Birthplaces Archive - Page 4 of 9

Łódź Voivodeship, Poland

Members of the Boys were born in Łódź Voivodeship in Poland.

The Boys were teenage and child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after the war for rest and rehabilitation.

Members of the Boys were held in Nazi labour and concentration camps and used as slave labourers. They had also survived World War II in hiding or as lone children.

Photograph of Zdunska-Wola, Poland during the German occupation. — ^{Zdunska-Wola, Poland during the German occupation.}

The territory formed part of Poland since its establishment in the 10th century. Łódź, its capital, was home to many of the Boys. Its second city, Piotrków Trybularski, was also the birthplace of a number of the Boys. Several Boys also came from the counties of Pabiance, Pajeczno, Radomsko, Sieradz, Wieluń, Zdunska Wola, and Zgierz

Photograph of David Sommer's concentration camp photo. — David Sommer

Photograph of David Kutner — David Sommer

^{Six of the Boys from the Łódź Voivodeship.}

The Łódź Voivodeship had a significant Jewish population, with around 270,437 Jews in 1921, representing 12% of the total population. The Jews in Łódź formed the second largest Jewish community in pre-war Poland, after Warsaw.

Photograph of Arek Hersch in 1946. — ^{Arek Hersch in 1946.}

“Sieradz was an army garrison town with a population of eleven thousand – six thousand Christians and five thousand Jews. The Jewish community was mainly composed of artisans and shopkeepers. It was set in rural surroundings, with forests on its horizons and fields of rape seed shining like gold in the summer sun. It was a peaceful place, the River Warta passing its outskirts, and local history boasting that Queen Jadwiga of Poland had once had a castle here …

Few strangers came to Sieradz except on market days, when peasants in national costume clattered through the cobbled streets in their clogs. They came regularly to sell livestock, butter, eggs and fruit.”

Arek Hersch A Detail of History (Quill, 2001).

Hersch returned to his home in 1980:

World War II

Wieluń, the home of Simon Klin and Moritz Tuch, was the scene of a major air raid carried out by the German airforce on 1 September 1939. It is considered the first major bombing of World War II.

From the beginning of the German occupation, the Jews of Łódź Voivodeship were subjected to various forms of persecution. The ghetto established in the city of Łódź was the second largest in Nazi-occupied Europe.

There were several other ghettos established within the voivodeship including one in Sieradz, established in February 1940, where 2,000 Jews were crowded together in an area previously inhabited by a few hundred people. The majority of Jews from Łódź Voivodeship were transported to Chełmno extermination camp.

The Story of the Boys’ Families: The Fuks Family

Rachel and Joseph Fuks, a tailor, lived on Remisfesvkego Street in the small town of Tuszyn, Their family had resided there for generations. They had three children: Jonah (b. 1928), Chaim (b. 1930) and Rhoda (b. 1932). Wolf Gottesman, Rachel’s father, was very religious and died in 1938.

After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, in December of the same year, the family were woken in the middle of the night and given thirty minutes to leave their home, as were all the Jews. They were they told they could only take what they could carry with them.

The family were taken to the nearby town of Piotrków, where they were put in the ghetto, which was the first to be created in Poland. Joseph Fuks worked in the Hortensia glass factory with his two sons making medicine bottles.

In October 1942, the ghetto was liquidated and the only people who managed to survive were those with work permits. Some 22,000 Jews, among them Rachel and Rhoda Fuks, were herded onto the main square in order to undergo a selection.

In the course of the next few days, they were marched to the railway station and loaded onto the awaiting freight trains, 150 to one wagon. They were taken to the Treblinka extermination camp. Rhoda was just ten-years old.

Jonah and Chaim survived the Holocaust and came to the UK in the first group of the Boys. To find out more about their lives click here.

World War II

Wieluń, the home of Simon Klin and Moritz Tuch, was the scene of a major air raid carried out by the German airforce on 1 September 1939. It is considered the first major bombing of World War II.

Aftermath

Following the liberation of the region in early 1945, very few Jewish survivors remained. The Jewish population in towns such as Radomsko, Sieradz, Wieluń, and Zgierz were eradicated, and many of the synagogues and Jewish cemeteries were destroyed. Some survivors returned briefly, but widespread antisemitism and violence in post-war Poland discouraged many from rebuilding their lives there.

In the postwar years, the Jewish community of Łódź briefly re-emerged as a centre for displaced persons and survivors. By 1946, approximately 30,000 Jews had returned to Łódź, making it the largest Jewish community in Poland at the time. However, persecution, economic hardship, and the rise of communism prompted the majority to emigrate.

Present-day

Today, only a small Jewish presence remains in the region.

The Boys’ Story: Take Three Towns

Kalisz, Poland

Ozorków, Poland

Wielún, Poland

Visiting Łódź Voivodeship

Getting there Łódź Władysław Reymont Airport has direct flights from the UK but alternatively fly to Warsaw’s Chopin Airport. Łódź Fabryczn has direct train services to Warsaw and Kraków. Łódź is well served by Poland’s motorway system.

