Photographs of Deportations From Hamburg Identified

Deportation October 1941

In October 1941, over 1,000 Jews from Hamburg were deported to the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. The men, women, and children affected by the deportation were ordered in writing by the Gestapo to report to the assembly point at Moorweidenstraße 36. At the Logenhaus, the persecuted were subjected to degrading searches and robbery. After a night spent in cramped quarters and under catastrophic conditions, on the morning of October 25, 1941, the people were taken in Hamburg police vans to the Hannoverscher Bahnhof in Hamburg and from there to the Litzmannstadt Ghetto.

Photo Album of Police Officer Colberg

The three images that have now been identified come from a photo album belonging to Bernhardt Colberg, who was a member of Reserve Police Battalion 101. The photo album is in the possession of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The photographs it contains were labeled “victims of the Allied air raids before their evacuation.” This interpretation was corrected through expert scientific analysis and an intensive validation process carried out by researchers from various institutions.

Identification Through Research

The relevant discovery was made through collaboration between Dr. Kristina Vagt and Johanna Schmied from the denk.mal Hannoverscher Bahnhof Documentation Center project of the Hamburg Memorials and Learning Centers Foundation and Dr. Alina Bothe from the #LastSeen joint project. Images of Nazi deportations at the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg at Freie Universität Berlin.

The photographs offer new perspectives on the deportations from Hamburg in the fall of 1941. Their provenance suggests that further photos of other deportations may be preserved in archives or private collections. If you have any information that could help identify the people in the photos or locate other image collections, please contact us.

Presentation of the photos

Online: The photos are presented and critically commented on in the #LastSeen image atlas: https://atlas.lastseen.org

Exhibition: The photos will be shown in a pop-up exhibition from November 4, 2025, to January 6, 2026, at the Geschichtsort Stadthaus: Stadthausbrücke 6, 20355 Hamburg, opening hours: Monday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Event “Close-up: The Hamburg Deportations to the Ghettos in Autumn 1941”: Dr. Alina Bothe, Dr. Kristina Vagt, Johanna Schmied, and Wolfgang Kopitzsch will present the photos and the results of the investigation in a lecture on Tuesday, November 4, 2025, 6:30-8:00 p.m., location: Geschichtsort Stadthaus. Registration is required. The lecture will also be streamed online: https://www.gedenkstaetten-hamburg.de/de/veranstaltungen

Pressrelease

Report "Historische Fotos zeigen erstmals Deportationen in Hamburg" (TV NDR, 7.11.2025)

Report "Deportation von Juden in Hamburg: Fotos lösen Erinnerungen aus" (NDR, 14.11.2025)