So, here goes. This is a very grim story indeed. In November 1944, ten girls and ten boys aged between 5 and 12 were brought to the Neuengamme concentration camp from Auschwitz as subjects for medical experiments with tuberculosis pathogens.
In an attempt to erase the traces of their crimes, the SS took the children to the former school building on Bullenhuser Damm in the Hamburg borough of Rothenburgsort on 20 April 1945. Until a few days previously. the building had served as a satellite camp of KL- Neuengamme.
On Bullenhuser Damm, the children and four concentration camp prisoners who had looked after them were murdered by SS men. The children were drugged and then hanged in the school's basement. They were aged 6 - 12.
Up to thirty, sadly unknown, Soviet prisoners were also brought to the school that night to be murdered by the SS. Bear in mind this was on April 20, 1945. So close to the end of the war with British troops knocking at the door.
Some of those involved in the killings were tried by the British in Hamburg in 1946. Trzebinski, Neuengamme commandant Max Pauly, Dreimann, Speck, Jauch and Frahm were convicted and sentenced to death. They were all hanged on October 8, 1946.
After the war, this crime did not figure in public consciousness in Hamburg, even though former Neuengamme prisoners did organise commemorative events for the murder-ed children. In the late 1970s, journalist Günter Schwarberg researched and discovered the children's identities.
In 2011, the Bullenhuser Damm Memorial was redesigned and a new exhibition was opened. The Memorial offers guided tours and educational projects. In a rose garden behind the former school yard, visitors can plant roses for the victims of the Bullenhuser Damm murders.
I've visited many horrific #WW2 sites over the years, and this isn't a competition. Whilst all war crimes are abhorrent, there is something particularly horrific about the murder of children. This is Sergio de Simone from Italy, who was 7 when he was killed at Bullenhuser Damm.
May Sergio's memory, and the memories of all innocents murdered in war, live forever.
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