Today in Dutch WWII History: The Bunker Drama.

In January 1944 in Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch the Bunker Drama took place.
A German woman, who is kept prison in the Camp, provided all kind of information about the other prisoners to the camp leaders. By doing this she hoped that she would be released sooner. The other women in the barracks warn her to stop doing all this. After a last warning they cut her hair.
The leader of the barrack is locked up for this in the camp prison (Bunker). Ninety women from her barrack wrote their name and number on a list in the camp administration to protests against this act.

Two days later, on 15 January, all these women were brought to the Bunker. 74 women were locked up in one Cell: Cell 115. The size of the cell is about 9 square meters. Because the cell is full and there is absolutely no room left in this cell, the other 16 women were placed in another cell. Cell 117.
In Cell 115 panic broke out . There was no fresh air and it was very hot. More and more women became unconscious due to the lack of oxygen.
At Sunday 16 January after 14 hours the the door of the cell goes open.
Ten women didn't survive the night:
Helena 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

This drama soon became known outside the camp and all kinds of resistance papers wrote about this drama. The Germans were very annoyed that the news leaked. The camp-commander Grünewald is discharged and sent to the Russian front were he got killed.

Cell 115

Photo: FP Media VOF



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Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch revisited

This is some extra information on an earlier post about Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch.
It is information i found on a news tweet today (Thursday October 28 2010).
Today two unique photo's were found at Camp Vught, as the location of the former concentration camp and now memorial centre is called today.
The photo's are from 1944 and show camp prisoners and their guards.
It is exceptional that prisoners and guards are stand together on photo's like these. Moreover it was prohibited to shoot photo's in and close surroundings of the camp, such photo's are very rare.

Prisoners walking on the Loonsebaan guarded by a camp-guard on a bike.

Same group somewhere in the outskirts of the camp probably Gement or  the Bossche Broek where they were put to work.

The photo's are from the family album of Klaas Bezema. From research it has become clear that the father of Bezema made these photo's. He was an amateur photographer and kept taking photo's during the war.

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Photo's: STIWOT

Today in Dutch WWII History : Concentration-Camps 3

  

Polizeiliches Durchgangslager Amersfoort

Compared with other concentration camps, Camp Amersfoort was a small and makeshift camp. In operation from 1941 until the end of the war, it was run not by the military but by the German police the Sipo / SD. Neglect, starvation, maltreatment and murder marked the lives of over 35,000 prisoners who, in the course of two separate periods of the war, were held here for a brief or extended time.
The history of Camp Amersfoort can be divided into two periods.

First Period 1941 - 1943

In August 1941 the SS took the former shed camp for Dutch soldiers in use as a camp. Camp Amersfoort was a small, provisional camp. By the central, outlying position and poor control, the camp, in the period up to 1943, could develop into a cruel, disorderly, in itself turned community. Even to German standards.
The main feature of the prisoners population in Camp Amersfoort was the diversity.There were significantly more differences than similarities.There was difference in age, gender, background, education, religion, political orientation, reason for arrest, position and treatment in the camp, trial, sentence and length of confinement.
Forced labor, beatings, starvation and disease made staying at Camp Amersfoort a struggle for survival. There was no solidarity among the prisoners.
In the camp there were also 101 Russians. The German camp administration had them
registered as "Kriegsgefangene. They were exposed to abuse and neglect. The 77 survivors were murdered on April 9, 1942. On March 18, 1946, they were reburied at the general cemetery Rusthof in Leusden.
There were also approximately 120 American citizens, in the camp. The effect of the German declaration of war against the United States was that U.S. citizens, in the German occupied territories, were arrested. They were not considered prisoners, but as civilian internees. For them was the Geneva convention. They were treated different then the other prisoners. They did not have to perform forced labor and were not mistreated. But like the other prisoners they experienced, food shortages, uncertainty about their fate and the limited freedom of movement.
End 1942, beginning 1943 the camp was cleared. The prisoners were brought to the new camp in Vught. The existence of camp Amersfoort was uncertain. In this first period which lasted up to 8 March 1943, a total of 8,522 prisoners stayed in camp Amersfoort.

Second Period 1943 - 1945

Enlarging the capacity and afterwards reopening of camp Amersfoort appeared necessary. The reality of war, the growth in the number of detainees, retrieved the plans for Camp Amersfoort. On May 17, 1943, with the arrival of the first 2 new groups of prisoners, the camp, now with a new name 'Erweitertes Polizeigefängnis', reopened. The name pointed out that the camp fell under the responsibility of the local police force authorities.The capacity was, in comparison with the first period, drastically increased.
In this second period, as a result of the "arbeitseinsatz" the run through of prisoners became much larger.
In spite of the extension the camp remained, in comparison with ' official' German camps, disorderlily and negligent.
As a result, among other things, of the increasing allied threat on April 19 1945 camp Amersfoort was officially transferred to the Dutch Red Cross. 475 à 500 present prisoners no longer fell under the responsibility of the German occupancy power. On April 20 the German camp control left the camp.

Reconstruction of a copy of a stereographic drawing found in 1945 in the Camp commander's office.

Aerial picture August 1944

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Photo's: Nationaal Monument Kamp Amersfoort

Today in Dutch WWII History : Concentration-Camps 2

  

Durchgangslager Westerbork

Near the village of Westerbork, in the province of Drente, the Dutch Government owned a tract of heath and marsh land surrounded by dense woods. This isolated piece of real estate appeared to be the ideal place to build a camp for German Jewish refugees who had fled Nazi persecution. It was far enough placed from the village proper of Westerbork that refugees would not interfere with the daily business concerns of the villagers provided supervision was in place.
The first refugees that arrived at camp Westerbork was in 1939. During the German invasion on 10 May 1940 the camp contained 50 barracks, 1150 legal and 650 illegal refugees.
When the endlösing of the Netherlands started the existing camp near Westerbork was the ideal place for this. And early 1942, 24 large barracks capable of housing 300 people each, were added for this purpose.
On 1 July 1942 Refugee camp Westerbork officially became Durchgangslager Westerbork and stayed this until the liberation of the camp on the 12 April 1945.

