Hans was born to a Jewish family in the small Dutch town of Kampen. His father worked as a tailor, and he taught Hans about the tailoring trade.
1933-39: Hans was a skilled tailor, and an accomplished pianist as well. Inquisitive about all subjects, Hans loved to read and to keep abreast of current events.
1940-43: When the Jews in the Dutch provinces were ordered to relocate to Amsterdam in January 1942, the Rudelsheims complied. In early 1943, while in hiding with a Christian family near Leiden, Hans sneaked out to visit his friend Ina. Suddenly, a German came to Ina's door. Hans hid behind some clothes in a bathroom closet. The German searched the house and when they reached the bathroom, Ina opened the dark closet, saying as casually as she could, "... and this is the closet." Satisfied no one else was in the house, the German left.
In March 1943 Hans was betrayed. He was deported, and perished in a concentration camp.
Item ViewThe Germans invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. After a year or so, Hetty and other Jewish children could no longer attend regular schools. The Germans took over her father's business in 1942. Hetty's father tried to prove that the family was Sephardic, and they were thus exempted from a roundup in 1943. Hetty's father decided that the family should leave Amsterdam, and Hetty was hidden with a family in the southern Netherlands. She and both her parents survived.
Item ViewAfter invading the Netherlands in 1940, the Germans imposed anti-Jewish measures. With the aid of a Catholic priest who helped Jews find hiding places, Carla, her mother, and her brother went into hiding in August 1942 to avoid deportation to work camps. They had to leave the hiding place after three months and with the priest's help found shelter in Delft with a Catholic family which had seven children. They remained in hiding there for 30 months, until liberation in May 1945.
Item ViewWhen the war began, Anita and her family lived in Breda, the Netherlands. With the 1940 German occupation, they went into hiding and took on new names that shielded their Jewish identity. Anita and her brother first were hidden in a non-Jewish neighbor's home, and later by a Quaker family near Utrecht. Anita, her parents, brother, and two sisters survived the war.
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Thomas' father, Heinz, was a German-Jewish refugee who had married Henriette De Leeuw, a Dutch-Jewish woman. Frightened by the Nazi dictatorship and the murder of Heinz's uncle in a concentration camp, they immigrated to the Netherlands when Henriette was nine months pregnant with Thomas' older brother. They settled in Amsterdam.
1933-39: Thomas, also known as Tommy, was born 18 months after his older brother, Jan-Peter. In 1939 the parents and brother of Tommy's father joined them in the Netherlands as refugees from Germany. Tommy and Jan-Peter grew up speaking Dutch as their native language, and they often spent time at their mother's family home in the country.
1940-44: The Germans occupied Amsterdam in May 1940. Despite the German occupation, 4-year-old Tommy did not feel much change in his day-to-day life. When he was 6 the Germans sent his grandmother to a camp called Westerbork. Six months later, Tommy and his family were sent to the same camp, where Tommy celebrated his seventh birthday. That winter the Pfeffers were sent to a faraway ghetto called Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia, where Tommy felt cold, scared and hungry.
On May 18, 1944, Tommy was deported with his family to Auschwitz. He was gassed on July 11, 1944. Tommy was 7 years old.
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Coenraad was born to a Jewish family in Amsterdam that traced its roots in the Netherlands back to the 17th century. After graduating from public school, Coenraad went on to train as a pastry maker at a trade school. But after completing his training at the age of 13, he decided for health reasons to change professions, and he began to study tailoring.
1933-39: Coenraad finished apprenticing as a tailor in 1937 when he was 20. Then he spent a year working as a nurse in a Jewish home for the permanently disabled. It was there that he met Bep, a nurse. She wanted him to go back to tailoring so that they could build a secure future together. In 1939 Coenraad opened a tailor shop in Amsterdam, and in September that year he began to work as a tailor for the military, which fulfilled his Dutch military service.
1940-44: The Germans invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. In 1942 Coenraad was deported and spent the next three years in 11 different German labor camps, where he saw all of his Dutch friends meet painful deaths. In the Annaberg camp a 16-year-old boy came to him. He had ragged slippers on his feet. He offered Coenraad his soup for some shoes. Since Coenraad had two pairs, he gave him one and told him to keep the soup. "Idiot," said another man. "The boy will be dead in a week and then somebody else will take your shoes."
Of the 81 members of his extended family deported by the Nazis, Coenraad was one of seven survivors. His wife Bep survived in hiding, and they were reunited after the war.
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Dora, her parents, brother, aunt, uncle, and two cousins lived together in her grandfather's home in Essen, Germany. The Ungers were an observant Jewish family, and when Dora was 8, she began to regularly attend meetings of Brit HaNoar, a religious youth organization.
