Before I go into the main story I have to explain the geographical history of the Westelijke Mijnstreek (Western Mining area). It is situated in the province of Limburg, the most southern province of the Netherlands, in the southeast of the country. It is also the nearest to Germany, in many cases literally a walking distance away from Germany. Why this is important will become clear later on. The Westelijke Mijnstreek was a mining area until 1968. Until 2001 the 2 main principle municipalities were Geleen and Sittard, in January 2001 the 2 towns merged into one bigger city carrying the name Sittard-Geleen. The Westelijke Mijnstreek is also the start of Zuid Limburg or South Limburg. Contradictory to popular belief, the Netherlands isn’t completely flat. The hills in Zuid Limburg, often referred to as the heuvelland, or hill land are formed by the foothills of the Belgian Ardennes and the German Eifel.
This geographical bit of history is important to understand the wider context of the main story. Herman van Rens, a retired General Physician from the Westelijke Mijnstreek, became a Holocaust researcher, and in his research, he discovered that more Jews survived the Holocaust in Limburg, than in the rest of the Netherlands, Approximately 50 % of Jews in Limburg survived, whereas nationally it was only 25%. This is remarkable because of the close proximity to Germany, as stated earlier often only walking a distance away.
However, this also means that 50% of Limburg Jews did not survive the Holocaust. Following are a few stories of those who were murdered.
The picture at the start of the blog is of the Croonenberg Family of Grevenbicht, a small village near Sittard.
The Croonenberg family had lived in Grevenbicht for at least 200 years. By profession they had always been butchers and cattle traders. The Zeligman family had lived in Meerssen for several generations, but mother Helena had spent half her childhood in Sittard. Grandmother Julia Falkenstein, after whom Julienne was named, came from Gangelt.
Erna and Julienne were the only Jewish children in Grevenbicht. They had their grandfather Gustaf and great-uncle Karel Croonenberg living in the house, and there were no other Jews in the village. They therefore went to the Catholic Sisters’ Preschool in Grevenbicht at the age of three and to the Maria School from the age of six and mainly had friends in the village. They met Jewish children and adults in Sittard, on Saturdays in the synagogue and on Sundays at Rabbi Van Blijdestein’s religion class. Their grandmother uncle and aunt Zeligman also lived in Sittard and the related Sassen-Falkenstein family.
Sittard had a flourishing Jewish community for centuries, with a synagogue in Molenbeekstraat and later Plakstraat, and its own cemetery at Fort Sanderbout and later on the Dominicanenwal. From time to time there were frictions and incidents between the Catholic majority and the Jewish minority, but generally, they lived together in good harmony.
From 1941 onwards, the freedom of movement of Jews became increasingly restricted: they were no longer allowed to go to cinemas, libraries, swimming pools, parks or catering establishments, and were no longer allowed to be members of non-Jewish associations; From September 1941, Erna and Julienne were no longer allowed to go to school in Grevenbicht. An improvised Jewish school was set up in Sittard, but the question is how often the girls from Grevenbicht attended it.
At the end of August 1942, the call came for Arthur and his family to report for ’employment in Germany’. Early one morning they were taken in a truck to Sittard, and from there by train together with many other Jewish families to Maastricht for registration and control, the next day to Camp Westerbork and a few days later from there by train to Auschwitz. Arthur was among the men who had to leave the train at the Kosel labor camp, about 80 kilometers before Auschwitz. These men were put to work in various camps from Kosel.
Helena and the girls were gassed immediately after arriving in Auschwitz on August 30 or 31, 1942, less than a week after their departure from Grevenbicht. Grandpa Gustaf remained alone in the house until he too was deported in April 1943. None of the family survived, except some of Arthur’s great-uncles and aunts and a cousin of Helena.
A party in Sittard in 1941 or 1942; a pleasant get-together, children playing in the street. Nothing special you might say, except that it was captured on film. However, appearances are deceiving, because the film bears witness to daily Jewish life in the Westelijke Mijnstreek, especially in a period that was becoming increasingly dark and threatening. We see how Isaac Wolff celebrates his Bar Mitzvah at home in the Landweringstraat in Ophoven Dozens of family members and Rabbi Van Bledenstein and his wife are guests and participate in the festive meal, adorned with paper hats.
