Kamperstraat 14
Zwolle
With these stumbling blocks we commemorate Betje Wolff-Kats and her son Menno Wolff. Betje and Menno were murdered on June 11, 1943 in the gas chambers of the Sobibor extermination camp, aged 44 and 8. Betje was the widow of Aaron Wolff. **
Harry Hes outlined their life course when the Stumbling Stones were unveiled on November 3, 2017.
Wolff and Kats were Jewish families in Southeast Drenthe. Betje Kats was born in Nieuw Amsterdam, municipality of Emmen, on September 27, 1898. She was the youngest of eight children in the family of Meijer Kats and Eva van Geuns.
On 24 May 1932 she, aged 33, married in Emmen to Arnold (Aaron) Wolff, aged 39, from Meppel. There the Wolff family ran a wholesale business in wallpaper and related articles. The company had a branch in Den Bosch. Arnold Wolff started on July 29, 1932 a second branch in Zwolle at Kamperstraat 14, where the couple also went to live.
"Ms. Wolff and I have good company together and often do needlework together". My mother writes this on July 29, 1934 in a surviving letter to her niece Hilde abroad. Knitting and crocheting baby clothes have a purpose, that needlework. Both my mother and Betje Wolff are currently about halfway through their first pregnancy. It is remarkable that my mother writes about “Mrs. Wolff” and does not use a first name. The relationship is probably based on their simultaneous pregnancy and they may know each other from prenatal care. And they will receive the same maternity help, Sister Zeegers.
I was born on November 8, 1934, at home at Ter Pelkwijkstraat 3. Sister Zeegers assists my mother during the first weeks. Then she leaves for Kamperstraat 14, where she assists Betje Wolff, who gave birth to her son Menno on 1 December 1934 in the Sophia Hospital.
Menno and I grow up together, especially in our early years. A number of photos speak of this which have been preserved. The mothers walking with the prams, Menno and I together in the playpen, together in the park, playing together in the living room and in the garden. After 1938-39, contact seems to fade. According to preserved photos, our family, now extended with my brother, focuses more on the primary circle of family and intimate friends.
At the same time, a drama takes place in the Wolff family. On February 2, 1939, husband and father Arnold Wolff, aged 46, dies "after a short illness", according to the advertisement in the Algemeen Handelsblad of February 5, 1939. The company is currently managed from Meppel. The Zwolle branch was closed on 30 December 1940.
Menno and I go to the kindergarten of School I at Westerlaan in 1939 (later: Parkschool, now dependance Celeanum). The intention is to continue our school career there in September 1941 in the first grade. The occupier's measure against Jewish children prevents that. Instead we go to the first class of the hastily improvised Jewish primary school in Voorstraat. My Christmas report, written by Miss Frank on a postcard, gives an impression of the degree of improvisation.
The connection between Menno and me remains close. I borrow this from a note from my hand, in which I report to my father, already in hiding, about my birthday on November 8, 1941: of the children present, Fientje (great niece) and Menno can continue to eat. In the course of 1942 successively my father (final), mother, brother Abel and I went into hiding and we lost sight of Betje Wolff and Menno.
After the death of Arnold Betje and Menno stayed at 14 Kamperstraat. They escape the deportations of October and November 1942, because Betje Wolff as of 6 October 1942 as a teacher at the Jewish primary school has an indispensability statement from the Jewish Council. But this so-called Sperre ultimately meant only a few months delay.
On April 6, 1943, it was announced that all remaining Jews, with the exception of mixed marriages and the so-called half- and quarter-Jews, had to leave Overijssel and Gelderland by April 10 at the latest. Overijssel had to become "Judenrein". Betje Wolff and her son were taken to the Vught concentration camp on April 9, 1943. On Tuesday June 8, 1943 transport 68 leaves from Westerbork to Sobibor. The train has 46 wagons with 3017 deportees, of whom 1145 are children. This was the so-called children's transport. The transport included children who arrived from Vught in Westerbork on the previous Sunday and Monday, most of them with their mothers. Among them also Betje Wolff-Kats and her son Menno. They died immediately upon arrival on June 11, 1943 in the gas chambers of Sobibor. None of the transport survived the war.
In the post-war years my mother sometimes asked me unexpectedly: "do you sometimes think of Menno Wolff". "Actually not" I had to answer, busy when I was with school, sports, music and the next party; and felt slightly guilty for a moment. If asked now, I can answer in good conscience that I have thought a lot about him and his mother in recent weeks. How they were humiliated, tortured and murdered just because they were Jewish. May their souls be included in the bundle of eternal life.
Harry Hes
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