Marie Davidson-Wallach was one of the 8 Dutch Jews who were murdered on April 9, 1945. Now some people will dispute this . They will say that she probably just died because of disease our malnourishment. The fact is that she was forcibly taken from her house, transported to more then one camp, against her will where she eventually died in one of them, to me that makes it murder.
What makes it even sadder is that so little is know about Marie, but the thing that drew my attention to her is the notification of the Red Cross.
It says: “We have been advised by our Lisbon Delegate that the parcel(s) addresses as under in your behalf has/have been returned owing to the addressee(s) having gone away without leaving a new address .
As the content of the parcel, on its receipt in Lisbon were found, owing to its length of time in transit, to be not fit anymore for consumption, we regret we are unable to make you any allowance in this instance”
I don’t know the date of the document but it is reasonable to assume it was sent, while the Dutch Royal family were still in exile in the UK , because it was issued by the Netherland Red Cross with then crown princess HRH Juliana as president of the organisation.
One might think that the notification is a fair note, but it is not. The address mentioned ,Zuider Amstellaan 57 huis, Amsterdam, was the address of Marie’s parents. The note says ‘having gone away without leaving a new address’ who have wrote that must have known that they were forced out of their house, they did not leave voluntarily.
Marie married Jaap Davidson on March 31,1942 . The marriage ceremony took place at Marie’s parents’ house. There was no party or reception.
On September 4,1944 Marie was deported to Theresiënstadt. I am not sure if she had been in a transit camp like Westerbork prior to that, but it is safe to presume she had. On the transport there were another 653 people , Walter Suskind, a German Jew who helped about 600 Jewish children escape the Holocaust, was one of them.
I don’t know when Marie was deported to Bergen Belsen, but it is there were she found her untimely death on April 9,1945 by an evil regime that had not deemed her worthy to live.
She was born in Amsterdam, on the 8th of February 1920, she was aged 25 when she died.
I don’t know what happened to her husband, but I know her parents survived the war.
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Theresienstadt, also known as Terezín, was a town in northern Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic), it was used from 1941 to 1945 by the Nazis as a walled ghetto and concentration camp and was also used as a transit camp for western Jews en route to Auschwitz and other extermination camps.
In 1943, the Nazis scheduled 500 Danish Jews to be deported to a camp, but the Jews managed to escape to Sweden. While Europeans elsewhere often quickly lost interest in their deported Jewish fellow citizens, the Danes persisted in demanding that the Germans account for these Danish citizens and allow the Red Cross to visit the ghetto.
To dispel rumours about the extermination camps, the Nazis permitted the visit, but they arranged an elaborate hoax. They deported many camp residents to Auschwitz to minimize the appearance of overcrowding and erected fake stores and cafés to give the appearance of a life of comfort and ease. The Red Cross visited the Danish Jews—no more than two or three in a room—in freshly painted quarters. A children’s opera, Brundibar, was performed for the guests. The hoax succeeded so well that the Nazis made a propaganda film at Theresienstadt showing how well the Jews were living under the benevolent protection of the Third Reich. When the filming was finished, the Nazis deported most of the cast, including nearly all of the children, to Auschwitz.
On 18 September 1945, Lt. Colonel J.H.M. Benbow from the Indian army compiled a report on eyewitness accounts of Theresienstadt.
Below is the transcript of the report.
Senior Search Officer HQ 1 Corps District 14, Sudstrasse, Iserlohn B.A.O.R.
To: – Search Bureau
Bunde, BAOR. 18 Sept 1945
——————–
Subject: – Theresienstadt
Reference your PWDP/55711 dated 9th Sept 1945 and conversation of 15-9-45 between Col. ALLAN and Col. BENBOW.
Samuel Wolff’s home was visited a second time in accordance with your request but he was not available and in view of the fact that he is an old man and not very well, it was deemed more desirable to obtain the information you required from other personnel in the vicinity of Iserlohn whom Lt. Apte knew of as having returned from Theresienstadt. A certain amount of information has been procured and it is hoped that this will give you some idea as to the conditions etc prevailing in that Camp.
The following account is based on facts given by one local Jewish family but most of the points mentioned have been verified by a number of internees, within 1 Corps District, who were themselves at one time in Theresienstadt. The family concerned returned from Theresienstadt about two months after their liberation by the Allies.
