Category Archives: Sittard-Geleen
Holocaust in the “Westelijke Mijnstreek”
Before I go into the main story I have to explain the geographical history of the Westelijke Mijnstreek (Western Mining area). It is situated in the province of Limburg, the most southern province of the Netherlands, in the southeast of the country. It is also the nearest to Germany, in many cases literally a walking distance away from Germany. Why this is important will become clear later on. The Westelijke Mijnstreek was a mining area until 1968. Until 2001 the 2 main principle municipalities were Geleen and Sittard, in January 2001 the 2 towns merged into one bigger city carrying the name Sittard-Geleen. The Westelijke Mijnstreek is also the start of Zuid Limburg or South Limburg. Contradictory to popular belief, the Netherlands isn’t completely flat. The hills in Zuid Limburg, often referred to as the heuvelland, or hill land are formed by the foothills of the Belgian Ardennes and the German Eifel.
This geographical bit of history is important to understand the wider context of the main story. Herman van Rens, a retired General Physician from the Westelijke Mijnstreek, became a Holocaust researcher, and in his research, he discovered that more Jews survived the Holocaust in Limburg, than in the rest of the Netherlands, Approximately 50 % of Jews in Limburg survived, whereas nationally it was only 25%. This is remarkable because of the close proximity to Germany, as stated earlier often only walking a distance away.
However, this also means that 50% of Limburg Jews did not survive the Holocaust. Following are a few stories of those who were murdered.
The picture at the start of the blog is of the Croonenberg Family of Grevenbicht, a small village near Sittard.
The Croonenberg family had lived in Grevenbicht for at least 200 years. By profession they had always been butchers and cattle traders. The Zeligman family had lived in Meerssen for several generations, but mother Helena had spent half her childhood in Sittard. Grandmother Julia Falkenstein, after whom Julienne was named, came from Gangelt.
Erna and Julienne were the only Jewish children in Grevenbicht. They had their grandfather Gustaf and great-uncle Karel Croonenberg living in the house, and there were no other Jews in the village. They therefore went to the Catholic Sisters’ Preschool in Grevenbicht at the age of three and to the Maria School from the age of six and mainly had friends in the village. They met Jewish children and adults in Sittard, on Saturdays in the synagogue and on Sundays at Rabbi Van Blijdestein’s religion class. Their grandmother uncle and aunt Zeligman also lived in Sittard and the related Sassen-Falkenstein family.
Sittard had a flourishing Jewish community for centuries, with a synagogue in Molenbeekstraat and later Plakstraat, and its own cemetery at Fort Sanderbout and later on the Dominicanenwal. From time to time there were frictions and incidents between the Catholic majority and the Jewish minority, but generally, they lived together in good harmony.
From 1941 onwards, the freedom of movement of Jews became increasingly restricted: they were no longer allowed to go to cinemas, libraries, swimming pools, parks or catering establishments, and were no longer allowed to be members of non-Jewish associations; From September 1941, Erna and Julienne were no longer allowed to go to school in Grevenbicht. An improvised Jewish school was set up in Sittard, but the question is how often the girls from Grevenbicht attended it.
At the end of August 1942, the call came for Arthur and his family to report for ’employment in Germany’. Early one morning they were taken in a truck to Sittard, and from there by train together with many other Jewish families to Maastricht for registration and control, the next day to Camp Westerbork and a few days later from there by train to Auschwitz. Arthur was among the men who had to leave the train at the Kosel labor camp, about 80 kilometers before Auschwitz. These men were put to work in various camps from Kosel.
Helena and the girls were gassed immediately after arriving in Auschwitz on August 30 or 31, 1942, less than a week after their departure from Grevenbicht. Grandpa Gustaf remained alone in the house until he too was deported in April 1943. None of the family survived, except some of Arthur’s great-uncles and aunts and a cousin of Helena.
A party in Sittard in 1941 or 1942; a pleasant get-together, children playing in the street. Nothing special you might say, except that it was captured on film. However, appearances are deceiving, because the film bears witness to daily Jewish life in the Westelijke Mijnstreek, especially in a period that was becoming increasingly dark and threatening. We see how Isaac Wolff celebrates his Bar Mitzvah at home in the Landweringstraat in Ophoven Dozens of family members and Rabbi Van Bledenstein and his wife are guests and participate in the festive meal, adorned with paper hats.
