HENRI GOLDSTEIN

The Chronicler

Henri Goldstein is born on 16 May 1920 to a liberal Jewish family in Brussels. Neutral Belgium was attacked by Germany on 10 May 1940. Just over two weeks later, the kingdom is forced to capitulate. On 26 May 1940, Goldstein is taken prisoner of war by the Germans near Bruges. Soon after, he is transferred to Germany.

Prisoner of war

Until the end of the war, Henri Goldstein is imprisoned in a total of seven different prisoner-of-war camps. From the end of August 1942, one of the stations of his captivity as a prisoner of war is the Arbeitskommando 7000 in the Hamburg Free Port, where he will remain until the end of 1944 and has to store potatoes in a harbour shed.

Prisoner of War Work Detachment 1416

In November 1944, Goldstein is taken to his last station, the Prisoner-of-War Work Detachment 1416 in Quickborn's Himmelmoor. In his memoirs, he describes the conditions in the prisoners' quarters, where he is housed together with a total of 53 Jewish prisoners of war, mainly from France, as very depressing. Above all, the cramped conditions in the accommodation bother him.

"Each of these traps [meaning the beds] had three floors, and the space between them could not have been more than forty centimeters. Two people in it could hardly move. Small cupboards were hung on one wall. In the middle of the room stood the peat stove, and in the rest of the room, more poorly than properly, three tables were set up, surrounded by benches and stools. In other words, if fifty-three prisoners wanted to move around there, someone had to regulate traffic. There wasn't the smallest living space here."

Together with the other prisoners, Goldstein has to go to the bog every day and dig peat. According to Goldstein, he is often a victim of violence.

Life after the war

With the arrival of British troops in Quickborn on 4 May 1945, Henri Goldstein's captivity as a prisoner of war ends. In May 1947, Goldstein resumes his work as a photographer and filmmaker in the former Belgian Congo. In 1962 he returns to Belgium, where he works as head of the photographic department of the Belgian Institute for Information and Documentation until his retirement in 1982. In 1992, his memoirs of his time as a prisoner of war are published in two volumes. In the second, he also describes everyday life in the camp in the prisoner-of-war work detachment 1416 in Himmelmoor.

In the years that follow, Goldstein approaches the town of Quickborn twice to have his forced labor in the Himmelmoor confirmed. Despite the lack of documents, the city issues him the desired certificate. For the first time, the prisoner-of-war camp in Himmelmoor comes into the focus of public interest. In the end, the "Henri Goldstein House" memorial is founded on the historic site of the former prisoner-of-war work detachment in 1416.

Due to his poor health, Henri Goldstein is no longer able to visit the place of his imprisonment. He dies on April 13, 2014, in his apartment in Brussels.

LÉON DREYFUSS

Stations of a prisoner of war

Léon Dreyfuss is born in Strasbourg on February 3, 1911. His family is Jewish and has lived in Alsace for generations. He spends his childhood and youth in Strasbourg, now in France. He trains as an accountant and marries in September 1933. A year later, their first child is born. Léon completes his military service in Strasbourg and moves to Paris with his small family in 1934.

In the summer of 1939, Léon Dreyfuss is drafted as a common soldier. On May 10, 1940, the German Reich surprises France with a military attack and quickly forces the French troops to retreat. After the armistice is announced on June 23, 1940, the soldiers of the French army are finally forced to lay down their arms. Around 1.9 million people were taken prisoners of war by the Germans.  

Léon is 29 years old at the time. As an Alsatian Jew, Léon remains a prisoner of war. From September 1939 to January 1945, the German Wehrmacht maintained the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag I B near Hohenstein in East Prussia (now Olsztynek, Poland). Most of the prisoners come from Poland, France and the Soviet Union, but also from Italy, Belgium and Serbia. 50000-55,000 of them die as a result of poor hygiene, typhus epidemics, malnutrition, hard physical labor and torture. The living and working conditions for Soviet prisoners of war are particularly harsh.

Upon their arrival at the camp, Léon and the other French-Jewish soldiers are separated from their non-Jewish comrades. The prisoners of war suffer "from hunger and vermin". At the beginning of 1941, Léon is taken by train to Hamburg together with a large group of French prisoners of war. For about two years, he works there in various work commandos.

Arbeitskommando 1416, Quickborn-Himmelmoor

On 9 December 1942, Léon and his comrades are transferred to Quickborn. There, the French-Jewish prisoners of war form the Working Detachment No. 1416. They are used to extract peat in the Himmelmoor – together with prisoners from the Rendsburg prison and Soviet prisoners of war who were also interned in Quickborn. However, the different groups are strictly separated from each other in everyday life.

