Orphans from Warburg children's home pose outside with JDC relief workers.

Photograph | Digitized | Photograph Number: 02743

Overview

Caption: Orphans from Warburg children's home pose outside with JDC relief workers.

Pictured at the far right is Sally Bendremer; Hilde Jacobstahl holds the child in the center. The boy walking out of the picture on the far left is Peter Salomon (Peter Ruben Lewkowitz) now known as Yiphtach Ronen.
Date: November 1945 - April 1946
Locale: Hamburg-Blankenese, [Hansestadt] Germany
Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Sally Bendremer Wideroff
Event History: The sixteen acre Kosterberg estate owned by Max Warburg, the prosperous Hamburg Jewish banker, had been in the family for generations. In October 1941 it was seized by the Nazi regime and turned over to the army for use as officers' quarters and a military hospital. Following the German defeat, the British established a field hospital on the premises. A few months later, Eric Warburg (Max's son) returned to Germany and requested the return of the property. As a member of the Joint Distribution Committee's board of directors (his uncle Felix Warburg was one of the founders of the JDC), Eric decided to turn over the estate to the JDC for use as a shelter for Jewish orphans rescued from the concentration camps. Hundreds of children (most of them liberated in Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt) passed through the Warburg home in the three years of its operation.

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005367.

Photo Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Provenance: Sally Bendremer Wideroff

Keyword: BENDREMER, SALLY BERGEN-BELSEN CHILDREN (0-3 YEARS) CHILDREN (4-12 YEARS) CHILDREN'S HOMES CHILDREN'S HOMES (BLANKENESE) CHILDREN/YOUTH DP CAMPS/CENTERS DPS (JEWISH) GROUP PORTRAITS JDC (JOINT DISTRIBUTION COMMITTEE) ORPHANS RELIEF WORK/SOCIAL WORKERS WARBURG (BLANKENESE ESTATE) WOMEN
Photo Designation: DISPLACED PERSONS/RETURN TO LIFE -- Orphans/Children's Homes/Summer Camps -- Germany -- Hamburg-Blankenese

Biography: Sally Wideroff (born Sally Bendremer), a JDC relief worker, spent thirteen months in the British Zone of Germany where she worked first in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp and later at the Warburg children's home in Hamburg-Blankenese. While in Bergen-Belsen, Sally served as the liaison between representatives of the JDC, UNRRA and the DP camp's Central Jewish Committee. She also worked to establish educational, recreational and cultural programs for the DPs, including a camp library and film program. Sally was instrumental in opening the Warburg children's home, where she served as the JDC's child welfare specialist. In April 1946 she escorted a group of 105 orphans from the home to Marseilles, on the first leg of their journey to Palestine. In Marseilles the Warburg home orphans joined another group of children to form the first postwar Youth Aliyah transport.