THE 20 CHILDREN

Jacqueline Morgenstern

Jacqueline Morgenstern was born on 26 May 1932 in Paris. Her father Charles Morgenstern and his brother Leopold ran a hairdressing business. Her mother, Suzanne Morgenstern, was a secretary. After the German armed forces had occupied Paris, the Morgenstern brothers were forced to give up their business to a non-Jew. In 1943 first Charles Morgenstern, and then Suzanne and her daughter Jacqueline, fled to Marseilles, which was in the free zone of France. The family was arrested there and sent to the transit camp for Jews in Drancy, near Paris. On 20 May 1944 they were deported to Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Jacqueline’s mother was murdered there. Her father was sent away from Auschwitz on the last transport before its liberation to Dachau Concentration Camp near Munich. He died after being freed in May 1945. Jacqueline was brought to Neuengamme Concentration Camp on 28 November 1944. She was murdered here in Bullenhuser Damm on 20 April 1945.

Jacqueline’s aunt Dorothéa and uncle Leopold Morgenstern were safe from deportation in the early days because Leopold Morgenstern’s work was considered “important for the war effort”. But he was arrested nevertheless in 1943. Dorothéa Morgenstern, who was expecting a child, went underground. She hid her children with non-Jewish families. It was not until 1979 that Dorothéa Morgenstern and her son Henri heard through Günther Schwarberg of Jacqueline’s murder in Hamburg. Jacqueline’s identity could be established beyond doubt because her name was written on one of the x-ray pictures that Dr. Kurt Heißmeyer had taken for his medical experiments.

Henri Morgenstern came to the remembrance ceremony for the victims of the murders in Bullenhuser Damm on 20 April 1979. With Philippe Kohn, the brother of Georges-André Kohn, he was a founder-member of the Children of Bullenhuser Damm association and was actively involved in criminal prosecution.