Children…

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Children as guinea pigs
In April 1945, Allied armies were advancing steadily
into Nazi Germany.Yet the Germans did not surrender
until 8 May. As the war was coming to an end, those
who knew they had committed crimes were trying to
dispose of as much evidence as possible. On the evening
of 20 April – the same day Adolf Hitler
was celebrating his last birthday
– the “White Buses” were evacuat
ing Scandinavian prisoners from the
Neuengamme concentration camp
outside Hamburg. Left behind in the
camp were twenty Jewish children
between the ages of five and twelve.
The group included ten girls and ten
boys, among them two pairs of sib
lings. The children were not included
in the rescue mission that day. For
several months, they had been guinea
pigs in medical “experiments” con
ducted in Neuengamme by SS doctor
Kurt Heissmeyer. He had removed
the children’s lymph glands and injected living tuberculosis
bacteria into their skin. He had also introduced
the bacteria directly into the lungs of several children
through a tube. During an interrogation in 1964, Heissmeyer
explained that, for him, “there had been no real
difference between Jews and animals”.
A few hours after the last Scandinavian prisoner
had left the camp, the children, together with four
adult prisoners who had cared for them, were taken
to a large school building in Hamburg. They arrived
just before midnight. The adults were the French doctors
Gabriel Florence and René Quenouille, and the
Dutchmen Dirk Deutekom and Anton Hölzel. The
school was called Bullenhuser Damm and had for
some months been used as an annexe to the concentration
camp as well as a collection point for Scandinavian
prisoners being prepared for repatriation.
The group was taken into the
basement. In the boiler room, the
adults were hanged first, from a pipe
in the ceiling. Then it was the children’s
turn. A few had been given
morphine injections, according to
the attending SS doctor, Alfred Trze
binski. One of them was Georges-
André Kohn, who was in terrible
condition. The slumbering Georges­
André was hanged first, but from a
hook in the wall, not from the pipe.
SS corporal Johann Frahm had to
use all his weight to get the noose
to tighten sufficiently. After that,
Frahm hanged two children at a time
from different hooks, “just like pictures”, he explained
when being interrogated about the event in 1946. He
added that none of the children had cried.
When all the children were dead, schnapps and cigarettes
were doled out to the SS men present. Then it
was time for the next group to be hanged – this time,
twenty Soviet prisoners of war. We do not know their
names, but we know the names and ages of the children:
Mania Altmann, 5, Lelka Birnbaum, 12, Surcis Gold-
On 17 August 1944, 12-year-old George-André Kohn was deported
with his family from Paris to Auschwitz. This transport was
the 79th and one of the final deportations of French Jews. On
arrival to Auschwitz, George-André was selected for pseudomedical
experiments. He was sent to the Neuengamme concentration
camp at the end of November. The picture to the left was taken
in 1944 prior to deportation. In Neuengamme, SS doctor Kurt
Heissmeyer took the picture above after he had removed George­
André’s underarm lymph glands.
inger, 11, Riwka Herszberg, 7, Alexander Hornemann,
8, Eduard Hornemann, 12, Marek James, 6, W. Junglieb,
12, Lea Klygermann, 8, Georges-André Kohn, 12, Blumel
Mekler, 11, Jacqueline Morgenstern, 12, Eduard Reichenbaum,
10, Sergio de Simone, 7, Marek Steinbaum, 10, H.
Wassermann, 8, Eleonora Witónska, 5, Roman Witónski, 7,
Roman Zeller, 12, and Ruchla Zylberberg, 9.
The following day the bodies were taken back to
Neuengamme, where they were burned. Today the
school is called the Janusz Korczak School.A small rose
garden in memory of the children is there.
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