An estimated 1,800 Dutch citizens attempted to escape to England during World War II. The majority chose to travel via neighbouring countries, while a minority went straight across the North Sea. Many different vessels were used and at least 204 people made the crossing successfully. Most of the attempts were made in 1941 when the Dutch coast was still somewhat accessible. One crossing from Scheveningen was undertaken on 16 March 1941: seven young fishermen from Scheveningen journeyed to England on the shrimp barge Anna KW 96. All of them subsequently enlisted in the Royal Netherlands Navy and survived the war. Four Engelandvaarders (Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema-aka Soldier of Orange, Chris Krediet, Peter Tazalaar and Bob van der Stok) started Contact Holland as a way of improving contact between London and the Dutch resistance. Reliable radio communications were crucial. Dutchmen who had previously ventured across the North Sea as Engelandvaarders were trained as secret agents, ready to return to the Netherlands armed with instructions and Morse code equipment. These secret agents then had to be dropped off on the coast of Scheveningen along with radio gear. Hazelhoff Roelfzema, Krediet and Tazelaar carried out two landings off the coast of Scheveningen during the winter of 1941-42. A number of agents were arrested in the spring of 1942; Anton van der Waals, the most significant Dutch traitor in World War Two, played an important role in this. The Allied secret agents were captured and forced to continue to communicate with England through messages written by the Germans. This was the start of the Englandspiel. Not realising that the agents were sending their messages while in the enemy’s clutches, the British continued sending secret agents to the continent. Upon arrival in the Netherlands, they were immediately captured by the Germans. At the end of the war, most of the secret agents were deported from the Netherlands; 54 did not survive the Englandspiel.
Two of these men were captured respectively 80 and 81 years ago today on 9 March 1942 and 9 March 1943.
Thijs Taconis born in Rotterdam, on 28 March 28, 1914—Mauthausen, was a secret agent with the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. On 15 May 1940, he arrived in England on a fishing boat. In January 1941 he travelled to Canada to enlist. On his return to England, he started his training with the SOE on 28 May 1941. After he was parachuted into the Netherlands on 7 November 1941, he was arrested on 9 March 1942. He was deported to Mauthausen via internment in Kamp Haaren. Here he was executed on 6 September 1944.
Pieter Arnoldus Arendse,
Born: 14 February 1912 The Hague. Dutch agent of the SOE/Plan-Holland. Parachuted into the South of Ermelo and was arrested the same day 9 March 1943. He was executed on 6 or 7 September 1944, in Mauthausen.
The aforementioned Antonius van der Waals (Rotterdam, 11 October was a traitor and a spy for the German Sicherheitsdienst (SD). He played a leading role in the Englandspiel, in which at least 83 resistance members were arrested, thanks to him. After the war, he was sentenced to death for this betrayal. Van der Waals was executed on 26 January 1950 on the Waalsdorpervlakte.
On 19 February 1941, the German Grüne Polizei stormed into the Koco ice cream salon in the Van Woustraat. In the fight that ensued, several police officers were wounded. The Nazi authorities did not put up with the attack on their police officers. To put an end to the unrest, they decided to hold a raid the weekend of 22 and 23 February. Revenge for that and other fights came and a large-scale pogrom was undertaken by the Germans. 425 Jewish men, ages 20–35 were taken hostage and imprisoned in Kamp Schoorl and eventually sent to the Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps.
The February raids were only a prelude to much worse to come. These men were only the first of some 102,000 Jews from the Netherlands murdered during the Holocaust, a figure that represents 75 per cent of the Dutch Jewish population. Himmler, Seyss-Inquart and Rauter decided to set an example: the first raid on Jews became a fact. On Saturday afternoon, 22 February 1941, a column of German trucks appeared near Waterlooplein. The area was cordoned off, and men were seized in Amsterdam. February 1941 were the first Nazi raid on Jews in Western Europe.
Something that recently became known is that most of the Dutch prisoners, were taken to the Hartheim gas chamber for killing. Their families received false causes of death. Assumptions surfaced that the men had died of lead poisoning in the mines.
