Tag Archives: Vught concentration camp

Katja Schot—Dutch War Criminal

She was a maid and came from an NSB family. At the age of 18, she started working as a guard in Camp Vught. She was involved in the Bunker drama that took place on the night of 15 to 16 January 1944. From the end of 1944 to March 1945 she worked as a security guard in Ravensbrück.

Katja Schot was notorious in the camp Vught. She taunted, kicked, humiliated, abused and beat the inmates. In 1947 she was sentenced by the Special Court in Den Bosch to twenty years in prison for her crimes, after two granted requests for clemency, she was given nine years. Katja Schot was called “an animal creature” by the prosecutor at the hearing

Katja Schot never expressed regret and married a former SS man.

The Bunker drama was an atrocity committed by the staff at the Herzogenbusch concentration camp (also known as Kamp Vught) in the Netherlands, on January 15 1944.

Right before the Bunker tragedy a quarrel took place at the female department of the camp. One of the female prisoners in barrack 23 was blamed by other women for betrayal, and finally, they cut her hair to punish her. The next day the main culprit was locked up by the camp leadership in a cell in the camp prison, the Bunker. She refused to tell the names of the other women who were involved in the quarrel. The women of the 23rd barrack decided to declare their solidarity with her and all declared guilty in expectation to lighten the punishment of their detained fellow prisoner. That was a fatal miscalculation because Grünewald took the women’s solidarity action as mutiny and decided to take very hard measures. On the 15th of January, he let round up all the women and, under the encouragement of SS-Obersturmführer Hermann Wicklein, lock them in two cells in the Bunker. They crammed 74 women into cell 115, while the remaining 17 were detained in cell 117 nearby. Cell 115, had a floor area of 9m2 and hardly any ventilation.

After 14 hours of confinement, the inmates were released from the cell. Ten women did not survive the night.

Katja Schot was present during the confinement of the prisoners and had to translate camp commander Adam Grünewald’s speech in which he described the accused women of mutiny and told them not to shout and that no window could open. There was so little space left that Schot, had to climb onto a bench to see how much space was left. Schot was also the one who reopened the cell the next morning.

Tineke Wibaut a resistance fighter and survivor testified, “When the lights went out, the panic erupted in full force. Some tried to shout through it to calm down the women and not to waste oxygen. Sometimes that helped, just for a moment, but then it started again. It didn’t stop, not that whole night, it just got less noise. The heat got stifling.”

These are the women who died.

Lena Bagmeijer-Krant
Nelly de Bode
Maartje den Braber
Lamberta Buiteman-Huijsmans
Anna Gooszen
Mina Hartogs-Samson
Johanna van den Hoek
Lammerdina Holst
Antoinette Janssen
Huiberdina Witte-Verhagen

Katja Schot died on 28 January 1996.

sources

https://www.tracesofwar.com/articles/5192/Bunker-tragedy-at-concentration-camp-Vught.htm

https://www.nmkampvught.nl/bunkerdrama/

https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/artikel/een-nacht-cel-115-het-bunkerdrama-kamp-vught

https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/tijdlijn/Katja-Schot/03/0004

https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/1269422/92481

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Rosalina Zilverberg- an Angel.

Rosalina Zilverberg was born in Oss, the Netherlands, on October 5,1942. She was murdered in Vught concentration camp Vught on April 17, 1943. She lived for 194 days.

In those 194 she will have only experienced her parents anxiety. She will have only experienced a life in captivity. She never got a chance to learn to walk or talk.

I said murdered in concentration camp Vught, some will argue that, They will say she died but wasn’t murdered because Vught wasn’t an extermination camp. But she was murdered, no one had the right to put her in any camp in the first place. Aside from that all concentration camps only served one purpose, the extermination of Jews and other groups the Nazis deemed sub human.

194 days.

Dear Rosanna .1 Angel , 9 prayers, 4 blessings a day is what I wish for you.

source

https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/26967/rosalina-zilverberg

Margareta Maria Gallinat—Just One of the Evil Ones

I am not going to say too much about Margareta Maria Gallinat. Suffice it to say she sought employment abroad to terrorize innocent citizens.

She was born in Ragnitz on 16 October 1894 in Rotsche Bach, Hamar.

In April 1940, Gallinat read a newspaper ad for Aufseherin and decided to apply. Two months later, she started in Ravensbrück and worked there until the summer of 1943, eventually becoming deputy Oberaufseherin.

