Jacob was born on October 19,1934 in Amsterdam. He was the youngest child and only son of Rachel Morpurgo-Kijl and Abraham Morpurgo. He had 2 siblings, sisters Carla Celina Morpurgo and Vogelina Morpurgo.
This family was just a regular family, the Father Abraham, was a draper by trade. Mother Rachel is what they call nowadays a stay at home mum, or home maker.
On May 9,1941 Jacob was issued with a passport, which was valid for 2 years, until May 9,1943.
I don’t know the exact date but at some stage Jacob and his family traveled to Belgium. This must have been after his passport had expired. But that would not have mattered because he didn’t ravel there for his holidays. The Morpurgo family was send to the transit camp Mechelen in Belgium. The last day they were there was April 3,1944, because the following day they were all deported to Auschwitz on transport 24. Jacob, his mother and two sisters were murdered upon arrival on April 7,1944.
Abraham was deported to Mauthausen at some point, where he was murdered on February 1,1945. He reached the age of 43. There is a tradition in the Netherlands when a man reaches the age of 50, they say he has seen Abraham. This Abraham never got to celebrate that birthday.
Rachel Morpurgo-Kijl. born in Amsterdam, 21 July 1895. Murdered in Auschwitz, 7 April 1944. Reached the age of 48 years
Vogelina Morpurgo , Born in Amsterdam, 19 February 1925.Murdered in Auschwitz, 7 April 1944.Reached the age of 19 years.
Carla Celina Morpurgo, born in Amsterdam, 4 November 1930.Murdered in Auschwitz, 7 April 1944.Reached the age of 13 years. She had been a student at the Joods Lyceum in Amsterdam.
Vogeltje Morpurgo-van Engel, was the Mother of Abrham, and the Grandmother of Jacob,Vogelina and Carla. She was also on the same transport from Mechelen to Auschwitz and was murdered also on April 7,1944. She reached the age of 68. Her name means little bird.
On April 7,194, thirteen Dutch Jewish citizens were murdered in Auschwitz. Sic were from the same family.
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I am not a great believer in posting graphic images, but when it comes to the Holocaust there really is not always a way around it.
The picture above was taken in Ohrdruf shortly after it was liberated, it is actually one of the least graphic pictures.
The Ohrdruf camp was a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp, and the first Nazi camp liberated by US troops.
The camp was liberated on April 4, 1945, by the 4th Armored Division, led by Brigadier General Joseph F. H. Cutrona, and the 89th Infantry Division. It was the first Nazi concentration camp liberated by the U.S. Army. There is a scene in ‘the Band of Brothers’ where they liberate a camp, the name isn’t mentioned but I believe it to be Ohrdruf.
One of the 4th Armored Division soldiers, David Cohen, said: “We walked into a shed and the bodies were piled up like wood. There are no words to describe it. The smell was overpowering and unforgettable.”
The horrific nature of what the 4th Armored Division had discovered led General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, to visit the camp on April 12, with Generals George S. Patton and Omar Bradley. After his visit, Eisenhower cabled General George C. Marshall, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, describing his trip to Ohrdruf:
“The most interesting—although horrible—sight that I encountered during the trip was a visit to a German internment camp near Gotha. The things I saw beggar description. While I was touring the camp I encountered three men who had been inmates and by one ruse or another had made their escape. I interviewed them through an interpreter. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said that he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.'”
Ohrdruf had also made a powerful impression on battle hardened Patton, who described it as “one of the most appalling sights that I have ever seen.” He recounted in his diary that:
“In a shed … was a pile of about 40 completely naked human bodies in the last stages of emaciation. These bodies were lightly sprinkled with lime, not for the purposes of destroying them, but for the purpose of removing the stench.
When the shed was full—I presume its capacity to be about 200, the bodies were taken to a pit a mile from the camp where they were buried. The inmates claimed that 3,000 men, who had been either shot in the head or who had died of starvation, had been so buried since the 1st of January.