Historian Wally de Lang reported 108 murders at Hartheim Castle, a nearby Mauthausen Concentration Camp. Hartheim was also one of the T4 euthanasia centres.
Wally de Lang made it her mission in 2017 to discover the fates of each and every one of the men taken that day. “It was impossible for me to comprehend that 400 people of this town just disappeared without anyone knowing who they were,” said de Lang, who has spent several decades writing about Jewish history in the Netherlands.
The owners of the Koco Ice Cream Parlour were severely punished. Ernst Cahn was executed by the Nazis on the Waalsdorpervlakte, in the dunes near The Hague, on 3 March 1941. Alfred Kohn died in Auschwitz.
The arrests and brutal treatment shocked the population of Amsterdam. To respond, Communist activists organized a general strike on 25 February and were joined by many other worker organizations. Major factories, the transportation system, and most public services came to a standstill. After three days, the Germans brutally suppressed the strike, crippling the Dutch resistance organization.
The February strike was considered the first public protest against the Nazis in occupied Europe and the only mass protest against the deportation of Jews to be organized by non-Jews.
Mail was allowed to be sent from the concentration camps under strict censorship. It had to be written in the German language and the number of lines was limited. Only simple information about health and daily life was allowed. The Blockführer had to read and sign the mail and then it went to the censorship office. Jews were forced to write that they were in a labour camp to reassure those left behind. This mail was collected in bulk and sent to Berlin.
Meier Vieijra was born on 26 December 1918 in Nieuwe Kerkstraat in Amsterdam. He was the son of Jacob Vieijra and Rachel Simons and had two brothers, Joop (Joseph) and Piet (Louis), and three sisters Elisabeth, Clara and Branca. Like his father and his brothers, Meier was a tailor by trade. They all worked together in his father’s company.
• On 9 August 1939, he married Blanche Nabarro. • On Saturday afternoon, 22 February 1941, a convoy of German trucks arrived near Waterlooplein. Meier was one of the men who were arrested during the raid in Amsterdam. • On 28 February 1941, he arrived in Buchenwald (prisoner no. 4754). • Then he was deported to Mauthausen on 22 May 1941.
Meier sent six letters and postcards to his wife Blanche from Buchenwald.
Below is the translated text of one of those letters
31 August 1941
Dear Blanche,
Thank you for your letters and money orders. Today I have the opportunity to write to you. Blanche, please thank Aunt Aggelen for the money order. You ask in your letter if you can send me 15 RM weekly. It is probably allowed. Blanche, if it will be a boy, name him Jacob Ben Meier. If it is a girl, name her Rachel…
Please send regards to the entire family and especially to Clara and Chellie, and consider yourself warmly greeted and kissed by your loving Meier Vieijra.
Dear Parents and Mother-in-Law! How are you? Well, I hope. Please write to me sometimes.
Regards, Meier Vieijr
The handwriting in the letter was not Meier’s. It had been re-written and was also censored. The text that was censored apparently expressed condolences on the death of Samuel Vieijra. Samuel, Meier’s uncle, his father’s brother, was murdered on 7 August 1941 in Mauthausen. Only the signature was original.
Even the written word was controlled, monitored and silenced by the Nazis.
On 17 September 1941, Meier Vieijra died from the consequences of his hard life in Mauthausen. He may not have been gassed or shot but he was murdered nonetheless.
Blanche gave birth to a baby daughter on 2 October 1941 and called her Rachel. In May 1943, Blanche and her daughter went into hiding in Oldebroek with the Flier family. Both Blanche and Rachel survived the Holocaust.
On 18 December, I had the privilege to interview Racheli Kreisberg, the granddaughter of Simon Wiesenthal.
Anyone who has an interest in history, specifically Holocaust history, will know who Simon Wiesenthal is, but in case there are a few people who don’t know.
Simon Wiesenthal was born on the 31st of December 1908, in Buczacz (nowadays in Ukraine). He graduated from the gymnasium in 1928 and completed his architecture studies at the Czech Technical University in Prague in 1932.
