Westerbork – History of Sorts

Entomology During the Holocaust

The story of Emanuel Arnold Maurice Speijer reminds me a lot of that of Nikolai Vavilov, a scientist who sacrificed his life to save the seeds in the Leningrad seed bank. Emmanuel Speijer was more fortunate though.

Speijer was an entomologist. Entomology is the study of insects and their relationship to humans, the environment, and other organisms. Entomologists make great contributions to such diverse fields as agriculture, chemistry, biology, human/animal health, molecular science, criminology, and forensics.

For most people, a concentration camp would not be the obvious place to collect insects. However, for the Dutch Jewish scientist Emmanuel Speijer, establishing an entomological collection was a way to survive. While he was a prisoner in De Schaffelaar internment camp, in Barneveld, Westerbork, and Theresienstadt concentration camps, He did research on the insects that lived there and the diseases they spread. After the liberation, he published an article on his experiences, ‘Entomological work in the Nazi camps’

Speijer managed to use his passion for entomology to make life a bit more bearable in the camps. Insect plagues were resolved in an animal-friendly manner and he tried to prevent infections such as typhus by drawing up rules. The extensive Westerbork collection was collected in just one year.

This drawer contains all kinds of bees, bumblebees, wasps and ants collected in concentration camps during the Second World War by Emanuel Speijer.

On 19 December 1942, Speijer and his family were deported to De Schaffelaar internment camp near Barneveld in the Netherlands. More than 600 ‘socially prominent’ Dutch Jews were interned in the camp, which was housed in a castle, between 1942 and 1943. Due to their positions or connections, they were initially exempt from deportation to the East, but they too, faced increasingly strict rules.

Speijer’s stay in De Schaffelaar did not last long. After nine months, he was deported to Westerbork in the Northeastern Netherlands. He felt that it was important to preserve his collection, even if this meant giving it to the Germans, and he therefore asked them to keep it safe. It is partly thanks to these efforts that some of his collections can still be admired in Naturalis today.

‘In the beginning, it didn’t seem that my stay in this camp would be interesting from an entomological perspective,’ wrote Speijer of his first days in Westerbork. It wasn’t long before the camp’s Medical Service made him the ‘entomologist in the quarantine department.’ Instead of the caterpillars he’d studied in De Schaffelaar, he had to examine new camp prisoners for lice and mites. These bugs need to be removed with the utmost care, to prevent disease from spreading in the camp.

Despite the careful checks in the quarantine department, there were various disease outbreaks in Westerbork. Speijer wrote in length about one of them—the mysterious disease 7. Could this disease have been caused by lice? Or was the culprit a mite that was brought from Greece on rags distributed by the Germans? Speijer began a study to find an answer to this question. He sent specimens of infected skin to Leiden, to no avail.

Speijer spent the final, and perhaps the most turbulent, year of his imprisonment in the Czech concentration camp of Theresienstadt. Nowadays, the typhus outbreak there in the first half of 1945 is one of the most discussed outbreaks of the Second World War. Fearing the Allied advance, the Germans took large groups of prisoners to Theresienstadt in the last months of the war. It soon became impossible to check all new prisoners for lice and ‘disinfect’ them. As a result, the body louse—the main spreader of typhus—rapidly moves through the camp.

Because of his close contact with patients, he also became infected with typhus. After two days, he had such a high fever that he was unable to keep working.

As the Allied forces closed in, the Nazis began to empty ghettos and camps in Eastern Europe and send prisoners on death marches to camps and ghettos closer to Germany. Approximately 15,000 such prisoners arrived in Theresienstadt in the last weeks of April 1945. This increase almost doubled the camp‘s population to approximately 30,000 people.

Following two further visits in April 1945, the International Red Cross took over the running of Theresienstadt on 2 May 1945. One week later, on 9 May 1945, Soviet forces liberated the ghetto. Speijer left Theresienstadt on a stretcher, with the Red Cross.

When he returned to the Netherlands after the war, his ‘first task was to inquire about the collection.’ Unfortunately, little remains of his collections from Westerbork and Theresienstadt. According to him, though, entomology had shown that ‘it can help to give meaning to our lives, even in the most difficult circumstances.’ Doing research had given him a goal and had prevented the occupying forces from breaking his spirit. The tiny creatures had thus been of the utmost importance.