Isaac Wolff was deported to Auschwitz in June 1943 from Vught via Westerbork on the so-called children’s transport. He was 14 years old when he was murdered on 3 September 1943.
Isaac’s father was Herman Wolff.
Herman Wolff was the only child of shopkeeper Isaac Wolff from Boxmeer and Sophia Silbernberg from Sittard. He grew up in Ophoven at Dorpsstraat 28 and became a tailor. In 1926 he left for Amsterdam with his parents, where he married Rozette in August 1927. They then settled in Sittard at Landweringstraat 4 (later renumbered to 15) and had two sons, Isaac and Bennie.
Herman became manager and owner of the local tricotage factory ‘Weta’ (Weverij En Tricotage Atelier), located at Landweringstraat 17b, next to their house. He founded this company in January 1935 together with partner Joseph Saile from Rottenburg (Württemberg). Saile was a weaver by profession and lived at Kruisstraat 13 as a boarder with the widow Zeligman from 1933 until his marriage in 1940. In November 1941, Herman had to resign and the occupiers placed Weta under an ‘Aryan’ administrator. Saile had to join the Wehrmacht in early 1942.
In the autumn of 1941, the Wolff family’s Bar Mitzvah of eldest son Ies was captured on film, a unique time document, where many family members and other Sittard Jews were guests in their home (see the video). This is the only known footage of the Wolff family.
A year later, almost the entire community was deported. Herman and his family had been given a reprieve because he was chairman of the Jewish Council in Sittard, but in April 1943 they too had to be transported to Vught. In June 1943, Rozette and the children continued on to Westerbork on the so-called children’s transport, from where they were deported to Auschwitz and murdered at the end of August. Herman also had to board the train to Auschwitz on November 15, 1943 and died on an unspecified date in Auschwitz or the surrounding area.
Seven other people had lived with the family, who, in addition to the (‘half-Jewish’) maid, were also deported: in February 1941 the widow Stein-Salomon and her eldest daughter came to live with them, in November 1942 the Schwarz-Wihl couple, and in February 1943, Rozette’s parents. None of them survived.
The story of Albert and Ida (Ajga) Claessens
Due to the flexible local admission policy in the early 1930s, Amby, in Maastricht counted many Jewish refugees from Germany and Eastern Europe, already over a hundred in 1933. In Zawiercie, where about a quarter of the population was Jewish, there had been pogroms in 1919 and 1921; It is possible that the Krzanowska family already fled their country to Germany at that time. Ida had arrived in Amby from Aachen in October 1936. She lived there on Hoofdstraat. Her brother Herman had also settled in Amby with his family, and her sister Rachella married another refugee there in 1934. They wrote their family name themselves as Chrzanowski. Herman was a wedding witness at Ida’s wedding to Albert Claessens on April 4, 1938, in Amby. Albert worked at the coking factory in Geleen.
The young couple settled in Geleen at Pastoor Vonckenstraat 51.
By order of the Reich Commissioner, Albert was fired from the State Mines on April 1, 1941. He later earned a living as a ground worker.
Albert did not think about going into hiding; he assumed that the Jews were taken to labor camps in Germany. At the first call, on August 25, 1942, he and Ida, together with many others, were taken via Maastricht to Westerbork, where they arrived on August 26. From there they were deported to Auschwitz on August 28. On August 25, 1942, the Geleen police report stated that all perishable goods had been removed from their house.
Ida Claessens-Krzanowska and Cilly Claessens-Hirsch were gassed immediately after their arrival in Auschwitz, less than a week after their departure from Geleen. Albert and Jozef were among the men who had to leave the train at the Kosel labor camp, about 80 kilometers before Auschwitz. These men were put to work in various camps from Kosel. Nothing further is known of their fate; only the note ‘died in Central Europe’ testifies to their sad fate.
Brother Herman Chrzanowski appears to have gone into hiding with his wife and two children and survived the war, as did sister Rachella and her husband.
sources
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/123055/isaac-wolff
https://www.stolpersteinesittardgeleen.nl/Stichting
https://historiesittardgeleenborn.nl/verhaal/14/holocaust-in-de-westelijke-mijnstreek
https://halloonline.nl/verhalen/bericht/herman-van-rens-houdt-de-holocaust-onder-de-aandacht
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A Wedding Day Without Family
Today is my 28th wedding anniversary. I still vividly remember my wedding day. It was the hottest day of the 20th century, at least in the town of Geleen, the Netherlands, where I got married. It was 42 degrees Celsius. Despite the heat, it was a beautiful day because both my and my wife’s family were there to celebrate the day with us.
