On 5 July 1939 he was photographed for the last time at the entrance to PKO Bank, located at 64 Krakowska Avenue (Polish: Krakowskie Przedmieście) in Lublin.
On 1 September 1939 Henio was supposed to start first grade, but that day, Nazi Germany invaded Poland.
Shmuel, Henio's father, a teacher by profession and Chairman of the Poale Zion movement in Lublin, was appointed by the Judenrat to be the manager of the post office at 2nd Kowalska Street.
This role allowed him, apparently, to make contact with the Polish underground (which delivered him forbidden information and news); to correspond with his young brother, Yehuda (Leon) Zytomirski, who had already emigrated to Palestine in 1937; to be in contact with Yitzhak Zuckerman and Zivia Lubetkin[2] from the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto and with Hashomer Hatzair people in Vilnius; and to correspond with Nathan Schwalb,[3] Director of the Jewish Agency offices and Hehalutz movement in Geneva, who aided hundreds of youth movement activists in the Nazi-occupied territories.
On 16 March 1942, the transports in freight trains from Lublin District to extermination camps began as part of "Operation Reinhard".
Among them were Henio's mother and grandmother, as well as two of his aunts – Esther and Rachel – who were murdered in Belzec's gas chambers shortly after arrival.
On 22 April the SS held another selection: about 2,500 to 3,000 people without work permits were taken first to Majdanek and from there to the Krepiec forest which is about 15 km from Lublin.
Henio's father, Shmuel Zytomirski, was transferred to a forced labor camp outside Majdanek, where the prisoners built a sports stadium for the SS.
From the camp he managed to send a few last letters to his brother Yehuda in Palestine and to the Zionist delegation in Istanbul.
On 3 November 1943 the massive extermination of all remaining Jewish prisoners in Majdanek and the other camps in Lublin District took place.
According to the center's director, Tomasz Pietrasiewicz, the main idea of the project is as follows: "It is unacceptable to remember the faces and names of 40,000 people.
A shy smile, white shirt with a collar, colored shorts, side haircut, striped socks… Henio.
Lublin postal authorities have to deal with full sacks of letters which are sent back to senders with the post seal: "Unknown Addressee".
The walk ends with a silent prayer at the foot of a street lamp, which is the last remnant of the pre-war Jewish town of Lublin serving as a memorial candle.
The idea of the project was born when one of the survivors noticed that Majdanek Museum does not inform the visitors and does not show them the lives of the children in the camp.
Through this exhibition the Majdanek museum enables pupils to turn the knowledge which is learnt in school into real education that concerns what had happened in "The Camp World".
We learn this only from what was written on a slip of paper which was found in Majdanek, hidden in a girl's shoe: The girl, Elżunia, who wrote the note was nine years old, and she was singing the song to herself to a melody of a famous Polish nursery rhyme (in Polish: "Z popielnika na Wojtusia iskiereczka mruga").
Camp life brought entirely new experiences, created new concepts for children such as: hunger, selection, gas chamber – as well as daily contact with evil and death.
The following words are described in it: appeal, barrack, gas chamber, crematorium, camp, selection, transport.
When one leans into the well, one can hear from the depths of the earth a story narrated by an adult about their stay in camp when they were children.