Nazi Victims' Belongings
January 15, 2008
The personal effects have been locked up in Red Cross archives in Bad Arolsen, in central Germany, for decades.
Viewing the items evokes ghosts from the past, said Gerrit Jan Evers, who learned just a few weeks ago that the effects had been discovered.
"So many died. And now, 63 years later, I'm here holding my father's identity card in my hand," Evers told DPA news agency.
The items include an old pocket watch with cracked, yellow glass and its case, a scratched-up lock and key and a photograph with writing on the back that is hard to discern.
The Nazis had kept all the items packed in boxes, which were then confiscated by the Allies at the end of the war.
Files on over 17 million people
The Red Cross' own International Tracing Service supervises the archive of captured files on some 17.5 million non-Germans persecuted by the Nazis or displaced during World War II.
Within the files, personal letters, jewelry and other private papers are sometimes found. The Red Cross staff then notifies next of kin and sends the items to them. Monday was the first time relatives came themselves to collect items at the Bad Arolsen archive.
Evert de Graaf, a Dutch historian, explained the history to DPA: "Evers's father was caught up in a wave of arrests by the Nazis," he said. "After a resistance attack on German soldiers, they sent about 600 Dutch people to the concentration camps on Oct. 1-2, 1944."
De Graaf and his colleagues are collaborating with the Red Cross to investigate what happened to the victims.
"We found files on 80 of them, and an envelope containing personal effects was attached to eight of them," the historian said.
Mood becomes sober and reflective
On Monday, six months later, the eight families traveled to Bad Arolsen in a chartered bus to collect the personal effects.
"When the trip began, everyone was cheerful," De Graaf said to DPA. "But the closer we got to Bad Arolsen, the quieter everyone became."
Evers's hands shake as he opens a package to find the brittle, yellowing ID card marked "Personsbewijs" in Dutch inside and glimpses the photograph of a gaunt, serious-looking man.
"That's my father," he says softly.
Evers is named after his father but has no recollection of him other than his mother's anecdotes.
Gerrit Evers Senior died of exhaustion in December 1944 at Neuengamme concentration camp, near Hamburg. Three weeks later, his son was born in the Netherlands.
Stifling his emotions, Evers puts away the card and murmurs, "So many people."
Mixed feelings toward Germans
Evers' stepson, Gerjo Mulder, explained to DPA: "It's beyond belief for him that people could be so cruel to one another here, in the middle of Europe. I can't grasp it myself. I'm trying to put myself in his shoes. But I'm just 35."
Asked whether he hates the Germans, Dutchman Mulder said, "That's all in the past," but then adds: "Except when we're playing soccer against them."
Viewing his dead brother's concentration-camp registration card, Willem Dorgelo, said, "I keep trying to tell myself that it wasn't 'the Germans,' it was Adolf Hitler. Well, I try anyway."
"They worked him to death, starved him, gave him no winter clothes. He didn't survive," he said, turning over a wallet in his hand that used to belong to a man who has been dead for 63 years.
Standing next to him, Johan Dorgelo, Willem's son, said: "I hardly have anything to remember my father by. I was a baby when he was rounded up and taken away."