On 30 July 1930, Simon Birenbaum and Salka Birenbaum, née Fleszer, were married in a registry office at Cologne’s City Hall. One of the marriage witnesses was Aron Jachimowicz, a friend of the family, and neighbour at 44 Thürmchenswall. A few years earlier Simon and Salka had immigrated from Poland. The shoemaker Simon Birenbaum ran a workshop selling shoes and accessories at 30 Kleiner Griechenmarkt. Their residential accommodation was in the adjacent building. Salka Birenbaum gave birth to her children Jenny (born 1929), Esther (born 1931) and Joseph (born 1932) in the Israelitisches Asyl (Jewish Asylum [Hospital]) in Cologne-Ehrenfeld. With the birth of Herschel in 1936, the family was complete.
After the National Socialists seized power, the Birenbaum family was subjected to exclusion and violence. On 28 October 1938, Simon Birenbaum was expelled from Germany as part of the so-called Polenaktion (the forced expulsion of Jews who were Polish citizens) and deported to the Polish border. During the November pogrom of 1938, his shop premises were plundered, and the furnishings wrecked.
Salka Birenbaum, now a single mother, decided to initiate the escape of her three older children – she only kept two-year-old Herschel with her. In December 1938 Jenny and Esther were able to leave for Belgium with the help of an acquaintance. Joseph was registered with the Comité d’Assistance aux Enfants Juifs Réfugiés (Assistance Committee to Jewish Refugee Children, CAEJR) in Brussels for the Kindertransport. On 9 March 1939, his mother Salka received the reassuring news that “all the children of this particularly large transport [136 children] have arrived safely and in good spirits in Brussels”. Joseph was well received: he was taken in by the Lemarchand family, with whom his two sisters Jenny and Esther were already staying.
With the German invasion of Belgium, the situation changed significantly for the siblings. In 1942, the Lemarchand family decided to place Joseph in the orphanage Orphelinat Israelite de Bruxelles. He was thus separated from his sisters, who were able to remain with the family for a while.
On May 15, 1942, I arrived at the Jewish ultra-religious orphanage. This had room for about 19 children. The orphanage was managed by Mr Tiefenbrunner. He was a very strong personality. For us he was more of a father than a director and he managed this small world clearly, firmly and above all with great humanity. Everyone liked and respected him.
In late summer 1944 the situation for the children at the orphanage became more difficult. There were increasing numbers of raids. The community of children was distributed in small groups to Catholic institutions.
The Jesuit Père Maurice Robinet hid Joseph Birenbaum and several other children in the parish hall of his monastery. There they experienced the liberation of Brussels on 3 September 1944. Finally, they could return to their orphanage. All the children were impatiently waiting there for signs of life from their relatives. After many weeks Joseph learned that his sisters were alive: Jenny had survived the deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Esther had been able to go into hiding in Belgium. However, the three would never see their parents or their little brother again. Any traces of Simon, Salka and Herschel Birenbaum were lost in the ghetto of Stanisławów. A franked postage stamp and a fragment of their father’s signature was their only souvenir, because Joseph’s sister had to burn photos and letters for fear of the raids.
A television program in the Radio Télévision Belge Francophone (RTBF) in February 1997, which focused on the story of the Enfants Cachés (Hidden Children), inspired Joseph Birenbaum to search for the traces of his murdered parents. A few years later he published his life story Les chaînons manquants (The missing links).
In spring 2018, something completely unexpected happened: Joseph Birenbaum received a longed-for message from the United States: the descendants of Aron Jachimowicz, his parents’ best man at Cologne City Hall, mailed family photos, one of them depicting Joseph Birenbaum in 1938 in the Cologne Volksgarten, a public park, with his three siblings, mother Salka and father Simon Birenbaum. Joseph Birenbaum now lives in Brussels. AS
Portrait of Joseph Birenbaum: © Joseph Birenbaum