Hamburg, Germany - '45 Aid Society

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.

Hamburg, Germany

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.

The Liberation of Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp, April 1945.

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.

Present day Country:

Germany

Associated Boys:

Alfred Hymans
Herman Rothschild

Map: