Waterlooplein 247

Schoontje Beugeltas (1898) was born at No. 16 Uilenburgerstraat. The family did not live there long, because every few months their address is changed: in the year of her birth alone, three houses in Nieuwe Kerkstraat and two in entered the Uilenburgerstraat and left it again. Due to the irregular income, it is difficult for father Levie to offer the family a decent accommodation. After the death of her mother in 1916, Schoontje takes over the household tasks and takes care of the youngest children. In between she works as a saleswoman and maid.

While everyone leaves home to start a family of their own, Schoontje continues to live at home and takes care of her father. Around 1930 she meets her future husband, the non-Jewish Philippus Theodorus (Philip) Becht (1898), a car mechanic and driver who takes up residence with the family in the Rapenburgerstraat. Two years later they get married and in 1935 they move to Waterlooplein 81-II. Levie also moves with him, and rents part of the floor until he moves in 1938 to the Municipal Nursing Home for the elderly in Roetersstraat.

During the occupation, the residents of this part of the Waterlooplein soon had to deal with bullying and violent provocations from the occupying forces and the resistance department of the NSB, the lowest point being the death of WA man Koot, who was practically killed on 11 February 1941 for Philip and Schoontje is knocked down by a vigilante group and dies a few days later. Schoontje had had a bad premonition for some time and in January 1941 she withdrew from the compulsory registration for Jews, meaning that she would have to go into hiding at some point. She may initially do this in her own home, but when it gets too hot underfoot, she seeks refuge in the Dutch-Israelite Hospital (NIZ) on Nieuwe Keizersgracht, where her farmer Joseph (Joop) has a room.
Flight

Philip, meanwhile, works as a night guard and will no doubt have made up an excuse every now and then when people inquired about his wife. After the raid on the Jewish psychiatric institution Het Apeldoornsche Bosch in January 1943, it becomes clear that the medical staff of hospitals in Amsterdam will not be spared either, and Schoontje's brother Joop's call for work expansion is probably the reason to make plans for a joint flight. to Switzerland. Around mid-February/early March, Philip, Schoontje and Joop leave Belgium for France with false papers.

Philip's brother will be in charge of the finances and will send money from Amsterdam at regular intervals, but if that doesn't happen it becomes clear that he has run off with the money. Without money, little will come of the plans: various smugglers have to be paid for their services and some are not afraid to ask for a higher amount than agreed in advance. And of course there are also the costs for daily maintenance of three people.

It doesn't take long before Schoontje, Philip and Joop are arrested by the French police and end up in Besançon prison. Joop and Schoontje are transferred to Drancy, the transit camp for Jews northeast of Paris. Philip is imprisoned as a political prisoner in Frontstalag 122 in Compiègne.

Joop is deported to Auschwitz in June 1943, where he is murdered on arrival. Schoontje follows a month later, but she is selected for forced labor and manages to hold out until January 1945. The camp then closes and she has to go on a death march. Arriving in Bergen-Belsen, she probably saw the hopeless situation and did not hesitate for long when, in mid-February, 500 women were asked to work in Venusberg, a satellite camp of Flossenbürg concentration camp. The fact that after an exhausting death march in winter conditions she was fit and healthy enough to be selected mainly with girls and young women could indicate that Schoontje was in a position in Birkenau in which she had easier access to food and perhaps also clothing.

What follows after the selection in Bergen-Belsen has been carefully researched and published by the German historian Pascal Cziborra (KZ Venusberg: Der verschleppte Tod – Lorbeer-Verlag, 2015). A large number of survivors of the camp made detailed statements after the war that served as the basis for the criminal case against the camp leadership – from which the commander and his girlfriend, the Oberaufseherin (head guard) of the camp, managed to escape; to this day, their identities have not been established with certainty and their hiding place has remained unknown. Schoontje is also mentioned in the book.

After being transported under winter conditions and due to pouring rain, she ends up in Venusberg, a women's camp near Gelenau (Saxony, near the Czech border) where already 500 women are staying in two barracks and which now have to make way for even more people who are also from Bergen-Belsen carry typhoid fever. She is entered in the Flossenbürg camp books under number 63352. In Venusberg, aircraft parts have to be made in a nearby factory. The shifts are long and dangerous machinery is used, with women regularly being seriously injured. The camp guards are brutal and the women are dying in droves from malnutrition and epidemic diseases. In April 1945, due to the approach of the Allies, this camp also had to be abandoned.

The approximately 900 remaining prisoners are driven in boxcars over the bombed track for two weeks until the train finally comes to a stop at Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. With no food and only sporadic drinking, half of the women have died in horrific conditions along the way. Schoontje is alive, but is critically ill and needs to be nursed.

The camp was liberated by the Americans a few days later and Schoontje remained behind in the field hospital, the 131st Evacuation Hospital, which was set up in the Gusen side camp until the beginning of June. While all patients are being repatriated one by one, the Dutch Red Cross simply does not show up. After the war, they are too busy with meetings and organizing, so that there is a lack of decisiveness in the field, according to the criticism later on.

Finally, on June 6, 1945, the Dutch patients from Mauthausen and Dachau are collected by the French occupying army and Schoontje can go to a French military hospital in Reichenau on Lake Constance in southern Germany for further treatment. Unfortunately, it is no longer possible because on June 20, 1945 she dies and is buried under a wrong spelling of her name, Shronte Becate.

It takes until 1950 before a captain of the Identification and Salvage Service has to be at the cemetery for an excavation and also to start an investigation into other Dutch victims who should be buried here. He reports: On the grave of Ms. Schronte Beot was a wooden memorial pole with the star of Sion and given as family name Decat (sic). Years later, this name is linked to Schoontje by the War Graves Foundation. In 1955 she was reburied on the Dutch Field of Honor in Frankfurt am Main.

For Philip, after the camp in Compiègne, a transport to Buchenwald follows in January 1944. There he has to perform heavy forced labor and his health is visibly deteriorating due to typhoid fever and malnutrition, as evidenced by the registration of various admissions to the infirmary. When the camp is closed by the approach of the Allies, Philip is sufficiently strengthened to be able to join a grueling death march. After about ten days, the procession reaches Theresienstadt concentration camp, where Philip is still registered in the camp administration.

Philip also experiences the liberation, but just like Schoontje he is at the end of his powers. The thought of a future reunion will have kept both of them going all along. Philip is also in such bad shape that he dies on May 25, 1945. He is buried in a mass grave in the camp's Jewish cemetery.
(Source: Achterdesteen.nl)

Připomínáme zde

Je tady kámen poškozený, nebo chybí? Napište nám e-mail