DEPORTATION to Theresienstadt was restricted to Jews from Western and Central Europe and of those, only old people (i.e. over 60) families of disabled ex-servicemen of World War I with children under the age of 14, married couples of whom one member was non-Jewish and which, according to Nazi ideology, were privileged marriages. For these people, a warning of the impending deportation to Theresienstadt was given two weeks in advance, but the normal procedure appears to have been short notice of about 24 hours. 25 kg of baggage per head plus bedding consisting of only one blanket and cushion and foodstuffs for the journey was allowed.
Transport assembled at Dortmund railway station but deportees were detained for two days in a former cattle shed, from which it appeared, that cattle had only been moved just before the personnel arrived. During the short period between the removal of the cattle and the entry of the deportees into the shed, Nazis searched people for possessions. When entraining, the 25 kg of baggage had to be stowed away separately and was not seen again. Deportees were accommodated in old passenger [sic] carriages which were overcrowded – about 1500 persons were involved in that move, in which the family concerned, took part. The deportees arrived at Theresienstadt after approximately 36-hour journey and were then detrained after some days. At the end of July 1942, there were 15-20000 internees at Theresienstadt but later batches arrived weekly and the number increased to about 60000. The peacetime population of Theresienstadt was about 8000, but these had all been evacuated before the arrival of the deportees.
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These 60000 persons were placed in the few small houses which were originally there and also into the five existing military billets which were not being used for administrative and industrial work. 25-30 people were accommodated in a normal-sized room, each person being allowed 2’2” x 6’ floor space. No beds were provided until 1944, (when wooden beds were introduced) and blankets were rolled up daily and placed against the wall together with the scanty personal belongings.
Sanitary conditions were practically non-existent, with 400-600 people being obliged to use one water pump in the courtyard for washing, laundry and cleaning food utensils. Latrines were open trenches and the probable cause of much illness and disease.
Meals were prepared in a number of communal cookhouses, each one feeding up to 10,000 persons. The daily ration consisted of 170 grams of bread, black coffee substitute for breakfast, water soup and half-pound of boiled unskinned potatoes or occasionally a kind of millet-pep for lunch, and black coffee for supper. No mess halls were provided and deportees were obliged to eat their meals in their living quarters which made the task of keeping these quarters free of vermin so difficult, and in fact [sic], almost impossible.
The death rate was approximately 100-150 per day owing to malnutrition and consequently lowered resistance against prevalent disease. Corpses were removed from the Camp and buried in either the local cemetery or in mass graves. Later on, a crematorium was constructed and the ashes were stored away in urns or cardboard boxes.
At the end of 1944 and the beginning of 1945, word came that the Swiss Red Cross Commission was expected to arrive and orders were given for all traces of these casualties to be removed. These orders were carried out and within a few days, 40000 urns or cardboard boxes had been loaded onto trucks and dumped into one of the nearby rivers.
At the same time, a special spectacle was arranged to deceive this Commission. This consisted of the construction of a children’s playground in the centre of the town, children were provided with new clothing and toys, which they had never seen before. They were then invited to a kind of garden party, with cakes etc provided. A special -party was arranged for adults and evening dresses and gowns etc. were issued.
A few days after the Commission had departed, these same people were sent to Poland to be killed off at one of the ill-famed extermination camps.
Everybody had to work. Elderly people were engaged in administrative work or in the interior economy of the camp. The stronger and younger men were put to work on the roads and on railway construction. Women were employed in special workshops which were set up in cold and drafty wooden huts. One of these workshops was used for the splitting up of micre into thin layers required for electrical appliances, another was utilised for the making of leather articles such as wallets, belts etc for German troops.
General conditions of work were extremely bad and even worse during the winter months.
One large wooden shed, erected on poles and standing well above the ground was erected. Three hundred people worked in this building in which there were six very small stoves. On several occasions, permission to light these stoves was withdrawn for periods ranging up to a fortnight, either as a punishment or a method of saving fuel.
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Hours of work were very long – 14-16 hours daily and a 7-day week being normal.
At the end of 1944, it was announced that 1,200 people would go to Switzerland under arrangements being made by the Swiss Red Cross Commission. Internees were permitted to apply to go to Switzerland provided they had no relatives who had previously been deported to Poland. Four days after this announcement, the persons concerned were despatched to Switzerland and upon arrival, a few of the younger ones wrote letters, some of which did reach Theresienstadt, but no news from the older members ever came through.
In April 1945, another announcement was made that a further 600 people could proceed to Switzerland, but participation on this journey was restricted only to those whose relatives in Switzerland had asked for them to be sent and for those who had occupied a leading position inside the Ghetto Community.
