Walter Jungleib
Walter Jungleib was born on August 12, 1932, Hlohovec, a town in Slovakia.
Along with the other children, he was taken from Auschwitz to Neuengamme and murdered at Bullenhuser Damm on April 20, 1945.
Walter was twelve years old.
Walter’s father owned a jewelry shop, where his mother also worked.
Walter was an enthusiastic stamp collector. He attended the Jewish school with his sister Grete until Jewish children were no longer allowed to go.
His father was forced to give up the jewelry shop, and eventually, the family went into hiding. Discovered by the SS, they were deported to the Sered concentration camp, and later sent to Auschwitz.
Walter’s father did not survive the concentration camp.
His mother, Malvina, and his sister, Grete, were liberated in 1945.
They searched for Walter but were unable to learn what had happened to him. For many years, they believed he had died during an evacuation march from Auschwitz.
Walter’s identity remained unknown until 2015. For decades, all that was known was that a 12-year-old boy named “W. Junglieb” might have come from Yugoslavia.
In 2015, Bella Reichenbaum - a relative of another Bullenhuser child - conducted research in Tel Aviv and discovered a list of prisoners transported from Auschwitz to Lippstadt.
It quickly became apparent that “Walter Junglieb” had been a misspelling. The long-missing child was, in fact, Walter Jungleib.
In 1995, a street in Hamburg-Burgwedel was named Junglieb-Straße in Walter’s memory.
On April 20, 2016, it was officially renamed Walter-Jungleib-Straße, with his sister Grete present for the ceremony.