Blankenese

This guide to Blankenese in Hamburg opens in January 1946, when roughly a hundred teenage survivors of Bergen-Belsen arrived by truck at a villa on the Elbe that had once belonged to the Warburg banking family before the Nazis seized it. It follows the young Jewish Brigade soldier Erich Stiefel, who ran the home under the name Eliyahu Ben Yehuda, and the small staff, including Betty Adler and Reuma Schwarz, who built a school, kindergarten and infirmary there. The first group sailed for Palestine from Marseille in April 1946, on a ship called the Champollion.