Het Israelisch Weeshuis—The Israelite Orphanage

January 24, 2024

Het Israelisch Weeshuis—The Israelite Orphanage

Anyone familiar with my blog knows that the murder of children during the Holocaust touches me deeply. I know one of the excuses for murdering children was to avoid that they would take revenge. It always puzzled me. The only reason why you’d want to kill someone to avoid revenge is because—you knew what you did was wrong.

Using that same logic, why would you kill orphans because many of them would have no one to avenge?

A Jewish orphanage was a novelty for The Hague in the 19th century. Previously, family members cared for Jewish orphans, if necessary, with financial assistance from the Jewish community’s poor fund. They were not allowed to be housed in one of the non-Jewish orphanages in the city because of kashrut (the ritual dietary requirements).

After the start of the Second World War, the management had to keep the orphanage running under the most difficult of circumstances. On September 4, 1940, all refugees had to leave the coastal area by order of the German occupier. Four days later, the orphanage received news that German refugee children over the age of fifteen were also leaving The Hague. They left for the Central Israeli Orphanage in Utrecht, among other places.

In the late evening of March 5, 1943, Nazis raided the orphanage. All attendees, staff, and children—were forcibly taken from the orphanage, forced onto waiting trucks, and transported to Westerbork. Most of the children and the adults were sent to the Sobibor Extermination Camp on March 10, 1943. There the Nazis killed them on March 13, 1943.

The Nazis took the children and staff from the orphanage, including the director Heinrich Ullmann, his wife Zippora Abrahams, and their children Helene, Machiel, and Renée. Heinrich Ullmann was originally from Antwerp in Belgium.

The following photos are of some of the children.