In the corner, worn and scuffed, it lay,
A silent witness to a world gone gray.
Its leather cracked, its latches weak,
It held the echoes no voice could speak.
Ingrid de Vries, a child so small,
Born in Amsterdam, one crisp fall.
Her laughter danced in the autumn air,
A fleeting joy—beyond despair.
Her suitcase—packed with careful hands,
By those who dreamed of gentler lands.
A dress, a doll, a ribbon for hair,
A mother’s love—so tender, so rare.
From Amsterdam’s cobbled, familiar street,
To Auschwitz’s gates, where horrors meet.
Her name marked a journey, cruel and cold,
A story stolen—never told.
The suitcase waited, as children do,
For a reunion, it never knew.
Its seams held whispers, its corners pain,
Memories folded in fear’s refrain.
In Sobibor’s depths, the end was near,
For Ingrid’s short life, so pure, so dear.
Yet the suitcase remains a fragile thread,
A testament to the lives now dead.
In its silence, we hear her call,
To remember, to grieve, to honor them all.
For the suitcase of Ingrid de Vries still cries,
A fragment of hope that never dies.
During the investigation into Ingrid de Vries, it was discovered that the suitcase was in the Auschwitz museum, while Ingrid de Vries was murdered in Sobibor. According to the records, she was never in Auschwitz. It is a fact that puzzles Dutch Holocaust experts as well.
Inquiries at Auschwitz reveal that the suitcase was only discovered after the liberation of the concentration camp. “We have more items in our collection belonging to victims who were never in Auschwitz. However, we cannot conclusively determine how Ingrid de Vries’s suitcase ended up in Auschwitz,” said a spokesperson.
Various experts explain that belongings collected during the war were transported elsewhere within the Third Reich to be sorted and examined for valuables. Guido Abuys from Camp Westerbork elaborates: “There was a connection between Sobibor and Auschwitz. It is possible that everything was transported by train to Auschwitz to be sorted and processed there.”
Sources
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/174570/ingrid-de-vries
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