He survived the Janowska concentration camp, the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, a death march to Chemnitz, Buchenwald, and the Mauthausen concentration camp.
In May 1945, Wiesenthal, just barely having survived the hardships, was liberated by a US Army unit. Severely malnourished, he weighed less than 45kg by this time. He recovered and was reunited with his wife Cyla by the end of 1945. 89 members of both their extended families were murdered during the Holocaust.
Immediately after the liberation, Simon Wiesenthal started to assist the War Crimes Section of the US Army and later worked for the Army’s Office of Strategic Services and Counter-Intelligence Corps. He headed the Jewish Central Committee of the US Zone of Austria and was also involved with the Bricha, the clandestine immigration of Holocaust survivors from Europe to Mandate Palestine.
Simon Wiesenthal dedicated his life to tracking down former Nazis and their collaborators. He established the Jewish Documentation Center in Linz (1947–1954), with the purpose to assemble evidence of Nazi war crimes.
Simon Wiesenthal started searching for Adolf Eichmann shortly after the war when it had become clear that he was the architect of the final solution, i.e. to annihilate the Jewish People. Simon Wiesenthal was several times very close to catching Adolf Eichmann; however, the latter managed to escape or avoid attending events at which he was expected. In the mid-1950s, Simon Wiesenthal donated his entire archive to Yad Vashem, except for the Eichmann file. He was instrumental in providing the Israeli Mossad with an early picture of Adolf Eichmann. In addition, Simon Wiesenthal provided evidence that Adolf Eichmann lived in Buenos Aires under the name of Ricardo Clement. Eichmann was captured by Mossad on the 11th of May 1960. He was sentenced to death and hung on the night of the 1st of June 1962; his body was incinerated and his ashes were scattered outside Israel’s territorial seawater.
In the interview with Racheli, we briefly discussed her grandfather but focused more on her work for The Simon Wiesenthal Genealogy Geolocation Initiative (SWIGGI). It links genealogy and geolocation data in a novel way. They currently have the country of the Netherlands, the cities Lodz and Vienna and the Shtetls Skala Podolska, Nadworna and Solotwina. SWIGGI shows all the residents of a given house and links residents to their family trees. Simon Wiesenthal’s Holocaust Memorial pages are developed for Holocaust victims.
There are links below, and I urge you to look at them. If possible, please consider givIng a donation to this very noble and well-worthy cause.
The number of victims of the Holocaust is just so difficult to fathom. When you talk about millions it just becomes a number it is just something that our human mind can’t comprehend.
It is often better to remember those who were murdered, one by one. Today I am remembering Jesaia Swart. He was murdered today 80 years ago in Mauthausen.
He was the youngest child of Gabriel Swart and Sara Peper. He married Saartje Levitus, the eldest child of Heiman Levitus and Esther Kosses, on 4 August 1909. Jesaja and Saartje had ten children: Hijman, Nathan, Marcus, Margaretha, Izak Jacob, and five children who survived the war. The family lived at several addresses in Amsterdam but lived at 43 Czaar Peterstraat from 1938 onward.
Jesaja Swart was arrested on 9 June 1942 and transferred to the concentration camp at Amersfoort via the house of detention on the Amstelveenseweg. After being tortured extensively, he was deported to Mauthausen, where he was murdered on October 14, 1942.
Born in Amsterdam, 15 February 1884. Reached the age of 58 years. Occupation: Rag peddler.
The Englandspiel was a counter-espionage operation set up by the Germans that lasted from March 1942 to April 1944. Secret agents of the SOE who had been dropped over the Netherlands were often arrested immediately upon landing and forced to maintain radio contact with England. Despite hidden warnings in their broadcast messages, British intelligence continued to send secret agents, eventually over 50 of them were murdered in captivity. The majority in Mauthausen.