Getting around Use the railway and bus network if you do not have your own transport.

There are surviving Jewish cemeteries in the following Boys’ hometowns: Kalisz, Klodawa, Ozorkow, Radomsko, Sieradz, Turek, Tuszyn, Zgierz and Zdunska Wola.

Repurposed synagogues stand in Kalisz and Sieradz.

Visiting Chełmno extermination camp

Chełmno

The former Chełmno extermination camp, 77km northwest of Łódź, was the site of the first Nazi extermination camp on Polish soil and the first place where Jews were gassed.

Background

Chełmno is one of the most sinister of the Nazi extermination camps as it was here that the Nazi teams experimented with ways to carry out mass murder and dispose of the bodies.

The first transport from the Łodz ghetto arrived in December 1941. Jews were choked to death as gas vans drove into the Rzuchów Forest along the road from Dabie to Kolo.

Good to Know Chełmno was the fifth most deadly extermination camp, yet it gets few visitors, so is never crowded. Do however book an English language tour in advance in order to understand the importance of the monuments in the nearby Rzuchów Forest.

What to see

The Kulmhof Museum in Chełmno on Ner (Muzeum Kulmhof w Chełmnie nad Nerem; Chełmno 59a; ( w chelmno-muzeum.eu; free) uses the German name for the village, Kulmhof, as the area around the camp was annexed by the Reich in 1940. The tour starts at the ruins of the country house, where in the cellar Jews from the neighbouring towns were stripped of their possessions and then loaded into mobile gas vans.

The Rzuchów Forest is 15 minutes away. There are a series of monuments and memorials. Visitors can also see the remains of the experimental crematorium.

Lesser Poland Voivodeship, Poland

Photograph of Herman Weinstock in Kloster Indersdorf, Germany in 1945. — Herman Weinstock

Photograph of Roman Weinstock in Kloster Indersdorf, Germany in 1945. — Herman Weinstock

^{Three of the Boys born in Lesser Poland Voivodship. These photographs were all taken after World War Ii.}

Before World War II, the region was home to vibrant Jewish communities in cities and towns. These communities were largely destroyed during the Holocaust, though some individuals survived and later rebuilt their lives abroad.

The area was occupied by Germany in September 1939 and became part of the General Government. Jewish communities across the region were subjected to persecution, confinement in ghettos, forced labour, and mass deportations to extermination camps—most notably Auschwitz. Most towns saw the complete destruction of their Jewish populations.

Visiting Lesser Poland Voivodship

Getting there Krakow has excellent international air, road and rail connections. It helps to have a car to explore the region.

What to see

There are Jewish sites in the following Boy’s hometowns:

Bobowa

The 18th century synagogue, with a wooden-galleried front, was used as a weaving workshop before being returned to Jewish ownership in 1993.

Dobczyce

The most prominent physical trace of Jewish life in Dobczyce is the ruined mikveh (ritual bath) building.

Dubiecko

Jewish Cemetery (North of the town) Fewer than 20 sandstone matzevot (tombstones) remain, many of which are toppled or broken.

Frysztak

Old Jewish Cemetery (Parkowa Street) contains about 30 surviving tombstones.

Krynica

Jewish Cemetery (Polna Street) The site sits on an overgrown hill. While many stones were destroyed, it remains a protected historical site.

Synagogue Locations Historically, two synagogues served the town. One was located on today’s Piłsudskiego Street and another at the junction of Kraszewskiego and Polna Streets (which also housed a mikveh).

Nowy Sącz

Memorial A significant new memorial lists the names of 12,000 Jews from the region, including many from Krynica-Zdrój, who perished in the Holocaust

Ksiaz Wielki

Synagogue Ruins (Stroma 3) The building is currently in poor condition with a collapsed roof and bricked-up entrances.l

Jewish Cemetery (Szewska Street) No original tombstones remain in their original positions, as they were used for paving during the war. However, one matzeva (tombstone) belonging to Jacheta Fridberg (d. 1901) and a modern monument dedicated to Holocaust victims are present on the site.

Rymanów

Synagogue Built in the 17th century, this stone fortress-style synagogue was once a ruin but has been extensively restored since 2005.

Jewish Cemetery Located on the eastern arm of Kalwaria Hill, it is one of the most picturesque in the region. It contains hundreds of matzevot (tombstones), some dating back to the 1610s.

Jewish House Museum (2 Sanocka Street) This private memorial was established by Malka Shakham Doron in her grandfather’s former home.

Tarnów

(Yiddish: Torne/Tarne) Tarnów is just over 70km east of Kraków. The ruined Bimah (reading platform) of the Old Synagogue, which was destroyed by the Nazis in 1939 survives (ul. Żydowska 12). The old Jewish quarter was off the Rynek (market square).

Jewish Cemetery One of the largest and best-preserved in southern Poland, featuring thousands of tombstones and a mass grave of Holocaust victims is located on the intersection of Szpitalna and Sloneczna.