I have often thought about how the day would have been without family.
The picture at the top of this post is the Wedding photo of two Jewish survivors: Isidor Sassen from Sittard and Rosalie Wijnbergen from Eindhoven. Isidor was the only Sittard Jew to return from Auschwitz, and Rosalie had gone into hiding with the Reformed Blok family in Heerlen. Both of their families were murdered. They got married in the garden of the Blok family in Heerlen. Completely penniless with no home, no money, and no family. Heerlen is only 15 km from Geleen, and Sittard is even nearer.
So many were married without their family or friends being present for the joyous occasion. They were not there because they didn’t want to attend but because they were murdered.
The Rosenboom Family
I came across this death notification of Jacob Rosenboom. The reason why it drew my attention was the date. Jacob died on 10 April 1968, the very day I was born. Then when I did more research, I discovered that Jacon had lived in my hometown of Geleen in the Netherlands.
The Rosenboom-Wolf family lived in Sittard from 1933 and in Geleen from 1936 to 1938. An Abraham Rosenbaum/Rosenboom had come to the Netherlands from Germany in the early nineteenth century and had settled in Zevenaar as a merchant. His grandson, (also named) Abraham, married Josina Wolf from Lith (near Oss) in 1895. From this son, Jacob Rosenboom was born in 1896 in Zevenaar. Jacob married his cousin Vrouwtje (which means little woman in Dutch) Wolf from Lith in 1918, also born in 1896. In Zevenaar, daughter Saartje was born in 1919, son Herman Abraham in 1920, then in Didam in 1922, daughter Josina Rebekka followed by son Levie Rosenboom in 1923. Jacob’s mother died in 1922, after which his father remarried.
The Rosenbooms were traditionally merchants by trade, but Jacob, like his uncle Nathan Rosenboom, started working in the mines in the south of the province of Limburg at a certain point.
Jacob and Vrouwtje and their four children lived in Hoensbroek in 1929, then in Brunssum and from May 1933 in Sittard. Jacob was then a carpenter by trade. In October 1936, they moved to Geleen Jacob worked in Geleen at the state mine Maurits.
The family moved back to Sittard in November 1938 at 5 Vouerweg. (The company Philips had a factory at Vouerweg, where I worked for ten years) Daughter Saartje worked as domestic help and lived (most of the time) in Amsterdam from November 1938 to July 1940 and in Arnhem from 1941-1942. During of the German invasion, Vrouwtje Rosenboom-Wolf and his daughter Josina stayed in Amsterdam for a few months. Saartje returned to Sittard in March 1942.
The family probably went into hiding in the spring of 1943 when something went wrong with daughter Saartje: she died in Heerlen on 28 October 1943, aged 24. I am a father of 3 children, and I would not know how I would feel if one of my children died. The only thing I can be sure of is that I’d be devastated.
The rest of the family survived the war. Apart from the loss of Saartje, there were more victims in the family. In 1942, Vrouwtjes’s brother Herman Wolf was deported from Sittard with his wife and two sons and gassed in Auschwitz. Jacob’s sister Regina Koppel-Rosenboom, a young widow, had been murdered in Sobibor, together with her daughter. Jacob’s father, age 74, died in Zevenaar in January 1943; Jacob’s stepmother survived the war.
After the liberation in 1945, the five surviving family members returned to the Vouerweg in Sittard. Not much later, they lived at 45 Resedastraat. After the war, Jacob worked for some time at the Julia mine in Eygelshoven. They moved to Eindhoven soon afterwards.
The sons left home and married within a few years. Herman Abraham became a draftsman at the SBB, a nitrogen fixation company. It also has significance to me. Some employees died during the war, either because they had been in resistance or due to a bombing by the RAF in 1943, where the RAF had mistaken Geleen for Aachen in Germany. A monument was erected, for these men, in the street where I grew up. I passed it by many times without giving it a second glance.
Herman Abraham married Lena Offenbach in 1952 and moved to Amsterdam with her in 1959. He passed away in 2015.