1933-39: In October 1938 a teacher, with tears in her eyes, came to Dora at the municipal pool, saying "Jews cannot swim here anymore." Just weeks later, on November 9, Jews were arrested and their property destroyed. A neighbor tried to protect Dora's family, but that night as her family huddled together, Nazis spotted their house. Suddenly, an axe flew through the window, landing by Dora's head. A few days later, they fled for the Netherlands.
1940-45: In Amsterdam, as refugees, her parents were not permitted to work and so they could not provide for Dora and her brother. Dora was sent by a Jewish aid organization to the Buergerweeshuis, an orphanage which had 80 Jewish refugee children. Just after the Germans invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, "Mama Wysmueller," a Dutch woman who worked to rescue thousands of children by arranging their passage to England, came and told all of them to get dressed. They were taken by bus to a pier and put on the Bodengraven, a boat.
Dora spent the remainder of the war in England. Her parents and brother perished at the camps of Sobibor and Auschwitz. Dora immigrated to Israel in 1946.
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Benjamin, called "Benno" by his family and friends, grew up in a religious Jewish household in Amsterdam. Benno's father, a successful diamond manufacturer, was president of the Amsterdam Jewish community. Benno had two younger sisters and enjoyed collecting stamps.
1933-39: After he obtained some work experience in a department store, Benno joined his father in the diamond business. Benno adhered strictly to Jewish law. He loved tennis and skiing, and in 1938, while skiing in Switzerland, he met a girl and fell in love. Sensing that conditions in Europe were worsening for Jews, his girlfriend's family left the Netherlands for the United States in 1939.
1940-41: Benno's girlfriend returned to the Netherlands, and they were married in October 1940. The newlyweds took in a Jewish refugee who was training for agricultural work in Palestine. On June 11, 1941, the Gestapo came to Benno's door, looking for the refugee boarder; in reprisal for the murder of a German, the Nazis were rounding up foreign Jews. When Benno answered the door, the Nazi asked him if he was Jewish, too. Benno said he was, and the Nazi said, "Then you will come, too."
Benno was deported to the Schoorl labor camp in the Netherlands, and then to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, where he perished at age 22.
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Judith was the younger of two children born to religious, middle-class Jewish parents. Judith's mother, Clara, was Sephardic, a descendant of Jews who had been expelled from Spain in 1492. Her father, Lodewijk, was a traveling representative for a firm based in Amsterdam. The family lived in an apartment in a new section of Amsterdam on the southern outskirts.
1933-39: Judith attended grade school with her cousin Hetty who was the same age. Judith loved to study. Her mother taught piano to students who came to the house for lessons. Judith loved to play the piano, too. Her family celebrated the Jewish holidays, and like most Dutch families, they exchanged gifts every December 6 on Saint Nicholas Day.
1940-43: After the Germans occupied Amsterdam, they enforced new laws that forbade Jews to enter libraries and museums, or even to use street cars. Then they ordered Jews to wear an identifying yellow badge, and would not allow Jewish children to attend public schools. One by one Judith's relatives disappeared, picked up by the Germans. Then Judith, her mother and brother were arrested in a roundup by the Germans who came while Judith's father was away at work on a night shift.
Judith was deported to the Westerbork transit camp. From there she was sent to a killing center in Poland. She was 13 years old when she died.
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The elder of two sons of religious German-Jewish parents, Siegfried grew up in the city of Frankfurt. Upon completing his education, he became a certified public accountant in Frankfurt. In his free time he worked as a freelance music critic. While on a vacation in 1932 on the North Sea island of Norderney, he met Herta Katz, a young woman with whom he quickly fell in love.
1933-39: The Nazis had fired Siegfried from his government job because he was Jewish. Although his mother opposed the match, Siegfried proposed to Herta and she accepted. They married in June 1933. In 1934 they left for Amsterdam, where Siegfried found a job. Herta gave birth to a daughter and began a successful interior decorating business. Just before the outbreak of war in 1939, Siegfried's parents also moved to Amsterdam.
1940-44: In May 1940 the Germans occupied the Netherlands. Two years later the Wohlfarths were ordered to report to the train station, but went into hiding. In 1944 they heard on the BBC that the Germans had killed 2 million Jews in extermination camps and that the biggest camp was Auschwitz-Birkenau. When Herta and Siegfried were arrested and put on a train on September 3, 1944, Siegfried feared the worst. Determined not to let the Germans have more than his body, he tore up their money during the journey.
Siegfried was deported to Auschwitz, and later to the Stutthof concentration camp where he died on December 5, 1944.
Item ViewAlthough originally from Germany, Helen was living in the Netherlands with her husband and young daughter when the Germans invaded in May 1940. Helen and her husband sent their daughter to non-Jewish friends, and went into hiding themselves. They stayed in a variety of places arranged by a friend who was active in the underground. On August 25, 1944, Helen and her husband were arrested. They were sent first to Westerbork and then to Auschwitz, where they were separated. Helen worked in the I. G. Farben factory in Auschwitz. Helen survived; she and her daughter immigrated to the United States in 1947.
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