Mikvah Building (Plac Dożywocia) An oriental-style former ritual bathhouse located near the city centre.

Goldhammer Street Traces of Hebrew and Polish signage can still be seen on buildings here, including the site of the last prayer house.

Ghetto Location The Market Square (Rynek) and Magdeburg Square were assembly points for deportations to the Bełżec extermination camp.

Königsberg, Germany

Königsberg, once the capital of East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), had a Jewish presence dating back to the early 16th century. The community flourished during the 19th century, contributing to cultural, academic, and commercial life in the city. Königsberg’s Jewish population included professionals, merchants, and scholars, and the city became known for its synagogues, schools, and Zionist activity.

Third Reich

By the early 20th century, the community numbered around 3,000. However, the rise of Nazism and subsequent antisemitic persecution reduced the population to 3,500 by 1933, and then to 1,585 in May 1939.

The main synagogue was destroyed during Kristallnacht in 1938, when many families were deported or fled. Emigration was prohibited after 1939. Deportations intensified in 1941, when Jews were sent to ghettos and camps in Riga, Minsk, Kaunas and Theresienstadt. By the end of World War II, the once-thriving community had been virtually annihilated.

Aftermath

After the war, Königsberg was annexed by the Soviet Union and renamed Kaliningrad. Under Soviet rule, no Jewish community was officially re-established.

Present-day

A community of roughly 3,000 Jews exists in the region, with active cultural, educational, and religious life

Visiting Kaliningrad

Getting there

It is only possible to fly to Kaliningrad from Moscow or St Petersburg. Access by road is possible at designated crossing points.

What to See

Synagogue (ul. Oktyabrskaya) The reconstructed synagogue was destroyed during Kristallnacht in 1938. A memorial plaque to victims of the Holocaust is attached to the red building next door, a former Jewish orphanage. The synagogue complex has an exhibition on the Holocaust.

Further afield

On the coast 50km from Kaliningrad city, Yantarny, then known as Palmnicken, was, in late January 1945, the culmination of a death march for some 3,000 women and children from concentration camps in the region. Here they were forced into the ice-covered water and mown down by machine gun fire. Only 13 people survived. There is a memorial on the seafront north of the town off ul. Sovetskaya.

Koblenz, Germany

Koblenz is a German city on the banks of the Rhine and the Moselle rivers 125km northwest of Frankfurt am Main.

Background

The Jewish community in Koblenz had a long history, with Rabbi Benjamin von Tudela mentioning community life in the city in 1160.

A sizable Jewish community in Koblenz played an important role as moneylenders to the nobility and the Church from the end of the 13th century. The community, however, was the target of persecution and was totally destroyed in the Black Death disturbances of 1348-49. Jews were blamed for the plague. They resettled in Koblenz but were expelled definitively in 1418.

They were allowed to return in 1518 and a renewed Jewish community began to develop, establishing a synagogue in 1702. The Jewish population increased from 342 in 1808 to 634 in 1900. Most were merchants in the food and textile trade. The community grew in size, reaching a peak of about 800 members by 1928.

Third Reich

The Nazi boycott of stores and antisemitic persecution began in 1933. The synagogue was burned in November 1938. About 100 Jewish men were sent to the Dachau concentration camp. In May 1939 only 308 Jews remained.

Deportations commenced in 1942, with Koblenz serving as a regional concentration point. The first transport for the east left on 22 March. Additional transports left on 15 June, 27 July, and 28 February 1943 and in July 1943.

Aftermath

Twenty-two Koblenz Jews survived the Holocaust.

Modern-day

The Jewish community in Koblenz has an active congregation of over 871 members, many of whom are from eastern Europe and Russia.

Visiting Koblenz

Getting there Koblenz is easily accessible by train from Frankfurt and Cologne.

Cemetery (Schwerzstrasse 14) Dating back to the 14th century and the cemetery contains tombstones from as early as 1657 and a Holocaust memorial. This is also the site of the current synagogue.

Bürresheimer Hof (Florinsmarkt 13) This building served as the community’s synagogue, school, and community hall from 1848 until its interior was destroyed during Kristallnacht in 1938. Today, it has been renovated and serves as a public library with a memorial room dedicated to the former Jewish community.

Kiel, Germany

Before the Nazis came to power in 1933, an estimated 1,900 Jews lived in Schleswig-Holstein in the north of Germany, mostly in Lübeck and Kiel.

Background

Persecution of the Jews began in Kiel earlier than in the rest of Germany. Already in 1932, before Hitler came to power, public notices saying “Jews forbidden from entering” had started to appear across the city.

In August 1932, Kiel’s synagogue and a Jewish-owned department store were bombed.

The Story of the Boys’ Families: The Senkpiel Family

Koldingstraße, Kiel — ^{Koldingstrasse, Kiel}

Otto and Anna Senkpiel lived on Koldingstrasse in Kiel with their six children. The names of four of whom are known: Otto-Benjamin (b. 1925, Günther, Lieselotte and Gisela (b. 1931).