Churchill had set up the SOE in 1940 to “set Europe ablaze”, by helping the resistance movements in occupied countries. At its peak it had some 10,000 men and 3,200 women working for it, running agents and arranging resistance and sabotage behind enemy lines. The organisation had many successes, especially in France, but it had some failures, of which the disaster in the Netherlands was by far the worst.
Recently released records show that poor leadership of the Dutch section of SOE sowed the seeds of disaster. In the vital period Major Charles Blizard, who used the codename “Blunt”, headed the Dutch section, though he was replaced by Major Bingham.
Under SOE’s “Plan for Holland,wa” agents started to be dropped into the Netherlands in 1941. Among one of the first teams parachuted in, on a November night, were Thijs Taconis, a trained saboteur, and his wireless operator, Hubert Lauwers. The German security police then penetrated the embryonic Dutch underground movement and a stool pigeon informed on Lauwers, who was captured early in March 1942.
Portrait of secret agent Thijs Taconis, killed by the Englandspiel. Born 28 March 1914, in Rotterdam. Sent by SOE, parachuted and arrested on 9 March 1942. Died 6 September 1944 at Mauthausen.
He was forced to transmit messages to England but was confident that SOE in London would spot a false security check. Unfortunately, it did not. Shortly afterwards it told him to receive another agent. “Watercress” arrived on 27 March. He was captured and the process went on as further agents arrived. The lack of radio security checks was ignored by SOE in London. It was even stupid enough to radio back to one operator: “You ought to use your security checks,” thereby alerting the Germans to the existence of such checks.
The German operation was called Englandspiel—the England Game—and its chief strategist was Lieutenant Colonel HJ Giskes. He reported daily to Hitler through Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr—German intelligence. By April 1943, the Germans controlled 18 radio channels back in London.
H.J Giskes
For about 15 months, SOE’s Dutch section planned the creation of resistance in the Netherlands, recruiting and training agents, sending and receiving intelligence and other wireless traffic, the dispatch of supply-laden aircraft, all the time confident that a vigorous underground movement was being built.
A memo of May 1943 says: “The sabotage organisation as planned is now complete. It comprises five groups containing 62 cells and totalling some 420 men. These groups are now well equipped with stores and are ready for action.”
In reality, the entire operation was compromised. The files reveal that, up to October 1943, SOE sent 56 agents to the Netherlands of which 43 were given a “reception” by the Germans. Of the 56 only eight survived. Of those captured 36 were executed in September 1944, at the Mauthausen concentration camp. Eleven RAF aircraft were shot down in the process. (A later War Cabinet note observed that RAF losses on these missions had been “abnormally high”.)
The phoney network was finally revealed to London after the escape from Haaren concentration camp in August 1943 of two SOE agents, Pieter Diepenbroek and Johan Ubbink – “Sprout” and “Chive”.
Files in the Public Record Office contain the debriefings of “Sprout” and “Chive”, which make clear that the Germans had controlled the Dutch “Underground” movement for more than 18 months.
The Germans realised that their double-cross network had been blown. Giskes signed off with this message to London on April Fool’s Day 1944:
“Messrs, Blunt, Bingham and Successors, Ltd. London. The last time you are trying to make business in the Netherlands without our assistance. We think this rather unfair in view of our long and successful co-operation as your sole agents. But never mind, when you come to pay a visit to the Continent you may be assured that you will be received with the same care and result as all those you sent before. So long!”
The files also show the courageous “Sprout” and “Chive” were locked up in Brixton Prison upon their return to London in case they were German double agents.
“Sprout” and “Chive” were convinced that the Germans had help from Major Bingham, then the Dutch section’s head. “No one else was in such a good position to `play ball’ with the enemy,” Chive told his MI5 interviewers.
The British author of the memo was clearly angered by the assertion. The two had had the temerity to make an allegation against a British officer, “which it is fair to say they have failed to substantiate”. The two were later released and allowed to join the Dutch Armed Forces.
The SOE post-mortem examination shows that serious doubts had been raised about the network as early as July 1942 but the warning had been ignored by the section’s chief. “Not only, however, does there appear to have been a failure to look the facts squarely in the face but also failure when suspicion had once been aroused to test suspicions.”
