Ernst Israel Bornstein

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Ernst Israel Bornstein (born November 26, 1922 in Zawiercie , Poland ; † August 14, 1978 in Munich ) was a Jewish Holocaust survivor who was deported to the Grünheide labor camp, today's Schironowitz (Poland) for forced labor at the age of 19 and in four Years and three months through different camps. He described his experiences in 1967 in the book The Long Night - A Report from Seven Camps .

Life

Ernst Israel Bornstein was born as the oldest of four children. Trained in Jewish schools, he spoke German , Yiddish and Polish .

In 1939, after the attack on Poland, he and his family were taken to the ghetto in his hometown.

From 1941 to 1945 Bornstein was imprisoned in seven camps: Grünheide (today Schironowitz, Poland), Markstädt, Fifthichen (today Miłoszyce, Poland), Groß-Rosen , Flossenbürg , Leonberg (subcamp of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp ) and Mühldorf . On April 30, 1945, he was liberated by members of the US Army.

Of 72 family members, only six survived the Holocaust. His parents and two younger sisters were murdered in Auschwitz.

Nevertheless, he stayed in Germany after the war and studied in Munich. During this time he was also an employee of the Jewish Scientific Institute in New York “and was busy collecting the experiences of young people who had come through years of imprisonment. His task was to put these notes in the language of the eyewitnesses and to keep them free of literary ingredients ”. In 1952 he did his doctorate in Munich once on "The Caries Intensity of Different Peoples and Ethnic Groups" and again in 1961 on "Regional differences in the ABO system between different Upper Bavarian districts". In Munich he became a “popular doctor” and a “respected member” of the religious community, on whose board he was active for years.

In 1964 he married Renee Koenig, himself a Holocaust survivor, and they had three children. Bornstein died in 1978 at the age of 55.

The long night

At the suggestion of his teacher Professor Max Mikorey , Bornstein began to write down his experiences. In the book “The Long Night - A Report from Seven Camps”, first published in 1967, he tries “to look back on the experience and only let the facts speak without comment, without burdening the reader with personal emotions”. In 2015 his daughter Noemie Lopian translated his book into English under the title "The Long Night: A True Story". In 2018, the English translation with a foreword by David Cameron was selected for Holocaust Memorial Day 2018. In 2020 the book was published again in the original version with a foreword by Charlotte Knobloch .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ holocaustmatters.org
  2. ↑ Ernst Israel Bornstein: The long night, a report from seven camps. European Publishing House, Hamburg 2020, ISBN 978-3-86393-092-9 , blurb
  3. ↑ holocaustmatters.org
  4. ↑ Ernst Israel Bornstein: The long night, a report from seven camps. European Publishing House, Hamburg 2020, p. 13.
  5. ↑ d-nb.info
  6. ↑ http://swb.bsz-bw.de/ online catalog of the Southwest German Library Association (SWB)
  7. ↑ Charlotte Knobloch, in: Ernst Israel Bornstein: The long night, a report from seven camps. European Publishing House, Hamburg 2020, p. 9.
  8. ↑ Charlotte Knobloch, in: Ernst Israel Bornstein: The long night, a report from seven camps. European Publishing House, Hamburg 2020, p. 9.
  9. ↑ holocaustmatters.org
  10. ↑ Ernst Israel Bornstein: The long night, a report from seven camps. European Publishing House, Hamburg 2020, p. 13.
  11. ↑ Ernst Israel Bornstein: The long night, a report from seven camps. European Publishing House, Hamburg 2020, p. 14.
  12. ↑ Ernst Israel Bornstein: The long night, a report from seven camps. European Publishing House, Hamburg, 2020, blurb
personal data
SURNAME Bornstein, Ernst Israel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Jewish Holocaust survivor and author
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Zawiercie , Poland
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 1978
Place of death Munich