Alexander Hornemann was born in Holland in 1936. His father was an executive at the Philips Corporation. This position allowed the Hornemann family to be exempt from many restrictions placed on Jews during the Nazi occupation of Holland. In 1943, Germans arrested all of the Jews working in the Philips plant, including Alexander's father. These Jews were sent the Vught concentration camp. Because of their positions in the Philips corporation, they were given special privileges, including extra rations and being allowed to be in the same barracks as their wives and children. Alexander's mother was told by a member of the Philips Corporation that her family's safety would only be guaranteed if she joined her husband in the camp. In 1944, the Hornemann family was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Alexander was sent with his brother and mother to the women's barrack. His mother died from typhoid fever within three months of their arrival. Shortly after his mother's death, Alexander was chosen to be a subject in a series of medical experiments. He was transferred to the Neuengamme concentration camp in the fall of 1944. There, Alexander became extremely ill after being injected with tuberculosis cultures. In 1945, when the British were only three miles away from the camp, eight-year-old Alexander and the other children of the medical experiments were taken to a schoolhouse. They were injected with morphine and hanged.
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