Anna Senkpiel was born in 1900 in the Russian city of Brest-Litovsk. She was the third child of the Jewish fabric merchant. During World War I, she met Otto Senkpiel, a German soldier and native of Kiel, with whom she moved to Kurdwitz/Silesia in 1919, where Senkpiel worked as a local police officer and farm manager.

In 1927, the couple moved to Kiel with their daughter and two sons. Here, Anna Senkpiel and her children joined the Jewish community. Her husband remained a Methodist.

The Great Depression Otto lost his job, so his wife, a seamstress, earned the living for their family. After the Nazi takeover, Otto was offered a job with the municipality, but only on the condition that he separate from his Jewish wife and children—a demand Otto Senkpiel refused. Instead, he worked as a painter, in construction, and as a cinema doorman, but was frequently ill due to the emotional strain, leaving Anna Senkpiel to continue providing for the family, which became increasingly difficult for her as a Jew.

Persecution In 1936 Günther was expelled from school, denied an apprenticeship as a Jew by and emigrated to the Palestine Mandate. His sister Lieselotte followed him in 1939.

That same year, Anna was placed in a Jewish orphanage in Hamburg so she could attend a Jewish school. In 1942, she was already on a deportation list, but managed return to her parents.

Holocaust Otto-Benjamin, who had also hoped to go to Palestine, was enduring forced labour in a Berlin shoe factory. Constantly threatened with deportation, he asked his father in 1942 to bring him back to Kiel.

Photograph of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. — ^{Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.}

When the Kiel Gestapo rejected Senkpiel’s request, Otto-Benjamin went into hiding. His father was subsequently interrogated by the Kiel Gestapo. He was severely beaten and died after release. The family received no further word from Otto-Benjamin, who was murdered in Auschwitz on 30 November 1944.

In Hiding After the death of her husband, Anna Senkpiel lived in constant fear of deportation. Bombed out of her home in Kiel for the second time in August 1944, she went into hiding in Kleinmeinsdorf near Plön with her 13-year-old daughter Gisela and her two-and-a-half-month-old illegitimate daughter Edith.

She was discovered in November when she desperately needed a ration card for the infant. In mid-November, she and the two children were arrested, taken to Berlin under police guard, and from there deported to Theresienstadt on 8 December 1944.

Post-war Destitution After the war Anna Senkpiel was impoverished and unable to care for Gisella who came to Britain as part of the First Group of the Boys. Her half-sister Edith also survived. Anna returned to Kiel but was refused a state pension. To find out more click here.

Third Reich

With the Nazi rise to power, the community was exposed to severe repression and persecution: Jewish professors were dismissed from the university and the works of 28 Jewish authors – mainly lecturers in Kiel University – were removed from the library of the university. Anti-Jewish boycotts were held all over the city.

In November 1938, the synagogue was burned down and Jewish homes were looted on Kristallnacht. Large numbers of Jews began emigrating and by 1939 there were only 299 Jews remaining in Kiel. Those who remained were expelled in 1940. Kiel’s last 12 Jews were deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto.

Aftermath

After the war 11 Jews returned to Kiel. Kiel is now home to two independent Jewish communities with approximately 550 members.

Visiting Kiel

Getting there

The nearest airport if Hamburg. Kiel is accessible by bus, car, ferry and rail.

What to See

Memorials

Memorial for the Destroyed Synagogue (Mahnmal für die zerstörte Synagoge; Goethestrasse)
A monument commemorating the 1910 synagogue destroyed in 1938.

Jewish Houses (Judenhäuser) There were no ghettos in Germany but Jews were held in special houses prior to deportation. Locations where the Gestapo forcibly quartered Jewish residents before deportation are at Kleiner Kuhberg 25 and Flämische Straße 22a.

Jewish Community

Mishkan Shalom Synagogue (Waitzstrasse 43) Inaugurated in 2024, it serves as a new, central place of worship and community in the heart of Kiel.

Synagogue am Schrevenpark (Jahnstrasse 3) Originally established in 1891, the synagogue was destroyed in 1938, it was reconstructed in 2008 and serves a Liberal Ashkenazi community.

Cemetery

Old Jewish Cemetery (Michelsenstrasse):A historic, walled cemetery located in Kiel that survived WWII and remains in use.

Iwieniec, Poland

Modern-day Belarus became part of the Russian empire as it expanded westwards. Catherine the Great (1762–96) decreed that Jews could live and work only in the so-called Pale of Settlement in western Russia of which Iwieniec was a part. Here, Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews lived in small towns and villages that were often majority Jewish, known as shtetls. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, there were a number of pogroms against Jews, which prompted many Jews to emigrate.

Interwar Years

Iwiniec became part of the new Polish state after World War I after the signing of the Treaty of Riga. Under Polish rule secular education in Hebrew and religious education in Yiddish, as well as all kinds of Jewish political parties and cultural institutions, were active, and Jews were part of the Polish administration of most cities and shtetls.