Liberation

On May 8,1945, the day of the unconditional surrender of the German Wehrmacht, Léon leaves the work detachment in Himmelmoor. Together with French, Belgian and Dutch former prisoners of war and forced labourers, he spends a few days in various Displaced Persons camps in Hamburg. On May 21, 1945, the long-awaited repatriation to France begins. Léon is officially discharged from military service at the end of June 1945. He is now 34 years old and returns to his civilian job as an accountant.

In the 1970s, he moves to Switzerland. Léon Dreyfuss dies there in January 2008 at the ripe age of 97. He is survived by four children and 13 grandchildren, who keep his memory alive.



ERNEST GUGENHEIM

A rabbi as a prisoner of war

Ernest Gugenheim is born on January 22, 1916, in Westhofen in Alsace. He comes from an Alsatian-Jewish family of many rabbis and scholars. In 1933 he enters the SIF Rabbinical School "Israelite Seminary France" in Paris. In June 1940, Ernest Gugenheim is taken prisoner of war by the Germans. On a piece of paper, he writes down the names of his Jewish comrades, many of whom, like him, come from Alsace. He quickly takes on the informal role of spiritual leader.

He writes that his small "congregation" represented for him "a remarkable, if not ideal, field of experience": "Nowhere else did the rabbi participate so much in the lives of his faithful as here. He was exactly one of them, a prisoner like them, like them a number. He shared the lives of his comrades in perpetual confinement; he shared their work, their games, their punishments, their sufferings."

In February 1941, the group is taken to Hamburg, where the prisoners of war are divided into various work detachments. In January 1943, after various posts, Ernest is transferred to Work Detachment 1416 in Quickborn. Here he meets some of his comrades again. As an informal rabbi and spiritual leader, he encourages his fellow prisoners to believe in a better future without closing their eyes to reality. It is particularly important to him to strengthen his fellow prisoners in their Jewish identity and thus help them to build up a strong self confidence.

Ernest Gugenheim spends almost five years in captivity. After his liberation by the British Army in May 1945, he returns to France, exhausted and marked. In Paris, he teaches as a professor of Talmud and rabbinic law at his former rabbinical school.

Like many prisoners of war, Ernest finds it difficult to recount the time of his captivity: "A former prisoner who is asked to speak in public about memories of his captivity will at first encounter a double inconvenience. [...]. 

On the one hand, he senses that his listeners expect him to tell particularly courageous, if not heroic, traits, and he is very afraid of disappointing them. On the other hand, since his liberation, he has retained a kind of shame in the face of all that he has seen and suffered, withholding words on his lips that would undoubtedly distort these impressions and memories [...]."

In December 1976, cancer forces him to resign from his professional duties. He dies the following year at the age of 61.

HENRI SAMUEL

Professional ban and witness

Henri Samuel is born on April 7, 1912, in Quatzenhein in Alsace. After Germany's defeat in the First World War, Alsace belongs once again to the French state in 1919. Henri grows up and, like his father before him, becomes a sales representative. At the age of 19, he is called up for military service in the French army and trains as a medic. In 1935, Henri marries and moves to Strasbourg.

Prisoner of war

When the German Wehrmacht invades France in May 1940, Henri Samuel is probably one of the first French prisoners of war. He is 28 years old at the time. Henri is initially taken to the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag XI B Fallingbostel north of Hanover. The further stages of his captivity as a prisoner of war are not known exactly. The only thing that is certain is that, because of his Jewish origins, he is transferred in the winter of 1942/43 to the work detachment 1416 for French-Jewish prisoners of war in Quickborn-Himmelmoor.

Prohibition of professional activity

On 19 April19, 1943, based on his training as a paramedic, Henri Samuel asks for confirmation and registration as a trained paramedic. He is probably denied this because the Wehrmacht repeatedly violated the Geneva Conventions in its dealings with Jewish doctors and paramedics. The Wounded and Sick Agreement stipulates that medical personnel must be repatriated (i.e. discharged home) as soon as possible.

However, the Wehrmacht refuses to dismiss Jewish doctors and paramedics and also bans them from their professions. Unlike their non-Jewish colleagues, they are not allowed to care for the sick. This racially motivated violation of the Geneva Conventions is also felt by Henri Samuel.

The witness

Shortly after the war, Samuel describes his time as a prisoner of war in Quickborn and his work in Himmelmoor as a witness in the court case against the former camp director as "particularly hard [...]. We were constantly standing in the mud in summer and winter, and the amount of peat we had to cut every day far exceeded our strength."

After the liberation by the Allies in May 1945, Henri Samuel returns to France. Together with his wife, he moves from Paris back to Strasbourg. He returns to his profession and works as a foreign trade representative in the clothing industry.

Henri Samuel dies in 2001 at the age of 89. The couple has no children.