Josina Rebekka was a shop assistant until her marriage in 1953 to the divorced Amsterdam tailor Tobias Lavino. She then left for Amsterdam. They had two children. Josina passed away in 2009. Levie Rosenboom became a miner and married Neeltje Groot in 1950. They had two children in Sittard and moved to Boxtel in 1957. Levie died in 2003 in Boxtel.
After Jacob and Vrouwtje celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary in Sittard in 1958, they followed their daughter and eldest son to Amsterdam in November 1959, where Jacob died on April 101968 and Vrouwtje in 1980.
Amazingly, all of this originated and in my hometown in an area I am very familiar with, and I never knew until today.
sources
https://www.stolpersteinesittardgeleen.nl/Stichting
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/666557/familie-rosenboom
Shivers Down My Spine
The above photograph sent shivers down my spine. Not because it is a horrific picture, just the opposite is true. Three young girls walk into town, pushing a pram.
Why I find it so disturbing, is because I know that street very well. I have walked the same route many times. In fact, all my Dutch family would have walked that route many times. It is the street that leads into the city centre of Sittard, the neighbouring town to Geleen where I grew up. Sittard and Geleen merged in 2001 to make it the bigger city of Sittard-Geleen.
The girl pushing the pram is Hermine Zondervan. She was born on the Brandstraat in Sittard, where her father had a business as an electrician and optician. Benoit had taken it over from his father. Hermien’s grandparents died when she was still small, in 1932 and 1934. Afterwards, Max Capell from Düren, a cousin of her father, lived with them for a while. Hermien did have a grandmother on her mother’s side, who lived on Stationsdwarsstraat.
Hermine was an only child but had a niece Ivonne who was the same age, and a nephew Herman who was a few years younger; and lived on the Bergstraat. On her mother’s side, she had an older cousin living in Sittard and a few others in South Holland. She spent a lot of time with Roosje Silbernberg from Engelenkampstraat, who was the same age as Hermine. In 1941, the family took in a single uncle from the father, the 84-year-old Jozef Zondervan from Maastricht. After the summer, Hermien was suddenly no longer allowed to go to school, and from then on she and the other Jewish children attended an improvised school next to the synagogue in the Plakstraat.
In August 1942, Uncle Henri was deported with his family, and in November of that same year, Uncle Jos Hertz was her mother’s brother. Hermine’s friend Roosje and her family then went into hiding. The Jewish class had become a lot emptier by then, but the atmosphere was becoming more and more oppressive.
It was Hermien’s turn, her parents and Great-Uncle Jozef Zondervan’s at the beginning of April 1943, when the last major deportation from Limburg took place. Grandma Hertz was also taken via Vught and Westerbork. First Great-Uncle Jozef, then Grandmother Hertz, and finally Estella and Hermine were all taken to Sobibor to be murdered upon arrival, on 12 June 1943. Hermine was 12 years old.
Father Benoit had stayed behind in Vught because his technical skills made him very useful in the so-called Philips Kommando, where he had to perform forced labour. In March 1944 he was also deported to the east, where he finally succumbed in April 1945.
Roosje Silbernberg survived the war.
After seeing the picture and reading the story I realized it could have easily been members of my family.
sources
https://simonwiesenthal-galicia-ai.com/swiggi/lx/nl/64254
https://www.stolpersteinesittardgeleen.nl/Slachtoffers/Hermine-Zondervan
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/123086/hermine-zondervan#intro
The Football Tragedy of November 19, 1944
The history of Sittard-Geleen is a bit of a complicated one. The city used to be 2 towns, but in 2001 the towns of Sittard and Geleen merged and are now known as Sittard-Geleen.
On September 18, 1944 both towns were liberated.
With the liberation of Sittard on 18 and 19 September 1944, the war did not end for this town. On the contrary, in the following five months hundreds more were killed because it was close to the front.
Nevertheless, an emergency football competition started in November 1944 with five clubs from Sittard and Geleen. “The proceeds go to the needy Netherlands,” says Limburgsch Dagblad. On 19 November, the Sittardse Boys and Maurits played in the then-Baandert-stadium, in the presence of several thousand spectators. After about half an hour Harry Ehlen of the Sittardse Boys dropped to the ground because he heard a whooshing sound. Seconds later, shells hit the field for nearly ten minutes. There were also impacts elsewhere in the city centre.
