Jenny Birnbaum. Collection

Schenja alias Jenny Birnbaum or Birenbaum was born on 19 April 1929 in Cologne, Germany. She was the eldest child of Simon Birnbaum (born on 13 August 1897 in Checiny, Poland) and Salka Flescher (born on 23 February 1900 in Stanislawow, Poland). Jenny had three younger siblings: Esther who was called Erna (born on 8 November 1931), Joseph (born on 26 December 1932) and Herschel (born on 4 November 1936). After the Nazis rose to power, the Birnbaum family struggled. Father Simon owned a shoemaker’s workshop but was forced to sell his machinery one by one to provide for his family. During Kristallnacht the workshop was completely destroyed. Simon, however, was no longer there to witness the destruction. He had been expelled to Zbaszyn in Poland on 28 October 1938 during the so-called Polenaktion. Mother Salka stayed behind in Cologne with four young children and made plans to send eldest daughter Jenny to Belgium via the Red Cross. Salka had remained in contact with her former employers, the Mayer family, who had fled to Antwerp, Belgium, and who agreed to take in Jenny. Jenny was subsequently permitted to leave Germany, but she didn’t want to go without her sister Esther. Salka then decided to send both her daughters on a Kindertransport to Belgium. Jenny and Esther arrived on 24 December 1938. Unfortunately, the Mayer family had already left for New York by that time and the Birnbaum sisters were taken in by the Lemarchand family in Groot-Bijgaarden who abused Jenny as a live-in maid and a cleaning lady. At the beginning of 1939 Salka decided to also send over eldest son Joseph. He was reunited with Jenny and Esther at the Lemarchand family home in Groot-Bijgaarden on 3 May 1939. Jenny, Esther and Joseph still lived with the Lemarchand family when Nazi Germany invaded Belgium on 10 May 1940. In April 1942 Jenny, Esther and Joseph learned they could no longer attend their non-Jewish school. The Lemarchands then decided to split up the siblings as they presumably could not care for them any longer. Jenny remained with the family, serving as their housekeeper. Joseph was sent to the Jewish orphanage run by Jonas Tiefenbrunner at Rue des Patriotes 34 in Brussels and Esther was taken in by the family of her literature teacher Mariette De Guchteneere and her husband Robert Duquenne in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode. On 15 October 1943 the Lemarchand family moved to Genval, close to Brussels, taking Jenny with them and renting her out to another family as a maid. On 19 April 1944 Jenny turned fifteen and was thus accorded an ID card. She presented herself at the municipality of Genval to obtain the document. One of the local clerks subsequently denounced her. She was lifted from her bed at the Lemarchand home in Genval by two Feldgendarmen on 23 May 1944 at 5 o’clock in the morning. Jenny was taken to the Nivelles prison and from there to the Dossin barracks. On 31 July 1944 she was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau via Transport XXVI. Upon arrival at Birkenau Jenny was selected as a forced laborer. The number A24045 was tattooed on her arm. On 27 October 1944 Jenny was transferred to Landsberg, a Kommando of Dachau, where she worked for the laundry service, washing the clothes of the dead. In Spring 1945 Jenny was ‘evacuated’ to the Kaufering camp. She survived the death march although she got very ill. Jenny was liberated at Kaufering by the American Army and was repatriated to Belgium on 24 May 1945. Jenny rejoined the Lemarchand family in Genval and was reunited with her brother Joseph and her sister Esther only in 1946. Both had survived the war in hiding and were now cared for by the Duquenne family. Jenny, Esther and Joseph Birnbaum never heard from their parents Simon and Salka or their little brother Herschel again after the war. Salka and Herschel were deported to Poland in 1939, just like father Simon had been in October 1938. Simon, Salka and Herschel were reunited in Stanislawow, Poland, on 11 July 1939. The exact date, location and circumstances of their death remain unknown: they either perished at the Stanislawow ghetto between June 1942 and June 1943 or they were murdered in the Belzec extermination center before April 1943. Jenny married Raymond Camberlin. They had a daughter together named Brigit but Jenny also took care of Raymond’s daughter Manon from his first marriage as if the girl were her own. The family settled in France, where Jenny Birnbaum passed away on 16 March 2019.

On 13 November 2002 Jenny Birnbaum donated a reproduction of a portrait of herself to the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance, predecessor of Kazerne Dossin. A handwritten testimony and a questionnaire filled out by Jenny were also added to the collection via her brother Joseph Birenbaum. After the passing of Jenny Birnbaum, her daughters Brigit Camberlin and Manon Camberlin donated the original objects and documents in this collection to Kazerne Dossin on 7 June 2022.

Brigit Camberlin and Manon Camberlin, daughters of Raymond and Jenny Camberlin-Birenbaum, 2022