In 1939, under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, eastern Poland and the Baltic states were occupied by Soviet forces.

Holocaust

Iwieniec was occupied by Germany between 25 June 1941 to 6 July 1944. In November 1941, the Germans established an enclosed Jewish ghetto, which also held Jews from the surrounding villages. The ghetto was liquidated on 9 June 1942.

On 19 June the Polish Partisan Unit from the AK Stolpce District captured Iwieniec and destroyed the local German garrison. The city was free for a dozen or so hours. In revenge for the defeat, the Germans murdered about 150 inhabitants of Iwieniec, and many others were deported for forced labour.

After the war the city was incorporated into the Soviet Union. It is now part of Belarus and known as Ivyanets.

Np Jews live in Ivanyets today.

Visiting Ivyanets

Getting there Ivanyets is located 56km from Minsk. The primary entry point to Belarus is Minsk airport, with limited international flights. Frequent bus or taxi services operate from Minsk to Ivyanets, taking roughly 1 hour.

Jewish Cemetery (opposite 25 Kastrychnitskaya Street) This site contains approximately 100 tombstones (matzevot) dating from 1828 to 1930. The cemetery was fenced and protected in 2019.

Memorial A memorial, erected on a private initiative in the Pishchugi tract, in the forest outside of the town honours the roughly 800 Jewish victims murdered by German forces on 9 June 1942, of whom approximately 600 were children.

Synagogue The current wooden building was built around 1912. After World War II, the building housed a cinema, and later a cultural centre. In 2010, the synagogue was transferred to a Jewish religious association.

Hesse, Germany

The State of Hesse is in western Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt, which is also the country’s principal financial centre. Two other major historic cities are Darmstadt and Kassel.

Background

Jewish communities in Hesse existed by the late 12th century, with a flourishing presence in numerous towns by the 14th century.

Many Jewish residents in Hesse, like Jews elsewhere in Germany, were integrated into German society and contributed to various aspects of German life, including social, political, artistic, and economic fields.

Despite their integration, Jewish residents in Hesse, like those elsewhere in Germany, faced rising antisemitism and persecution in the lead-up to and during the Nazi era.

Third Reich

^{Deportation of the Jews of Fulda 8 December 1941}

After the Kristallnacht November pogrom of 1938, the Jews of the rural communities of Hesse were forced to move to larger towns. From there, they were deported to ghettos in eastern Europe.

Members of the Boys lived in Fulda, 100km northeast of Frankfurt am Main. There were 1,058 Jews in Fulda in June 1933, this number had fallen to 415 by May 1939. The yeshivah in Fulda remained open until 1939. The Jews of Fulda were deported to Riga, Lublin and Theresienstadt in 1941.

The Story of the Boys’ Families: The Birnbaum Family

The Birnbaum family lived at Löherstraße 10 in Fulda. Abraham and Frieda Birnbaum had three children: Moshe (b. 1928), Salomon (b. 1933) and Gustel (b. 1934). Abraham Birnbaum was arrested and taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp in 1939. He died there in 1941.

Freida Birnbaum and her children were deported to Riga on a transport from Kassel that left on 8 December 1941. Freida and Salomon are believed to have died in Auschwitz in 1943. Gustel Birnbaum survived the war but died in July 1945. She was 12 years old.

Moshe Birnbaum was the sole survivor of his family. To find out more about his life click here.

Aftermath

After World War II most of Hesse-Darmstadt and Hesse-Kassel was included in the new state of Hesse, which in 1970 contained 1,508 Jews in nine communities, the most important being Offenbach, Wiesbaden, Darmstadt, and Kassel, with a joint regional organisation in Frankfurt. At the beginning of the 21st century, after immigration from the former Soviet Union, the population of these four main communities exceeded 3,000.

Visiting Hesse

Getting there The nearest airport is Frankfurt. There are excellent road and rail connections.

Synagogue As of May 2024, archaeologists have begun excavating the site of the destroyed synagogue to create a permanent memorial.
Heritage is preserved through commemorative plaques at the site of the former synagogue and the Old Jewish Cemetery, which was also destroyed by the Nazis and is now a park.

Hamburg, Germany

Hamburg, Germany’s second largest city, is located on the river Elbe in the north of the country.

Background

The port, in the heart of the city, is Europe’s second largest after Rotterdam. It attracted Jews escaping persecution in Spain to settle in the city in the 16th century. The city had a significant Jewish population before the Holocaust who played an important role in its cultural and economic life.

The Story of the Boys’ Families: The Hymans Family

Elli and Leonhard Hymans were married in 1928. Leonhard Hyman’s was the son of the merchant Albert Hymans. He was a World War I veteran, who met his wife at the Otto Dinkelspiel Company, a food processing business, where he worked. She was the owner’s daughter. Their son, Alfred Hymans, was born on 31 August 1929. The family lived at Loogestieg 4 in Hamburg-Eppendorf.