Eleven people were killed throughout Sittard and most of the victims were on the Baandert, the exact number is unknown. In any case, Karel Ermans died there, at ten years old. His brother Sjeng and his father found him. The body of Peter Houben lay next to it, also ten years old.
This grenade attack is the only fatal wartime incident at a sports match in the Netherlands. It is the biggest disaster in Dutch sports history. There have never been more deaths during a match. And yet it is completely unknown, barring those directly involved in Sittard.
This is mainly due to the press censorship of the time. The newspapers only said that the match was ‘untimely halted’ and that the emergency competition had been stopped. In the obituary of Francisca Frissen, ‘a fatal accident’ was her cause of death. Her prayer card, still in the possession of brother Toine, escaped this censorship, “Born in Sittard on June 28, 1929, and there, hit by a shrapnel, died on November 19, 1944.”
After the national liberation in 1945, this football disaster was quickly forgotten. For example, a huge misunderstanding could arise about a memorial stone in the Bernadettekerk on the Baandert, which was always thought to contain the names of the victims of 19 November 1944. That is not correct: on this war memorial from 1952, the fifteen members of Sittardse Boys and Sittard died in the Second World War. Only Karel Ermans, Francisca Frissen and Bertha Simon are victims of 19 November 1944, the other twelve died on another day. The wrong people have been commemorated at this monument for decades, symbolizing the chaos of November 19, 1944.
At the end of 2019, it became clear to the Bernadette Church that a misunderstanding had arisen, after which the church placed a call for more information. Here is a summary of what we have found so far.
Eight names found so far of the victims of November 19, 1944:
Karel Hubertus Ermans (10 years)
Francisca Agnes Frissen (15)
Pieter Jouzef Houben (13)
Bertha John. Hubert Simon (16)
John Peter Ant. Simons (40)
André Carolus Maria Tummers (1)
Maria Neer-Vaessen (56)
Diena Zoer (16)
So there are still three names missing
And these are the fifteen names of Sittardia on the monument from 1952:
Paul Collard
Paul Crauwels
Tonny Hunnekens
De Heus
Piet Letschert
Karel Ermans
Harry Janssen
Charles Soesman
Jack. Hertz
Frans Schadron
Frans Eijck
Frits Clemens
Bertha Simon
Fransien Frissen
Mia Sprenger
I was never aware of this tragedy. I only came across it by chance because I was researching the liberation of Geleen. Strangely, that this is such a forgotten event in both Sittard and Geleen because Geleen is the cradle of professional football in the Netherlands.
sources
Philip Silbernberg—Murdered in Auschwitz
It is just a photo of a soldier with his family. One could easily dismiss this photograph as someone’s memory. A father who loved to smoke, a mother all dressed up and two well-dressed children—a boy and a girl.
This photo could have easily been a picture of my grandfather with his family. Like the man in the picture, my grandfather had something in common. The man pictured is Philip Silbernberg, and it was 1939. The year the Dutch army was mobilized for fear of war. My grandfather was sent his notification to report that year, as well.
War did come to the Netherlands on 10 May 1940 as German troops invaded the Netherlands. The fighting continued for four days, and on 14 May, the Dutch army capitulated.
In a way, Philip and my grandfather may have been relieved that the fighting only lasted four days. They realised things would change. The Germans set up a new government, a Nazi regime composed of German and Dutch members. But in general, things would not change all that much, and for a short time, that held true.
On 12 May 1942, there was a notification in the newspaper, Het dagblad van het Zuiden!, the daily newspaper of the south, that all men who served in the Dutch army on 10 May 1940, the day the Germans invaded the Netherlands, and who were 55 or younger, had to report to the occupying authorities by 15 May 1942. It had been the second notification.
On that same day, 12 May, my grandfather died. For years, I thought he was executed, but now I believe there is a possibility he committed suicide.
I do not know if Philip Silbernberg saw that notification, but he probably did because he lived in the same area as my grandfather, only a short cycle distance away. Philip’s outcome was completely different.
Philip was born in Ophoven-Sittard. His father owned a shop in draperies and colonial goods there since 1890 and later it was known for men’s fashions. His father died in 1934. Philip and his brother Les took over the family business in 1929.
In August 1929, Philip married Jenetta (Jettie) van der Stam from Rotterdam. They settled in Sittard, where their daughter Roosje was born in 1930, and their son, Herman, was born in 1934. Les married in 1937 and started his own shop in Geleen, my hometown, while Philip continued the family business.