He died on October 30, 1999, at 95, in the Hague, South Holland, Netherlands.

Sources

https://www.niod.nl/en/blog/tiny-creatures-great-importance-how-emmanuel-speijer-did-entomological-research-concentration

https://topstukken.naturalis.nl/object/collectie-emanuel-speijer

https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/pres003onde01_01/pres003onde01_01_0035.php

https://filmkrant.nl/recensies/een-gelukkige-tijd

Nikolai Vavilov and the forgotten tragedy of the Siege of Leningrad.

https://collecties.kampwesterbork.nl/persoon/https%3A%2F%2Fkampwesterbork.nl%2Fdata%2Fperson%2F10698717

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.

$2.00

Music and Holocaust

Music and Holocaust

From Zero to 102

I was reluctant to use the title, From Zero to 102 as the title, I didn’t want it to look like a review for a car. However, I couldn’t think of a more suitable title either. The 0 and the 102 are the ages of two victims of the Holocaust.

This is how evil the Nazi regime really was. It is also why their industrialized way of murder was so effective. It is in human nature to always find the good in our fellow human beings, even animals. No one could really fathom the level of cruelty by the Nazis. It was unprecedented.

Suzanne Kaminski was born on 11 March 1943, in Brussels, Belgium. On 19 April 1943, she was deported from Mechelen to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Upon arrival on 22 April, she was murdered by the Nazis that same day. She was only 45 days old and considered the youngest Jewish child to be deported from Belgium.

Klara Engelsman was born on 30 April 1842 in Amsterdam as the daughter of Salomon “Samuel” Abraham Engelsman and Saartje Hartog Cosman. Klara Engelsman married Daniel Brush on 24 May 1865. As far as we know, the couple had no children. Daniel Brush died at 76 years old on 9 July 1918 in Amsterdam.

At the time of her 100th birthday, Mrs. Klara Brush-Engelsman lived at the home of the Morpurgo family. Later she stayed in the Jewish care home. In March 1944 she arrived in Camp Westerbork, where she was nursed in the camp hospital. There she still experienced her 102th birthday. She was taken on a stretcher to the train on 4 September 1944, which went to Theresienstadt, where she was murdered on 12 October 1944.

The murder of a 45 days old baby and a 102-year-old lady, is the clearest indication that the Nazis’ ideology was based on hate and hate only. Anyone who condoned this or still condones it, subscribes to that same ideology.

Sources

https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/228136/klara-borstel-engelsman

https://www.bruzz.be/actua/samenleving/jongste-joodse-gedeporteerde-krijgt-struikelsteen-brussel-2024-01-26

Hanns Albin Rauter—Pure Evil

It is important how you report on history. No one expects things to be always 100% accurate, but facts that can easily be verified should always be correct. In the case of Hanns Albin Rauter, I have seen him described as the Dutch head of Police during World War II, this is not true, he wasn’t Dutch, but Austrian. On Wikipedia I had seen the date of his execution as March 24, 1949, this is also incorrect, the date is a day later March 25, 1949.

He was the highest SS and Police Leader in the Netherlands during the period of 1940-1945. He was responsible for the repression of the Dutch resistance and supervised the deportation of the Dutch Jews to the concentration and death camps. Some sites refer to the occupied Netherlands, I don’t like that term, because that is giving an excuse to many of the Dutch who also played a part in governing the country as part of the Nazi regime.

On March 29, 1943, an order issued by Hanns Albin Rauter was published in most of the Dutch newspapers, “As of 10 April 1943, Jews are forbidden to stay in the provinces of Friesland, Drenthe, Groningen, Overijssel, Gelderland, Limburg, Noord-Brabant, and Zeeland. Jews who are currently in the aforementioned provinces must go to camp Vught.”

