Molendijk 160

Klaas Görtemöller was one of the Sliedrecht Merge hostages: young men who were arrested during a round-up in reprisal for the killing of two NSB country guards.

The personal story of Klaas Görtemöller (13-07-1920) was told in November 2008 by his youngest son Teus:
“My father Klaas was born in Sliedrecht in 1920. He married my mother Marrigje Kooij in 1940. At the age of twenty he became the father of my sister Pleuni and a year and a half later there was a son: my brother Wim. I was born in September 1943. More than seven months later, on May 16, 1944, my father was arrested in Sliedrecht at the Merwederazzia and would never return to his family. My father was sent to Germany for the first time on July 9, 1943. Until the beginning of 1943 he worked as an iron braver / barge skipper at Volker Beton in Sliedrecht. Because of the reporting age at that time, he received a call from the Regional Labor Office. My mother was pregnant with me at the time and the doctor was willing to write a statement stating that this was not desirable. Although this was followed, my father was obliged to do Wehrmacht work for the organization Todt in Willemsdorp. After four months he had to report to Wijk aan Zee and from there he was sent directly to Germany. There he was employed as an iron weaver at the O.T. In October 1943 he was transferred to Herne-Sodingen. Letters he wrote home made clear that he was in a bad way in Germany. He longed for home, where he should have left his pregnant wife with two children. In his absence, my mother had given birth to me in September 1943. In May 1944 my father was finally allowed to go home on leave after having been in Germany continuously since July 1943. Then my father saw me for the first time and it would turn out to be the last. Obviously, he was reluctant to return to Germany. When his father indicated that he had found a place to go into hiding near Soest, he had made his decision quickly: he would not travel to Germany again. Unfortunately, this happened through a twist of fate. On May 16, 1944 he was on his way to the station in Sliedrecht to travel from there to the hiding place in Soest. It did not get that far, because he fell into the trap of the raid and so he was arrested by the Grüne Polizei. As was the case with many other boys that day, he was taken to the assembly point at the Grote Kerk in Sliedrecht. My mom saw him standing in line there that night, she told us later. My father managed to give her his wallet there. "It is more useful for you with three children than I am," he seems to have said. He was transferred from Sliedrecht to Kamp Amersfoort. When the Merwede hostages were transported from Amersfoort in July 1944, he ended up in a concentration camp in Germany near Leipzig. My mother never heard from him all this time. That he was imprisoned near Leipzig was told to her via via. In April 1945, she received notification from the Dutch Red Cross that her husband had died in Dölkau in Zöschen in November 1944. According to reliable sources, my father had died of misery, hardship and total exhaustion. In the camp where he died, he turned out to have been assigned to the so-called death command, which meant that he was charged with the removal and burial of corpses. Work which, given the circumstances and my father's character - my father was quite heavy on the hand, I understand - probably led to his own death. My father is buried in Germany, but has no personal grave there. We tried after the war to have him reburied in Sliedrecht, but because he was in a mass grave, that unfortunately did not work. It goes without saying that it was not easy for my mother. Becoming a widow at age 23 and left with three very young children. Especially in the light of that time, social services were not as good as they are now. In 1948, my mother remarried my stepfather, who raised us as his own children. In that sense my sister, brother and I didn't miss a father, but still… ”

The Stumbling Stone for Klaas Görtemöller was placed on the Molendijk on Monday 6 February 2017, at number 160. The stone has been adopted by the ABB Bouwgroep, the company that is located at this address.

Source: https://www.merwedegijzelaars.nl.

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