England game. Interception of dropped weapons. SD men Hahn and Eenstroth look over the dumped containers with illegal weapons, which were dropped by the RAF shortly before.
Major Blizard had gone by the time of the denouement. Major Bingham was posted in Australia.
The Germans’ chief gain from the fiasco was that until just before D-Day they thwarted all attempts to build a Dutch resistance movement into Allied plans and to equip it ready for action.
Several files on the SOE in the Netherlands are still withheld.
Below are just some of those brave men. These few were all murdered in Mauthausen on 6 September 1944.
Portrait of secret agent Klaas van der Bor, killed by the Englandspiel. Born: May 24, 1913. Broadcast by: SOE/Plan-Holland. Parachuting and arrest: February 16, 1943. Died: 6 September 1944, in MauthausenPortrait of Roelof Christiaan Jongelie, killed by the Englandspiel Born: 25 February 1903, in Amsterdam. Broadcast: SOE/Plan-Holland. Parachute and arrest: September 24, 1942. Died: 6 September 1944, in Mauthausen.Portrait of Leonardus Cornelis Theodoris Andriega, killed by the Englandspiel Born: 22 November 1913, in The Hague. Broadcast: SOE. Parachute: 29 March 1942. Arrest: 28 April 1942. Died: 6 September 1944, at MauthausenPortrait of Charles Hofstede, killed by the Englandspiel Born: 17 December 1918, in The Hague. Broadcast: SOE/Plan-Holland. Parachute and arrest: 24 October 1942. Died: September 6, 1944, at Mauthausen.Portrait of Aart Hendrik Alblas, killed by the Englandspiel Born: 20 September 1918, in Middelharnis. Broadcast: MI-6/CID. Parachute: 5 July 1941. Arrest : 16 July 1942. Died: 6 September 1944, at Mauthausen.Portrait of Willem van der Wilder, killed by the Englandspiel Born: 1 July 1910, in Kelichem. Broadcast: SOE/Plan-Holland. Parachuting and arrest: 18 February 1943. Died: 6 September 1944 at Mauthausen.Portrait of Pieter van der Wilden, killed by the Englandspiel Born: 8 May 1914, in Haarlem. Broadcast: SOE/Plan-Holland. Parachuting and arrest: 18 February 1943. Died: 6 September 1944, at Mauthausen.Portrait of Johannes Cornelis Buizer, killed by the Englandspiel Born: 11 September 1918, in Almkerk. Broadcast: SOE. Parachuting and arrest: 22 June 1942. Died: 6 September 1944 at Mauthausen.Portrait of Gerard van Os, killed by the Englandspiel Born: 2 May 1914, broadcast by: SOE/Plan-Holland, parachuting and arrest: 18 February 1943 Died: 6 September 1944, at Mauthausen.Portrait of Jan Emmer, killed by the Englandspiel Jan Emmer had escaped to England by boat in the autumn of 1941. He became a secret agent and was sent across the North Sea with Felix Ortt by the group Hazelhoff Roelfzema (Soldier of Orange). Born: 8 April 1917, in Wormer. Broadcast by: MI-6/Contact Holland. Deposed 12 March 1942. Arrest: 30 May 1942. Died: 6 September 1944, at Mauthausen.
The fifty Dutch SOE agents that had been captured by the Germans were transported to Mauthausen concentration camp in September 1944 as Allied military forces were advancing into the Netherlands, and eventually executed. Giskes, the Abwehr mastermind of Englandspiel, was arrested by the British, but after the war was employed by the United States during the occupation of Germany.