Anne Frank wrote of the news in her diary: ‘Rauter, some German bigwig, recently gave a speech. “All Jews must be out of the German-occupied territories before July 1st. The province of Utrecht will be cleansed of Jews (as if they were cockroaches) between April 1st and May 1st, and the provinces of North and South Holland between May 1st and June 1st. These poor people are being shipped off to filthy slaughterhouses like a herd of sick and neglected cattle. But I’ll say no more on the subject. My own thoughts give me nightmares!”

As I said earlier there were many Dutch involved in governing the Netherlands during World War 2. One of them was the leader of the NSB, the Dutch Nazi Union. Anton Mussert. Seen above on the left standing next to Adriaan Anton Hanns Albin Rauter and Arthur Seyss-Inquart,

Rauter was the main instigator of terror through summary arrests and internment in the Netherlands. The SS set up a concentration camp named Herzogenbusch after the city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch but located in the neighboring town of Vught gave the camp its name—Kamp Vught. In total this camp detained 31,000 people, of whom about 735 were killed.

Also, his SS manned a so-called polizeiliches Durchgangslager or police transit camp near Amersfoort, known as Kamp Amersfoort, in fact, a concentration camp, where approximately 35,000 people were detained and maltreated and 650 people (Dutch and Russian) died.

Rauter’s SS also managed the Kamp Westerbork (Polizeiliches Durchgangslager Westerbork), the place from which 110,000 plus Dutch Jews were deported to Nazi concentration and extermination camps, mainly Auschwitz and Sobibor.

75% of all Dutch Jews and Jews living in the Netherlands were murdered by the Nazis. Additionally, almost 20,000 Dutch people were arrested because of their work with the resistance, of which, two thousand resistance fighters were executed. Others were sent to detention centers or to concentration camps. Hanns Albin Rauter was one of the main architects.

On the night of 6 March 1945, Rauter was severely injured in a resistance attack. A day later, the Germans executed 263 political prisoners in retaliation. When the war ended, Rauter was still recovering in a German hospital, where he was arrested by the British. Rauter was handed over to the Dutch government by the British, in 1948, and was tried by a special court in The Hague. Rauter was sentenced to death on May 4th, 1948. He appealed to the Court of Cassation on May 12, 1948. The case was tried for the Bijzondere Raad van Cassatie (‘special court of cassation’) on October 20th and 22nd, 1948 in the building of the Hoge Raad (‘supreme court’) of the Netherlands. The death sentence was confirmed on January 12, 1949. He was executed on March 25, 1949.

Rauter, like several other high-ranking Nazis, had a scar on his cheek. This was not caused by the war but was as a result of dueling. These so-called dueling scars (or “Schmisse” in German) have been seen as a badge of honor since as early as 1825. Alternatively referred to as “Mensur scars,” “smite,” “Schimitte,” or “Renommierschmiss,” they became popular among upper-class Austrians and Germans involved in academic fencing at the start of the 20th century. Consequently, many of these same upper-class men who fashioned them found themselves wearing German army uniforms in both World War I and II. German military laws permitted men to wage duels of honor until World War I. During the Third Reich, the Mensur was prohibited at all universities following the party line.

Donation

$2.00

Sources

https://discover.hubpages.com/education/Dueling-Scars-The-Nazi-Officer-Badge-of-Honor

https://www.verzetsmuseum.org/en/kennisbank/imprisoned-by-the-germans-1#:~:text=Almost%2020%2C000%20Dutch%20people%20were,centres%20or%20to%20concentration%20camps.

Directions to Camp Amersfoort

https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/tijdlijn/Hanns-Albin-Rauter/03/0004

https://www.annefrank.org/en/timeline/162/rauter-wants-to-run-all-jews-from-the-provinces

https://www.tracesofwar.com/articles/2871/Hanns-Rauter.htm

An Unfinished Song for an Unfinished Life

When I write an unfinished life, I mean it as the life of the 1.5 million children who were murdered during the Holocaust.

For several years I have been trying to finish a song to remember all those children, but for some reason, I cannot finish it. Every time, I sit down to visualize the children and the horrors they went through, the emotions get the better of me. Maybe it is because I am a father, or maybe because I just can’t fathom the evilness.

The photograph above is of two children, both were murdered on March 6, 1944—80 years ago in Auschwitz. Eva Beem and her baby brother Abraham aka Bram.

