Maastricht is the capital and largest city of the province of Limburg. in the Southeast of the Netherlands. On August 18, the Unites States Army Airforce, attempted to bomb a railway bridge, but it went horribly wrong.
Friday, August 18, 1944 was a warm sunny day that started nicely but ended in a drama when at the beginning of the evening a group of American bombers attacked the railway bridge over the Maas. (Meuse)
The aim was to make the retreat of the German troops more difficult, because the Allies had the wind at their back in France and were doing everything they could to make the escape of the Germans more difficult and to prevent them from bringing in supplies. The fact that this required bombing in populated areas, with a real chance of civilian casualties, was an acceptable risk. But instead of hitting the bridges, the bombs wreaked havoc on neighboring residential areas. 26 American B-17s dropped about 160 thousand pounds on the railway bridge, but it almost entirely unscathed. It was different in the surrounding neighborhoods where the population paid a heavy toll: 129 deaths, countless seriously injured and hundreds of houses on both banks of the Maas were wiped off the map.
Due to the anti-aircraft fire near the city, most bombers continued to fly at high altitudes. It was virtual impossible to accurately pinpoint the of a precision attack on the bridge,therfore many of the 156 bombs ended up in the wide perimeter of the bridge. Only one direct hit on the target was counted.
Many residents of Maastricht were concerned about the approaching violence of war. Some had decided to take shelter in the caves of the Sint-Pietersberg for the time being.
Trees Dubois was aged 12 when the bombing happened.
In an interview she gave for a local newspaper she recalled the following.
“I was very scared,my father sent me to the bomb shelter. I went out with the neighbor. She returned halfway through to get something. She didn’t survive.”
Limburg is the southern province in the Netherlands (there is also a province with that name in Belgium). It was one of the first places to be liberated in the Netherlands. By the end of September 1944, the entire province was liberated.
Hanna Van de Voort was a woman who was born in Meerlo, the North of Limburg. During the second world war, Hanna Van de Voort was a maternity nurse in Tienray in Limburg. Encouraged by her mother Marie, Hanna, together with 22-year-old students Nico Dohmen and Kurt Loewenstein went into hiding and gave 123 Jewish children a place to hide between 1943 and 1944. It was mainly concerned children, who were smuggled out of the Hollandsche Schouwburg in Amsterdam, where Jews were gathered for deportation. Almost all of the children were smuggled away by Piet Meerburg’s student resistance group.
The children usually stayed at Van de Voort’s home for a few days, where they were taught Catholic doctrine and about the street plan of Rotterdam. It was made clear that these children had been orphaned by the bombing of Rotterdam in 1940. All children were given pseudonyms and identity cards from the Central Bureau for Children’s Evacuation that was in bombed Rotterdam.
After a few days, they were placed with farming families in the area. The children were regularly transferred to new locations if they were in danger of being discovered. Aunt Hanna and especially, Uncle Nico—as they were called—kept in touch with the hiders and supported them by encouraging them to persevere. The foster parents received monetary compensation, clothing and footwear. The necessary vouchers for clothing and food came from Amsterdam.
The van Geffen family was one of the foster families. Sometimes things were even difficult to explain to their own children, below is an account of one of the van Geffen’s children.
“Maria was the eldest of the family. Her father was a strict Catholic, with a strong sense of social justice, he owned a shoe store in Tienray. He was active in the resistance as a courier of a resistance paper. Maria initially did not like that a Jewish girl, named Floortje de Paauw, had been included in the family. So she told the story that the Jews nailed Jesus to the cross. Floortje took revenge by walking on the bleach with her shoes on the white laundry. Eventually, It all worked out between those two. There was also a Jewish boy in the family: Daniël Jozeph Cohen, pseudonym Wim Dorn. He survived the war. Floortje participated in everything and went to school and to church. Maria remembers exactly how the Nazis lifted Floortje from bed during the children’s raid in Tienray on the night of 31 July 31–1 August 1944. She had to dress Floortje. After a big hug, Floortje said to Maria, “I’m not coming back.” She was killed on 6 September 1944 in Auschwitz. After the war, it was hardly talked about at home.”
After a betrayal by Lucien Nahon, a Dutch Nazi, a raid was carried out. On the night of 31 July 31–1 August 1944, raids took place in several hiding places that Lucien has provided.
During these children’s raids, Jewish children in hiding were arrested. The employees of the Eindhoven State Police and their helpers in Tienray and surrounding villages carried out the action. At least five children were arrested and deported to Auschwitz, and four of them were murdered there.
Floortje de Paauw (15-12-1933), Wim de Paauw (17-12-1934), Louis van Wezel (16-5-1936) en Dick van Wezel (6-3-1934).
Hanna van der Voort was also arrested during this raid. She was tortured to give information about the resistance, but she gave them nothing. She was released after nine days. Van de Voort suffered permanent damage to her health. She died on July 26, 1956.
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Before I go into the story of the men, who were put on slave labour by the Nazi regime, I will have to explain what ‘Limburg’ is .Limburg is a province in the southeast of the Netherlands and the northeast of Belgium.
I was born and grew up in the Dutch side of Limburg. The most populated part is the south of the Dutch Limburg, it is also the part that looks completely different then the rest of the Netherlands. There are actually hills there.
The first mass arrest of Jews from Limburg took place on August 25, 1942. Jews under the age of sixty received a call on August 24 to report for “labour-increasing measures”. They were to gather a day later in a school building at the Prof. Pieter Willemsstraat 39 in Maastricht. The summoned Jews therefore had one day to go into hiding or to get a reprieve. Less than 300 instead of the planned 600 people left for Camp Westerbork. Most of the detainees were transported to the East on 28 August. This was the first deportation train to stop in Cosel. Men between the ages of 16 and 50 were taken off the train and taken to Jewish labor camps. Most of the women, children and men between the ages of 50 and 60 were gassed on August 31, 1942 in Auschwitz.
Although I am a native of the province, I was not aware of the fate of these people.
Not all deportation trains with Dutch Jews went directly to the extermination camps and gas chambers. Between August 28 and December 10, 1942, some of the trains to Auschwitz-Birkenau made a stopover in Silesian Cosel (present-day Poland). Here almost all men between the ages of 15 and 55 had to get off the train at the freight station. Where they were put to work.
On 24 August 1942, six hundred Limburg Jews were issued a call-up card by the Dutch police, the municipal police or a constable. They were all under the age of sixty and had to report to the assembly point at the public school on Professor Pieter Willemsstraat in Maastricht the next day.
Only half of them showed up. The group was taken to Camp Westerbork and was largely deported on August 28, 1942. They were part of the first Cosel transport. Another 17 Cosel transports from the Netherlands would follow. Also 21 transports from France and Belgium stopped in Cosel.
The train stopped on August 29 in Cosel, about a thousand kilometers from Westerbork .About 170 men, 75 of whom are Limburgers, were pushed out of the train while being yelled and cursed at . A selection followed, and those who were not been deemed fit for work had to get back on the train. The train continued the journey to Auschwitz ,when it arrived on August 30,1942, the majority were murdered in the gas chambers.
The Limburg men who left Westerbork on August 28 were put on trucks in Cosel and ended up in Camp Sakrau, from where they went to various other camps in the region. Conditions in these camps were very different. The work was very hard, some of the Jewish men died from hunger, exhaustion, illness or accidents.
Abraham Spiero, a survivor who survived a later transport said about the ordeal:
“The train stopped in Cosel. That was a terrible thing there. Humanity stopped here. We, the men up to 50 years old, all had to sit down squatting. When the train had driven away, we were loaded onto trucks like animals.”
The men of the other 17 Cosel transports also ended up in a network of 177 camps near factories and construction sites. Some 1,500 forced laborers make fighter planes and war machinery, they worked in Krupp’s metalworks or IG Farben’s chemical plants.
Others were forced to work in the construction of railways and highways. Which was a big money earner for the German state and the companies.
The men who were no longer able to work were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were gassed.