“My parents were well off. As an authorised signatory of the Dinkelspiel Company, my father had a good position for life and a considerable income. As I was their only son, my parents strove to fulfil my intention to take up an academic job, and they were definitely in a position to do so. For my part, I had the strong wish to become a physician, specifically, a surgeon.” – Alfred Hymans testament.

Persecution When her father’s company was “Aryanized” in 1939, Leonard lost his job and was then unemployed. Her father Otto Max Dinkelspiel managed to emigrate to Britain. The family tried to leave Germany for the Netherlands but the German occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940 shattered their plans.

Deportation Leonhard, Elli and their son Alfred were arrested in their apartment and deported to the Minsk Ghetto. To find out more about the ghetto click here. They were rounded up at one of Hamburg’s Masonic lodges, where they were stripped of their belongings. The deportation train left from the Hannoverscher Bahnhof.

Elli Hymans starved to death in the ghetto on 29 September 1942. Her husband Leonhard was shot dead in April 1943.

Alfred Hymans survived slave labour and became one of the Boys. To find out more about his life click here.

Among the notable Jews who lived in Hamburg was the composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. The 19th-century romantic poet Heinrich Heine also spent time in the city with his uncle Salomon. His famous Germany: A Winter’s Tale was published in 1844 after a visit to Hamburg.

In the late 19th century many Jews fleeing from pogroms in the Russian empire left Europe from Hamburg. In Hafen City, the Hamburg America Company had many warehouses. The company was owned by an Orthodox Jew named Albert Ballin, who converted one of his warehouses into a hostel for Jewish refugees from Russia, complete with a kosher kitchen.

Third Reich

In 1933, about 20,000 Jews lived in Hamburg. Many left after the Nazis came to power but, in a pattern repeated across Germany, the Jews who remained in the city were deported (on 17 transports) to Łodź, Minsk, Riga, Auschwitz and Theresienstadt.

The Great Synagogue on Bornplatz was destroyed during the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938 and demolished in 1939.

It stood on the square now named after the then chief rabbi of Hamburg, Joseph Carlebach, who was killed in Riga in a mass shooting in 1942. His daughter Eva Carlebach left for the UK before the war and was a member of the Central British Fund staff who cared for the Boys.

On 13 May 1939, more than 900 Jews boarded the SS St Louis, a luxury cruise liner, at the Hamburg docks. They had visas for Cuba from where they hoped to travel on to the USA, but when the ship docked in Havana, they were turned away. Refused entry to the US, the ship was forced to return to Europe – it docked in Antwerp in Belgium. The passengers were taken in by Belgium, France, Holland and the UK. In the years that followed 250 of them would be murdered in the Holocaust

About 7,800 Hamburg Jews were victims of the Holocaust.

Aftermath

In 1947, the Exodus docked in Hamburg with 4,530 Jewish refugees on board. The ship had secretly set sail from the south of France and had tried to break through the British Royal Navy blockade of the Palestine Mandate, which was then part of the British Empire. The ship was captured and turned back to France, where the refugees refused to disembark. The British then took the ship to Hamburg, then under British control, where British soldiers used water canon to force the survivors to leave the boat, among them many women and children. The plight of the Exodus and its passengers caused an international outcry that accelerated the foundation of the State of Israel.

Present-day

The current Jewish community has about 2,500 registered members, with an estimated total population between 5,000 and 8,000 in the city.

Visiting Hamburg

Getting there

Hamburg is easily accesible by air, bus, rail and sea.

Getting around

Hamburg has an efficient U- and S-Bahn system. The memorial at the former Neuengamme concentration camp is 30km southeast of Hamburg. If you do not have your own transport, catch the train from Hamburg Central Station to Bergedorf, then take bus 127 or 227.

The Bergen-Belsen memorial is 102km south of Hamburg in Lower Saxony. Take a train from Hamburg Central Station to Celle and then bus 100 or 110.

Good to Know Hamburg is the place to discover why Germans felt a sense of victimhood in the postwar era which meant that, until the 1960s, the country’s role in the Holocaust was forgotten in a national amnesia. The city was subjected to numerous bombing raids in World War II which targeted not only the shipyards, U-boat pens and oil refineries but also civilians and civic infrastructure. A raid at the end of July 1943 created a massive firestorm that killed thousands.

What to See

Memorials

Stolpersteine There are memorial stones for Elli and Leonhard Hymans at Loogestieg 4.

Hannover Station Memorial (Denkmal Hannoverscher Bahnhof; Uberseeallee – next to the Holiday Inn) In the middle of eastern Hafen City is the site of the former Hannoverscher Bahnhof. The memorial is in a small park, Lohsepark, on the site of the former platform 2.

A plaque at Hamburg Central Station by the Mönckebergstrasse exit also recalls the deportations from the Hannover Station.

Jewish Refugee Boats Near where the ferries depart and the museum ships are docked (Bridge 3), there are monuments to two Jewish refugee ships, the St Louis and the Exodus.