Before these people could be despatched, however, another Swiss Red Cross Commission suddenly arrived. This Commission was ignorant of the impending move to Switzerland which was allegedly supposed to have been arranged by the S.R.C.C. An investigation was carried out and the Camp Commandant is reported to have admitted that this move was a ‘fake’ and was really intended to supply the first batch of deportees to the newly-constructed extermination camp just outside Theresienstadt, which had been provided with the notorious gas chambers. Due to the timely arrival of the S.R.C.C., these people were never despatched.
On the other hand, since September 1942, transports of personnel were despatched at intervals of 3-4 months to the so-called Death-Camps in Poland and no more was ever heard of the people involved.
In September 1944, the speed of these transports was stepped-up considerably and within five weeks, 11 transports were despatched, carrying a total of 18000 individuals to almost certain death.
When Theresienstadt was eventually liberated by the Russians, they found there, approximately 20-25000 Jews who were in an exceedingly poor state of health.
It is not possible to ascertain the total number of persons who either died or were killed in Theresienstadt owing to the SS. Guards burned the whole Registry when they departed [sic] in a hurry just before the arrival of the Russians.
It is regretted that no other information is available regarding the number of graves in the vicinity of the camp, but it is suspected that these may have been obliterated prior to liberation, in order to destroy all traces of evidence and prevent the allies from determining the extent to which this form of Nazi brutality reached in this Camp. However, the fact that 40000 urns etc of ashes were disposed of and approximately 20000 victims were sent to Poland, will give some idea as to the state of affairs that existed.
I feel that this account illustrates fairly clearly the conditions etc under which these deportees were imposed, but if there are any more details required, please let me know and I will see what further information can be obtained, though a very detailed interrogation has already been carried out and I doubt whether much more knowledge of life in Theresienstadt will be forthcoming.
(J.H.M. Benbow) Lt. Colonel.
Indian Army
Senior Search Officer, HQ 1 Corps Dist.
I could not find too much on Lt. Colonel J.H.M. Benbow, but I do know that on 26 August 1946 he was promoted to the rank of Captain.
“Mengele and Eichman tour
I was here last year due to my father’s Nazi hunt in the 50s, lovely small Restaurant, even met a man in his 90s who knew many Nazis. Even had dinner in the corner with him where Mengele and Eichman once sat. You wont find anything from the past inside like old tables or chairs,but the idea what folks were talking about back then was intriguing”
The above text is from a restaurant review posted on Tripadvisor in September 2018. The restaurant is the A.B.C restaurant in Lavalle 545, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
I was always surprised where there were never any sanctions against Argentina, and other South American countries, but Argentina appears to have harboured and still does provide a safe haven for escaped Nazi war criminals.
The A.B.C restaurant is a prime example where Nazis dined and wined in plain sight. In 1950 Adolf Eichmann escaped with help from the Red Cross to Argentina m in 1952 his family followed him. Eichmann changed his name to Ricardo Klement.
Joseph Mengele also moved to Argentina after he had been hiding ,more or less in plain sight, in Germany, In 1949 he fled to Argentina via Genoa in Italy, using the alias Helmut Gregor, also assisted by the Red Cross via a passport and Visa he obtained from them. Now I don’t want to be too critical of the Red Cross because the whole civil administration was a chaos in the ;ate 40s in Germany.
Mengele though soon started using his own name again, be it a with a slight Spanish angle to it as Jose Mengele.
Somewhere in 1953 both men met in the German style A.B.C restaurant where they held a party for another Nazi, the propagandist Johann von Leers, who worked for Goebbels and also wrote propaganda for Juan Perón. von Leers was moving to Egypt , so Mengele and Eichmann threw him some sort of goodbye party.
There were so many Nazis who received refuge in Argentina, there is a small town called Bariloche, which made international headlines in 1995 when it became known as a haven for Nazi war criminals, such as the former SS Hauptsturmführer Erich Priebke and SS officer Reinhard Kopps, known in Argentina as Juan Maler. Priebke had been the director of the German School of Bariloche for many years.
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I don’t know what to think of this story. It is either bizarre or amazing, but probably a bit of both.It is a great indication how truly delusional Himmler was.
In spring 1945 Himmler had already seen the light in relation to the progression of the war. It was clear to him Germany would lose and his life would not be safe. He therefore approached the allies to see if he could make a deal with them. He basically wanted to be appointed as the head of Germany after the war.
Himmler met Hitler for the last time on 20 April 1945. at Hitlers’s 56th birthday party, although the Soviets were shelling Berlin, they were still having a birthday party. where Himmler swore unswerving loyalty to Hitler. At a military briefing on that day, Hitler stated that he would not leave Berlin, in spite of Soviet advances. Himmler left Berlin shortly after the briefing.