Some of the officials of the Dutch government-in-exile in London refused to cooperate with SOE when the details of Englandspiel became known to them. They were ordered to do so by the Dutch Prince Bernhard, and a fresh start was made in mid-to-late 1944 under new leadership at SOE. Twenty-five well-equipped and trained sabotage teams of two Dutch agents each were parachuted into the Netherlands. However, engendered by Englandspiel the British distrusted the Dutch resistance which prevented it from having an impact in Operation Market Garden, the unsuccessful offensive by Allied military forces in the Netherlands in September 1944. The spearhead of the British forces, the First British Airborne Division, was ordered not to cooperate with the resistance. Had it not been ignored, the resistance would have been helpful in providing badly needed intelligence and communications to the division which had to be withdrawn from the battlefield after heavy losses.
Conspiracy theories in the Netherlands alleged that a traitor in SOE caused the Englandspiel and that Dutch agents were sacrificed to conceal allied plans for an invasion of the Netherlands. “For many, it was simply impossible to fathom how the devastation caused by Das Englandspiel could have been the result of stupidity and ineptness. “The contrary and more accepted view of M.R.D Foot is that “the agents were victims of sound police work on the German side, assisted by Anglo-Dutch incompetence in London.”
Before I go into the main story, I just want to point out the most disturbing aspect of the picture above. At the very front is a lady carrying a baby. We know now what her fate would have been. It is a disturbing sight on an old photograph, so just imagine how disturbing this most have been for those who were forced to help the Nazis in their crimes. These men would have also know what fate awaited the lady and her baby, and they could nothing about it, to safeguard their own survival and perhaps of their family. Or at least the notion that they perhaps would survive.
Sonderkommandos were work units made up of German Nazi death camp prisoners. They were composed of prisoners, usually Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the disposal of gas chamber victims during the Holocaust. The death-camp Sonderkommandos, who were always prisoners and victims themselves, were unrelated to the SS-Sonderkommandos, which were ad hoc units formed from members of various SS offices between 1938 and 1945.
This blog is not to judge those were forced into the Sonderkommandos, none of us can judge because we were never put in that situation. This blog is about a few of the Dutch Jews who were forced into the Sonderkommandos in Auschwitz.
With the arrival of a deportation train in Auschwitz, the work of the Sonderkommandos began. They had to escort the victims to the gas chamber, reassure them and collect their belongings. After the victims were gassed, the members of the Sonderkommandos moved the corpses from the gas chamber and took them to the incineration pits or crematoria. For this arduous work, Jewish men are selected on the platform, including one hundred to one hundred and fifty Dutch. They were forced to become part of the Nazi killing machine at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
During the invasion of the German army of the Netherlands in May 1940, Josef van Rijk fought with the reserve company De Jagers in The Hague against the Germans. During that time Josef shot d a German paratrooper, and killed him. Maurice Schellekes is a tailor and didn’t notice much of the German invasion. But both Jewish men soon had to deal with the persecution of the Jews in the occupied Netherlands. Josef is fired from De Bijenkorf in The Hague and Maurice was sent the Jewish labor camp Kremboong on March 31, 1942.
Josef tries to flee to Switzerland, but is arrested during a check at Amsterdam Central Station. He is imprisoned in the prison on the Amstelveenseweg and is soon transferred to Camp Westerbork. Maurice also flees after rumors that Kremboong will be evicted. He goes into hiding in Amsterdam. On August 6, 1942, Maurice goes outside to get razors and is arrested. He also ends up in Camp Westerbork.
Josef and Maurice both only spent a brief time in Camp Westerbork. Because they were arrested after an attempt to flee and trying to go into hiding, the men are considered ‘criminal cases’. They were deported on 10 August 1942 from Camp Westerbork to Auschwitz.
The following day they arrive at the extermination camp and are selected to work in the Sonderkommando. Maurice works at the mass graves in the open Sonderkommando of Bunker II. Josef buries the corpses after they are taken from Bunker II to the mass graves via a narrow gauge railway with a small wagon.
Working in the Sonderkommando was physically very demanding. In the scorching August sun, the men barely get a drink. The SS and Kapos guarding them constantly mistreated the men. But then suddenly there was a way out. All Dutchmen were called upon to participate. The men of the Sonderkommando were not allowed to leave at all.