When we began to approach with our troops, the Germans thought it expedient to remove the evidence of their crime. Therefore, they had some of the slaves exhume the bodies and place them on a mammoth griddle composed of 60-centimeter railway tracks laid on brick foundations. They poured pitch on the bodies and then built a fire of pinewood and coal under them. They were not very successful in their operations because there was a pile of human bones, skulls, charred torsos on or under the griddle which must have accounted for many hundreds.”
John W. Becket was another soldier who entered Ohrdruf that day. On the 17th of April he documented his experiences and impressions.
“As we came along our way we saw a sign pointing to ‘OHRDRUF,’ 15 kilometers from here, that is where the Germans had a concentration camp. What we saw was enough and at that it was pretty well cleaned up.”
“… an MP captain was questioning one of the liberated prisoners. He was Polish, spoke German, & as he related it was translated to us by the captain.” The prisoner showed them places where prisoners were beaten, tortured, and executed. Beckett wrote, “As the Polish prisoner talked, tears seemed to come to his eyes but he fought them down.”
“All such atrocities that were known to savages & Roman times & here it exists today in 1945, how is it possible, how can a man treat another as such. The question perhaps can’t be answered and I pray they will receive their just rewards, both here & in the life to come. Practically the whole battery went to see it & Patton wanted as many of his men that could go to see it & know that it is real & not propaganda. Its real, all too grotesquely real.”
Bruce Nickols was yet another soldier who recalled on what he saw that day. In 1998 he wrote a report on it.
“Fifty years have passed since this day but I recall my first impression of the camp called Ohrdruf which I found later was associated administratively with the camp called Buchenwald. Ohrdruf was named after the town of the same name, apparently locally famous for its history of being the place where Johann Sebastian Bach composed some of his works..
April 4, 1945 REPORT ON SURRENDER OF THE GERMAN CONCENTRATION CAMP AT OHRDRUF: The date was April 4, 1945 and I was on a patrol as a member of the I &R platoon attached to the Headquarters company of 354th Infantry Regiment, of the 89th Infantry Division, 3rd Army U.S.A.
As I recall it was a beautiful spring morning marred by the fact that we were under mortar attack. I remember very well my surprise when I observed Brigadier General Robertson strolling upright down the road. He was an elderly avunular gentleman who thought nonchalance under fire characterized the general officer’s role model.
I was impressed but remained prone in the drainage ditch until the atttack ceased. Shortly thereafter, an acquaintance let it be known that a camp had been liberated further up the hill.
Fifty years have passed since this day but I recall my first impression of the camp called Ohrdruf which I found later was associated administratively with the camp called Buchenwald. Ohrdruf was named after the town of the same name, apparently locally famous for its history of being the place where Johann Sebastian Bach composed some of his works.
From the outside, the camp was unremarkable. It was surrounded by a high barbed wire fence and had a wooden sign which read, “Arbeit Macht Frei.” The swinging gate was open, and a young soldier, probably an SS guard, lay dead diagonally across the entrance. The camp was located inthe forest and was surrounded by a thick grove of pine and other conifers. The inside of the camp was composed of a large 100 yards square central area which was surrounded by one story barracks painted green which appeared to house 60-100 inmates.
As we stepped into the compound one was greeted by an overpowering odor of quick-lime, dirty clothing, feces, and urine. Laying in the center of the square were 60-70 dead prisoners clad in striped clothing and in disarray. They had reportedly been machine gunned the day before because they were too weak to march to another camp. The idea was for the SS and the prisoners to avoid the approaching U.S. Army and the Russians.
Adjacent to the”parade ground” was a small shed which was open on one side. Inside,were bodies stacked in alternate directions as one would stack cord wood, and each layer was covered with a sprinkling of quick-lime. I did not see him, but someone told me that there had been a body of a dead American aviator in the shed. This place reportedly had been used for punishment, and the inmates were beaten on their back and heads with a shovel. My understanding is that all died following this abuse.
I visited some of the surrounding barracks and found live inmates who had hidden during the massacre. They were astounded and appeared to be struggling to understand what was happening. Some were in their 5 tier bunks and somewhere wandering about.