Below is the translation of a letter that Eva wrote when she was imprisoned in Westerbork. Eva was born on May 21, 1932.

“Dear Aunt Janke, Uncle Han, and Aunt Mar, how are you? I’m doing fine! I have received your letter. I’m very happy with it! I don’t know if Bram has already written that we have family here, but we have a nephew and a niece here. I just met that cousin. Her name is Nannie! A nice name, huh? You said you would send the shoes, would you also send my dust comb and my clothes that I left hanging and my bows? I forgot to ask for my glasses, if possible, would you please send them to me?

My violin probably won’t work, right? But you should absolutely not add any sweets or any kind of food to it, because then it won’t get through. I cannot get a parcel stamp for you. I’m glad you got out of prison. I hope I can write again in 14 days. Would you like to say hello to Mr Polen? Furthermore, warm regards from your niece Eva Beem. Dear Uncle H, Aunt Mar and Marijke. Are you all doing well? Aunt Mar, are you completely better again? How old is Joke now? Give Marijke a big kiss from me. Uncle Han, have you gained some weight yet? Has Joke grown a bit bigger yet? Now, warm regards from your niece, Eva Beem.”

Bram did get the opportunity to write a letter. He was born on June 13, 1934. Below is the translation of his letter.

Dear Uncle and Aunt,

How are you? I’m doing well. The food is good here. We get 4 sandwiches and coffee in the morning, vegetables and potatoes in the afternoon and 4 sandwiches and porridge in the evening. And it’s cozy here. And sometimes we get cottage cheese and that is very tasty. We go to school here. I’m already in fourth grade and just got a 7 in math. Eva is also doing well. When your aunt is there, would you also show the letter to your aunt? And when you write back to me, you have to sign on the dotted line. And on the leaves where I have not written, you may write on them. I hope you are doing well too. I also have a cousin Sjonnie here who used to work on the radio.

Furthermore, greetings from,

Bram and Eva Beem”

On March 3, 1944, on a frosty morning, they were both put on a train and deported from Westerbork to Auschwitz, where they were murdered upon arrival.

This is not a photograph of the Beem children put on transport, but other children put on a train to be murdered.

These are the lyrics of my unfinished song. Like their lives, my song will remain unfinished.

On a frosty morning
You put me on a train

Not because I am different
But because I’m the same

On a frosty morning
You did send me away

I hate that drove you
I wasn’t allowed to stay

I‘m only human
Very much like you too

Why do you hate me
It‘s a puzzle to me

This is the unfinished song, “Human Like You.”

Sources

https://westerborkportretten.nl/westerborkportretten/eva-beem

https://westerborkportretten.nl/westerborkportretten/abraham-bram-beem

No Scruples—Dutch Public Transport and the Holocaust

Something I had not been aware of, but of course, it makes sense that the Nazis also used trams to transport the Dutch Jews to the concentration camps in the Netherlands.

The GVB is the company that runs the trams in Amsterdam and has had that name since 1943. A new film and book titled Verdwenen Stad (Lost City) by filmmaker Willy Lindwer and writer Guus Luijters uncovered a painful truth.

Invoices show that there were approximately 900 tram journeys for the deportation of the Amsterdam Jews, for which the GVB declared and received more than 9,000 guilders (converted to now more than 61,000 euros). The Central Jewish Consultation (CJO) would meet with the GVB and the municipality to request the money back. According to the researchers, the GVB never acknowledged guilt, expressed remorse or offered financial compensation to the deported Jews or their relatives.

An estimated 48,000 Amsterdam Jews were transported by trams to Central Station and Muiderpoort Station between mid-July 1942 and the end of August 1944. From there, trains went to the concentration and extermination camps via the Westerbork and Vught Transit Camps.

Every month, the transport company sent invoices to the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung (Central Office for Jewish Emigration), the agency that coordinated the persecution of Jews in Amsterdam. The Nazis paid the GVB bills with the money that the Jews had to hand in from 1941, as can be read in the book.