From September 1943 to 1 July 1944, she was appointed SS-Oberaufseherin in the Vught transit camp and served as head of the Female Prisoners’ Division.

There are no records of the crimes she committed, but at least 749 men, women and children died in Vught, also known as Herzogenbusch, due to hunger, sickness and abuse. Of those, 329 were murdered at the execution site just outside the camp.

Margarete was complicit in these crimes. She applied for the position, initially in Ravensbrück and later in Vught.

source

https://beeldbankwo2.nl/nl/beelden/detail/d2ed573a-0259-11e7-904b-d89d6717b464/media/b853d5da-aed6-c43b-357c-6d05217cefa7?mode=detail&view=horizontal&q=1%20september&rows=1&page=165

Emile Franken’s Testimony in Cartoon Form

A picture tells a thousand words, and in this case, they truly do. The drawings and cartoons are made by Emile Franken. I am not sure what happened to Emile. I do know he was born on 15 April 1921 somewhere in the Netherlands and he survived the war.

I also know he spent time in the Vught concentration camp, and from there he was transported to Westerbork on 18 October 1943. After that, he was deported on 3 March 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The caption of the drawing at the top of the blog says, “Mealtime at the planes, Birkenau.”

“Life in Lower Birkenau Poland, 1944 Latrine at Night in Block.”
Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration camp

Above left: Arrival and transport in Birkenau
Above right: Selection for crematorium [or KL]
Lower left: The last clothes are taken off
Lower right: Hair cutting

I do not know if Emile survived, I doubt it very much, but his drawings made his experiences crystal clear. I suppose now-a-day this could be called memes, but memes are supposed to be funny or satirical. There is nothing funny about these—they portray reality.

source

https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/bronnen?term=Emile+Franken&Foto%27s=1

The Forgotten Kindertransport

Most people will have heard about the Kindertansport-Children-Transport—a unique humanitarian rescue programme, which ran between November 1938 and September 1939. Approximately 10,000 children, the majority of whom were Jewish, were sent from their homes and families in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Great Britain.

But there were two other Kindertransports. In Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch, better known as camp Vught, in the Netherlands, nearly 1,300 children were deported, 6–7 June 1943, most of them accompanied by their mothers, sometimes with fathers or sometimesalone. A few days later, almost everyone in the Sobibor extermination camp was killed by gassing. It is an exceptional horror story from the Holocaust.

The children were between a few days old and up to age 16. Children up to three years old were accompanied by their mothers. Or on the transport of the 7th of June, children from 4 to 16 years were accompanied by their father or mother. At least 1,269 were then transferred to Sobibor, where they were murdered almost immediately in the gas chambers.

The Jewish children had a hard time in camp Vught. The German SS leadership had decided in February 1943 that all children between the ages of 4 and 16 had to be separated from their parents. Boys and girls were housed in separate barracks, but there were not enough people to care for and entertain all the children.

At the end of April 1943, the children’s area in camp Vught became overcrowded. The chaos that this caused was a thorn in the side of the German SS leadership of the camp. On 5 June 1943, it was announced that all children had to leave the camp. The next day they rounded up all the children up to 3 years old with their mothers and a day later, the children from 4 to 16 years old with one of both parents.

The 13-year-old Alida Lopes Dias from Amsterdam also had to go along with her mother and sister on the children’s transport. Her older sister Gretha stayed behind in Vught. She ran after Alie, as she called her sister. “The German shepherds bit my legs. I screamed. But I still managed to say hello to Alie. I buttoned up her red cloak. And then she and Mother went into a cattle truck with hundreds of other children. I never saw her again,” Gretha said after the war.

The husband of Annie Vrachtdooder, who was imprisoned in Vught, wrote to her husband from camp Vught:

“At least you have a sign that I’m still here. Now darling I’ll tell you what happened. All women with children have been forwarded, including the women whose men work on the Moerdijk. (…) Now that Maup is here j.l. Sunday and Monday two transports went, taking a total of 3,500 people. All the children are gone (…)”

For a short time there was a school in camp Vught where the children were taught by Rie Hakker, she wrote:

“(…) Despite all the trouble, especially with those transports, we still laugh a lot. Only not yesterday, when we saw the women leave alone with the children. He had scarlet fever, that 40°C fever, etc. terrible. How lucky we are to be alone.”

At the last minute, Rie also had to join the transport.