At the end of April 1943, most of the survivors were sent to Camp Blechhammer. Also father Pinehas Gans and son Philip Gans. They both came from the transport of November 2, 1942. Pinehas and Philip survived for a long time, and end up together in Camp Blechhammer. But when the camp is evacuated on January 21,1945 ,the prisoners are marched to Camp Gross-Rosen by foot. During the march or shortly after arrival at Gross Rosen both Gans men are murdered, on February 5,1945.
The Gans family in 1934 .Right in the picture is Pinehas(Piet)Gans, behind him is his wife and sitting next to him is his son Philip
In January 1945, of the ten thousand French, Belgian and Dutch forced laborers selected in Cosel, about two thousand were still alive. Most are in Camp Blechhammer. Eventually, only 873 men survive, less than ten percent of the men who got off at Cosel. The survival rate of the Dutch is even less, of the 3400 Dutch on the Cosel transports, 193 men survived. This also applied to the Limburg men who started their journey in Maastricht on 25 August 1942. Eleven of the 170 men of this first transport survived the forced labour.
On initiative of some people from Limburg there was finally a plaque unveiled at September 2, 2016 near the former goods store station of pre-war Cosel (Poland) and this as a remembrance of the so called Cosel Transports.
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Without a shadow of a doubt, the star of the 1936 Olympic games was Jesse Owens. But there was another medal winner, who became more infamous then famous. He came 3rd behind in the Men’s 100 metres sprint, behind Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, He also ended 3 in the Men’s 200 metres sprint, behind Jesse Owens and Mack Robinson. The name of this double bronze medal winner is Tinus Osendarp.
In the 100 m final he ran 10.5 s, behind Americans Jesse Owens 10.3 s, and Ralph Metcalfe 10.4 s. Upon his return home Osendarp was called “the best white sprinter” by the Dutch press.
During the medal ceremony he had raised his arm in the Nazi salute.
Tinus (Martinus) Osendarp was born on 21 May 1916 in Delft as the son of Bernardus Osendarp, owner of an export company in fruit and vegetables. The Osendarp family soon moved to Rijswijk. The VUC football association flourished there, which also had a small athletics department. However, Tinus wanted to become a famous footballer above all else. With his innate speed, he was therefore ascribed a great future on the football field
Tinus Osendarp started sprinting for fun, and was discovered as a talent. His first success came in 1934, when he placed third in the 200 m at the inaugural European Championships, won by compatriot Chris Berger. Osendarp finished fifth in the 100 metres and won a second bronze medal in 4×100 metres relay (with Tjeerd Boersma, Chris Berger, and the non-Olympian Robert Jansen).
He increased his popularity by winning both the 100 and the 200 at the 1938 European Championships in Paris.
The basis for his future involvement in National Socialism was laid in Berlin, where he first came under the influence of SS propaganda.
Working as a policeman in The Hague, Osendarp joined the NSB (the Dutch National Socialist Party) in 1941, and the SS in 1943. Working for the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), he was involved with arrests of various resistance fighters. and helping in the deportation of Dutch Jews. The payment for each captured Jewish man or woman was 7.50 Dutch Guilders, which is the equivalent of $50 or €42 today. Many of those he arrested or betrayed were murdered.
In 1948, Osendarp was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but he was allowed to carry out his sentence by working in the coal mines, in the Southeast of the Netherlands, to support his family.
This is actually the street where I grew up, Convicted Nazis on the way back to the camps they stayed in after working in the Maurits Coal mine
He was released early in 1953 and moved to Limburg to work in the mines. In 1958 he also became athletics coach at Kimbria in Maastricht, and from 1972 he was a coach at Achilles-Top in Kerkrade. He died in 2002 at the age of 86 in Heerlen. Although he was a relatively ‘minor’ perpetrator, I think his sentence was much too lenient. He should have been jailed for life.
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The buzzword nowadays is “immigrants” and in hardly any context it is used in a positive way. Here is the thing though, who is an immigrant?
This is just a micro snapshot in history. It is basically a background of my family well at least from my Mother’s side.
The picture at the start of the blog is a picture of the marriage certificate of my maternal grandparents. They got married on December 28,1915.