The painful truth does not stop there. The most astonishing aspect of Luijters’ discovery is the GVB’s persistent efforts to collect outstanding payments after the war had ended. A note on the final invoice highlighted that the payment was overdue at the time of liberation, and it revealed a hired debt collection agency enlisted in 1947 to recover the 80 guilders owed. This attempted collection, years after the atrocities, has been met with shock and condemnation, underscoring the moral complexities surrounding businesses involved in the Holocaust.

The last two bills, from July and August 1944, were never paid. Anne Frank was transported to Camp Westerbork on August 8, 1944, on one of those trams, as was Etty Hillesum.

On August 8, 1944, the eight people in hiding from the Secret Annex were transported by tram from the House of Detention at the Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen to CS to be taken by train to Westerbork Camp with 65 other Jews.

I am not sure what is worse—the use of the trams or the fact they made a profit from death transports and still tried to make money after the war. The GVB never showed any scruples.

Sources:

https://bnnbreaking.com/world/amsterdams-gvb-sought-nazi-payments-for-holocaust-transports-including-anne-franks-final-journey

https://www.parool.nl/amsterdam/het-gvb-verdiende-aan-de-tramritten-waarmee-joden-werden-gedeporteerd-door-de-duitsers-het-waren-praktisch-rijdende-gevangenissen~bdd4acf4/?utm_source=parool&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20240305%7Cdaily&utm_content=Het%20GVB%20verdiende%20aan%20de%20tramritten%20waarmee%20Joden%20werden%20gedeporteerd%20door%20de%20Duitsers%20%E2%80%93%20%E2%80%98Het%20waren%20praktisch%20rijdende%20gevangenissen%E2%80%99&utm_term=306311&utm_userid=&ctm_ctid=2317e5bc05c8c884e7b6eb681398151a

Murdered on February 28, 1944

Aside from the fact that February 28, 1944, was 80 years ago, the date is random, and that is just what all the murders by the Nazi regime were, random acts of violence.

Yes, they targeted certain groups, the biggest group being Jewish, within the groups the Nazis were still random in the selection. If they had use for a person he or she would be spared, at least temporarily. However, sometimes even if they would have use for them, they’d still be murdered.

Following are stories and photographs of victims who were murdered on this day 80 years ago.

The above picture is of Serica Bianca Gabay and her mother, Dina Gabay Smeer. Serica was born in Alkmaar, the Netherlands on April 30, 1943.

She was betrayed along with her mother by her mother’s cousin in early 1944. Serica Bianca Gabay was murdered on 28 February 1944 in Westerbork, and she was cremated on 2 March 1944. The urn with her ashes was placed on the Portugese-Jewish cemetery in Ouderkerk aan de Amstel on field 1924, row CU 2, grave nr. S. 14. She was only 9 months old when she was murdered.

Her mother Dina, was murdered eight months later in Auschwitz on October 31, 1944.

Robert Spiero was born in The Hague on May 23, 1941. Murdered in Auschwitz on February 28, 1944. He reached two years of age.

Benjamin Herman Gans was born in Amsterdam on February 9, 1926. He was murdered at Auschwitz on February 28, 1944. He was 18 years old.

Benjamin Gans was in hiding with the Koning family at Bloemendaalschestraatweg 123 in Bloemendaal, the Netherlands. In mid-1942 his younger brother Philip also joined him there. Their parents and sister, Rebecca, were in hiding in Baarn. In the spring of 1943, Benjamin and Philip also went to that address. Due to betrayal, the family was arrested on the night of July 24, 1943. The youngest son Philip was the only one to survive the concentration camps.

Werner Roth was born in Hindenburg, Germany on 12 August 1920. He was murdered at Auschwitz on February 28, 1944. He was 23 years old.

Although Sgt. Salomon Vanderveen technically wasn’t murdered by the Nazis, the circumstances of his death were a direct result of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. In a way, his death could be considered even a greater tragedy because he escaped the Nazi rule. He was born in Rotterdam, on December 13, 1919. He lived with his younger brother and stepmother (both survived the war) in Pijnacker, the Netherlands. On May 10, 1942, two years after the invasion, he escaped from the Netherlands. He joined the KNIL, the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army. When he joined I don’t know, and how he escaped imprisonment by the Japanese I don’t know either.

