Sobibor 1943

I just stared at my computer screen; frozen but my mind racing. The name seemed right, the birthdate seemed right, but “Death: April 16, 1943, Sobibor, Włodawa County, Lublin, Poland” seemed very wrong. Sobibor! The Nazi death camp on the Eastern Polish border?! I was taken aback. Were the family myths true? Were some of my mom’s relatives actually Jewish and killed in the holocaust?!

Part of my exploration over the year since my mom’s death has been to sort through the family documents, photographs, and delve into more of the genealogical records. In the past, I’ve always avoided my mom’s Dutch side of the family tree. How would I navigate the genealogical websites of a foreign country, written in a language I do not understand? Nevertheless, after a few forays, I have found that their genealogical websites are just as user-friendly and intuitive to use as the English ones. In fact, perhaps more so. Over the last weeks, I started finding the names of my Oma’s (Dutch grandmother’s) siblings: Maurits, Regina, and Sophia. Although my mom had never talked about them much, as I think she did not really know them well, the names rang (tiny) bells in my head. I had heard her speak these names; I seemed to be on the right track.

In exploring Maurits’ genealogical documentation, which seemed a bit thin and scattered, I confirmed that he was the much older brother (by ~9 years) of the three girls. Then I found on someone’s English family tree the entry above: Name: Maurits S.; Birth: November 1888; Death: April 16, 1943, Sobibor, Poland.  No. That can’t be right. I had thought my mom had meant distant uncles or cousins may have died in the holocaust. Not her own uncle. Not our family. Not for real. There must be some mistake…

I noticed the name of Maurits’ wife, Rachel, in the entry, so I looked up their marriage documentation on the Dutch national genealogical website. It showed the correct names of both sets of their parents as witnesses to the marriage, so this was indeed my great-parents’ son, my oma’s brother. But looking back at that one person’s somewhat sketchy entry on a ancestry website was not quite enough for me to say he died in the holocaust. They must have filled in the wrong death information. I needed just a bit more proof.

After some further searching over the next couple of days, I came across a Dutch War Graves site where you can look up an individual’s name to see if they died as a civilian, military, or holocaust victim of WWII. I entered Rachel’s name and confirmed she died in the Sobibor camp on April 16, 1943. I entered Maurits’ name and confirmed that he died in the Sobibor camp on April 16, 1943. Figuring that it was highly unlikely that two unrelated individuals with the exact same names as my great-aunt and uncle would die on the same day at the same extermination camp, I had my proof! It was my mom’s own uncle and aunt. It was our family. It was for real. There was no mistake…I stared at the computer screen. Frozen but with my mind racing.

As I study the genealogical lists of names and occupations, the Jewish roots become more and more obvious. My great-grandparents and Rachel’s parents had typical Jewish first and last names. Rachel’s father was actually an Amsterdam diamond-cutter. How’s that for a Dutch-Jewish cliché!? Oma’s family, my mom’s family, and not just some distant branch of the family tree, were Jewish. I also now realize—at least from the halakhic perspective where the religion passes via the mother—I am Jewish.

Somehow, all of this comes as a bit of a shock to me. It is one thing to have a family myth, a rumor that my mom mentioned vaguely in our discussions of her childhood, but to connect all the dots and see it officially documented gave me chills. Why? Why did I never quite believe the story? Part of me thought it was perhaps a bit of fear mongering to keep me in line, “Look, kiddo! You have a pretty comfy life here in Canada now. We grew up with these horrors during the hard times of war….”. Another part of me just found it all too vague and unreal: distant Dutch relatives…years ago…wartime…Jews…Nazis…Holland. I think my mom herself did not really know too much about all this, and it seems that my grandmother was not very close to her siblings. In all the photos, I think I only have found only one that shows her sisters, but nothing with Maurits.

Ahhh, but when one thinks about it more carefully, the picture gets clearer and starts to make sense. If Oma’s family of origin was Jewish, she was Jewish, her children were effectively Jewish, and the Nazis didn’t discriminate if you were married to a Protestant like my grandfather (opa). The whole family could still end up in the concentration camps. What to do? Distance yourself from your Jewishness, perhaps? Keep your siblings at arms length or further? (Maurits lived on the other side of the country and the sisters were not local either. Regina had married a businessman and moved with him to Indonesia.) Perhaps you don’t talk about them or your parents and family customs? (Oma’s father had died more than 20 years before the war and her mother was ancient, so who would even notice?) Finally, perhaps you would have a trusted contact at city hall alter the records about the family’s religious affiliation? Oma and Opa were pretty savvy.  He had military connections as an officer in the Dutch reserves and several business colleagues in Germany. I bet he knew what would happen when Germany invaded Holland—except for one personal detail, which perhaps I’ll save for another post.

Survival through denial. Do what it takes to protect your own children. No wonder my mom didn’t know too much. She was shielded from the liability of the truth. One could only imagine the stress and tension that would have pervaded her home life, smothering it under a dark, heavy blanket of denial and secrecy. What did Oma think every time the soldiers or police banged on her door in the middle of the night, especially as Opa was away during much of the war? What did Oma think as her favorite store clerk, or the neighbor’s piano teacher, or some other casual acquaintance was picked up and deported to Westerbork? Children absorb these dark things, though, and it explains much about my mom’s anxieties, her desire to keep family matters private, and her need to keep all of her documentation and personal affairs in good order.

Perhaps it also explains her vagueness in explaining it all to me. Why pass that nightmare onto your children? Even though I didn’t live the nightmare like she did, I could sense its underlying presence, as I have mentioned in earlier posts. There were just things that were not discussed in detail. Even as I write this, there is a part of me that wonders if I should write this. What right do I have to open up this family secret?  Would it not be better to let sleeping dogs lie? Is it wrong to stir up the past this way?

But no…this “family secret”, if one can call it that, has run its due course. It protected my mom and her immediate family, and for that I am thankful. I likely would not be alive otherwise. What happened to the Jewish people in those years was terrible beyond words. And thinking about it now, the sadness and horror hits even closer to home. I cannot fix that past, but I will not continue to hide it or just forget about it. It is time to lift that blanket of darkness and let it go.

For Rachel and Maurits, and all the children who have lived under the darkness.

34 295 Dutch jews were killed at Sobibor (Photo by Marc Broens)