This was the first camp to be “liberated” by the Allied armies in Germany. Ohrdruf was visited by Generals Eisenhower, Patton and Bradley and there are photographs of them observing the bodies of the machine gunned inmates. According to Eisenhower, Patton had refused to visit the punishment shed as he feared he would become ill. He did vomit at a later time.
Further into the camp was evidence of an attempt to exhume and burn large numbers of bodies. There was a gallows, although I really cannot remember whether I saw it or not. I don’t remember leaving the camp. I recall being numb after seeing the camp. I had just turned 20 years old and I had read the biographical “Out of the Night.” It was a pale and inadequate picture of a German concentration camp by a refugee German author.
I recall becoming very upset when we got back to our quarters, but the whole experience was far beyond my understanding. I wrote a letter to my parents describing the experience which was read at a local gathering of business men. It was widely disbelieved.
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2 ,however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thanks
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Robert William Gary Moore was born in Belfast on 4 April 1952,the son of Winnie, a housewife, and Robert Moore, a promoter who ran the Queen’s Hall ballroom in Hollywood. He grew up near Belfast’s Stormont Estate with four siblings.
He credited his father for getting him started in music. When Moore was six years old, his father invited him onstage to sing “Sugartime” with a showband at an event he had organised, which first sparked his interest in music. His father bought him his first guitar, a second-hand Framus acoustic, when Moore was 10 years old. Though left-handed, he learned to play the instrument right-handed. Not long after, he formed his first band, The Beat Boys, who mainly performed Beatles songs. He later joined Platform Three and The Method, amongst others. Around this time, he befriended guitarist Rory Gallagher, who often performed at the same venues as him. He…
I was watching a documentary last night called” Lost Home movies of Nazi Germany”. The documentary contained footage taken by German civilians and German soldiers.
Some of the footage was truly horrendous but other parts of the footage appeared on first glance quite pleasing. For example it showed a young attractive woman dancing topless for some German soldiers.
However when I thought about it later and put it in context, those pleasing images suddenly became very disturbing. The film material was taken in the USSR during operation Barbarossa , and the young woman dancing was a Gypsy girl. It occurred to me that she wasn’t dancing half naked because she enjoyed it, she was dancing because she thought it would please the monsters that had invaded her village. In her culture as in many other cultures women would not show themselves naked in front of men, unless it was their…
The last few years have been a strange year for a great number of countries across the world, especially when it comes to education. There is no doubt that the Covid 19 pandemic will have consequences down the line for many students.
However most of them when they go back to school, they will still see their fellow school friend and students.
During the Holocaust a great number Jewish children were killed. In the Netherlands 75 % of all Hews were murdered. Yet the Nazis still created the illusion, that life was reasonably ‘normal’ for the Jews. Jewish children were still going to school, although their curriculum was greatly reduced. Even extra curricular activities were still encouraged.
This to me is one of the more sickening of the Nazi occupation, they gave people false hope. I have said this before that the Nazis had never been abled to succeed with…
Helmuth Hübner, was a young member of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), he lived in the St. Georg Branch in Hamburg.
His short life was shaped by the rise of fascism in Germany. The Nazis changed nearly every aspect of everyday life for Germans, and Helmut was no exception. He had been a devoted Boy Scout, but he was forced to become part of the Hitler Youth, when the Nazis banned the Boy scouts organization in 1935. Helmut did not feel comfortable with this and quit the Hitler youth in 1938,aged 13.
He was disturbed by participation of the Hitler Youth in Kristallnacht.After Hübener finished secondary school in 1941, he began an apprentice training course at the Hamburg Social Welfare Authority He met other apprentices there, one of whom, Gerhard Düwer, (whom he would later recruit into his resistance movement). In 1941 at a sauna…
I wish I could tell you a long story about the Rooselaar family, but I can’t. However the few things I do know I will tell you because it is a chilling tale of evil and destruction.
The Rooselaar family lived in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. They were moved or rather deported to Westerbork at some stage. I know this because on March 30th 1943 the whole family were put on transport from Westerbork to Sobibor. They arrived in Sobibor on April 2nd 1943, where they were all murdered upon arrival.
