Westerbork
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For anyone who is not from Geleen or the province of Limburg ,in the south East of the Netherlands, the name Geleen will mean very little. Yo may have visited the town perhaps while it was still hosting the annual Rock festival of PinkPop. Maybe you even visited the former mining town during one of…
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The title is about Jacques Swaluw but it really is about just more than Jacques. Jacques was born in Rotterdam on the 19th of June 1942. Esther Swaluw was the daughter of Isaäc Swaluw and Maria Melkman. On 2 December 1913, she married Izak van Been in Rotterdam, a son of Abraham van Been and…
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The girl in the playpen is Renee Sara Gottschalk, born in the Central Refugee Camp Westerbork on 21 June 1941. The two girls in the dark dresses are the daughters of chief physician F. Spanier. The lady on the right is Rosa Strauss; Renee Sara’s mother. Her father was Erich Gottschalk. Renee and her mother…
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It is an old Dutch tradition that you send a little card to friends and neighbours to announce the birth of a baby. As did Izak Vredenburg and Ganna Vredenburg-Hirsch. They must have been delighted to announce the birth of their baby boy Samuel Juda Vredenburg. He was born in Amsterdam on 24 July 1942.…
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During World War II, Jewish citizens in the Netherlands were isolated and subjected to discrimination and persecution by the National Socialists and their associates. Most of them did not survive the war. More than 102,000 Jews from the Netherlands were deported and murdered during the Holocaust. One of the most compelling pieces of evidence to…
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The most beautiful announcement any parent can make, is the announcement of the birth of a child. Mary Louise van der Horst-Beerenborg and Abraham Arthur van der Horst. must have been so proud when they put a notification in the Jewish weeklu(Het Joodsche Weekblad) on September 4.1942 that their son Hartog was born on August…
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Sally was born on August 19, 1934 in Geffen, the Netherlands. I wish I could say more about Sally, but there is very little known about him. The fact that he was murdered on May 28,1943 in Sobibor is sad, What makes it even sadder, his father, mother and older sister were murdered the same…
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500 Jews responded to the German appeal and registered for departure to Camp Westerbork. They waited hours for the special train to transport them from Muiderpoort Station in Amsterdam to Westerbork. Of the 7,000 Jews who had to report to the Polderweg in Amsterdam that day for deportation to Westerbork, only 500 appeared that day,…
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I wish I could write a biography of these 3 murdered children, but I can’t. They didn’t live long enough to have a whole lot of details. In fact most of their lives could be written down on a small registration card.The one thing they have in common they were all murdered on May 20,1943.…
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The definition of ‘one in a million’ is : a person or thing that is very unusual, special, or admired. Herman Wertheim was certainly that. However, sadly he was also one in six million. He was one of the six million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust. Herman Wertheim was born on February 17,…
