SOBIBÓR - Holocaust Handbooks

J. GRAF, T. KUES, C. MATTOGNO, SOBIBÓR 367
February 1943 altogether 42,533 Dutch Jews were sent to Auschwitz.
According to mainstream Holocaust historians, 30,413 of them were
“gassed upon arrival” 1091 – which means that they were probably deported
east. If the destination of a part of them had been Vievis, it is
perfectly possible that the number of Dutch Jews living in that Lithuanian
town on 16 April 1943 amounted to 19,000.
On the same date Kruk wrote the following under the heading “More
about the Dutch Jews” (p. 519):
“Just now I succeeded in getting a Jewish sign and a copy of the
order of the Reichskommissar for the Occupied Netherlands about
Jewish property (attached).”
The editor follows this with a remark that “The order is missing.”
With “Jewish sign” is no doubt meant the cloth Star of David forcibly
worn by Western Jews. In the Netherlands these emblems bore the inscription
Jood (Dutch for Jew). This passage shows that Kruk had a
good reason to believe the rumor about Vievis, since he himself was in
possession of items belonging to one or more Dutch Jews.
Several reports exist about the labor camp of Vievis, a town situated
between Kovno and Vilnius. A former inmate of the ghetto of Kovno,
Avraham Tory, wrote in his diary on 2 July 1943: 1092
“The conditions in the Vievis labor camp are harder than in the
ghetto [in Kovno]. […] Once in a while, patients from the Vievis
camp are admitted to our ghetto hospital. The camp inmates also
come here quite often to ask for help over some problem or other.
We, for our part, extend them whatever assistance we can.”
In a collective volume of “memoirs of Holocaust survivors” published
in 2007 we learn the following about a certain “Marie” from the
ghetto of Vilnius: 1093
“When they saw that the last days of the ghetto were approaching,
[1094] Adam [Marie’s brother] succeeded to be transferred to the
camp Zezmarai, working for the German engineering organization
TODT. He was working there as a camp physician, while Marie remained
in the ghetto. Just before the great action her brother ar-
1091
D. Czech, op. cit. (note 825), No deportations of Dutch Jews to Auschwitz took place in
March and April 1943.
1092
Avraham Tory, Surviving the Holocaust. The Kovno Ghetto Diary, Harvard University
Press, Cambridge/London 1990. p. 407.
1093
Joseph Rebhuhn, “Why me?” Memoirs of Holocaust Survivors, Wildside Press, Rockville
(MD) 2007, p. 173.
1094
The ghetto was dissolved in September 1943.