Category:Home Speyer (subject)

Home Speyer (see Holocaust Children Studies)

Overview

In the year preceding the outbreak of World War II, nearly 1000 Jewish children from Germany and Austria between the ages of 4 and 17 found refuge in Belgium. Some came individually, others illegally, and some on an organized transport which gathered the children from Cologne. The rescue effort was organized by the Comite d'Assistance aux Enfants Juifs Refugies (CAEJR), an organization founded by Madame Goldschmidt-Brodsky, whose husband, Alfred, was an official of the Belgian Red Cross. Most of the children were sheltered in private homes, and about 80 in two large children's homes. The girls' home, known as the Home General Bernheim, was located in the Brussels suburb of Zuen, and the boys' home, called Home Speyer, in the suburb of Anderlecht. After the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940, the children escaped to southern France; see Children of La Hille. Almost all children portrayed in this picture avoided arrest and survived the Holocaust, with the exception of Manfred Vos (who was deported and perished at Auschwitz) and Egon Berlin (who joined the Resistance in France and was killed in action).

Group portrait of the children who came to Belgium from Germany and Austria on a Kindertransport outside the Speyer children's home at 128 rue Victor Rauter in Anderlecht.

Front row (left to right): Guy Haas, Georges Herz, Willy Wolpert (?), Alfred Eschwege, Martin Findling, Manfred Tidor, Henri Vos, Gerhard Eckmann, unknown, and Fred Findling. Second row: Gerard Kwaczkowski, Manfred Vos, Egon Berlin, Rudi Oehlbaum, unknown, Bernard Eisler, unknown, Joseph Dortort, Max Krolik, and Klaus Sostheim. Back row: Mr. Becker, Willy Grossmann, female counselor, Gerd Obersitzker, Leo Grossmann, Emile Dortort, Tante Lucienne DeWaay, unknown, Peter Salz, Edgar Chaim, Manfred Kamlet, unknown, Bertrand Elkan, Hans Garfunkel. Lucien Wolfgang, unknown, Henri Brunel, Werner Rindsberg, Jacques Roth, Norbert Stueckler, Kurt "Onze" Klein, and Norbert Winter. Far back are Charles Blumenfeld, and Eddie Nussbaum.

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