04.05.1943 | #OTD Postcard from Leo to his dear boys from the ghost train with 1187 people of @kampwesterbork to death camp #Sobibor: "I wish you all the best. I'll be brave and I'll always be thinkig of you. Your father is always in your hearts." Who was Leo?👇🏼/1
Leo is a true Maastricht native and has 2 brothers and 1 sister. Louis goes by @Kamp_Amersfoort to @AuschwitzMuseum. Max, like Leo, is murdered in #Sobibor. Tilly survives the war, as does his mother Rosalie. /2
Single father Leo has 2 sons from his marriage to the non-Jewish Getrud Meuer (div 1937). He owns a textile store on the Grote Gracht in #Maastricht. Emiel lives with his sister's in-laws & neighbours of his store, Butcher Drielsma at Grote Gracht 23 and Jakie with his mother./3
On August 25, 1942, Leo, like the befriended Isaack Family, had to report to police in #Maastricht before 4 p.m. and was arrested for the 1st time and taken to Westerbork.
From there the Isaacks are immediately forwarded to Auschwitz and murdered. /4
After just one week, Leo is released from @kampwesterbork because of the care for his 2 sons and returns home to #Maastricht.
On November 11, 1942 Leo is arrested for the 2nd time after presumably being betrayed by an NSB member. /5
On May 4, 1943, Leo is one of 1187 deportees who go on the 10th transport to Sobibor. Before leaving the Netherlands at Nieuweschans, he throws his last greeting from the train to keep his children hopeful. He probably knows better about his fate.... /6
On May 7, 1943, Leo Salomon was murdered in #Sobibor extermination camp immediately upon arrival.... leaving behind 1 million kisses for his 2 boys. /7
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In late September 1943, a transport from Minsk arrived in #Sobibor. Among them was Alexander 'Sasha' Pechersky, who survived the selection. His presence gave a new boost to the escape plans of Leon Felhendler.
Alexander Pechersky, son of a Jewish lawyer, was born Feb. 22, 1909, in Kremenchuk, Russian Empire (now Ukraine).
Without Sasha Pechersky, the October 14, 1943 uprising in #Sobibor would not have happened.
Who was Pechersky? 🧵1/16 👇🏼
2/16 Sasha had a one brother Boris (1907) and two sisters, Faina (1906) and Zinaida/Zina (1921). At home, his parents spoke Yiddish. In 1915, his family fled to Rostov-on-Don, where he eventually worked as an electrician at a locomotive repair factory.
3/16 3/16 Pechersky was fond of theater and worked in a theater studio, where he met his future wife, Lyudmila Vasilyeyna. In 1933 they married.
Today we celebrate the life of Regina Zielinski. She is 1 of only 58 known survivors of #Sobibor death camp. She grew up as Riwka Feldman in Siedliczcze, in eastern Poland. She survived for 10 months in Sobibor. In 1949, she emigrated to Australia, where she died in 2014. 🧵👇🏼1/9
2/9 Regina Zielenski, born Riwka Feldman, was forced to move to the Siedliszcze ghetto on 18 May 1941 along with her parents, Golda and Josef Feldman, her sister Fradele, 19, and 3 brothers: Max, 21, Theodore, 13, and Paul, 10. On 22 October 1942, they were all sent to the Staw labour camp. Crammed into horse-drawn carts and guarded by SS men, Regina arrived in Sobibor just before Christmas 1942 with about 800 Polish Jews from the Staw-Nowosiulki. On arrival, an officer asked for young women who could knit. Her mother pushed her forward and she was 1 of the 11 selected. She was sent to the barracks to untangle clothes and knit socks for the German army.
On arrival at the camp, she heard her little brother say, "Let's say goodbye to the night, because we won't see the sun rise again." Later she was put to work in the laundry and she also had to clean and sort ammunition.
