Ernst Bornstein

Ernst Israel Bornstein (26 November 1922 – 14 August 1978) was a Polish-born Jewish Holocaust survivor who practised as a dentist and doctor post-war in Munich, Germany. He is the author of 'Die Lange Nacht', which was first printed in Germany in 1967 and in 2015 translated into English as 'The Long Night'. The book is a personal recollection of his time in 7 different concentration camps and several death marches ending in 1945.

Early life Bornstein was born in Zawiercie, Poland in 1922. He was the oldest of four children. He was educated in Jewish schools and was a talented student who was fluent in German, Yiddish and Polish.

The Holocaust

Until the outbreak of the Second World War, Bornstein lived with his happy, close-knit family in the Polish town of Zawiercie. When the Germans invaded in 1939, the synagogue was locked, Jewish pupils were barred from schools and the Nazis began their sustained policy of cruelty and prejudice towards the Jewish community. Bornstein who was 17 years old at the time, was dragged away from his family and conscripted into forced labour in March 1941. He spent the next four years enduring physical and psychological torture, starvation and sickness, all of which he documents in his unflinching memoir 'Die Lange Nacht'.

At one point he describes breaking down after receiving a letter from his parents, passed on by a kind German soldier, telling him that their town had been ‘cleansed of Jews’ and that ‘like other transports before us we are probably going to the extermination camp at Auschwitz’.

During 1941 to 1945, Bornstein was incarcerated in seven concentration camps: Grünheide (now Sieroniowice), Markstädt, Fünfteichen (now Miłoszyce), Gross-Rosen, Flossenbürg, Leonberg and Mühldorf.

Death march and liberation

In 1945, Bornstein was forced on a death march through Germany to evade the advancing Red Army; a friend who walked with him, Yaacov Bloch, was shot dead by the SS when they arrived at the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. The Nazis wanted to transfer the surviving prisoners, including Bornstein, to the mountains of the Tyrol and there exterminate them.

Bornstein was liberated in Bavaria by American soldiers on 30 April 1945. In his book he writes "The Germans packed us into boxcars and transported us in the direction of Munich. While we were in transit the Americans mounted an offensive and captured the train tracks. We were free'. 'Everyone fled from the train, but the "SS murderers" drove the group back into the wagons and began killing indiscriminately."

Bornstein's parents and two younger sisters were murdered at Auschwitz. Of an extended family numbering about 72 at the start of the war, by its conclusion only six had survived including Bornstein and his sister Regina.

Post War

Bornstein went on to train, first as a dentist and then as a doctor after gaining a university place in Munich. He established a successful medical practice. He started collecting his memoirs with the intention of publishing an autobiography after discovering that many of his patients knew nothing about the Holocaust less than a generation after it happened, others thought it had been exaggerated and falsified.

Bornstein married Renee Koenig, herself a Holocaust survivor, in 1964 and they had three children: The English language version book was published in 2015. The book includes a prefaced letter by David Cameron and has been endorsed by Lord Finkelstein, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Jonathan Dimbleby and Dan Snow. It is one of the chosen books for Holocaust Memorial Day 2018.

A new German edition was published in 2020 with a foreword by Charlotte Knobloch.