Adi Bader and Bernhard Ehrenreich were connected by a lifelong friendship. They were both born in Cologne in 1931 and met in the Griechenmarkt district, where many Jewish emigrants from Eastern Europe had established themselves. This was also the case with Rosa Rachel Ehrenreich, who came from Poland with her husband Abraham Goldberg in the early 1920s. After his death, she married Jakob Samuel. During 1938, the family of three attempted unsuccessfully to flee to Belgium. In their desperate situation, the parents decided to place Bernhard in a Jewish children‘s home and to take the risk of escaping separately. They were successful: in autumn 1938 they reached Belgium and, with the support of the Comité d‘Assistance aux Enfants Juifs Réfugiés in Brussels, obtained a legal reunification with their son Bernhard.
The family was given accommodation in Anderlecht. However, their hopes for a new start were not fulfilled. As a result of the German occupation of Belgium in May 1940, Jakob Samuel was interned. His odyssey took him to the camps of Saint Cyprien, Gurs, Drancy, Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Yet he survived and returned in 1946. The situation was different for Rosa Rachel Ehrenreich: on 26 September 1942, she was deported with the XI transport from Mechelen to Auschwitz. Only 31 of the 1,772 deportees survived.
Before being arrested, she arranged for Bernhard to be admitted to the home for „single children“ in Wezembeek-Oppem – a life-saving decision for her son. There he was reunited with Adi Bader, his childhood playmate. Despite the dangerous situation, the children‘s everyday life in Wezembeek continued as normal. Bernhard‘s eleventh birthday on 9 December 1942 fell on the Hanukkah festival of lights. He was given the honour of singing the traditional song Maoz Tzur in front of all the children.
A few months later, the Jewish Defence Committee (CDJ) brought the children from the Wezembeek home to safety. From May 1943, Bernhard was hidden in a Christian boarding school, the Château du Faing, near the village of Jamoigne-sur-Semois. The liberation at the end of 1944 caused conflicting feelings in him. One by one, relatives and friends who survived fetched their children to join them, yet he was left behind. He decided to make Aliyah, to immigrate to the land of Israel. He met his friend Adi Bader again on the passenger ship Cairo on the way from Marseille to Haifa. On 22 June 1946, they went ashore and were taken into the Shefajim Kibbutz 15km south of Tel Aviv.
Ten years later, Adi Bader and Bernhard Ehrenreich visited the places of their childhood in Europe. There their paths in life separated. Adi Bader decided to stay in Cologne, while Bernhard Ehrenreich returned to Israel. He started a family and emigrated to the USA in 1961.
Bernhard Ehrenreich died on 15 September 1992. AS