On the evening of Thursday 4th May from 19:30, the residents of ‘Samenwerking’ who lost their lives as a result of World War II will be commemorated at the ‘namenmonument’ in Gerard Terborgstraat. Attention will be given in particular to Jewish residents, and also to resistance fighters.
95-year-old Maurits van Witsen will give a speech at the commemoration ceremony. In 1943, he and his family had to go into hiding when he was just 15 years old. His father, Henri van Witsen, did not survive the war. His name is inscribed on the monument.
Those interested are welcome to attend the commemoration, which will include performances by violinists Suus van den Akker and Fieke Smitskamp. After the commemoration a gathering will take place at De Coenen. Mascha Furth, a member of the board of ‘Samenwerking’, will give a speech there. The Samenwerking monument was unveiled in 2018. This monument was created due to the initiative of four residents: Ido Abram (died in 2019), Guus Luijters, Renée Sanders and Dorine Winkels. This year’s commemoration is organised by Jacques Bettelheim, Els van Eijden, Rob Mommers and Martine van der Velde.
Background
On the afternoon of Friday 21st August 1942, four Dutch policemen entered the Lux photographic shop at Roelof Hartstraat 4 in Amsterdam-Zuid following a tip-off. The 38-year-old branch manager Richard Voitus van Hamme was not present at the time. The officers walked past his shocked wife to the living area behind the shop. There they met 23-year-old window dresser Bernard Davids. He informed them that he was there on a visit. When checked, his ID (proof of identity) appeared to be in order. Then 38-year-old Voitus van Hamme came home and was immediately searched. There was a copy of the illegal magazine Vrij Nederland In his pocket. The policemen forced him to open the safe contained in the wall. In it they found a revolver, a pistol, bullets and a personal ID. This copy also showed Bernard Davids’ name, only this one had a big ‘J’ on it.
Bernard was Jewish and had shown the officers a forged copy of his ID, which he hoped would help him to escape deportation. The officers also found banned photos of the royal family in exile in the house as well as anti-Nazi written materials. Both detainees were taken to the dreaded headquarters of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) in a school building on nearby Euterpestraat (now Gerrit van der Veenstraat). On 18 September 1942, after intensive interrogation, Bernard Davids was transported to the Judendurchgangslager (transit camp) Westerbork in Drenthe. Voitus van Hamme was transferred to the prison in Scheveningen, known as ‘the Oranjehotel’. A harsh sentence followed on 3rd October: the death penalty for prohibited possession of weapons, reading of illegal materials and aiding of Jews. A pardon request by his wife was rejected. In the early morning of 4th November, the photo dealer was executed on the Waalsdorpervlakte. The man he was hiding, Bernard Davids, was deported from camp Westerbork to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp in Poland. He was murdered there on 31st January 1943.
In April 2020, the names of both men were added to the memorial on Gerard Terborgstraat in Amsterdam-Zuid. The monument was designed by Victor Levie three years earlier and came about due to the initiative of residents of Amsterdam-Zuid. The monument consists of four wooden doorposts, to symbolise the doors behind which the victims lived. White, green and black plaques are attached to their posts. The white ones indicate the street, the green ones the house number and floor, the black ones the name of the former occupant(s). The text at the memorial reads: ‘Remember the names, they will live on’. The residents who initiated this project conducted extensive research into the lives of the victims of the German occupation in their neighbourhood. Their findings uncovered 169 names of killed resistance fighters, deported Jews and perished Jewish people in hiding.
Around 1940, 35 to 40 per cent of Amsterdam’s 80,000 Jews lived in Amsterdam-Zuid. Among them were many German Jews who fled to Amsterdam from Nazi Germany before the war. Likeso many others, the Jewish community living in Zuid were subjected to isolation, persecution and deportation during the German occupation. On the Sunday morning of 20th June, a large raid took place in Amsterdam-Zuid and Oost. Houses were searched, and then the Jewish residents of Zuid were ordered to go to assembly points on the Olympiaplein and Daniël Willinkplein (now Victorieplein). A total of 5542 men, women and children were taken from the capital to camp Westerbork that day. In no time, their abandoned homes were reallocated by the municipal Bureau for Relocation to house other Amsterdam residents.