However, I do know he joined the No. 18 (Netherlands East Indies) Squadron, which was a combined Dutch-Australian bomber squadron under the operational command of the Royal Australian Airforce.

On February 8, 1944, the last large group left, led by A.B. Wolff, with their planes via Camp Beale in California to Australia. The group consisted of 38 pilots, 16 observers, 19 gunners, 9 aviation radio operators, 2 ground operators, 3 liaison officers, 5 officers and non-commissioned officer pilots classified as telegraph operators and a technical officer. The group included 23 officers and non-commissioned Naval Aviation Service (MLD) officers. The group was intended for the NEI Pool Squadron in Canberra, Australia. The B-25 Mitchell N5-191 crashed on February 28, 1944, during the crossing between Camp Beale and Hawaii. First Lieutenant Pilot C.W. de Veer, Sergeant J. de Wal (MLD), observer-navigator First Lieutenant Salomon van der Veen, and air gunner-sergeant H.Th. Klopper died. Only Sergeant L.Ch. Huisman survived the accident.

Despite escaping two invading occupying regimes, Salomon van der Veen faced death on February 28, 1944.

Sources

https://oorlogsgravenstichting.nl/personen/157459/salomon-van-der-veen

https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/search?mode=cards&qs=#eyJjYXRlZ29yeSI6W10sImNvbnRlbnRHcm91cHMiOltdLCJwYWdlIjoxLCJzb3J0aW5nIjoiIiwiYWR2YW5jZWRmaWx0ZXJzIjp7InN1ck5hbWUiOm51bGwsImZpcnN0TmFtZSI6bnVsbCwiYmlydGhDaXR5IjpudWxsLCJkZWF0aENpdHkiOm51bGwsInJlc2lkZW5jZUNpdHkiOm51bGwsInJlc2lkZW5jZVN0cmVldCI6bnVsbCwib2NjdXBhdGlvbiI6bnVsbCwiYmlydGhZZWFyIjpudWxsLCJiaXJ0aE1vbnRoIjpudWxsLCJiaXJ0aERheSI6bnVsbCwiZGVhdGhZZWFyIjoxOTQ0LCJkZWF0aE1vbnRoIjoyLCJkZWF0aERheSI6MjgsImRlY2Vhc2VBZ2UiOm51bGx9fQ==

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/208342242/salomon-van_der_veen

Donation

$2.00

My Fellow Citizens—The Jews from Geleen

I want to start by saying that I am not Jewish, although I may have some Jewish ancestry. I am still looking into that. However, the Jews from Geleen were my fellow citizens, as were any other one, regardless of race or colour were my fellow citizens.

However, the majority of the Jews of Geleen were murdered during the Holocaust—this was not the case for other groups. The picture above is of a plague which was placed on the wall of the town hall on August 25, 2012, to commemorate a group of 20 Jews who were deported from that spot 70 years earlier, on August 25, 1942.

The text translates to:
FROM THIS PLACE, IT WAS ON
AUGUST 25, 1942 A LARGE
GROUP OF FELLOW JEWISH CITIZENS
WERE. DEPORTED FROM GELEEN

MAY THEIR SOULS BE INCLUDED IN THE BUNDLE OF ETERNAL LIFE

Following is the story of one of my fellow Jewish citizens from Geleen and her family.

Ilse Roer
Father Max Roer, born in 1886, was a butcher (Metzgermeister) in Zülpich in the Eifel. He married Jennie Baum from Bauchem in 1920 in Geilenkirchen. Helene (Leni) was born in 1921, and her sister Ilse in 1925. Max Roer died in Zülpich in 1932.

Two of Ilse‘s mother’s half-brothers, Max and Karl Baum, settled in Geleen on the Bloemenmarkt ( Flower Market) in May 1937, followed a month later by Jennie Roer-Baum and the teenagers Leni and Ilse. Ilse’s aunt Henriette Moses-Baum had already settled in Geleen with her family in 1934, and her other sister Johanna Gottschalk-Baum, with her family, emigrated to Valkenburg in 1938. Max and Karl’s two brothers, Bernhard and Albert, emigrated to America in 1938.

