Introduction
"Among the countless crimes committed by Germans during the National Socialist regime, the murders in the basement of the school on Bullenhuser Damm are a particularly heinous, shocking and incomprehensible act. [...] Mourning for the dead unites us. But it also obliges us Germans. It obliges us not to forget what happened and what so many people took part in. For far too long, this guilt has been concealed, suppressed and forgotten."
Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier
During the Shoah, twenty Jewish children, ten girls and ten boys, were deported with their families to the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland. The children came from Poland, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Slovakia. They were between five and twelve years old.
On November 28, 1944, the twenty Jewish children were taken from Auschwitz to the Neuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg. After their arrival in Neuengamme, an SS doctor carried out pseudo-medical experiments on them.
In April 1945, the British army approached Hamburg. On April 20, 1945, the twenty Jewish children were taken to the basement of a former school on Bullenhuser Damm. There they were drugged with morphine and hung from hooks on the wall while they were still asleep.
In order to eliminate any evidence of their crimes against humanity, the Nazis also murdered four of the children's guardians and at least 24 Soviet prisoners.
After the war, life in Hamburg went on as if the murders had never happened.
The school was used as such again. The pupils were not informed about the events that had taken place in the basement of the building. The parents and siblings of the victims were not visited. Only a few prisoners from Neuengamme concentration camp came to Bullenhuser Damm every year with flowers to commemorate the twenty Jewish children.
Many, but not all, of the perpetrators were brought to justice by the Allies. The German justice system, especially in the case of the main perpetrator Arnold Strippel, failed completely.
33 years after the gruesome events, the journalist Günther Schwarberg became aware of the story. He published the series "The SS doctor and the children" in Stern magazine. Through years of research in many countries, Schwarberg succeeded in locating most of the children's relatives.
Together with his wife, the lawyer Barbara Hüsing, and the bereaved families of the murdered children, they founded the association Kinder vom Bullenhuser Damm.
After the German justice system failed in the case of the main perpetrator Arnold Strippel, the association organized an "International Tribunal" in 1986. Relatives, former prisoners of the Neuengamme concentration camp as well as judges and lawyers from the countries of the 20 children took part in the tribunal.
The association set up a permanent exhibition at the memorial in 1979 and opened a rose garden in 1985 to commemorate the twenty Jewish children. Every year on April 20, a memorial service is held to which relatives of the children travel from all over the world.
The association Kinder vom Bullenhuser Damm will continue to honor the memory of the twenty children in the future.
These are their stories.
