CONTENT WARNING: This post recounts the tragic fate of a child victim of the Holocaust, including medical experimentation and murder. The details are deeply disturbing but historically verified. Purpose: education and remembrance only – never to promote violence. Trusted sources at the end.
Paris → Auschwitz, 1944: The Story of Georges-André Kohn – The 12-Year-Old Boy the Nazis Called Their “Guinea Pig”
Georges-André Kohn was born on 23 April 1932 into one of the wealthiest and most prominent Jewish families in France. His father, Armand Edouard Kohn, directed the famous Rothschild Hospital in Paris and served as Secretary-General of the Rothschild Foundation. His mother Suzanne came from a millionaire tobacco family. Georges, the youngest of four children, grew up surrounded by love, culture, and privilege—until the war changed everything.
When Nazi Germany occupied France in 1940, Armand Kohn used his hospital to hide hundreds of Jews, listing them as “seriously ill” patients. He believed his personal contacts—even with Alois Brunner, the feared commandant of Drancy camp—would protect his own family. In 1942, Suzanne and the four children formally converted to Catholicism in a desperate attempt to escape anti-Jewish laws.
It was not enough.
On 21 July 1944, the entire Kohn family was arrested. Twelve-year-old Georges-André, his parents, and his three siblings were sent first to Drancy, then deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau on the last transport from France (Convoy 77, 31 July 1944).
Because of their wealth and connections, the family was initially spared immediate death. Instead, in late 1944, Georges-André was selected by the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele for transfer to Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg. There, the boy became one of 20 Jewish children (aged 5–12) used in horrific medical experiments on tuberculosis.
The children—later known as the “20 Children of Bullenhuser Damm”—were injected with live TB bacilli, subjected to painful operations to remove lymph nodes, and deliberately infected. On the night of 20 April 1945, as British forces approached, SS officers decided to erase evidence of the crimes. The children, along with their four adult caretakers, were taken to the basement of a former school at Bullenhuser Damm in Hamburg.
One by one, they were hanged from hooks on the wall. Because little Georges-André was too light for the noose to break his neck instantly, the SS men hung a second child on the same hook to add weight. The boys died slowly in unimaginable agony.
Georges-André Kohn was 12 years and 362 days old.
His parents and siblings were murdered in Auschwitz. Only distant relatives survived the war.
Today, the Bullenhuser Damm Memorial in Hamburg honors the 20 children with a rose garden—one rose for each child. Georges-André’s rose blooms every spring as a quiet reminder of innocence destroyed.
We remember Georges-André and the other 19 children not to spread hate, but to teach the world what happens when prejudice is allowed to grow unchecked.
Never Again.
Learn more (official memorial sites):
Bullenhuser Damm Memorial
Yad Vashem – Georges André Kohn
USHMM – Children in the Holocaust