Photos of the Horserød Recreational Camps for Jewish Children in 1934 and 1935
© United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Wollheim papers)
Norbert Wollheim tells about the summer holiday trips made by Jewish children to Horserød, Denmark, and to Sweden, on which he accompanied them in the years 1933–1935:
“For instance, the Jewish community at this time had developed a program which was interesting. Since we couldn’t have Jewish summer camps any more in Germany, the man who was my youth leader at that certain time was very active and innovative, had established contact with Sweden and Denmark and had asked the Jewish communities there to accommodate Jewish children from Germany during the summer, and they responded favorably. In Denmark, for instance, they had established special summer camps near Copenhagen where they took hundreds of Jewish children from Germany to spend the summer there, which was very pleasant and in Sweden interesting enough, the Jewish community in Malmö and Stockholm organized a program taking Jewish children into Jewish families during the summer and I was able to accompany these transports, so I had a first... I got a first experience how to handle these kind of transports and then certainly when we went to Sweden and Denmark, we also certainly got familiar with the families and with the organizations, so we thought that somehow would be helpful if need be.”[1]
Photos taken by Norbert Wollheim himself, showing the summer camps in 1934 and 1935, have been preserved among his effects. In some of these photos, we see a boy, Jürgen Löwenstein, and an escort, Arthur Posnanski, both of whom, like Wollheim, were later imprisoned in the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp and made to perform forced labor for I.G. Farben.
(MN; transl. KL)