This story has torn my heart open. I can’t tell you too much about Johannes van der Hoek all I can tell you is that he was born on November 6, 1942, in Westerbork. He must have been placed on a transport to Auschwitz, straight after his birth because, he was murdered there on November 9, 1942, with his mother and his 2-year-old sister, Johanna, just three days after he was born.
His father was murdered a few months later, April 30, 1943. also in Auschwitz.
The very sad irony is that on Johannes’s birthday, November 6, 1942, the Soviet POWs mutinied and escaped from Birkenau. Under cover of fog and falling darkness, they forced their way past the SS guard posts into a part of the Birkenau camp, still under construction, that was not fenced. However, the majority of them were shot or caught during the escape.
Why a…
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History of Sorts 