The Belgian newspaper Le Soir Illustré issue from November 15, 1945 – documenting how Jews who survived extermination in the death camps are attempting to rebuild their lives in the city of Berlin. Accompanied by moving photographs of the first Jewish survivors of the death camps from Berlin who returned to the city after the war, broken and shattered.
In a central article titled LA GRANDE PITIE DES JUIFS DE BERLIN – “The Great Pity for the Jews of Berlin” – written by journalist J. F., a report is given on the last Holocaust survivors who remained in Berlin: “The terrible plan devised by Hitler to slaughter every Jew in Berlin – a plan which was on the verge of being fully executed – can now be clearly seen in the ruined capital of the Reich. The only Jews still visible there are elderly men or very young children, and most of those of working age have just returned from concentration camps; they are searching for their homes or their families, but in most cases, these are gone, and they are nothing more than wanderers or broken souls. The small number of Jews currently living in Berlin are in an utterly absurd situation and in extremely poor health. All their property was confiscated by the Nazis, and whatever remained was sold so they could feed themselves. In the former Jewish quarter of Berlin – Dra-gonerstrasse – not a single Jew remains. Most families were deported by the Nazis and all their shops were shut down. This neighborhood has long been deserted, and some of the buildings that saw fighting are still uninhabitable. Today, despite its ruins and sorrowful memories, Dragonerstrasse is adorned with the flags of the victorious Allied nations.”
The article is accompanied by photographs of Jewish survivors in a recently restored Berlin synagogue, the first Jews permitted to fulfill the commandment of prayer after the Nazi prohibition following the end of the war; a father and his daughters who survived after the rest of the family perished in Auschwitz; a photo of an Aryan German woman who lost her eye due to abuse because she was married to a Jew; a depiction of Dragonerstrasse in Berlin described as: “Dragonerstrasse, in Berlin: once the center of the Jewish quarter. At present, not a single Jew lives there. The Nazis deported them all, confiscated their property and shut down their shops”; a photo of emaciated Jewish children is described: “These two little Jews, aged seven, after being separated from their parents during forced labor, were imprisoned in a special concentration camp for Jewish children near Berlin. Malnourished, they barely reached the size of a four-year-old”; Jewish children in an orphanage: “Jewish children, most of whom saw their parents vanish in the horrific Nazi concentration camps, find some joy and comfort in the Jewish home in Berlin where they are welcomed”; a photo of orphaned children from the Fabian family in the Jewish Hospital in Berlin after being imprisoned for many months in a camp “deep in Poland”; a moving photo of a father and daughter described as: “Little Ruth Kosiner, ten years old, smiles for the first time in five years at her father. He was sent to forced labor, and the little girl narrowly escaped the slaughter of one hundred thousand Jewish children who were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp near Krakow, Poland” (The father, Alfred Kosiner, was sentenced to five years of forced labor, while his five-year-old daughter was sent alone to Auschwitz. She managed to escape the massacre of hundreds of thousands of children murdered in the gas chambers, was brought to Berlin after the war, and reunited with her father, who had also survived). A Jewish woman at the Jewish Hospital in Berlin, a concentration camp survivor, appears elderly but is in fact only 40 years old. A photo of survivor Gertrud Hoffmann at the Jewish Hospital in Berlin after two years in the Theresienstadt camp.
The title page of the issue is dedicated to Winston Churchill – “The one who marked the victory” – and the two center pages are devoted to the British leader who “saved us” from Nazism, “The architect of Brussels’ salvation”, and more.
[14] pp. Complete issue. Fold mark. Good condition.
