THE 20 CHILDREN

Mania Altman

Mania Altman was born in Radom, Poland, on 7 April 1938. She was the daughter of the shoemaker Shir Altman and his wife Pola. The family had a large number of relatives. Also living in Radom, for instance, were six of Shir Altman’s siblings and their families. In the spring of 1941, the German occupying forces erected a ghetto in which the Jewish population had to live. The Altman family was deported from there in summer 1944 to Auschwitz Concentration Camp via the forced labor camp at Pionki near Radom, which was attached to a munitions factory. Mania’s father was taken to Mauthausen Concentration Camp, where he was murdered in the last weeks of the war.

Pola Altman was separated from Mania in Auschwitz and deported in October 1944 to a satellite camp of Groß-Rosen Concentration Camp. She was liberated there in May 1945. In 1951, she and her brother-in-law Chaim Altman emigrated to the USA.

Mania Altman was brought to Neuengamme Concentration Camp on 28 November 1944 and murdered here in Bullenhuser Damm on 20 April 1945.

Pola Altman never knew of her daughter’s fate. She died in Chicago in 1971. Through an article in Voice of Radom by Marc Grumelin, brother of Eleonora and Roman Witonski, Mania’s uncle Chaim Altman, who lived in New York, heard about the murder of the children at Bullenhuser Damm and of his niece’s fate.