3/9 On October 14, 1943, the prisoners in Sobibor revolted. Under gunfire Regina ran through the cut wire fence and escaped into the forest. After three days, she felt it safe enough to return to Siedliszcze. Regina Wojciszyn gave Riwka her birth certificate and thus a new identity
Imagine how Ellen and her husband Ben must have felt during their transport to #Sobibor of June 8, 1943? They were parents of a 3-month-old baby who was taken away by the neighbor just minutes before their arrest on May 26, 1943. Ellen and Ben were deported to Sobibor without their daughter on the so-called children's transport. Tsiwja survived as Carla. At Carla's (@Tsiwja) request, we share the story of her murdered birth parents in a thread 🧵👇🏼1/11
2/11 Ellen was born in Amsterdam, as the daughter of Herman Sanders and Sara Maijkels. She lived in her childhood with her twin sister Vera and her younger sister Henny (1923) in De Lairessestraat in Amsterdam. In 1931 the family moved to Groningen due to her father's work. After her final exams, she returned to Amsterdam in 1938 to study at the “school for social work” in the Pieter de Hoochstraat.
3/11 Herman Sanders was born in Wildervank and after finishing his studies he worked at the Polak company in Groningen. Polak is the inventor of the lemonade syrup Ranja. In 1901 he became a representative for the company in Amsterdam and from 1916 he was a member of the board of directors. Herman married Sara Maijkels on June 26, 1917. They had three daughters.
At the end of 1931, shortly after his sixtieth birthday, David Polak retired from the daily management of the company. Herman Sanders was director after this until December 31, 1940, when he was forced to resign by the Germans.
Herman held many administrative positions during his professional life. In Groningen the family lived in the Midsummer villa on Verlengde Hereweg.
Herman, Sara and their youngest daughter Henny were murdered in Auschwitz on January 28, 1944. Vera survived the war.
13.07.1943 | Max (Marcus) Hamme was deported to #Sobibor camp. He was one of the 2209 deportees of the 18th transport from Westerbork. On July 13, 1943 he threw a letter to his wife from the train. She received it. What were Max' last words to her and the world? 👇🏼 1/11
2/11 Marcus Hamme was born in The Hague in 1901. He had 3 brothers and 2 sisters, of whom only Manuel David Hamme and his wife Roosje (Ro) Koekoek survived the war. Their son John Hamme died in Mauthausen on September 16, 1941, after being arrested prior to the February 1941 strike.
3/11 Marcus had himself registered in the marriage certificate as an accountant. He was also a secondary school accounting teacher in Oud-Beijerland. Keetje Tromp was a saleswoman. They had 2 daughters, Hanneke (Rotterdam, Nov. 12, 1933) and Aaltje (Elly) (Rotterdam, June 14, 1936).
07.01.1921 | ❤ Jules Schelvis, whose birthday we commemorate today, founded the Sobibor Foundation 25 years ago. We owe it in large part to him that the world is now aware of #Sobibor. He made it his life's work with the motto: You must pass on these stories. A long thread👇🏼1/18
2/18 Jules was born on Jan. 7, 1921, the 2nd child of Jewish parents who went through life as humanists and members of the Social Democratic Workers Party (SDAP). Some Jewish traditions were maintained. He experienced his childhood in a diamond workers' family under varying financial circumstances during the crisis years of the last century as a happy one, especially because in addition to always having bread on the table, there was a focus on culture and science.
3/18 Jules was the son of diamond worker Jacob Schelvis and Esther Schelvis-Papegaaij. His father perished in an outside camp at Sachenhausen. His mother and sister Milly survived Bergen-Belsen and Beendorf. That the versatile boy from Amsterdam's Rapenburg, became a historian was not only determined by the history of the twentieth century. Schooling and cultural development were cherished and encouraged by the social democrats, but more than the three-year HBS (high school), as Jules himself had so desired, was out of the question: he had to start earning for the family and became a printer.
21.12.1922 | 🕯 Remembering Doris Mak. She, like her brother, was born in Malmö. Since 1921 her father worked here for the Jewish community and was a ritual butcher. He was born in the Czech Republic. Her mother in Poland. In 1927, the family moved to Meent 94c in Rotterdam.👇🏼1/5
Fiszel Mak moved to Rotterdam 1927, serving the Dutch-Jewish Congregation as second hazzan (cantor) and as shokhet (ritual butcher). After the 1940 bombing, the family moved to Beukelsdijk 152a. Here they lived until April 10, 1943. 2/5
Childhood photos of Doris have been preserved, allowing us to see her grow up from baby to young lady. On April 10, 1940, the family was registered at the Westerbork transit camp. 3/5