These two transports were the only two transports specifically for children.

sources

6 juni

https://anderetijden.nl/aflevering/37/Alle-kinderen-op-transport

Escaping a Jewish Work camp.

There were 4 concentration camps in the Netherlands. The best known was Westerbork, the other 3 were Vught,Amersfoort and Ommen.

A relatively unknown fact is that there were also an estimated 42 work/labour camps. Between January 1942 and October 1942 , the Jewish work camps in the Netherlands spread across the countrie from which unemployed Jews had to carry out outdoor work.

The work in the camps was heavy, in almost all cases waste ground had to be cleared. The digging is done by hand. The men work long days, from six in the morning to six in the evening.

On the night of October 2–3, 1942, during Yom Kippur, the Jewish men were removed from most of these camps. They were transported to camp Westerbork on the pretext of family reunions. Most of them were sent later to Auschwitz, Sobibor and other camps, where the majority were murdered.

Maurits Jakobs was one of the men who were interned in Vedder one of the work camps. The camp was run by a Dutch company, Nederlandsche Heidemaatschappij, although it was under supervision by the Nazi regime.

At the end of September 1942, Maurits Jakobs cycled through a pitch-black forest in the middle of the night. He had just escaped from the Jewish labour camp Vledder in Drenthe. At that time, hw was not yet aware that his old camp mates would be deported to extermination camps a few days later, via Westerbork.

He managed to escape from Camp Vledder with the help of supervisor Willems, who was employed by the Nederlandse Heidemaatschappij. Willems has parked his bicycle at the sandy path. But the initiative for the escape came from Jo Oldenburger, a former employee of Maurits.

Oldenburger knew that the situation for Jews was becoming increasingly ominous and arranged a hiding place for Maurits and his wife in the town of Emmen. In the evening Oldenburger is waited for Mauris at the camp with an extra bicycle. Maurits, who initially still had doubts, decided to go along and follows Jo via the sandy path into the dark forest.

Maurits knew. as long as he would see the red bicycle light of Jo Oldenburger, who cycled in front of him, it would be safe. That was the arrangement.. Suddenly the light disappeared from view and Maurits hid with bicycle and all in a ditch. But Jo appeared to have turned a corner. They agreed to stay closer together.

The bike ride of almost seventy kilometers was tough for Maurits, who had not been on a bicycle for at least a year. After a long and painful journey they arrived at the hiding place in Emmen. Thanks to various hiding places, the Jakobs’ couple managed to stay under the radar all this time. They both survived the war.

This was probably the most ‘Dutch’ escape one could imagine. Escape by bicycle.

sources

https://www.ru.nl/rich/our-research/research-groups/cultures-of-war-and-liberation/current-projects/projects/knhm-1929-1954/

https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/artikel/maurits-jakobs-ontsnapt-dagen-voor-grootschalige-deportatie-uit-kamp-vledder

https://joodsewerkkampen.nl/geschiedenis

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Donald Davids Murdered innocence

I always try to keep my emotions out of it when I write about the Holocaust, but I often fail. How could I not get emotional when I see a picture of a baby who was murdered.

Donald was born in Amsterdam, on 30 March 1941 .He was murdered in Sobibor, on 11 June 1943., aged 2.

His Father was Meindert Davids and his Mother was Alida Davids-Hoost.

Meindert Davids was born on 23 April 1911 in Rotterdam .He was the son of David Davids and Betje Godschalk. Meindert married Alida Hoost, on 3 July 1940 in Aamsterdam.Alida was born on 1 December 1917 in Amsterdam. She was the daughter of Godschalk Hoost and Leentje Beugeltas. The couple had one child, their pride and Joy Donald, who was born on 30 March 1941 in Amsterdam.

On 17 February 1943, Meindert, Alida and their baby boy Donald were deported from their house on the Waverstraat to concentration camp Vught. From the registration card of the Jewish Council archive of Meindert Davids, it shows that he has been transferred on 21 May 1943 from Vught to the Moerdijk Command, a satellite command of Vught, and subsequently to to Vught and then to Westerbork where he steyd in barrack 62. On 21 September Meindert was put on transport to Auschwitz.

Where he was immediately murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau, upon arrival on September 24,1943

Little Donald and his Mother were sent to Westerbork on the 7th of June 1943.

Donald Davids was deported to Sobibor, together with his mother on the 8th June 1943 with the so-called children’s transport.