Gestapo Memorial (Stadthausbrücke 8) The memorial by the entrance to the Hamburg Building Authority reminds passers-by that this was once the Gestapo HQ. Called Stigma, it is made up of red paving stones that look like bloodstains on the pavement.

Hamburg’s Dammtor Station (Dammtor Bahnhof) There is a moving bronze memorial called The Final Parting dedicated to the 1,000 children who left from Hamburg on the Kindertransport. It is situated on the south side of the station.

Platz der Jüdischen Deportierten Memorial (Moorweide park) Jews were gathered here in 1942 prior to deportation from the station at Dammtor.

The Great Synagogue (Bornplatz) The synagogue was destroyed during Kristallnacht in 1938 and demolished in 1939. This is currently a controversial spot as a new synagogue is being built here. Critics say the construction will erase Nazi crimes.

Museums

Museum for Hamburg History (Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte; Holstenwall 24) has a permanent exhibition on the Jews of Hamburg which covers in detail the persecution and deportation of Hamburg’s Jewish residents.

Poppenbüttel Prefabricated Building Memorial (Gedenkstätte Plattenhaus Poppenbüttel; Kritenbarg 8; free) 17km north of Ohlsdorf, this was the Sasel satellite camp of Neuengamme. The camp was for women brought into the city to clear rubble from the bombing and to build prefab accommodation. It functioned from September 1944 to May 1945 and was one of eight such camps holding in all 2,800 women among them members of the Boys.

Deportation Memorial (Platz der Republik, Altona) is a memorial to the local Jewish community.

The Bucci sisters with their cousin Sergio.

Bullenhuser Damm Memorial (Gedenkstätte Bullenhuser Damm; Bullenhuser Damm 92; free) The memorial and small museum in Rothenburgsort east of the centre, is one of the most important memorials in Hamburg and has particular resonance for the story of the Boys.

The memorial remembers 20 Jewish children and 28 adults who were hanged by the SS on the night of 22 April 1945. The children, among them the young cousin, Sergio, of Liliana and Andra Bucci from Italy, had been brought from Auschwitz to the nearby Neuengamme concentration camp.

From there they were taken to a school in the Rothenburgsort that had been used as a subcamp of Neuengamme. The children, ten girls and ten boys aged between five and 12 were subjected to medical experiments and deliberately infected with tuberculosis bacteria rubbed into open wounds. Fearful of being convicted for war crimes, the SS killed the children.

The story only entered into public memory in the late 1970s when the journalist Günter Schwarberg discovered the children’s identities. Until this point the Bucci sisters had had no idea what had become of their cousin. The two girls were among the youngest survivors of Auschwitz and were brought to the UK in 1946.

Cemetery

Ohlsdorf Jewish Cemetery (Ilandkoppel 6) Established in 1883, the cemetery was closed in 1943 and makeshift housing for those who had lost their homes in the bombing was put up on the site. It reverted to being a Jewish cemetery in 1945, and in 1951 a memorial stone with an inscription in German and Hebrew was placed here dedicated to the Jews murdered in the Holocaust. An urn containing the ashes of prisoners from Auschwitz was placed in front of it in 1957.

Visiting Neuengamme & Bergen-Belsen

Neuengamme

Neuengamme on the outskirts of Hamburg opened as concentration camp in 1938. Although none of the Boys are believed to have been held in the main camp, they were subjected to slave labour in its subcamps. To find out more click here.

Neuengamme Memorial Site (Gedenkstätte Neuengamme; Jean-Dolidier-Weg 75; w kz-gedenkstaette-neuengamme.de; free).

Good to Know Allow at least 2 hours for your visit. There is a useful App, in German and English, which it helps to download in advance, or be sure to use the audio guide. Visitors looking for information about relatives can search the memorial’s records for names of prisoners.

The memorial site spans an area of 600,000m2 and is over a 1km long, some parts of which are always accessible.

The main exhibit, ‘Traces of History’, is located in a former cell block, where the introductory film gives a quick overview of the camp. An exhibition about the crimes of the SS is housed in the former SS garages; and a further two exhibitions on slave labour are located in the former brickworks and the site of the Walther factory. In the remains of the prison there is a further small exhibit.

Bergen-Belsen

The former concentration camp is a site of particular importance in the story of the Boys. Many members of the Boys were prisoners in the camp, the vast majority arriving on death marches. After the liberation part of the Second Group of the Boys was formed in the Belsen-Hohne DP Camp. To find out more about the camp click here, for more on the DP camp click here.

Bergen-Belsen Memorial Site (Gedenkstätte Bergen-Belsen; Anne Frank Platz, Loheide; w bergen-belsen.stift ung-ng.de; free) The former camp is now a large clearing in the forest. On the site you will find 17 information steles with short texts and photographs that provide information about the history of the camp and mark the site of the buildings.

The permanent exhibition has 45 video points and covers the history of the camp and the story of the displaced persons camp in the Hohne barracks.