This saved Josef and Maurice’s lives. The group of 1200 Dutch people had to undress and were inspected. The healthy men, including Josef and Maurice, were given clean camp clothes, leave Birkenau and walk to Auschwitz. The other Dutch were gassed. Josef and Maurice end up in the Kanada-Kommando.
–When the selection process was complete, a work group of prisoners called the ‘Kanada Kommando’ collected the belongings of victims and took them to the ‘Kanada’ warehouse facility for sorting and transporting back to Germany.
To prisoners Canada was a country that symbolised wealth. They, therefore, gave the ironic name Kanada (the German spelling of Canada) to the warehouse area as it was full of possessions, clothing and jewellery.–
Both Josef and Maurice survived the war.
“An intertwined mass of people – tangle of people – who could only be separated by moistening them. They were sprayed wet. (..) By just pulling you took the bodies out, like a bunch of animals. We have been horrified done that for a few days but by then we were already used to it.”: Josef van Rijk
“I realized that this mound was loose earth, shoveled from the ground where there was now a mass grave filled with rows of women’s bodies covered with quicklime. It was such a terrible sight that words on paper simply cannot describe it. There was the work that was waiting for me.”: Maurice Schellekes
At the end of 1943 a new group of Dutchmen ended up in the Sonderkommando. Including Samuel Zoute who arrived on 21 October 1943. Before the war, he sold fruit and vegetables on the Albert Cuyp market. On 19 October 1943, Samuel is deported from Camp Westerbork to Auschwitz, together with his wife Doortje and four children. Doortje, Rachel, Abraham and Simon are gassed immediately. Eldest son Maurits is selected for labour, until he too is gassed. Samuel found his son Maurits among the gassed people and had to burn him.
On August 17, 1943, Abraham Beesemer, Joseph Peperroot, Salomon van Sijs and Louis Elzas arrived in Auschwitz. The men were first in the quarantine block and at the beginning of January 1944 they ended up together in the Sonderkommando. Jacob Beesemer, Abraham’s brother, was later also selected for the Sonderkommando.
These Dutchmen were also looking for a way out of the Sonderkommando. The number of incoming transports decreased and the Sonderkommandos were slowly reduced. The threat of the complete liquidation of the Sonderkommandos hung in the air. On October 7, 1944, a prisoner knocked down an SS man with a hammer and started the uprising. Several Sonderkommandos revolt. One of the crematoria is blown up and hundreds of Sonderkommando prisoners flee the camp. Three SS men and about 450 Sonderkommando prisoners were killed. The brothers Abraham and Jacob, Salomon, Joseph and Louis were murdered by the SS. Samuel Zoute and Hagenaar Henry Bronkhorst worked at other crematoria in other Sonderkommandos and managed to survive the uprising.
After the uprising, Henry Bronkhorst, Samuel Zoute, Maurice Schellekes and Josef van Rijk are still alive. As the Russians approach, the death marches begin to clear the camp. Henry Bronkhorst is the only one who manages to mix with the other prisoners and thus remain in Auschwitz until its liberation by the Russians on January 27, 1945. The rest are forced to join the death marches: Samuel, Maurice and Josef leave Auschwitz. Samuel ends up in Mauthausen, he is murdered on March 7, 1945. Maurice ends up in Ebensee, a satellite camp of Mauthausen, and is liberated by the Americans on May 6, 1945. Josef ends up in Leitmeritz, a subcamp of Flossenbürg and is liberated by the Russians on 9 May 1945.
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Himmler, Seyss-Inquart and Rauter decided to set an example: the first round-up against Jews became a fact. On Saturday afternoon, 22 February 1941, a column of German trucks appeared near Waterlooplein. The area was completely cordoned off. Young Jewish men were ruthlessly herded together on Jonas Daniël Meijerplein, in Amsterdam. On the following day, many Jewish men were arrested. A total of 427 Jews between the ages of twenty and thirty-five were deported to the Schoorl Camp.