The Baum family took over the Gijzen butcher shop on the Bloemenmarkt, located there since 1929. Shortly after arriving in Geleen, Max, Karl, and Jennie opened their beef, pork and lamb butchery as partners on May 15, 1937, under the trade name Gebr. Baum, register with the Chamber of Commerce in Heerlen.

On January 2, 1939, the Baum grandparents registered at the Bloemenmarkt. Grandpa Samuel died a few months after the outbreak of war, on October 11, 1940, aged 78. He and Grandma Sophie then lived in Burg. Lemmensstraat 225. After his death, Grandma moved in with her children at the Bloemenmarkt. Uncle Max married Gerta Kaufmann from Waldenrath in 1941, who also moved into the Flower Market then.

Leni and Ilse Roer were part of the first group of Jews who were transported via Maastricht to Westerbork camp and from there to Auschwitz under the guise of ‘Arbeitseinsatz’ on August 25, 1942. Leni was gassed there upon arrival. Ilse was initially spared by being employed as a tailor. She died on October 2, 1942, on the “Kasernenstraße” in Auschwitz, according to the Auschwitz death register of influenza.

I lived on the Burg Lemmensstraat 141. The Bloemenmarktt is the small shopping centre in the part of Geleen called Lindenheuvel. All of this is in minutes of waking distance from where I grew up. That is how close and tangible the Holocaust still is.

Sources

https://www.stolpersteinesittardgeleen.nl/Slachtoffers/Ilse-Roer

https://www.tracesofwar.nl/sights/136569/Plaquette-Gedeporteerde-Joden-Geleen.htm

https://www.4en5mei.nl/oorlogsmonumenten/zoeken/4241/geleen-plaquette-voor-gedeporteerde-joden

Donation

$2.00

Rudolf Breslauer—Photographer of Westerbork

The photograph above is of Anna Maria ‘Settela’ Steinbach. She was a Sinti girl who was murdered in Auschwitz. I have written a few blogs about her in the past. This blog is about the man who took that picture.

It is a still from a film called, The Westerbork Film, which was shot by Rudolf Breslauer. He was A German Jewish man, born in Leipzig, where he was trained as a photographer and as a printer. In 1938, to escape Nazi persecution, he fled to the Netherlands, where he lived and worked in Leiden, Alphen and Utrecht. In 1942, Breslauer, his wife Bella Weissmann, sons Mischa and Stefan and daughter Ursula were imprisoned and deported to Westerbork transit camp. Camp commander Albert Konrad Gemmeker ordered Breslauer to make photographs and films of life in Westerbork. Breslauer and his family were transported to Auschwitz in the autumn of 1944. His wife and two sons were immediately killed upon arrival on October 21, 1944, Rudolf Breslauer died a few months later, on February 28, 1945, in an unknown place only mentioned as somewhere in middle Europe. Their daughter Ursula survived the war.

Following are just some of the photographs he took in Westerbork. Some of the pictures were used by the Nazis, to give a distorted view of Westerbork. Portraying it in a better way than it was.

Jewish celebration in Westerbork camp. Hanukkah.

Westerbork. Penalty group of potato harvesters, August 1943.
Both women wear a sleeve band with an S on it, S for Penalty Company. the punishment was to work in the fields.

The assembly of a part of a downed aeroplane in the so-called industrial barracks.

The Central Warehouse of Camp Westerbork.
In this photo Adolf Naftaniel, head of the warehouse.

Two boys painting while wearing the Star of David, in Westerbork, 1943.

Narrow gauge transport train in Westerbrok. Used for transport coal, wood etc.

A Different Type of Transport
A still from the Westerbork film by Rudolf Breslauer. May 19, 1944. Nearly 107,000 people were deported from Westerbork camp in 97 transports. On July 15, 1942, the first transport left for Auschwitz-Birkenau. From March 2, 1943. to November 16, 1943, there was a weekly schedule: every Tuesday a train departed with a thousand to sometimes more than three thousand people. The last transport left on September 13, 1944.