There is a series of memorials, 13 mass graves and 15 individual graves. The gravestone memorial to Anne Frank and her sister is symbolic. No-one knows where her remains lie.

North of the camp on the L298 there is a memorial at the ramp where prisoners were transported to and from the camp.

Good to know Allow at least 2 hours to see the exhibition and the memorials, more if you intend to walk to the Soviet prisoner-of-war cemetery. The camp is exposed, so come prepared for the weather. There is a café in the exhibition hall. The former DP camp is still a military site and not accessible to the public, but the original buildings can be clearly seen from the road.

Photograph of the former Neuengamme concentration camp.

Hamborn, Germany

Background

Hamborn, now part of Duisburg, Germany, had a significant Jewish community before the Holocaust. A small Jewish settlement existed there from the second half of the 13th century whose members were massacred in the wake of the Black Death in 1350. No Jews then lived in Hamborn until the 18th century.

An organised community was established in 1793. A synagogue was built in 1826 and was replaced by a larger one in 1875. Antisemitic outbursts occurred in the Hep! Hep! riots of 1819 and in 1885, reflecting the wider rise in antisemitic agitation across Germany in the late 19th century.

After World War I, Hamborn’s Jewish population increased significantly due to immigration from Poland and Galicia, many of them economic migrants seeking stability in the Ruhr industrial region. By 1933, the community numbered approximately 2,560.

Third Reich

The rise of the Nazi regime brought escalating persecution. In October 1938, 144 Polish Jews were expelled as part of the nationwide deportation of Polish nationals. In October 1938, 144 Polish Jews were expelled.

On Kristallnacht (9–10 November 1938), the synagogue was set on fire and 40 Jewish homes were vandalised. Some Jewish children were sent to Holland on the Kindertransport, with some later reaching England, where they survived the war.

The remaining 809 Jews in Hamborn were crowded into 11 so-called Judenhäuser (Jewish houses), pending deportation. Beginning in 1941, they were sent east to ghettos in occupied Poland, including Litzmannstadt (Łódź) and Theresienstadt, and later to extermination camps, where most were murdered

Aftermath

Only a handful of Hamborn’s Jewish residents survived the Holocaust. In the post-war years, a small Jewish community re-emerged in Duisburg. It was boosted in numbers in the late 1990s by emigration from the former Soviet Union.

Visiting Hamborn

Getting there The nearest airport if Düsseldorf. from there take the train and tram.

There is little trace of its Jewish community.

Synagogue (Springwall 16) In 1999, a new synagogue was inaugurated, designed by architect Zvi Hecker.

Hajdu County, Hungary

Hajdu was an administrative county of the Kingdom of Hungary. It had a population of over 13,000 Jews in the early 20^th century. The capital was Debrecen, which was the home of four members of the Boys: the Jacob siblings and Alzbeta Marton. Moses Deutsch was from Hajduhadhaz and Josef Hornstein was born in Hajdannas.

Background

Before World War II, the Jewish community in Debrecen was well-integrated, with intellectuals like Alajos Popper and Albert Kardos promoting Magyarization and participating in liberal and conservative political circles.

The Jewish population in Debrecen grew significantly throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, reaching approximately 12,000 by 1940. Debrecen had a Jewish secondary school and several synagogues, including the Orthodox synagogue and a Neological synagogue both built in the 1890s.

The Hungarian antisemitic laws of 1938 caused many businesses to close when persecution of the Jewish community began.

1944

An estimated 12,000 Jews were left in Debrecen, when German forces entered the city on 20 March 1944. A ghetto was established by May 1944. To find out more about the ghetto click here. The members of the Boys from Debrecen were deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto. To find out more click here. The majority of the regions Jews were taken to Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. For more information on the camp click here.

Aftermath

Some 4,000 Jews from Debrecen survived the war, creating a community of 4,640 in 1946, the largest in the region.

Today, Debrecen’s Jewish community is the second largest in Hungary with about 1,500 members.

Visiting Hajdu County

Getting there Debrecen airport is the second biggest in Hungary and has good European connections. There are direct trains from Budapest.

Getting around The quickest way to get around Debrecen is by foot. Hajduhadhaz is 18km north of Debrecen. There is a direct train. Hajdannas is 46km north of the city and can also be reached by train.

Debrecen

Synagogue

The community maintains a synagogue on Pásti Street.

Cemetery (44 Monostorpályi Street)

Hajdannas

Jewish Cemetery (The cemetery is located along a dirt road that starts from Polgári Street) Established in 1839, it contains graves from 1840 to 1958, including the Ohel of Rabbis Israel Efraim Fishel Sofer and Benzion Halpert. The site is fenced and includes Holocaust memorials. Hajdannas was the hometown of Josef Hornstein.

Hajduhadhaz

Jewish Cemetery (Irinyi János street, at the intersection with Dorogiás Street) There are approximately 175 tombstones. The last recorded burial took place in 1993. Hajduhadhaz was the birthplace of Moses Deutsch.