by Lorraine Bowyer

Created on: March 25, 2009   Last Updated: September 24, 2010

The Park keeper

My name is Mordecai Liebermann, I am 45 years old and for the 14 months until our Liberation on May 4th 1945 I was the Park Keeper at Neuengamme Concentration Camp. This is my story as recounted to British Army Intelligence Officers.

I started working at the Hamburg Botanischer Garten as an under-gardener when I was 16 years old and gradually worked my way up to section leader with a small group of under-gardeners. My team and I were all Jewish, but considered to be hard working and when the park Directors established the Planten un Blomen' exhibition in 1935, we were allocated some of the smaller planting beds to design and maintain.

I went to labour at the park one Monday in late September 1943 to find that three of my team were not there. The remainder were frightened, telling of raids in the Klosterwall district when soldiers had forced several hundred families into trucks in the middle of the night. I'm usually a fairly peaceable man, but knowing that so many of my Jewish friends and family had just vanished, I marched straight up to the Director's office to demand where my team had been taken.

The Director's secretary was Fraulein Schwab. Normally every Monday she would greet me with a friendly smile as I handed her the cut flowers for the office display. That day was different, she was on edge and cast frequent nervous glances towards the door of the Director's office. I asked her if she knew what was happening and where my team were. She looked up at me, her large blue eyes beseeching, almost pleading with me to be quiet and say nothing. Then a loud scraping of chairs came from the other room and three SS officers emerged followed by the Director. Fraulein Schwab hurriedly motioned for me to stand still and I averted my eyes. The tallest of the SS officers turned to me and asked what I was doing there; nervously, I replied that I had come to ask if anyone knew where my colleagues were. The officer coldly replied that I should not worry as a final solution was imminent. I twisted my cap in my hands, thanking him for his help as I backed out of the door.

It was about six weeks later that I had occasion to meet the tall SS officer again. I was working alone, when a uniformed man walked past with a young woman on his arm; as he shifted the heavy coat he was carrying, a leather wallet fell onto the path. I picked it up and ran after the couple calling out for their attention. The officer wheeled round, and I proffered the lost wallet before

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