Waterstraat 45

Waterstraat 45 is now known as Krabbestraat 3.

** With these stumbling blocks we commemorate the Kropveld-van Gelder family consisting of father Samuel, mother Judith and their daughters Esther, Sophia, Carolina and Jacoba. The children die together with their mother on October 26, 1942 in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Esther is then 21 years old, Sophia 18, Carolina 16, Jacoba 11 and Judith 51. Samuel dies at the age of 53 in the Ludwigsdorf camp on March 4, 1943 **.

Samuel Kropveld was born in Vlagtwedde. On February 2, 1921, he married Judith van Gelder in Amsterdam. With daughter Esther they settle in October 1923 from Heerde in Zwolle. The other children are born here. The family has lived at 45 Waterstraat since 1937. Their house was at the current Krabbestraat 3-5.

We know little about their lives. Like so many Jewish people from Zwolle, they have been wiped off the face of the earth without leaving many traces of them. Fortunately, there is another eyewitness. Sippora Stibbe, born in the Zwolse Papenstraat in 1931, recorded her childhood memories in the book: How carefree is childhood. Childhood memories of a half-Jewish girl in wartime. She remembers about the Kropvelds:

“They lived in the Waterstraat, father, mother and 4 daughters. They lived in a very small house, because they were poor people. Father Samuel walked with galleries. That would not have been much more than a suitcase on the front of a bicycle with the so-called galleries, such as combs, mirrors, shaving soap, shaving brushes and other household necessities.

My two oldest sisters were friends with the three oldest girls, they knew them from the sewing workshop Tepe, where poor Zwolle girls often started their working lives. They talked about general cargo, I remember, and explained to me that the more collars you could 'process' in a day, the more you earned.

The Kropveld couple differed from one another as day and night. Mrs. Kropveld had a somewhat long face with a gloomy expression and tousled hair. Shabbily dressed, with the youngest spoiled daughter Coba always hanging from her skirts, who was brought to and from school every day. She was my age and was in the fifth grade of Jewish primary school. Samuel, the father of the family, always looked super fine, shiny polished shoes, a darling cloth in the breast pocket of his jacket, walking proudly, I remember him.

The girls were very handsome, especially Esther, the oldest, who worked as a seamstress in a garment factory. She was the prettiest and called herself Hetty. After Esther came Sophia, she worked as a seamstress in a leather goods factory and Carolina, she was a maid. All three of them worked, just like my oldest two sisters, and lived their lives that I didn't have to worry about. "

So much for the memories of Sippora Stibbe.

The following tracks lead to the Westerbork transit camp where the entry of the Kropvelds is registered between 3 and 5 October 1942. Samuel then comes from a Dutch labor camp for Jewish men. It is unknown which camp. In the summer of '42, dozens of Jewish men from Zwolle were forced to work in camps of the former Dutch employers in Overijssel and Friesland. In early October 1942, all these men were deported directly from the labor camps to Westerbork. Their partners and children were brought together under the pretext of family reunification on 2 October in the gymnasium of the Celeanum gym on the Veerallee and deported to Westerbork via the Zwolse livestock station the following day - on the Jewish day of Sabbath. Among them Judith with her daughters hoping to see Samuel again. The family is indeed reunited in Westerbork.

In the following weeks, transports depart from Westerbork at a rapid pace to the east, to Auschwitz, although that destination is unknown upon departure. The Kropvelds are deported to Auschwitz with transport 30 on Friday 23 October. The train employs 988 people, 167 of whom are children. On October 25, the train arrives in hell on Earth, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Judith and her daughters are believed to have been killed in the gas chambers of Birkenau immediately upon arrival.

Samuel's fate was different. In addition to the gas chambers, destruction by labor was a second method of murder of the Nazis. Jewish men and women were forced to do hard work, with a minimum of nutrition, rest and care. They then died of abuse, starvation, exhaustion or infectious diseases or were still sent to the gas chamber.

In the second half of 1942, 39 deportation trains from Westerbork, Mechelen (Belgium) and Drancy (France) stop at the freight station of Cosel, about 80 kilometers west of Auschwitz. Here, 9,000 men aged 16-50 have been forcibly removed from the trains to work in one of the dozens of forced labor camps in Silesia. Samuel Kropveld was taken off the train with 169 others from his transport in Cosel. In the end, only 14 of them will survive the war. “The train stopped in Cosel. That was a terrible thing there. The human ended here. We, the men up to the age of 50, all had to squat. When the train pulled away, we were loaded onto trucks like animals, ”Abraham Spiero described his arrival in Cosel a week earlier. Women and children disappeared by train, facing an unknown fate. There was no opportunity to say goodbye to each other.

Little is known about Samuel's journey through the labor camps. He will first have gone to one of the nearby selection camps Sakrau or Sankt Annaberg. Eventually he ends up in Ludwigsdorf, an outer camp of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. Ludwigsdorf became operational as an ammunition factory in March 1943. Mostly Jewish women work there. The Red Cross has determined that Samuel died there on March 4, 1943.

Like so many, the Kropvelds do not have a grave. The ashes of Judith and her four daughters rest under a meadow behind the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Samuel's final resting place is unknown. The Stumbling Stones keep the memory of them alive. This gives them a place in our midst again.

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