The worst crime the Nazis committed was the murder of children. An estimated 1.5 million children were murdered by the Nazis. This number is just an estimate, although I have no data to back this up, I believe the number is higher.
Not all children who died on the transport are included in this number. Nor are the children who were murdered before they even went on the train. There are reports of SS officers murdering babies by smashing their heads against walls or other surfaces.
Then there are the babies who were born in the camps, some would have been accidentally smothered by their mothers to keep them quiet, I don’t judge these mothers, and I never will, these children were also victims of the Nazi regime. I could write so much about the children, but at the moment I am just not emotionally capable to do so.
All I will do today is post pictures of children who were murdered. I will not even put all the names down of the children, I really should be posting pictures of men and women in their 80s and 90s, because all these children could still be alive.
I will do one story of the child who was more than likely the last Dutch child victim of the evil of the Nazi regime.
All I want today is for you to look into these youngsters‘ eyes and pledge that you will do everything in your power to stop an event like the Holocaust, so it will never happen again. We owe it to them.
Rika Overdijk
Thousands of people gathered at Dam Square in Amsterdam, on 7 May 1945 to celebrate arrival the of the liberators. While the local citizens celebrated on Dam Square, German soldiers of the Kriegsmarine were trapped inside the Groote Club (Grand Club) building, a large building at the corner of the Dam and Kalverstraat. In the nearby Paleisstraat, local forces arrested two German soldiers. One of them refused to surrender his weapon and fired a shot. German soldiers then appeared in the windows, on the balcony and the roof of the Groote Club and started firing into the crowd with machine guns.
On 7 May 1945, Joop van Beek (15) moved from Barentszstraat to Dam Square: it was rumoured that the Canadians would arrive there. “When we arrived at Dam Square, there was a festive atmosphere. There was even a barrel organ playing,” he recalled later.
The festivities turned into a bloodbath.
Some people hid behind a camera car that had driven into the city with the Canadians, and also behind that barrel organ. Joop van Beek heard when he came home that his neighbour, Rika Overdijk, had died. Rika was only 12 years old when she was killed by bullets at 3 p.m. She was the only child of electrician Dirk Overdijk19 and Rimkien Ossel.
sources
History of Sorts 