"Swedish children" from barrack number 211 in Bergen-Belsen. Very last transport by White Boats from Lübeck to Sweden.

The photos above is a still images from documentary movie made in April 1945 with the help of the famous director Alfred Hitchcock. The movie German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, include several scenes with the Kinderheim children from Bergen-Belsen after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen.

The photo above Barrack 211 and the team making documentary movie with the help of the famous director Alfred Hitchcock. The movie German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, include several scenes with the Kinderheim children from Bergen-Belsen. Here massgrave that was created just behind the Kinderheim that can be seen in the background.

There were roughly 3,500 children under 15 years of age in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Some of them were placed in the children barracks. Most known are 44 Dutch Jewish children that were deported to Belsen on a dump truck and left in the middle of the camp one night in the summer of 1944.
After the liberation of the camp most of Dutch children returned to Holland. Approximately 50 other children, many of them from Piotrków Trybunalski in Poland, were send with very last transport by White Boats from Lübeck to Sweden.

Holocaust survivor Mala H Tribich, pictured with her family in Poland before the outbreak of World War II. Mala is pictured front left.

Luba, third from the left followed Kinderheim children to Sweden

Elza Biller

From barrack number 211 - Kinderheim in Bergen-Belsen approx. 50 children were moved by UNRRA mission White Boats to Sweden. I am trying to identify all the children. They arrived on UNRRAs S/S Kastelholm on July 26 1945 to Malmö in Sweden.
Many of them left after some years in Sweden for Eretz Israel.  Among them twins Eva and Vera Weiss already in May 1946.

Lusia-Luba Rosenblatt (Ahuva Margalit) on left ad Elsa Biller (Chandler) on the right.

In Sweden, they have placed hospitals and at special orphanages for Jewish children, Holocaust survivors, see photo.

Bergsjö

Bergsjö

Hanna Helfgott was born 1936 and her cousin Mala Helfgott in 1930. Both in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland. Mala was for a while outside the ghetto hidden by Polish family in Częstochowa. After Mala’s returned from the Aryan side to the ghetto, there were several round ups during which her mother and eight-year-old sister were taken. All these people were murdered in the local forest. Soon afterward Mala had to undertake the responsibility of caring for her five-year-old cousin Hania (Hanna) Helfgott, whose mother was deported to a concentration camp. When the ghetto in Piotrków was finally liquidated, Mala (14 y) became a slave labourer in the plywood factory until November 1944. Mala was separated from her father and brother and stayed together with Hanna. As the work was on shifts other female inmates took care of little Hania 8 year old. After 14 months when Russian front was approaching they were sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. After about 10 weeks in Ravensbrück they were transported in cattle trucks to Bergen-Belsen where conditions were appalling. The first night, in February they spend in a tent. Mala contracted typhus.

There were three Jewish women taking care of the children in the "Children barrack" - Barrack number 211. Luba Tryszynska was the one who had established the Kinderheim there. Her two helpers were Ada Bimko and Hermina. Also a young Dutch girl Hetty V. helped a lo

At the time of the liberation by the British army, Mala was very ill. She remembers that from her upper bunk she saw peoples running. That was strange because most of the peoples had not enough the strength to go, but it was April 15, 1945 and the camp was liberated.
She was transferred to a hospital/children’s home and it was many weeks before she recovered. 

Soon after the British liberated the Bergen-Belsen camp in April 1945, a Dutch nurse, Annie Bonsel, came there with Robert Collis and Han Hogerzeil as part of the Red Cross team.

Three months later she was sent, with a large group of children, to Lübeck Transit Hospital and thereafter, by UNRRAs White Boat S/S Kastelholm to Sweden where Mala spent nearly two years. As many other Holocaust survivors, Mala was not expecting any of her family to be alive, Mala was therefore surprised to receive a letter from her brother Ben in England. He was the only other member of her close family to have survived and of course little Hania, Malas cousin.

At the same time Malas father and brother Beniek (Benjamin) were send to other concentration camps.

Her brother survived. First in March 1947, Mala left Sweden and came to England to be reunited with her brother Ben.

Holocaust survivor boys and girls from Poland who came to a children's house in Sweden.The photo was taken next to the children's house in Billesholm, Villa Torrekul. Their counselors included Egon Kux and his wife Adele - Deli. Identified: Halina Kreitmann (Krajtman) - kneeling first from the right; Lusia-Luba Rozenblatt (Jozef Rozenblat relative?) to check?)- kneeling second from the left.

 

Beside "Polish" children in the Kinderheim in Bergen -Belsen there was a big group of Dutch children. During the Holocaust, Dutch children were usually first sent to Westerbork transit camp and from there to other camps, ao Bergen-Belsen. Most of the Dutch children repatried, went back to Holland after the end of WWII. Numerous were, however brought to Sweden during UNRRA White Boats mission. Information about children imprisoned in Holland can be followed on "Pink Cards" that were to start with issued by Dutch Judenrat and thereafter used by Germans. After WWII Dutch Red Cross use the same cards and added the tracing information on it. Hirsch Bela was brought to Sweden on July 26, 1945 on White Boat S/S Kastelholm.  Also some mothers of the Diamond Children were brought separately, at the end of WWII. to Sweden.

Children from Bergen-Belsen Barrack 211 and other young Holocaust survivors, who came to Sweden by White Boats in July 1945 usually left for Eretz Israel in 1946-1948.
In Sweden, they were schooled in a Children's house whose staff included Egon and Adela Kux. In 1947 they moved to France. they were resided in Chateau de la Serra in Villette D'Anthon, near Lyon. The next stop was Eretz Israel.

Chateau de la Serra in Villette D'Anthon, near Lyon

Children from Bergen-Belsen, Kinderheim, barrack 211 who came to Sweden by UNRRA White Boats in July 1945 and and other young Holocaust survivors at a roll call at a children's house at Chateau de la Serra in Villette D'Anthon in France. The sign at the entrance reads (in Yiddish)/ Popular national Jewish aid. The Israeli and French flags hang above the entrance and Theodor Herzel in the window.

Chateau de la Serra in Villette D'Anthon in France. 

Note:
Egon Kux was born on 17 April 1913; Adele – Deli Sternberg was born on 18 September 1917. Both were born in Wien (Vienna). Egon was active in the Brith Bilu gymnasium students' movement, and he did not receive his PhD from the University of Vienna due to the Anschluss. Adela was active in the Blau – Weiss youth movement.
Not long before Kristallnacht, they were sent by the Viennese HeHalutz chapter to a hachshara (Zionist training camp) in Denmark. In late 1943, they were evacuated together with the majority of Danish Jews by fishing boats to neutral Sweden. Until 1945, the couple worked in a farm in Möllestad, Östra Husby. Egon served as a member of the HeHalutz secretariat in Sweden, and from 1946 to 1947, he was the director of a children's house for children survivors of the Bergen – Belsen camp. Adela was a caregiver in this children's house. Their daughter Naomi, who donated these materials, was born in Norrkoping.
The children's house operated from early 1946 to late May 1947, and was inhabited by 47 children from Poland, ages 9 -13, mostly from the city of Piotrkow Trybunalski. During the war, the boys were sent to Buchenwald, and the girls to the Ravensbrück camp. From these camps, they were transferred to Bergen – Belsen. In Sweden they have initially resided in the Lövsätra children's house in the city of Täby, and later in the Torekulls children's house in Billesholm, Sweden.



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