The Children of Bullenhuser Damm association
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Mania Altman

*1938 in Radom, Poland

Lelka Birnbaum

*1933 in Poland

Sergio De Simone

*1937 in Naples, Italy

Sara Goldfinger

*September 20 1933 in Ostrowiec, Poland

Riwka Herszberg

*1938 in Zduńska Wola, Poland

Eduard and Alexander Hornemann

*1933/1936 in Eindhoven, the Netherlands

Marek James

*1939 in Poland

Walter Jungleib

*1932 in Slovakia

Lea Klygerman

*1937 in Ostrowiec, Poland

Georges-André Kohn

*1932 in Paris, France

Bluma Mekler

*1934 in Sandomierz, Poland

Jacqueline Morgenstern

*1932 in Paris, France

Eduard Reichenbaum

*1934 in Kattowitz, Poland

Marek Steinbaum

*1937 in Radom, Poland

H. Wassermann

*1937 in Poland

Roman und Eleonora Witoński

*1938/1939 in Radom, Poland

R. Zeller

*1933 in Poland

Ruchla Zylberberg

*1936 in Zawichost, Poland

Eduard Reichenbaum, 1937

Eduard Reichenbaum’s mother, 1945. When her son Ytzhak found out about the murder of his brother at Bullenhuser Damm, he did not have the heart to tell his mother the news. She died in Israel in 1985.

Ytzhak Reichenbaum, brother of Eduard Reichenbaum, 2009

THE 20 CHILDREN

Eduard Reichenbaum

Eduard Reichenbaum was born in Kattowitz, Poland, on 15 November 1934. His family called him Edulek. His father, Ernst Reichenbaum, was employed as a bookkeeper in a subsidiary of a German publishing house. Shortly before the beginning of the Second World War, the family moved with Eduard and his brother Jerzy, two years older, to Piotrków Trybunalski near Łódź, where the grandparents lived.

In 1943 the family was taken to the Bliżyn Labor Camp. Eduard and Jerzy had to work in a forced labor detachment producing socks for the German armed forces. Nine-year-old Eduard was able to escape the selection process in Bliżyn in which 50 children aged less than 10 were deported and murdered. Eduard’s father, whose knowledge of German enabled him to work in the camp offices, had forged his date of birth. The whole family was deported to Auschwitz in September 1944. Jerzy and his father were sent to the men’s camp; the father died in November. Eduard was initially put into the women’s camp with his mother, Sabina Reichenbaum. He was later moved to the children’s barracks. Sabina Reichenbaum was sent to a satellite camp of Buchenwald Concentration Camp in November 1944. The mother of Riwka Herszberg, Mania, was in the same transport.

Eduard was brought to Neuengamme Concentration Camp on 28 November 1944; he was murdered on 20 April 1945 here in Bullenhuser Damm. When Auschwitz Concentration Camp was cleared, Jerzy Reichenbaum was taken to the more westerly concentration camps of Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen; he survived. In the same year, the 13-year-old Jerzy emigrated to Israel. His mother followed him in 1947. They searched for Eduard, but it was not until 1984 that Jerzy – now known as Ytzhak – found out about his brother Eduard’s fate through an article in the Israeli newspaper Maariv. Ytzhak Reichenhaum was a regular visitor to the remembrance ceremonies at Bullenhuser Dam, where he told German youngsters about the fate of his brother.

Ytzhak Reichenbaum and his wife Bella passed away in Haifa/Israel in October 2020.