In the early hours of April 21, With the help of Heinrich Himmler’s osteopath, Felix Kersten, the Swedish section of the WJC arranged a secret meeting between Norbert Masur, a German Jew who had emigrated to Stockholm, Walter Schellenberg and Himmler about 70 kilometres north of Berlin.
I don’t know what I would have done if I would have been in Masur’s shoes. I more then likely would have attacked Himmler.
Masur issued a report of more then 60 pages about the meeting. Below is one excerpt of it.
“I tried very carefully to get him away from the unfortunate thought to defend his policies against the Jews in front of a Jew, because such an attempt would force him to add lie upon lie to his argument. But it was impossible to do so. It seemed that he had the need to express his defense to a Jew, as he probably felt that the days of his life, or at least the days of his freedom were numbered. And Himmler continued: ‘In order to stop the epidemics we were forced to cremate the bodies of the many people who died of the diseases. That was the reason we had to build the crematoria, and now, because of this, everyone wants to tighten the noose around our neck.’This was the most convulsing try by Himmler to cover up his deeds. I loathed this explanation of the crematoria to such an extent that I could only remain silent.”
As a result of Masur’s meeting, Himmler allowed around 7000 women to leave the Ravensbruck concentration camp with the Swedish Red Cross.
Himmler probably thought that would absolve him from any wrong doing. Just over a month later on May 23rd ,1945, Himmler killed himself, if you ask my opinion I believe that day should be an international holiday.
What amazes me most about this is that so little is ever made of this meeting in the history annuls of WWII.
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On the 23rd of June , 1944,two delegates from the International Red Cross and one from the Danish Red Cross visited Theresienstadt accompanied by the commandant SS First Lieutenant Karl Rahm and one of his deputies.
During the visit the delegations were treated to an Opera by the Jewish composer Hans Krása. The children’s opera Brundibár was composed by composer Hans Krása and written by the writer Adolf Hoffmeister in 1938. for a government competition, which was later cancelled because of political developments.
In mid 1941 a production of the opera was directed by Rafael Schächter, and several of his friends, it served as a fiftieth birthday present for the director of the orphanage at Hagibor. There had only been 2 performances of the production in Prague, both took place in secret for the Jews were banned of partaking in any cultural events.
By winter 1942 composer Krása and the set designer František Zelenka had been transported to Theresienstadt.
By summer 1943, almost all of the children from the original chorus and the orphanage staff had also been transported to Theresienstadt.
This gave composer Krása the opportunity to reconstruct the full score of the opera, based on memory and the partial piano score that he had kept, the opera was adapted ait to suit the musical instruments which were available in the camp:guitar, clarinet, , flute, accordion, piano, percussion instruments, 4 violins, a double bass and a cello . A set was once again designed by František Zelenka, who had formerly been a stage manager at the Czech National Theatre.
In spring time of 1944 the Theresienstadt ghetto was getting ready for a visit from the International Red Cross committee, whose aim it was to assess its function as a ‘model’ ghetto that was ‘given’ to the Jews, by Hitler. Brundibár was chosen as the opera that would be put on show for the committee. It was moved to a large sports hall outside the ghetto, and Zelenka, was given the materials to make improvements to the set and costumes. This beautification of Brundibár had to happen overnight. The end scenes of Brundibár were then filmed on June 23 1944 for the propaganda film Theresienstadt (better known under the title The Führer Has Given the Jews a Town).
The plot of the opera is about two children, Aninka and Pepíček, whose mother is very ill and needs milk to get better, but there is no money. An idea of making money occurs to them when they see the organ-grinder Brundibár earning a living in the market. But Brundibár is an evil man , and shouts down the children. During the night, animals from one of the posters come to the aid of the despairing children, and the following day they help the children to sing louder than Brundibár. The children get the money they need , but the evil Brundibár steals their earnings . In the end the children find him and are given back what belongs to them.
All of the cast who were involved in the Theresienstadt production were put on transport sent to Auschwitz as soon as filming was finished. Most were gassed immediately when they arrived, including the children and also the composer Krása.
What makes all of this worse is that the whole charade was believed by the Red Cross.
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One of the reasons why so many died during the holocaust is because ‘good’ people, decided to look the other way.
The Red Cross knew what was happening and decided to do very little. I know some people will say”It was war time, what could they do?” And I understand that question and appreciate the reasoning behind it.
However in 1933, 6 years before the war began a Jewish refugee had already alerted the International Committee of the Red Cross to mistreatment of prisoners in Dachau, this was ignored.