Aerial picture of Durchgangslager Westerbork 1944

Between July 1942 and September 1944 more than 104,000 Dutch and German Jews and 250 Dutch Sinti and Roma were deported by train from Westerbork to the extermination camps. Between them were 22,025 childeren and young adults with an age below 21.
On 13 September 1944 the last train left from Durchgangslager Westerbork. Destionation: Bergen Belsen.

65 train-transports with 60,330 victims were sent directly to Auschwitz II Birkenau. Only 854 people who were deported from Westerbork survived. On 3 September 1944 the last train to Auschwitz II Birkenau left Westerbork. On this train was the Frank familly.

19 train-transports with a total of 34,313 Jews were deported from Westerbork to Sobibor. Only 18 Dutch jews returned.

9 train-transports with 4,894 Jews left Westerbork for Theresienstadt. Just as Westerbork this was a internent and transit camp. 2,000 deported survived.

A total of 3750 victims were transported to Bergen-Belsen. An other notorius concentration camp. But also know as the camp where Anne Frank, who was transported from  Auschwitz II Birkenau to Bergen Belsen, was murdered.
From the 3750 people deported to this place 1700 died.

After the last deportation on 13 September 1944 876 Jews and non Jewish people remained in Westerbork. On 12 April 1945 they were liberated by Canadian troops.

Dutch Camp Commanders:
mr. D.A. Syswarda Camp's inception - 16 July 1940
Captain in the Reserves Jacques Schol 16 July 1940 - Early January 1943

German Commanders:
SS-Sturmbannführer dr. Erich Deppner 1 July 1942 - 1 September 1942
SS-Sturmbannführer Josef Hugo Dischner 1 September 1942 - 12 October 1942
SS-Obersturmführer Albert Konrad Gemmeker 12 October 1942 - 12 April 1945

Note: both Dutch camp commanders had nothing to do with the death transports. Not even Schol who served under 2 German camp commanders. SS-Obersturmführer Albert Konrad Gemmeker even quickly saw to it that Schol was discharged in January 1943. Not wanting to have any witnesses to the Nazi Endlösing plan.

Other important positions (these people were Jews):
Kurt Schlesinger, the Oberdienstleiter 
Arthur Pisk :Head of the Ordnungsdienst
Dr. Fritz Spanier - Chief Medical Officer


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Photo: The Holocaust - Lest We Forget

Today in Dutch WWII History: Concentration-Camps 1

  

Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch

Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch (Concentration-camp ’s-Hertogenbosch) was the only SS concentration camp in the Netherlands (The more known camp at Westerbork, was a transit camp for Jews.) and was located at the town called Vught. Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch was the same organized as the SS camps in Nazi Germany. But the prisoners are treated less rigid than in the other camps. This way the Nazis wanted to prevent that the Dutch population started to protest against the treatment.
The choice of the location for the camp was well thought out. Vught was surrounded by railways and roads and nearby is ‘s-Hertogenbosch. Here a lot of the German authorities headquarters were located. In 1942 they started the building of the camp. The layout of the camp is over 1 kilometer long and 400 meters wide. Wrapped around the camp is a big moat digged by the camp prisoners. On all sides of the camp is a high barbed wire fence.
At every 100 meters there is a watchtower, with guards, searchlights and Machine-guns. The guards on the towers were almost all Dutch, who had chosen to side with the Germans.

Aerial view of the camp with right of the middle the "Fusilladeplaats".

Between January 1943 and September 1944 more than 31,000 men, women and children were encased in the camp. Among them more than 12,000 Jews who were from Vught  transported to Westerbork. Also in this camp were about 19,000 political prisoners, resistance fighters, drifters, Sinti and Roma, Jehovah's, gays, black marketers and criminals. Women were imprisoned in a special women's camp. At least 750 people died in the camp from disease and abuse or being shot outside the camp at the so called “fusilladeplaats”. At the approaching of the Allied army’s the Nazi’s started at the beginning of September 1944 with the evacuation of the camp. The prisoners were put on trains and transported to camps in Germany. On October 26, 1944, the empty camp is liberated.

The first commander was the 39 year old Karl Chmielewski. In the first months the camp was badly organized. The prisoners receive little food, the sick are not treated well and the drinking water is bad. Many people die in the time that Chmielewski was the Commander. In October 1943 he was sacked because he had stolen on a large scale in the camp. In 1961 he was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the concentration camps.

The second commander was the 40 year old Adam Grünewald. He introduced strict rules. He gave the order in January 1944 to put a large group of female prisoners into one cell. A horrible decision, which comes to be known as the “Bunker Drama”. He was brought to face the SS court and was sent to the Russian front as a soldier. He was killed in 1945.

The last commander of the Camp, was the 50-year-old Hans Hüttig. He fought as a soldier in the First World War and he became a member of the Nazi party before 1933. The SS leaders were very pleased with him. Under his leadership in July / September 1944 a certain number of 329 men are shot by the firing squad.

After the war the camp fulfilled many purposes. One of them was to imprison those Dutch people who had chosen to side with the Germans during the war.
Now a days most of the camp is a museum and a memorial center.

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Photo: Nederland in de Tweede Wereldoorlog