There were about 3000 people on that transport. Below is the breakdown of the age groups.

Off the 3000 people, 2743 are murdered in Sobibor. 17 Others are murdered elsewhere

Donald Davids is murdered on June 11.1943 He reached the age of 2 years. Another 3000+ Dutch Jews were murdered in Sobibor that day.

sources

https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/156499/donald-davids

https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/tijdlijn/Donald-Davids/01/3831

https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/tijdlijn/Donald-Davids/01/3831

https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/search?mode=cards&qs=#eyJjYXRlZ29yeSI6W10sImNvbnRlbnRHcm91cHMiOltdLCJwYWdlIjo1LCJzb3J0aW5nIjoiIiwiYWR2YW5jZWRmaWx0ZXJzIjp7InN1ck5hbWUiOm51bGwsImZpcnN0TmFtZSI6bnVsbCwiYmlydGhDaXR5IjpudWxsLCJkZWF0aENpdHkiOiJTb2JpYm9yIiwicmVzaWRlbmNlQ2l0eSI6bnVsbCwicmVzaWRlbmNlU3RyZWV0IjpudWxsLCJvY2N1cGF0aW9uIjpudWxsLCJiaXJ0aFllYXIiOm51bGwsImJpcnRoTW9udGgiOm51bGwsImJpcnRoRGF5IjpudWxsLCJkZWF0aFllYXIiOjE5NDMsImRlYXRoTW9udGgiOjYsImRlYXRoRGF5IjoxMSwiZGVjZWFzZUFnZSI6bnVsbH19

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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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The murder of 10 women in Camp Vught.

Concentration camp Vught, also known as concentration camp Herzogenbusch , was the only purpose built concentration camp in the Netherland. The other 2 major camps, Westerbork and Amersfoort, were already built before the war as a refugee center and army barracks.

The construction of Camp Vught began in May 1942. The camp consisted of 36 living and 23 working barracks. It was surrounded by a double barbed-wire fence with watchtowers were placed roughly every 160 feet around the perimeter. The SS lived outside the camp. situated outside the camp.

On the night of 15th/ 16th January 1944 , 74 female prisoners were detained in a cell after they protested against the interment of a fellow prisoner. This was done under the authority of camp commander Adam Grünewald

The room with the surface of 9 m² had a poor ventilation system, and because of that ten women died of suffocation during the 14 hours of imprisonment. The news of this crime quickly got outside the camp and was extensively reported by the Dutch illegal press. This caused a problem to the Nazi leadership in the Netherlands, who were trying to limit such violent incidents in the camp in order not to fuel the resistance in the Netherlands.

Electronics company Philips had a factory within the compound of the camp. It employed about 1200 people, who received a better treatment then other prisoners.

Adam Grünewald was subsequently arrested for the “bunker tragedy” and tried by an SS court in February which gave him credit for his years of service and his contention that he “didn’t wish for the death of ten women.” He was convicted for their death but sentenced to only three and a half years imprisonment.

On several sites this is referred to as the “bunker tragedy” . I don’t see it as a tragedy, to me this was cold blooded murder. They only redeeming factor is that only 10 women died.

sources

https://www.britannica.com/place/Vught

https://www.tracesofwar.com/articles/5192/Bunker-tragedy-at-concentration-camp-Vught.htm

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/vught-concentration-camp

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/adam-grunewald

http://www.philips-kommando.nl/index_grijs.html#

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/herzogenbusch-main-camp-vught#:~:text=Consequently%2C%2074%20women%20were%20collectively,and%20a%20half%20years’%20imprisonment.

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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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Camp Vught-Concentration camp in the Netherlands

Before I start writing about Camp Vught in the Netherlands, there is something I have to get off my chest. Two days ago I was watching the Irish news, they were talking about the Stutthof camp, in connection with the recent detention of 96-year-old Irmgard Furchner, who worked as a secretary in the camp’s office.. The news reader said “Polish camp”. I immediately said “There will be complaints about this” and sure enough a day after Poland’s ambassador to Ireland protested against Irish national broadcaster, RTE.

In a letter to RTE CEO Jon Williams, Ambassador Anna Sochańska pointed out that wartime concentration camps in Poland were built and run by the Germans, who were occupying Poland at the time.

“This is completely wrong, because the death camps were Nazi-German camps in occupied Poland. Poland was under German occupation at the time when several Nazi-German concentration and death camps were operating on its territory,” Sochańska wrote.

