11.05.1943 | 11th transport with 1446 deportees from @kampwesterbork to #Sobibor | 1 survivor (Jozef Wins)
Rebekka and Aaron Meijers from Hengelo had been in barracks 67 in Westerbork as criminal cases since May 6.
Who were they? And what did they write on May 6? 👇🏼 /1
Aron dealt in all sorts of things (cattle, slaughter, rags, trade, cow hides, rabbit and mole skins for fur processing) and everyone knew him and he everyone. Together with Rebekka, he had 4 children: Leo, Jaap, Rosa and Nanny. /2
In the fall of 1942, Bekka and Aron went into hiding, after which a search warrant was issued.
On May 2, 1943, they were arrested, after which they were placed as criminal cases in barracks 67 in Camp Westerbork. /3
Jaap, together with sister Nanny, was in hiding in a pig shed on the Rupert family's farm on Spinnersweg between Hengelo and Borne. Rosa went into hiding in Friesland with the de Jong family during the war. They all survived. /4
Shortly before, their eldest son Leo was killed by the resistance in Voerendaal together with his fiancée Alie Frankenhuis. They threatened (presumably out of desperation) to betray other people in hiding. The resistance group was later rounded up, killing all those in hiding. /5
On the day of their arrival in Westerbork, they wrote a card to their old neighbors, the Horstink family, who is a blacksmith next to their house in Hengelo.
They are upset by Leo's murder. So at their hiding place they have heard what happened to Leo. /6
Aron and Bekka are murdered on May 14, 1943 in the gas chambers of Sobibor death camp upon arrival and are not among the 80 people selected as "Labor Jude.
Only one of these 80 does manage to survive: Jozef Wins. More about his testimony later. /7
/2a
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22.06.1933 | Cäcil David Speijer, a 9-y/o boy from Harlingen was murdered in #Sobibor. His parents had a clothing store, on the corner of Heiligeweg/Grote Kerkstraat. A last postcard from Speijer family arrived in Harlingen with the text, "This is not ending well."
👇🏼 1/5
2/5 Cäcil had one older brother, Elkan. Together they attended school in Harlingen. From September 1, 1942, the German occupiers required them to attend the Jewish School in Leeuwarden.
3/5 Michiel Speijer, called "Chellie" in Harlingen, married German-born Hanna Schulenklopper on Feb. 27, 1929, in Norden, Germany. The couple lived next door to the store with their two sons: Elkan Aron and Cäcil David. They were well known and loved in Harlingen.
01.06.1910 l Leon Felhendler was 1 of the 2 leaders of the uprising at the #Sobibor on Oct. 14, 1943. #OTD he was born in 1910 in Turobin (Pl) to an Orthodox Jewish family. He arrived in Sobibor in early November 1942. Who was this underground leader of Sobibor? 👇🏼1/8
2/8 Leon Felhendler was born in Turobin, Poland. His father became Chief Rabbi in Żółkiewka in 1924. Married Toba Wajnberg on May 9, 1935, and had a son, Chaim Szymon, on October 20, 1935. Limited records make it unclear about their second child.
3/8 Leon Felhendler's early life shrouded in mystery due to limited Żółkiewka records. Possible miller, just as his father-in-law. Education and pre-war work unclear. Likely received religious training from his rabbi father.
11.05.1943 | Jozef Wins was one of the just 18 Dutch survivors of Sobibor. He was selected along with 79 other men upon arrival on May 14, 1943 and was sent to a work camp in Dorohucza. Jozef Wins was the only survivor of the 11th Transport of 1446 deportees.👇🏼1/10
2/10 Jozef Wins was born in Amsterdam in 1915 as a son of Isaäc Wins (1884-1942) and Bloeme Leeda (1892-1942). He had 2 brothers, Samuel (1913-1919) and Salomon (1930-1943), and 2 sisters, Rachel (1918) and Sophia (1927-1942). Rachel and Jozef both survived the war.
3/10 Jozef went into hiding during the war. On March 12, 1943, he was betrayed. He was first locked up in the prison on Amstelveenseweg in Amsterdam and later transported to Westerbork as a "criminal case".
07.12.1918 | Ellen de Swarte-Sanders was born in Amsterdam, as the daughter of Herman Sanders and Sara Maijkels. She had a twin sister, Vera, and a younger sister, Henny (1923).
Imagine how Ellen and her husband Ben must have felt during their deportation to #Sobibor on June 8, 1943. They were parents of a 3-month-old girl,who was taken away by the neighbor just minutes before their arrest on May 26, 1943. The baby survived. 👇🏼1/10
2/10 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 the 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.
3/10 After her school exams, Ellen returned to Amsterdam in 1938 to study at the “school for social work”. At a discussion evening, Ellen met Ben de Swarte.
Within six months, Ben and Ellen were engaged. Ben was the youngest in the family of Abraham and Mietje De Swarte-Klepman. Benjamin Ruben de Swarte studied at the University of Amsterdam from 1931 to 1937. On June 14, 1935, he passed the doctoral exam in commercial sciences (economics) and on December 2, 1937, he passed the doctoral exam in law. Ben started his own accounting firm from his parental home in 1938.
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