Bullenhuser Damm

On April 20, 1945, as the Third Reich teetered on the brink of collapse, a heart-wrenching crime was committed at the Bullenhuser Damm School in Hamburg, Germany. Twenty Jewish children, who had been subjected to horrific medical experiments at Neuengamme Concentration Camp, were murdered in a vain attempt to conceal the barbarities inflicted upon them by Nazi doctors. This act of brutality coincided with Adolf Hitler’s last birthday, adding a grim parallel to the dictator’s final days.

The Neuengamme Concentration Camp, located near Hamburg, was infamous for its brutal conditions and the medical experiments carried out on prisoners. Among these were experiments on tuberculosis, and attempts to develop new treatments for the condition, which involved infecting healthy individuals to study the progression of the disease. The victims of these experiments included not only adults but also children, primarily Jewish, who were brought from Auschwitz in 1944.

These children, aged 5 to 12, were subjected to pseudoscientific medical tests under the supervision of SS doctor Kurt Heissmeyer. Heissmeyer aimed to prove the superiority of the Aryan race by demonstrating that the immune systems of Jews and other groups were inferior. To this end, he injected live tuberculosis bacteria into the children’s lungs to observe the disease’s progression and to test potential vaccines.

As the Allies advanced, the Nazis attempted to erase evidence of their atrocities. The children, along with their four adult caretakers and six Soviet prisoners, were transferred to the Bullenhuser Damm School, which had been converted into an auxiliary concentration camp. On the night of April 20, 1945, these children were hanged in the basement of the school, a brutal attempt to silence the witnesses of the heinous experiments.

The SS officer in charge, Arnold Strippel, and other perpetrators carried out the killings with chilling efficiency, betraying no remorse for their actions. The bodies of the children and adults were discovered by British troops when they liberated Hamburg, exposing yet another layer of the Nazi regime’s cruel experiments.

The murder of the 20 Jewish children is not just a footnote in the history of World War II; it symbolizes the extreme dehumanization and the scientific perversion perpetrated by the Nazis. The Bullenhuser Damm Memorial, established at the site of the school, now serves as a poignant reminder of the innocent lives lost to a regime’s ruthless pursuit of racial purity and scientific manipulation.

Annual commemorations bring together survivors, relatives, and international visitors, turning collective grief into a powerful plea for remembrance and education. The stories of these children, and the inhumane circumstances of their deaths, underscore the importance of vigilance against hate and the perpetuation of human rights.

The Bullenhuser Damm murders, a small moment of the holocaust that saw the deaths of millions, and occurring within moments of Adolf Hitlers self-inflected demise, serves as a stark reminder of the depths of cruelty reached by the Nazi regime and the lives brutally cut short in its quest for domination. It urges us to remember and teach future generations about the dangers of unchecked power and prejudice.