerable sup- happy ending and it is, sadly, typical of the Holocaust. port for this understanding. Evidently it is not for us to The Nazis murdered close to one and a half million judge whether or not we have succeeded in achieving our Jewish children during the war. This means that nine out goals within the existing framework. We have tried to of ten Jewish children in Europe lost their lives. How was integrate factual information with the voices of indivi- this possible? duals. It has been a painful experience to have to choose We hope that this book will be a contribution to the which voices and faces should be given the chance to knowledge about the Holocaust in Sweden, and on how speak from an extensive and difficult material. to teach the subject. We also hope that the book, in con- Much is known about the Holocaust. The order of junction with the Government’s primary goal of its cam- events has long been clear. The road to Auschwitz wound paign, will form the basis for a dialogue between parents from hateful propaganda to the classification, discrimi- and their children about morality, democratic values and nation and then segregation of human beings. After that humane ethics – not only today but also in the future. came the rounding up, deportation and finally physical However, this book can serve only as a starting point for extermination of millions of individuals. They were kil- the interested reader. The information it contains repre- led in the fields of Europe and in camps built only for sents only a fraction of the total body of knowledge avai- that purpose. Even if it can never be established exactly lable about those terrible years during the Second World how many people suffered from the Nazis’ vision of a War. We are merely scraping the surface, and we urge all “racially pure” Greater Germany, the magnitude of the readers of the book to find out more on their own. crime is clear enough. At the same time as between five We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of and just over six million Jews were killed in the those who have helped us create this book in such a brief Holocaust, several hundred thousand Gypsies (Roma) period. Without their help it would not have been pos- 2 Children as guinea pigs large school building in Hamburg, which they reached just before midnight. The adults were the French doctors Gabriel Florence and René Quenouille, and the By April 1945 Allied armies had penetrated far into Nazi Dutchmen Dirk Deutekom and Anton Hölzel. The Germany, yet the Germans did not surrender until 8 school was called Bullenhuser Damm and had for some May. As the war was coming to its end those who knew months functioned as an annexe to the concentration they had committed crimes were trying to dispose of as camp. It also functioned as a collection point for much evidence as possible. Scandinavian prisoners being prepared for repatriation. On 20 April, at 8:00 p.m. – the same The group was taken into the cellar. day Adolf Hitler was celebrating his In the boiler room the SS soldiers first last birthday alive – the so-called hanged the adults from a pipe in the “white buses” were evacuating Scand- ceiling. Then it was the children’s inavian prisoners from the Neuen- turn. A few had been given morphine gamme concentration camp outside of injections, according to the SS doctor Hamburg. Left behind in the camp in attendance, Alfred Trzebinski. One On 17 August 1944 12-year-old George-André Kohn was depor- were twenty Jewish children between of them was Georges-André Kohn, ted with his family from Paris to Auschwitz. Their train was the the ages of five and twelve. The group who was in a terrible condition. The 79th and one of the last deportations of French Jews. On arrival included ten girls and ten boys, slumbering Georges-André was at Auschwitz George-André was selected for pseudo-medical amongst them two pairs of siblings. hanged first, but from a hook in the experiments. He was sent to the Neuengamme concentration The children were not included in the wall, not the pipe. SS corporal Johann camp at the end of November. The picture to the left was taken rescue mission that day. For several Frahm had to use all his weight to get in 1944 prior to deportation. SS doctor Kurt Heissmeyer in months they had been “guinea pigs” in the noose to tighten sufficiently. After Neuengamme took the picture above after he had removed George-André’s underarm lymph glands. medical “experiments” conducted in that Frahm hanged two more children Neuengamme by SS doctor Kurt Heissmeyer. He had from different hooks, “just like pictures”, he explained Hornemann, 12, Marek James, 6, W. Junglieb, 12, Lea removed the children’s lymph glands and injected living when being interrogated about the event in 1946. He Klygermann, 8, Georges-André Kohn, 12, Blumel Mekler, tuberculosis bacteria into their skin. The doctor had also added that none of the children had cried. 11, Jacqueline Morgenstern, 12, Eduard Reichenbaum, 10, introduced the bacteria directly in the lungs of several When all the children were dead schnapps and ciga- Sergio de Simone, 7, Marek Steinbaum, 10, H. children by means of a probe. During an interrogation in rettes were doled out to the SS men present. Then it was Wassermann, 8, Eleonora Witónska, 5, Roman Witónski, 1964 Heissmeyer explained that for him “there had been time for the next group to be hanged – this time twenty 7, Roman Zeller, 12, and Ruchla Zylberberg, 9. no real difference between Jews and animals”. Soviet prisoners of war. We do not know their names, but The following day the bodies were taken back to A few hours after the last Scandinavian prisoner had we know the names and ages of the children: Mania Neuengamme, where they were burned. Today the left the camp, the children, together with four adult pri- Altmann, 5, Lelka Birnbaum, 12, Surcis Goldinger, 11, school is called the Janusz Korczak School. There is a soners who had cared for the children, were taken to a Riwka Herszberg, 7, Alexander Hornemann, 8, Eduard small rose garden in memory of the children. 3 Introduction argued that the “strong” had a natural right to rule, even conquer the “weak”. Another influential thinker was the German-Englishman H.S. Chamberlain. In 1899 he The history of Nazi Germany is impossible to separate published his vision that the “Aryan race”, led by the from the Nazi world view. The Holocaust was the out- Germanic peoples, would save Christian European civi- come of National Socialist ideology, expressed clearly in lisation from the enemy: “Judaism”. Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Hitler and his political party, the Nazis, made no secret of their fundamentally racist Antisemitism and racial biology “Nothing is so convincing as the view of mankind, or their loathing of democratic socie- Jews had lived in Europe since ancient times. Although consciousness of the possession of ty and its values.