The groom Durk Jager, the bride Tetje Hoekstra. They lived and were married in a small village in Friesland, in the Northwest of the Netherlands. The village Harkema-opeinde was part of the wider municipality of Achtkarspelen.
It was a rural place and there was not much work to be got. In Limburg, in the Southeast of the Netherlands, there was plenty of work though. This was because of the ‘black gold’, coal . In the early part of the 20th century. Between 1906 and 1926 coal mines were opened in the most southern province bringing with it job opportunities, not just only in the coal industry but also in the wider economy.
The biggest and the last one to be opened was States mine Maurits in Geleen, which opened in 1926.
That was the call for my grand parents to pack up things and uproot the family for a journey southward to Geleen. Even though the Netherlands is just a small country, in the 1920s a journey like that was the equivalent of emigrating to the US or Canada nowadays.
I used the term emigrating because that is what they were doing. The place they were going to was alien to them. Coming from Friesland they had their own language, a different culture and also a different religion, Friesland being a predominantly Protestant province where Limburg was a predominantly Catholic province. Even the landscape was different.
The new immigrants arrived in Limburg and had to adapt to a new way of life.My Grandparents weren’t the only ones to leave Friesland, because of the lack of work in Friesland a great number of Frisians chanced their luck in the hilly area of the Southern part of Limburg.
I am an immigrant too, because I left that same hilly area of southern Limburg for the emerald isle, Ireland. I emigrated because of my wife, who had emigrated from Ireland to the Netherlands 6 years prior.
In 1997 we decided to move to Limerick in Ireland.
So many people have immigrated over the centuries, when you go back far enough in history you will discover that most of us come from an immigrant background.
So next time someone talks in a disparaging manner about immigrants , just remember they maybe talking about you or your family.
(originally posted on January 15, 2019. Reposted with minor amendments January 10,2022)
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Silvain Wolf was just a footnote in history. But his story is an important one to tell.
He was born on October 7,1902 in Beek, a small town in the province of Limburg, in the South East of the Netherlands.
In 1930 he moved to nearby Sittard, where he got a job with his uncle Adolf Wolf- In the shop Wolf & Hertzdahl. (Which is a shop I often passed when I worked in Sittard.)
On August 25,1942 Silvain got the call to report for labor in Germany. He wanted to hide but was too late. He was initially sent to Westerbork. In Westerbork he wrote a few letters to his family. Below is part of the text of one of those letters.
“We are all good… Mrs van de Hors is keeping well too. Sophie(his sister) needs to remain tough, or do something else……. We had red cabbage and rotten unpeeled potatoes, and will disappoint more often.
You all keep strong, it is just a Holiday trip”
That last line says so much. He was still anticipating a return home. This was because the Nazis had created the illusion that all wasn’t that bad. On August 28,1942 he was put on a transport to Auschwitz.
But Silvain and other men were taken off the train in Kosel ,about 80 km away from Auschwitz. From labor camp Kosel the men were sent to other camps ,after that theirs and Silvain’s fate is unknown. There is only a footnote saying ‘Died in middle Europe’ not even the date is known. They put Silvain’s date of death on April 30,1943 but that is a fictional date.
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German troops invaded the Netherland in May 1940. The Nazi regime stayed in power in the the Netherlands until May 1945. Although the southern provinces had already been liberated in the autumn of 1944.
Despite the occupation, for many life went ahead as usual, at least to an extend. Sporting events were still allowed by the Nazi occupiers. I have often wondered why that was, but of course sports were ideal for propaganda purposes. It created an illusion to show the citizens that the Nazis weren’t all that bad. Also sports functioned as a distraction.
Cycling has always been popular in the Netherlands. Many Dutch still use the bicycle as their preferred means of transport. But also in a sporting sense it has always been popular and there have been many successful Dutch cyclists throughout the decades.
It is no wonder therefor that the Dutch continued to organizes cycling events like the Cauberg Criterium, which was an annual race in the most south Eastern part of the Netherlands , the province of Limburg, in the town of Valkenburg.
Two cyclists who would have competed in these races were Jan van Hout and Cor Wals.
Jan van Hout was a professional cyclist between 1933 and 1940. He was born in Valkenburg on October 17,1908.