The family were:
Father -Hartog Rooselaar born in Amsterdam, on 23 July 1900.Reached the age of 42 years, occupation: Furniture maker.
Mother -Anna Rooselaar-Presser born in Amsterdam, 3 July 1904.Reached the age of 38 years
Son-Salomon Rooselaar born in Amsterdam, 14 September 1930.Reached the age of 12 years.
Son-Barend Rooselaar born in Amsterdam, 30 June 1932. Reached the age of 10 years.
Daughter-Estella Rooselaar born in Amsterdam, 9 July 1936. Reached the age of 6 years.
Son-Eduard Rooselaar born in Amsterdam, 6 October 1938.Reached the age of 4 years.
All 6 members of the Rooselaar family were put on the March 3rd 1943 transport to Sobibor, but they weren’t the only ones. In total there were 1246 people who were on that transport.
On April 2nd 1943,1252 Dutch Jews were murdered in Sobibor. 113 were 18 years or younger. Among them were, Jacob de Vries born in The Hague on April 13.1941. He was 11 days away from his 2nd birthday when he was murdered.
Isidore Kiek born in Hilversum, 17 February 1932 .Reached the age of 11 years.
The oldest of those 133 children would have been 97 today. This means they all could have been still alive on April 2,2022.
On October 14, 1943, some 300 Jewish labourers at the camp rose in revolt and killed several SS supervisors and Ukrainian guards. Many inmates were killed during the rebellion or in the attempt to escape. All who remained were executed the following day. The Nazis dismantled the installations and planted the area with trees. Only about 50 Sobibor prisoners ultimately survived the war.
Imagine if the camp had remained open until the end of the war? More then 34,000 Dutch Jews were murdered in Sobibor which closed in November 1943. It had only be operational for just over 18 months.
Just over 56,000 Dutch Jews were murdered in Auschwitz ,which closed in January 1945.
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2 ,however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thanks
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the paypal link. Many thanks
How did become the first day of the 4th month, aka April 1, the day of trying to fool people or to play pranks on them. Since I come from a long line of pranksters and it appears it has transferred into the newest generations of the family, I always have a slight sense of paranoia on this day. They are all out to get me.
The origin of April Fools’ day seems to be a bit vague. Some say that it started in 1582, when France changed from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. The switch took place because France has decided to commence their New Year with the Spring Equinox, which takes place around April 1, not all of France’s citizens accepted this change and were therefore called April Fools.
Another theory is that April 1st became the fool’s holiday due to Geoffrey Chaucer’s 14th century collection…
No one can deny that the Nazis committed unspeakable atrocities during World War 2,against civilians. But the Nazis were not the only ones.
On October 21, 1944, the Soviet Red Army was steamrolling the German army on the Eastern Front, reaching the town of Nemmersdorf, at the time it was a German rural town in East Prussia, though today the town finds is part of Russia and is called Mayakovskoye.
The 2nd Battalion, 25th Guards Tank Brigade, belonging to the 2nd Guards Tank Corps of the 11th Guards Army, crossed the Angerapp bridge and established a bridgehead on the western bank of the Rominte river on 21 October 1944. The German forces tried to retake the bridge, but several attacks were repelled by the Soviet tanks and the supporting infantry. During an air attack, a number of Soviet soldiers took shelter in an improvised bunker that was already occupied by…
Josef Mengele was born in Günzburg on 16 March 1911, the oldest of three sons of Walburga (née Hupfauer) and Karl Mengele. His two younger brothers were Karl Jr. and Alois.
There is an eerie coincidence here, Alois was also the name of the Father of the man he came to admire and serve, Adolf Hitler.
I will not go too deep into the crimes of Josef Mengele as such, because so much has already been written about him, even I have done several pieces in the past. His Father Karl Mengele, a prosperous manufacturer of farming implements. In 1935 Josef got a PhD in physical anthropology at the University of Munich. He also held a doctoral degree in genetic medicine.
A privileged and educated man and yet he could not see how inhumane he was. Or maybe he didn’t want to see. With a slight flick of the finger…
History of Sorts 
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