Sergio De Simone

Sergio De Simone (born Naples, Italy 29 November 1937; died Hamburg, Germany, 20 April 1945) was a Neapolitan child victim of the Holocaust who was arrested with his Jewish family while summering in Rijeka (now Croatia, then part of the Kingdom of Italy). He was then deported to Germany, where he was subjected to human experimentation and subsequently murdered.

At age seven, De Simone was one of the children of the Bullenhuser-Damm Massacre. Twenty children of disparate nationalities were selected by Joseph Mengele as human subjects for medical experimentation by Kurt Heissmeyer at the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg. As the Allies closed in on Hamburg and the perpetrators sought to destroy evidence of the experimentation, all 20 children, their four adult caretakers and 24 Soviet prisoners were taken to the basement of Hamburg's Bullenhuser Damm School and murdered.

Although almost initially lost in the wake of WWII, the story and identity of the children was ultimately uncovered through the research of German journalist, Günther Schwarberg (1926-2008) and his wife, attorney Barbara Hüsing. Today the children are remembered internationally; numerous books and films document their story, as well as a foundation: Children of Bullenhuser Damm.

On the street where Sergio De Simone's family lived in Naples, a memorial plaque and a pavement Stolperstein mark his life, which is commemorated annually on 27 January International Holocaust Remembrance Day.