For 72 years, Greta, now 95, did not know what had happened to her only brother, Walter, from whom she was separated at Auschwitz. She believed he had died during an infamous death march. But a phone call from Bella Reichenbaum, whose husband's relative was also murdered in what came to be known as the "House of Horrors" in Hamburg, turned everything she thought she knew on its head.
Walter, it turned out, had been subjected to medical experiments. As Allied forces closed in on Germany, the Nazis hanged him and 19 other Jewish children in the basement of a school building. Their bodies were burned to erase the evidence of the brutal experiments they endured.
"Just weeks after Walter arrived at Auschwitz, Josef Mengele entered the children's barracks and asked, 'Who wants to see their mother?' The 20 children who ran to him, all between the ages of 5 and 12, were separated from the others, dressed in clean clothes, and sent to the Neuengamme concentration camp," said Daniela Moran, Greta's daughter.
Neuengamme was one of the Nazi concentration camps located within Germany. It held many non-Jewish prisoners, including Soviets, political dissidents, and even Germans. The Jewish children were placed in a sealed hut to conceal the experiments carried out by Dr. Kurt Heissmeyer, a Nazi lung and tuberculosis specialist. Heissmeyer injected the children with tuberculosis bacteria, conducting live experiments over several months.
But the horror didn't end there. On April 20, 1945, as the Nazis prepared for defeat, they executed a plan to destroy the evidence. The 20 children were sedated and then hanged in the basement of the Bullenhuser Damm school in Hamburg. Their bodies were burned. Two Dutch nurses and two French doctors who had been forced to assist with the experiments were also murdered to eliminate witnesses. All documents related to the experiments were destroyed.
This harrowing story only came to light in the 1960s, following an investigation by German journalist Günther Schwarberg for Stern magazine. Schwarberg took the exposé personally. Having no children of his own, he saw the murdered children as if they were his own and dedicated his life to uncovering the truth.
"We never knew this story," Moran said. "Even less than a decade ago, four of the children had not yet been identified. It was only when we received the call from Bella Reichenbaum, who was helping to identify the remaining victims, that we learned Walter was among them."
Greta and Walter Jungleib were born and raised in the town of Loštice in Czechoslovakia. Their father was a jeweler and watchmaker, and their mother helped in the store. In 1942, they were forced to wear yellow badges, their father had to give up the shop, and Greta was barred from attending school.
By 1944, with Greta aged 14 and Walter 12, they were hiding in a house near the forest to avoid deportation. But after a few weeks, Nazi soldiers arrived following a tip-off. The family was sent to a concentration camp in Slovakia and then to Auschwitz.
For a week, they were housed in the family barracks, before Greta and her mother were separated from Walter and their father. Greta and her mother survived. Their father died in Mauthausen from forced labor. For years, they assumed Walter perished during the death marches.
In a testimony to Yad Vashem, Greta described her last moment with Walter: "After a week in Auschwitz, the men were taken away. Walter came back briefly, he'd forgotten his cap. Coming from a religious family, he always wore it. He picked it up, smiled, waved goodbye, and I never saw him again."
Alongside Walter, the Nazis murdered 19 other children, 10 boys and 10 girls, from Poland, Italy, France, the Netherlands, and Slovakia.
"Walter and my mother were very close. They used to play together. When we discovered the truth just 10 years ago, it was emotionally overwhelming for her. She realized that while she was being liberated, Walter was still alive. She often wonders what could have been if he had survived," said Moran.
Following this discovery, Greta decided to visit Hamburg and see for herself the places where her brother spent his final months. She also visited the memorial site established in the school building's basement.
Greta eventually immigrated to Israel, married, had two children, and now has seven grandchildren. Her family recently traveled to Hamburg for ceremonies marking 80 years since Nazi Germany's surrender and the children's murder, at the invitation of a memorial foundation that honors the memory of the murdered children.
Today, a neighborhood has been built around the site, with 20 streets named after each of the children who were killed. Walter's name now appears on one of them. The commemoration foundation operates out of the former Bullenhuser Damm school building and organizes annual memorial ceremonies with participation from local schoolchildren.
"My mother couldn't come this year, it was too difficult for her, but she's deeply moved by the memorial efforts," Moran said. "We hope that someday Israel will also choose to commemorate this tragic story, which remains unfamiliar to most Israelis. Our presence here, proud and Jewish, is a victory for her and for the people of Israel."