Except for Ireland, UK, Spain, Portugal, Malta, Sweden and Switzerland all other European countries were occupied, or axis powers. In all occupied countries there were Nazis and Nazi collaborators, even in Poland. If the Polish government keeps denying that, they are betraying the memories of the brave Polish soldiers and resistance fighters who died fighting the Nazis and their helpers. They are distorting their own history and that helps no one, past and future generations will not thank them for it.

As you can see the title of this blog is “Camp Vught-Concentration camps in the Netherlands” and not occupied Netherlands.

The prisoners at Camp Vught included Jews, political prisoners, Sinti and Roma gypsies, and resistance fighters. They were subjected to slave labour and were forced to make products for the German war industry, such as torches and radios. Despite their difficult circumstances, the prisoners managed to resist even in the prison camp by sabotaging the goods they were forced to make.

The as camp located in Vught near the town of ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands. The camp was opened in 1943 and held 31,000 prisoners. 749 prisoners were murdered in the camp, and the others were transferred to other camps shortly before the camp was liberated by the Allied Forces in 1944. It is also known as ‘Herzogenbusch concentration camp’

After the war, the camp was used as a prison for Germans and for Dutch collaborators.

Camp Vught witnessed endless cruelty on order of the Nazi regime . One of the most infamous events was the bunker drama. On 15 January 1944, to punish prisoners for a women’s protest in the camp, the camp commander put 74 women in cell 115, a bunker measuring 9 square meters without ventilation. When the soldiers opened the bunker door the next morning, 10 of the women were dead.

Camp Vught was the only SS concentration camp outside Nazi Germany.

As I stated earlier every occupied country had indigenous people helping the Nazis, and to be honest I don’t know what I would do if I was put in that position. Many people helped the Nazis purely out of self preservation. The Dutch railways and the civil servants had a lot to answer for. Their actions enabled the murder of over 100,000 Jews and a great number of others. But the Dutch were not unique in this, the only difference is that the Dutch were more efficient because of a well oiled citizen registry.

It would have been physically impossible for the Germans to fight on 2 fronts, defend the Atlantic wall from Norway down to France. And control more than 44,000 incarceration sites, without getting help from the locals.

If we keep diluting history we will never learn from it.

sources

https://www.holland.com/global/tourism/destinations/provinces/north-brabant/the-camp-vught-national-memorial.htm

https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/poland-protests-irish-broadcasters-polish-concentration-camp-misnomer-25086

Happy Birthday Wolf Blits

In my opinion the best way to remember the victims of the Holocaust is to personalize their stories. Rather then a number, show the human side. Because that is what they were ,all those millions were all individual human beings, just like everyone else.

I wish I could show you a picture of Wolf Blits. I could perhaps include a picture of CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, but he is not the same person.

Perhaps Wolf Blits also could have been a reporter, journalist or news anchor. But he was never given that opportunity. He was murdered when he was 4.

Wolf was born in Amsterdam on August 24,1938. He was murdered on June 11,1943 in Sobibor.

In those 4 years he travelled more then many 40 year old. In 1943 he traveled from Amsterdam to Camp Vught near Den Bosch in the Netherlands, where he arrived on June 6,1943.

From Vught he traveled to Westerbork near Amersfoort, in the Netherlands where he arrived on June 8,1943.

From Westerbork he traveled to Sobibor in Poland, where he arrived on or just before June 11,1943. There he was murdered on June 11,1943.

At the start of this blog is a picture of a card from Vught. On the card 4 year old Wolf was registered as a prisoner, as if he was a hardened criminal. Of course he wasn’t a criminal, nor were his parents or anyone else of those millions who were murdered. The criminals were those who murdered them, The disturbing fact though is that these criminals followed the letter of the law.

A law made up up by sick individuals who followed a warped ideology, an ideology based on hate.

Poor Wolf traveled quite a bit. I remember moving when I was a kid, it was only a few blocks away from where I lived, but to me it was like moving to the other side of the world. I thought they spoke a different language. I was very anxious. But I moved to a nice place. Poor Wolf traveled to be murdered.

It is his birthday today. Dear Wolf whatever star you are up in the skies, I wish you a happy birthday.

sources

https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/184678/wolf-blits

About

https://www.oorlogslevens.nl/tijdlijn/Wolf-Blits/02/13216