Mother Rosalie, affectionately called den Engel, (The Angel), moved in 1939 with daughter Else and her family to Nieuwer-Amstel near Amsterdam. She passed away in November 1941.
In the spring of 1939, Rosalie’s brother Albert and his wife Hedwig Schwarz-Wihl emigrated from Dortmund to the Netherlands. Upon their arrival, they moved in with Philip’s family.
When the Nazis forced the Jews to wear the yellow star, Philip purposely went to the city photographer, Wulms in Sittard, to be photographed in his suit with the Star of David. He told his son, Herman, “Boy…you should be proud of it.”
In August 1942, the Silbernbergs escaped the first major deportation round in Limburg because Philip had recently registered as an employee of the Jewish Council. Nevertheless, Philip and Jettie decided to have their children go into hiding in Heerlen, and in October, they went into hiding. Philip’s brother in Geleen, and his sisters in Amsterdam and Nieuwer-Amstel, also went into hiding with their families.
The mayor of Sittard issued an arrest warrant for Philip and his wife to have them detained for trial. There was also a request for the location of the two Silbernbergs children. The charge— they changed their residence on 20 October 1942 without having the required authorization. This description referred to Jews who had gone into hiding.
Betrayed when hiding in Heerlen on 6 March 1944, they were arrested and deported from Westerbork to Auschwitz on 23 March. The exact date their murdered is not known. The camp wrote it as 31 August 1944.
The two children had escaped to Belgium and were in hiding until the end of the war. After the war, they were taken care of by Nathan and Else Wijnperle-Silbernberg.
The more I do research on the victims, the more I realise, it could have easily been my family. Sittard used to be the neighbouring town of my hometown Geleen, but in 2001 the two towns merged together and are now known as the city of Sittard-Geleen.
A few weeks ago, a grandson of Philip sent me a few more pictures:
Philip and Jenetta’s honeymoon in Bruxelles.
Philip’s brother Les (Isidore) with his wife, Greta and the children of Philip and Jenetta—Herman and Roos. (This photo, we think, was taken in Liège at the end of the war.)
sources
https://www.stolpersteinesittardgeleen.nl/Slachtoffers/Philip-Silbernberg
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/123077/philip-silbernberg
https://www.maxvandam.info/humo-gen/family/1/F20693?main_person=I55913
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This Is How Close The Holocaust Still Is To Me
The picture is of a vacant building in the town center of Geleen in the Netherlands. The building wasn’t always empty. It used to be a clothes shop called “Modehuis” or Fashion House. It was a shop that catered more for the older ladies, my mother liked to shop there A few doors next to it, there used to be a hairdresser, where I got my haircut several times.
Across from it there used to be a video store where I would rent my favourite movies. The address of the shop was Raadhuisstraat 16.
All of this will mean absolutely nothing to you, and even until today, the historical reference of the place was not known to me.
The shop was known as “Kousenhuis” (Stockingshouse) in the 1930s, the owner was Paul Siegfried Willner and his wife Charlotte Sophia Walter. Paul was Jewish but Charlotte was Roman Catholic. They were married on April 17, 1934, in Geleen, the maximum temperature that day was 21 degrees centigrade, so it was a warm spring day. Aside from the shop they also ran a wholesale business in cleaning products.
The shop was initially situated somewhere else, but due to subsidence caused by mining, they moved to the Raadhuisstraat. On January 11, 1939, Paul sold the shop to Julius Jacob Wolff.
Paul and his wife moved to Molenstraat 27 in Geleen. Below is a recent picture of that address.
As a young kid in secondary school, I had a friend living in Molenstraat 25, which is next door. The house is also near my favourite restaurant, swimming pool, and a few other places I would have visited several times a week.
Paul Siegfried Willner was born in Aachen in Germany, near the Dutch border, on June 5, 1902. He had moved in February 1934 from Aachen to Geleen. On November 25, 1941, Paul lost his German citizenship as per the new Reich citizens’ law. As a Jew, he was no longer considered to be a German.
On February 5, 1942, Paul and Charlotte divorced, I don’t know why but I can only imagine that this was to save Charlotte. If she was no longer married to a Jew, she would more than likely be safe.
