She Found What Occurred to 400 Dutch Jews Who Disappeared

She Found What Occurred to 400 Dutch Jews Who Disappeared

AMSTERDAM — In February 1941, 9 months after the German Reich invaded and occupied the Netherlands, the primary pogroms started on Dutch soil. Native Nazi occasion members posted payments in store and cafe home windows that learn “Jews Not Wished.” Then they trolled the Jewish Quarter, breaking home windows and shouting jeers.

Younger Jewish males and boys ready to guard their neighborhood. When Dutch Nazis returned a number of days later, the Jews fought again. Road fights went on for days leading to many casualties, together with the loss of life of 1 Dutch Nazi, Hendrik Koot.

In retaliation, the Inexperienced Police — German Nazi officers in lengthy inexperienced coats and excessive boots — randomly grabbed about 400 Jewish males off the streets throughout a two-day sweep, finally forcing them into vehicles and driving off into the night time.

A lot of the males had been by no means heard from once more. For greater than 80 years, nobody knew exactly what had occurred to them, and even what number of males had been taken away.

However a Dutch historian, Wally de Lang, made it her mission in 2017 to find the fates of every one of many males taken that day.

“It was unattainable for me to grasp that 400 individuals of this city simply disappeared, with out anybody understanding who they had been,” mentioned de Lang, who has spent a number of many years writing about Jewish historical past within the Netherlands.

Her findings, printed in a Dutch ebook final 12 months, at the moment are being introduced as a commemorative exhibition, “The Raids of Feb. 22 and 23, 1941,” at Amsterdam’s metropolis archive, the Stadsarchief, till Could 8.

“Till now, the info of the razzias had been identified, however the destiny of the boys who had been rounded up weren’t,” mentioned Ben Braber, an skilled in Dutch Jewish resistance in the course of the Holocaust, based mostly on the College of Glasgow.

The February razzias, or roundups, had been a prelude to a lot worse to come back. These males had been solely the primary of some 102,000 Jews from the Netherlands to be murdered in the course of the Holocaust, a determine that represents 75 % of the Dutch Jewish inhabitants.

De Lang discovered that 151 of the 400 males had been among the many early Jewish victims of Nazi gassing experiments at Hartheim Citadel, in Austria, the place Nationwide Socialist docs and directors examined strategies for killing individuals on a mass scale.

The British historian Mary Fulbrook, a professor of German historical past at College Faculty London, mentioned that the strategies used at Hartheim and different “euthanasia facilities” would later be employed at extermination camps like Treblinka, Sobibor and Auschwitz.

The deaths of the boys who had been seized in the course of the raids in Amsterdam, Fulbrook mentioned, got here on the “essential stage” within the Nazi genocidal program, when Nationwide Socialist leaders made the transition from “killing some Jews to killing all Jews.”

De Lang mentioned she began her analysis primarily to fill a niche within the historic file. The February razzias, she mentioned, had been the topic of surprisingly little scholarly consideration, particularly when put next with the February strike, a normal walkout by lots of of hundreds of Dutch staff, staged solely days later in response to the persecution of the Jews.

That occasion, acknowledged as the biggest European public protest on behalf of the Jews throughout World Conflict II, has been commemorated yearly since 1946 with a ceremony in one of many squares the place the razzias came about. The ceremonies have a good time non-Jewish resistance and solidarity. The razzias current a distinct narrative, of Jews recognizing the burgeoning menace they confronted and appearing in their very own protection.

“A lot consideration has been paid to the historical past of the February strike, however this was the precursor to that,” she mentioned.

De Lang might discover no single record of the entire names of the boys picked up on Feb. 22 and 23, so she compiled her personal from a number of sources. She was in a position to put collectively 390 biographies, every of which has been added to a brand new database.

For probably the most half, she discovered, the boys had been merely within the flawed place on the flawed time. One was getting back from a birthday celebration, whereas one other had gone out for groceries. Three brothers had gone collectively to select up their unemployment checks. Just a few had been on their manner house from the theater.

The boys had been initially pushed to Schoorl army camp, within the dunes of the Dutch coast. At that time, 13 had been despatched house as a result of they had been suspected of getting tuberculosis. The remainder had been deported to Buchenwald focus camp in Germany, the place 47 died within the subsequent two months. The remainder, 341 males, had been transported to Mauthausen in Austria, the place most of them had been put to work as slave laborers in a stone quarry.

Most of the relaxation had been killed, in alphabetical order, in September 1941, she discovered, when too in poor health or injured to work, they had been pushed to Schloss Hartheim, the Austrian citadel, the place the Nazis had already been poisoning disabled and mentally in poor health individuals with carbon monoxide fuel.

Of the 390 males that de Lang tracked, solely two survived the struggle.

These rounded up within the Amsterdam raids had been principally males of their 30s or youthful, de Lang discovered, and the overwhelming majority had been poor and dealing class, employed as market hawkers, rag pickers, and scrap steel salesmen.

Most of the males had just lately married and began households. De Lang discovered that that they had collectively left behind 24 pregnant companions. Frantic for information about their family members, these girls got scant data from the Dutch or German authorities. The few loss of life notices that trickled in recognized unlikely causes, like ulcerative colitis and normal sepsis, and even reproductive system ailments that usually strike girls, not males.

Vogelina Kroonenberg, 18 years previous on the time, knew solely that her husband, Simon Groen, had been despatched to Mauthausen. Simon and Vogelina had been married for simply three weeks earlier than he was picked up within the February raids, and he or she was pregnant with their first baby, Rosette. The infant was born in August.

“It’s going effectively with our baby,” she wrote to him on Sept. 11. “Day by day, we exit strolling with both your mom or mine. I hope that you will note your daughter very quickly.”

The letter was returned unopened. Groen had been killed at Schloss Hartheim on Sept. 8. Ultimately a letter arrived with information that he had died of a number of sclerosis.

Vogelina by no means discovered of his destiny. Desperate to be reunited with him, she went to Westerbork transit camp when ordered to take action, hoping she’d see him in Mauthausen. As an alternative, she was deported to Auschwitz and murdered there. Child Rosette had stayed behind along with her grandfather, who positioned her in hiding with a household in Blaricum.

The infant’s location was betrayed, nevertheless, and he or she was deported to the focus camps Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt. She survived. After the struggle she went again to the household in Blaricum, who raised her on a quiet fruit farm. Solely her grandfather survived.

“I don’t bear in mind something about my mom, my father, my grandmother,” mentioned Rosette van Engeland-Groen, 80, in a phone interview. “I used to be introduced as a child to my foster mother and father. I used to be in focus camps, however I don’t know something about it. I believe I closed my thoughts to it.”

Rising up, she discovered little or no about her household. “I couldn’t ask my grandfather, as a result of after I requested him one thing, he cried, so I didn’t ask loads,” she mentioned. “And no one else might inform me.”

She discovered lots of the specifics for the primary time on the new exhibition, she mentioned, however it was all nonetheless very laborious to course of.

“It’s a really unusual feeling,” she mentioned. “ you belong to them however you don’t have any grip on it. You possibly can’t attain them anymore.”

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