History of Sorts

On 2 August 1942, 245 Jewish Catholics in the Netherlands were arrested. To the Nazis it didn’t matter if they had converted to Catholicism, in their eyes and according to their laws these people were still considered Jewish. Else, Michaelis was among them.

Else Michaelis was born in Berlin on March 30, 1889. Her father was an umbrella manufacturer. She lost both parents at an early age. At the age of thirty, she became a Catholic, and in 1928, she joined the sisters of St. Joseph in Trier. When taking the vows, she took the monastic name Mirjam. Until 1935, she worked at the Gertudis asylum in Saarlouis, where she became an accountant at St. Xavier’s alum in Berlin. From there, she left for the Dutch sisters of St. Joseph in Rotterdam-Overschie on 10 February 1938. On 9 September 1940, after all kinds of wanderings, she arrived at the Franciscan sisters of Nonnenwerth in Mariënwaard in Meerssen (near Maastricht).

In the early morning of 2 August 1942, Sister Mirjam was arrested. She was initially brought from Meerssen to the Aussenstelle in Maastricht.
She was then deported to Camp Amersfoort in Leusden and then transported to Camp Westerbork.

On the same day, 2 August 1942, Catholic Jews were deported everywhere in the Netherlands as reprisal for the letter of protest against the persecution of Jews that the Dutch bishops had sent to Seys-Inquart and which had been compulsorily read out in the Catholic churches at the end of July 1942. Among them is the famous philosopher Edith Stein. Luise Löwenfels was another Nun who was murdered on 9 August 1942; she had been a Sister in a convent in my hometown.

Sources

https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/217466/else-michaelis

https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/tijdlijn/c51b32ca-f233-45fe-9cd9-4f6ac4be643c

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