He made quite a good living as a cyclist. With the money he earned as a cyclist he was able to but a pub in Eindhoven. When the Nazis occupied the Netherlands he closed his pub, he did not want to serve any drinks to the Nazis. He was a fervent anti Nazi. After he closed the pub Jan and his wife Anneke decided to join the Dutch resistance. They were involved in providing aid to refugees and people in hiding.
A few months before liberation Jan was arrested during a raid. He was sent to Neuengamme concentration camp where he died on February 22nd 1945.
Cor Wals was a Dutch cyclist, born February 26, 1911 in The Hague.
As early as 1931 Cor got contracts for the six-day races in Chicago and New York and made a name for himself as a six-day driver in the following years. Because of his unparalleled sense of balance, which stopped him from falling of the bike , he was nicknamed “Slingerplant” (Dutch: creeper). He took part in 39 races, of which he won seven, five of them with Jan Pijnenburg . In addition, he was three times Dutch master of the stayers(aka The pacemaker race, an endurance discipline of track cycling)
He was a fan favourite. However on July 21, 1941 during one of those stayers races, he took off his jacket and to the shock of the spectators ,they saw he was wearing a shirt with the SS symbol. He also gave the Hitler salute.
After winning the championship, he was whistled and booed during his lap of honor and cushions were thrown at him. He decided after that not to race again and to focus on a military career with the SS.
Initially he fought at the eastern front but he ended up working as a guard in several concentration camps. There was a rumour that he worked in Neuengamme when Jan van Hout was there, but this has never been verified.
After the war he was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but he was released in 1952.
He opened up a clothes shop in Eindhoven . One day Anneke van Hout-Louwers walked into the shop to buy some clothes for her son, Cor chatted with Anneke and cupid struck. The couple got married. Anneke van Hout-Louwers was the widow of Jan van Hout, there was a public outrage about the newly married couple. People were disgusted that Anneke married a traitor. The couple moved to Belgium soon after, they returned to the Netherlands in 1981.
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It is strange how things can come full circle. My first real blog was about an event during WWII in my hometown of which I was blissfully ignorant about, until I stumbled upon it by accident.. I came across the story of Frieda Goldschmidt-Jakob which actually ties into that story.
On October 5,1942 the RAF accidentally bombed the town of Geleen in the Netherlands. They mistakenly thought it was Aachen in Germany, which is only about 25 km away from Geleen.The bombing resulted in 83 being killed, 57 houses totally destroyed , severely damaging 227 more house and causing further damage to another 1728 homes.
Frieda Goldschmidt-Jakob and her husband lived on Groenstraat 7. which also functioned as a shop.
(the building in the middle is No 7.)
During that RAF bombing the Goldschmidt’s house was one of the homes which were hit and were destroyed. However they both survived.
Frieda and Joseph Goldschmidt fled Germany in 1936 and moved to the Netherlands where they setlled in Geleen . The oldest son Louis fled to the Netherlands in 1934, it is not known where exactly he moved to. The 2 oldest daughters also moved to Geleen in 1936, The 3 youngest children Alma , Hubert and Irene Initially moved to Utrecht and then moved in with their parents in Geleen in 1937.Irene moved to a different address in Geleen
Frieda’s oldest daughter Elsa and her husband Adolf Markus managed to emigreat to the US in 1940.
In 1941, new laws restricted the movement of Jews Hubert and Alma were transported to Toulouse in France. Frieda and her husband Joseph did not need to move because of their old age Irene was deported to Poland . When Frieda and Joseph’s house was bombed they moved into Irene’s house
On 9 April 1943 Joseph and other remaining Jews in the province of Limburg were sent to Vught and a few weeks later to Sobibor via Westerbork, He was immediately gassed when he arrived in Sobibor, aged 75.
All the stress must have got the better of Frieda because she became ill and rather then to be sent to Vught she was sent to a hospital in Maastricht by ambulance. She died in Maastricht on October 7 1943, age 74 just over a year after her house and shop was mistakenly bombed by the RAF.
It is believed that Hubert and Alma Goldschmidt and Elsa and her family have survived the war.