It wasn’t enough to round them up and deport them. The Nazis felt the need to humiliate at least one of the young men. One German, M.P. Grüne Polizei, was seen dealing a blow in a man’s face in front of his friends and family.
The men captured during the round-up were transported in an army truck to the Concentration Camp Schoorl. The group of 427 people only stayed four days and then they were deported to Buchenwald. Then in June 1941, they were subsequently deported to Mauthausen Concentration Camp. Only two of these groups survived the war.
It wasn’t enough for the Nazis to be cruel—they had to humiliate them.
On June 12,1942 64 people are transported from Camp Amersfoort on the Netherlands, to Mauthausen in Austria.
Of those 64 people, 12 were murdered on July 6,1942.
Nathan de Klijn. born in Amsterdam, 29 August 1905.Mirdered in Mauthausen, 6 July 1942
Reached the age of 36 years. His surname is pronounced the same as mine. Occupation: Transport bicycle hand
Louis Cohen, born on Amsterdam, 3 January 1918.Murdered in Mauthausen, 6 July 1942
Reached the age of 24 years. Occupation: Office clerk
Alexander van der Stam, born in Antwerp, 30 September 1894.Murdered in Mauthausen, 6 July 1942
Reached the age of 47 years. Occupation: Waiter
Jozua Klein, born in Wildervank, 3 April 1901.Murdered in Mauthausen, 6 July 1942
Reached the age of 41 years Occupation: Merchant
David Abraham Drielsma, born on Elst, 18 September 1903.Murdered in Mauthausen, 6 July 1942
Reached the age of 38 years
Marcus Cohen born in Groningen, 12 July 1907.Murdered in Mauthausen, 6 July 1942
Reached the age of 34 years. Occupation: Debenture bond office owner
Maximiliaan del Valle, born in Amsterdam, 23 April 1897 .Murdered in Mauthausen, 6 July 1942.
Reached the age of 45 years. Occupation: Literary scholar
Levi Messcher, born in Haskerland, 28 June 1895.Murdered in Mauthausen, 6 July 1942
Reached the age of 47 years.Occupation: Sales representative
Levie Godschalk, born in Amsterdam, 24 June 1906.Murdered in Mauthausen, 6 July 1942
Reached the age of 36 years. Occupation: Livestock wholesale dealer.
Bernhard van der Kloot, born in The Hague, 16 November 1897. Murdered in Mauthausen, 6 July 1942
Reached the age of 44 years. Occupation: Merchant
Juda Schrijver, born in Amsterdam, 21 July 1915.Murdered in Mauthausen, 6 July 1942
Reached the age of 26 years. Occupation: Dispatch boy
Albert Sluizer , born in Amsterdam, 12 August 1916.Murdered in Mauthausen, 6 July 1942
Reached the age of 25 years. Occupation: Manager
I only gave limited biographies on the men, but this is just to show that they weren’t members of political or terror groups, or criminals, or tax evaders. They were all just regular guys with regular jobs. Yet there were murdered because the Nazis thought they were different.
The saying goes, “Music can soothe the savage beast,” but what if it is the savage beast that is using the music as a cynical form of evil and torture?
In July 1942, Hans Bonarewitz attempted to escape from the Mauthausen concentration camp by trying to hide himself inside a box and was captured on 30 July 1942. The picture above is him forced to pose for a photograph standing next to the box he wanted to escape in.
He was going to be executed, but rather than just killing him, he was paraded through the camp as if he was some circus attraction.
He was led to the gallows on a makeshift cart pulled by fellow inmates. The camp orchestra had to continuously play the song “J’attendrai ton Retour,” I shall wait for your return.
Another song, the traditional German children’s song “Alle Vögel sind schon da,” All the birds are back again, was played immediately before execution. It was just evil on top of evil just for the sake of being evil and nothing else. How disgusted the musicians must have been, being forced to do this.
The information was discovered by Aitor Fernandádez-Pacheco, a filmmaker of the documentary film, “Mauthausen, una mirada Española,” who interviewed the former Spanish prisoner Mario Constante for his documentary.
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History of Sorts 
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