On August 25, 1942, Paul had to register for labour in Germany, A day later on August 26, he ended up in Westerbork transit camp. Two days later he was deported to Auschwitz. But shortly before arriving there, he was taken off the train at the labour camp in Kosel. It is not clear where he was murdered. His date of death was registered as April 30, 1943, but that was a generic date used for many whose death date wasn’t known.
On October 5, 1942, the RAF mistakenly bombed Geleen, assuming it was Aachen, Paul’s house was destroyed as was the house of his ex-wife.
Julius Jacob Wolff who was also Jewish survived the war, His shop was still thriving when I left Geleen in 1997.
When I said at the start ‘how close the Holocaust still is to me, I meant it in a physical way as in buildings I have been in or have been close to, but also in an emotional way, because I never knew this bit of history. I had to emigrate to find out the significance of the actual buildings, which is a pity.
sources
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/137523/paul-siegfried-willner
https://www.stolpersteinesittardgeleen.nl/Slachtoffers/Paul-Siegfried-Willner
https://www.openarch.nl/rhl:54839896-93a6-84fb-e6c6-a4540cb3b0a6
Donation
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. Thank you. 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.
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Where I was born.
Although I have not lived there since 1997, I still call the place where I was born home.
Geleen is a town in the Province of Limburg, in the south east of the Netherlands. A former mining town and since 2001 it has been part of the bigger municipality of Sittard-Geleen. It fused with the neighbouring town of Sittard in 2001.
There is an old saying in Surinam, a former Dutch colony, the saying goes “Where my umbilical cord is forever my home” That’s what I can identify with.
Does this mean I don’t consider Limerick to my home? Of course it doesn’t I equally see Limerick as my home. I can be both a proud Geleen man and a proud Limerick man, but Geleen will always have a special place in my heart,
I think due to the travel restrictions imposed because of the Covid 19 virus, I have been thinking of Geleen a bit more then I did before.
Below are just a few impression of Geleen.
84 killed by ‘Friendly’ fire.
Friendly fire or amicicide is an attack by a military force on friendly or neutral troops while attempting to attack the enemy. Examples include misidentifying the target as hostile, cross-fire while engaging an enemy, long range ranging errors or inaccuracy. I hate the term ‘friendly’ fire because the end result is still death and destruction
On October 5, 1942 the town of Geleen in the most southern province of the Netherlands ,Limburg. Fell victim to the ‘misidentifying of the target as hostile’
A squadron of 257 RAF bombers were on the way to Aachen in Germany , to bomb the mine ’Anna’ in the German city near the Dutch border. However due to bad weather , and limited vision 30 of the 257 bombers had deviated from their course, When they had reached Geleen and saw the States mine ‘Maurits’ they mistakenly believed they had reached Aachen and therefore they dropped their load.
It resulted in the death of 84 citizens, including an unnamed 12 year old Jewish boy. I have done pieces on this event previously, today I want focus on some of the victims, by means of their prayer cards or the death notifications in the local newspaper.
Maria Gerda Alberigs born on June 25,1925 in the nearby village of Elsloo. She was buried on October 9,1942.
The Lemmns-Voncken family.
Father Frans Lemmens, born 18 January 1897;Mother Elisa Voncken, born in the nearby village of Beek on 72 February 1905.
Children: Rob, born 26 July 1930;Mia born exactly a year later then Rob, July 26, 1931;Jacq, born October 2, 1933; Tini, born October 5, 1934;Annie. Born 26 October 1935;Lenie, Born April 9, 1937.
Tini was killed on her 8th birthday. The funeral mass was carried out by Bishop Guillaume Lemmens. given the fact he has the same surname I presume he was related. Although ‘Lemmens’ is a reasonably common name.
Bishop Guillaume Lemmens was known to be a vocal opponent to the Nazi regime. He wrote several letters in where he accused the Nazis of criminal acts. He also urged parishioners not to to co-operate with the Nazi occupiers in any way shape of form.
Geleen is where I was born and where I grew up. It will always be my hometown it is forever anchored as such in my heart, even though L live in Ireland now.
I only found out about the bombing a few years ago. And only today I found out there is a monument was erected in honor of the victims. The monument also commemorates the gas boiler of the Maurits mine that was shot in flames on September 1st 1944.
sources
https://www.tracesofwar.com/sights/13837/Monument-the-Burned-Gas-Boiler.htm
Bombardement 5 oktober 1942
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