De Groenstraat is the street I often walked across to get to town centre, in fact it is actually where the town centre starts. Yet another placed I passed by daily and never knew the significance of the place. I had to immigrate to Ireland to discover these things.
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There is a lot of rightful criticism about how the Dutch dealt with the Jews during WWII. A lot more could have been done, there is no question about that. But, it is easy to say these things in retrospect. If you are faced getting killed for a simple act of defiance , you might just think twice before you take action.
The noble thing is always to do the right thing, but the right thing can sometimes cost you your life.
However despite that there were men and women who looked past that, and even at risk of losing their own life they still did the noble thing and saved as many lives as they could.
The above picture is of Jaap (Jacobus) Musch, he and his brother set up a resistance group named NV(Nameless Partnership-It also is used in business as Company) Jaap Musch was a dedicated and religious man who came from a family of strictly Calvinist Christian in Amsterdam, When the Nazis invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, he worked as Lab technician. In July 1942 when he and his brother Gerardus saw what was happening to their Jewish neighbours they decided to take action and set up NV the group dedicated to helping Jewish children find hiding places. Not only nearby but all over the country, they had to journey sometimes to Friesland , at the Northwest to the Limburg in the south east of the Netherlands, it was especially in the south of Limburg where they managed to save the children, Often hiding in plain sight.
Jaap was captured in September 1944 and was executed. His brother Gerard was arrested on May 9,1944 in Amsterdam while in possession of five ration cards. He was tortured and sent to a concentration camp, but survived the war, and married Wilhelmina Vermeer another NV member who also had survived.
In total the group saved 231 children who all survived the war and the Holocaust.
Rather then write a lengthy essay on the group. I will be posting pictures of some members of the group and some children they have saved below. In this week of remembrances of Liberation and Victory, lets not forget the remember the oft forgotten heroes, the Nameless ones .
The group was awarded Righteous among the nations by Yad Vashem
Ida Groenewegen van Wijk member since 1943
Willem en Truus Vermeer members since 1943
Stella en Beccie Hamerslag, 2 sisters saved by NV
Leo Vogel, saved by the NV
Dick Groenewegen van Wijk, member of the NV since 1943
Marianne Braun, Jewish member of the NV , since 1943
Members and ‘hidden’ children saved by the NV in the garden of the Vermeer family, in Brunssum. Limburg the Netherlands.
Gerard Musch Co Founder of the NV group
Joop Woortman aka Theo de Bruin, co founder of the NV group
Semmy de Bruin, member of the NV group since 1943
Some of the saved children defiantly spelling out the letters NV in a field in 1943.
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The name Geleen will mean little to most, but it is where I was born and raised.A small industrial city in the province of Limburg, the south east of the Netherlands. Just because I don’t live there anymore doesn’t mean I am not proud to be from there or that I don’t love it anymore, because I do love it and I am still proud to be a Gelener..
This doesn’t mean I can’t be critical. Many mistakes have been made in the past which resulted in professional football and motor racing to disappear. Where there used to be a vibrant city centre there are only a few shops left at the moment, all because a mayor had some grandiose plans for the city, grandiose but not well thought through.
The biggest loss however was the loss of Pinkpop , one of Europe’s biggest Rock festivals. I am not going to dwell on the reasons ,but I will recapture some of my home town’s great Rock legacy.
However the very first edition wasn’t held in Geleen but in the nearby village of Gulpen. The festival was called PinkNick at the time , the date May 26 1969.
But from 1970 the festival was renamed to PinkPop(pink taken from the word Pinksteren, meaning Pentecost). and the new venue was Burgemeester Damen Sportpark in Geleen, where it remained until 1986. In 1987 it moved to Baarlo. In 1988 Landgraaf was to become the new venue where the festival is still being held to date.
Below are just some impression of artists who played in Geleen.
David Lee Roth of Van Halen with a broken nose at the Pinkpop Festival in Geleen . May 26, 1980.
1979 Poster
U2 in 1981
The Cure 1986
Fleetwood Mac 1971
Thin Lizzy 1978
ZZ Top 1982
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History of Sorts 
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