The German Red Cross or DRK was a member of the Red Cross movement. On 11 June 1933 Nazi Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick Frick was invited to speak at the Red Cross Day. He stated:
“The Red Cross is something like the conscience of the nation. … Together with the nation, the Red Cross is ready to commit all its strength for the high goals of our leader, Adolf Hitler”
Max Huber who was the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross from 1928 to 1944. Expressed the attitude of the ICRC towards the DRK’s exclusion of the Jews. In a 1939 letter he expressed the view ‘the primary obligation of neutral treatment as foreseen in the Geneva Convention was to the victims of war, and not to the helpers. He argued that as it was impossible to prescribe rules which were in conflict with the laws of a country, it was better to take a flexible approach than to risk the break-up of the universal Red Cross movement’.
Dr. Karl Franz Gebhardt was the director of the German Red Cross, during WWII and personal physician to Heinrich Himmler. He oversaw human medical experimentation of concentration camp inmates. He was the main coordinator of a series of surgical experiments performed on inmates of the concentration camps at Ravensbrück and Auschwitz.
Gebbhardt in his capacity as the leader of the German Red Cross had offered in April 1945 to take Goebbels’s children out of the city with him, but he was dismissed by Goebbels.
In June 1944 the ICRC were allowed to visit Theresienstadt .If they would have done a proper inspection they would have seen the horrors. But the visit was superficial and they were fooled by the Nazi in an elaborate hoax. The ghetto was “beautified.” Gardens were planted, houses painted, and barracks renovated. The Nazis staged social and cultural events for the visiting .
The ICRC were made to believe it was more of a holiday resort then a place where atrocities took place. This is just my view on it but do me it seems like the it was all a ‘ticking the box, exercise for the ICRC, nothing else.
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Theresienstadt was a 1944 Nazi propaganda film depicting Theresienstadt concentration camp as a sort of idyllic rest stop, in an attempt to convince world opinion that there was no such thing as Nazi death camps. The film intended to be viewed in “neutral” nations showing how “humane” conditions were at Theresienstadt.
Nor only was it enough to have a false depiction of Theresienstadt, the Nazi also coerced German-Jewish Actor, Director Kurt Gerron into directing it. Gerron had escaped Germany after the Nazis got to power, and ended up in the Netherlands. Once filming was finished, Gerron and members of the Jazz pianist Martin Roman’s Ghetto Swingers were deported on the camp’s final train transport to Auschwitz. Gerron and his wife were gassed immediately upon arrival, along with the film’s entire performing entourage (except for Roman and guitarist Coco Schumann).The next day, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler ordered the closure of the gas chambers.
After the Wehrmacht occupied the Netherlands, Gerron was first interned in the transit camp at Westerbork before being sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
The Nazis allowed representatives from the Danish Red Cross and the International Red Cross to visit in June 1944. It was all an elaborate hoax. The Germans intensified deportations from the ghetto shortly before the visit, and the ghetto itself was “beautified.” Gardens were planted, houses painted, and barracks renovated. The Nazis staged social and cultural events for the visiting dignitaries. Once the visit was over, the Germans resumed deportations from Theresienstadt, which did not end until October 1944.
As a result of preparations for the Red Cross visit, the summer of 1944 was, as one survivor later wrote, “the best time we had in Terezín. Nobody thought of new transports.”
The gimmick was so successful that SS commander Hans Günther tried and decided to expand on it by having Kurt Gerron, make a short documentary about the camp to assure audiences that the inmates kept there were not being abused. In return, the Nazis promised that he would live. Shooting took 11 days, starting September 1, 1944.
The idea behind the film was to be shown in neutral countries,including Vatican City to convince them that the Jews were treated fairly, to counter Allied news reports about the persecution of Jews.
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In a 1939 letter he expressed the view ‘the primary obligation of neutral treatment as foreseen in the Geneva Convention was to the victims of war, and not to the helpers. He argued that as it was impossible to prescribe rules which were in conflict with the laws of a country, it was better to take a flexible approach than to risk the break-up of the universal Red Cross movement’.
Gerron had escaped Germany after the Nazis got to power, and ended up in the Netherlands. Once filming was finished, Gerron and members of the Jazz pianist Martin Roman’s Ghetto Swingers were deported on the camp’s final train transport to Auschwitz. Gerron and his wife were gassed immediately upon arrival, along with the film’s entire performing entourage (except for Roman and guitarist Coco Schumann).The next day, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler ordered the closure of the gas chambers.
History of Sorts 
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