Isaac Wolff was deported to Auschwitz in June 1943 from Vught via Westerbork on the so-called children’s transport. He was 14 years old when he was murdered on 3 September 1943.
Isaac’s father was Herman Wolff.
Herman Wolff was the only child of shopkeeper Isaac Wolff from Boxmeer and Sophia Silbernberg from Sittard. He grew up in Ophoven at Dorpsstraat 28 and became a tailor. In 1926 he left for Amsterdam with his parents, where he married Rozette in August 1927. They then settled in Sittard at Landweringstraat 4 (later renumbered to 15) and had two sons, Isaac and Bennie.
Herman became manager and owner of the local tricotage factory ‘Weta’ (Weverij En Tricotage Atelier), located at Landweringstraat 17b, next to their house. He founded this company in January 1935 together with partner Joseph Saile from Rottenburg (Württemberg). Saile was a weaver by profession and lived at Kruisstraat 13 as a boarder with the widow Zeligman from 1933 until his marriage in 1940. In November 1941, Herman had to resign and the occupiers placed Weta under an ‘Aryan’ administrator. Saile had to join the Wehrmacht in early 1942.
In the autumn of 1941, the Wolff family’s Bar Mitzvah of eldest son Ies was captured on film, a unique time document, where many family members and other Sittard Jews were guests in their home (see the video). This is the only known footage of the Wolff family.
A year later, almost the entire community was deported. Herman and his family had been given a reprieve because he was chairman of the Jewish Council in Sittard, but in April 1943 they too had to be transported to Vught. In June 1943, Rozette and the children continued on to Westerbork on the so-called children’s transport, from where they were deported to Auschwitz and murdered at the end of August. Herman also had to board the train to Auschwitz on November 15, 1943 and died on an unspecified date in Auschwitz or the surrounding area.
Seven other people had lived with the family, who, in addition to the (‘half-Jewish’) maid, were also deported: in February 1941 the widow Stein-Salomon and her eldest daughter came to live with them, in November 1942 the Schwarz-Wihl couple, and in February 1943, Rozette’s parents. None of them survived.
The story of Albert and Ida (Ajga) Claessens
Due to the flexible local admission policy in the early 1930s, Amby, in Maastricht counted many Jewish refugees from Germany and Eastern Europe, already over a hundred in 1933. In Zawiercie, where about a quarter of the population was Jewish, there had been pogroms in 1919 and 1921; It is possible that the Krzanowska family already fled their country to Germany at that time. Ida had arrived in Amby from Aachen in October 1936. She lived there on Hoofdstraat. Her brother Herman had also settled in Amby with his family, and her sister Rachella married another refugee there in 1934. They wrote their family name themselves as Chrzanowski. Herman was a wedding witness at Ida’s wedding to Albert Claessens on April 4, 1938, in Amby. Albert worked at the coking factory in Geleen.
The young couple settled in Geleen at Pastoor Vonckenstraat 51.
By order of the Reich Commissioner, Albert was fired from the State Mines on April 1, 1941. He later earned a living as a ground worker.
Albert did not think about going into hiding; he assumed that the Jews were taken to labor camps in Germany. At the first call, on August 25, 1942, he and Ida, together with many others, were taken via Maastricht to Westerbork, where they arrived on August 26. From there they were deported to Auschwitz on August 28. On August 25, 1942, the Geleen police report stated that all perishable goods had been removed from their house.
Ida Claessens-Krzanowska and Cilly Claessens-Hirsch were gassed immediately after their arrival in Auschwitz, less than a week after their departure from Geleen. Albert and Jozef were among the men who had to leave the train at the Kosel labor camp, about 80 kilometers before Auschwitz. These men were put to work in various camps from Kosel. Nothing further is known of their fate; only the note ‘died in Central Europe’ testifies to their sad fate.
Brother Herman Chrzanowski appears to have gone into hiding with his wife and two children and survived the war, as did sister Rachella and her husband.
sources
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/123055/isaac-wolff
https://www.stolpersteinesittardgeleen.nl/Stichting
https://historiesittardgeleenborn.nl/verhaal/14/holocaust-in-de-westelijke-mijnstreek
https://halloonline.nl/verhalen/bericht/herman-van-rens-houdt-de-holocaust-onder-de-aandacht
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