27 Pastoorstraat

27 Pastoorstraat Before the Second World War Pastoorstraat was a central point for the Arnhem Jews, and the synagogue, after a design by the Arnhem city architect Hen- drik J. Heuvelink, was an important building. The foundation stone was laid on 13 July 1852, with the synagogue being blessed a year later on 19 August 1853. The location was a conscious choice. The house of Jonas Daniël Meijer (1780-1834), the first Jewish lawyer in the Netherlands, stood here until 1852. He was born in Arnhem and lived there till 1890. Meijer was also advisor to King Lodewijk Napoleon and to King Willem I. [1] Around 1853 approximately 1,200 Jews lived in the capital of Gelderland. Due to the fact that the community continued to grow, the seat of the Head Rabbi was moved to Arnhem in 1881. The building in Pastoorstraat then received the status of Dutch-Israeli main synagogue. [2] The Jewish bathhouse was nearby, in Kerkstraat, and from 1893 the Jewish School was located in the Kippen- markt, behind the house of God. By the end of the 1930s the number of Jews in Arnhem had risen to about 2,100, partly due to the arrival of refugees from Germany. Measures against the Jews Jewish resistance Raids The synagogue during the Battle of Arnhem Jewish evaders After the liberation in 1945 Recovery Restoration Measures against the Jews During the years of occupation, 1940-1945, the lives of the Arnhem Jews changed drastically. For the first months they could go about their lives fairly normally, but in August 1940 Jewish shops in Rog- gestraat and Steenstraat were daubed with racist slogans. Pam- phlets were also pasted up bearing ’calls’ such as “Do not buy from Jews” and “Jews not admitted”.[3] A month later NSB’ers tried un- successfully to set fire to the synagogue. In the autumn of 1940 Jewish teachers were sacked from non- Jewish schools. From then on they were only allowed to teach at Jewish schools. Text books were radically ‘adapted’: everything that did not fit in with the German philosophy, was removed from the school books, such as information about Jews and Deutschfeindliche (anti-German) writers, their poetry and novels.[4] Early in 1941 the German state commissioner Arthur Seyss- Inquart’s anti-Jewish measures took on a more severe form. Jewish footballers were no longer permitted to play for Vitesse, violinists had to leave the Gelders Orkest (Gelderland Orchestra), people were banned from membership of the Air Defence Service, and shops were ransacked. A second attempt to burn down the synagogue occurred on the night of 10/11 January, but nearby inhabitants managed to extinguish the fire quite quickly. [5] The material damage was limited but the psychological blow was enormous. The compulsory wearing of a yellow star with the word ‘Jew’ written on it, banning from schools, swimming pools and public parks are just a few examples of the discriminatory measures introduced by the German occupiers. 1 Jewish resistance However, the Arnhem Jews didn’t just stand by looking helpless. Various young men and a few slight- ly older people joined the resistance. For some this proved fatal, for example for 38 year-old Elias Paul Broekman. He went into hiding in Breda, and became a member of a commando unit. On 4 May 1942 Broekman was arrested by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) “for insulting the N.S.B.” [6] He was taken to Mauthausen concentration camp in Germany, where he was shot on 29 June 1942 while “attempting to escape”. His father Aron Broekman also died at that camp on 25 June of the same year. [7] Elias’ wife Frederica Broekman-Mendels spent two years at Auschwitz concentration camp. She survived the war, as did her two children Lottie and Robbie. All their effects were gone, so they received a 21 guilders per week benefit from Arnhem council. [8] Raids In February 1941 the Germans carried out their first raids at a number of places in the Netherlands in which Jews were picked up and taken to Amersfoort Camp. From there they were sent to concentration camps in Germany. The first raid on Arnhem Jews took place on 9 October 1941. Ten people were picked up that day and sent to Mauthausen, where all of them were killed. The following year saw more raids when the transition was made to systematic deportations. The Arn- hem police were ordered by the state commissioner to make an alphabetic list of all Jewish inhabitants. The police were then supposed to go to every one of the 581 addresses and arrest the occupants. If they were not at home the gas and water supplies were cut off and the house was sealed. In the period up to 10 December 1942, 131 houses were cleared out. The lists were continually checked and adjusted. [9] From October 1942 Westerbork Camp in the province of Drenthe served as Polizeiliches Durch- gangslager Westerbork: the transit camp on the way to the east. Later on the well-known diarists An- ne Frank and Etty Hillesum were imprisoned here before being sent to concentration camps in Germa- ny and Poland. The German general commissioner for security in the Netherlands, Hanns Albin Rauter, promised his boss Heinrich Himmler in Berlin that the Jews would be very quickly dealt with. On 10 September 1942 he sent the following message: “Am 15. Oktober wird das Judentum in Holland für vogelfrei erklärt, dh. es beginnt eine grosse Polizeiaktion, an der nicht nur deutsche und niederländische Polizeiorgane sondern darüber der Arbeitsbereich der NSDAP, die Gliederungen der Partie, der NSB, die Wehrmacht usw. mit he- rangezogen werden. Jeder Jude, der irgendwo in Holland angetroffen wird, wird in die grossen Judenlager eingezogen.” “On 15 October open-season will be declared on Jewry in Holland, in other words, on that date a huge police action will begin in which not only Dutch and German police establishments will take part, also involved will be the NSDAP, the NSB, the Wehrmacht etc.. Every Jew found anywhere in Holland will be locked up in one of the big Jewish camps.” At the same time Rauter ensured that all Police Corps chiefs received instructions. For Arnhem this meant that on 10 December 1942 the police had to pick up 959 Jews. They were held at ten assembly points awaiting transport to Westerbork Camp. Seventy policemen were each given a list of the names and addresses of the victims to be arrested. 271 houses were searched during the raid. Jews were found and arrested at 138 addresses. And on that December evening the Joods Oude Lie- denhuis at Markt 5 was emptied. All sixty occupants and about 20 Jewish staff members were transported to Westerbork. Not one of them returned after the war. [10] 346 Arnhem inhabitants were finally taken to Drenthe. 2 In March 1943 Rauter made it known that from 10 April all provinces, with the exception of Utrecht and North and South Holland, had to be “Judenrein” (‘Clear of Jews’). The remaining Jews in Arnhem were ordered to report to the station, from where they were taken by passenger train to Vught camp. [11] Approximately 1,300 Jews were deported from the Gelderland capital. 1,162 of them died in concentration camps. Four people were executed, two in Velp and two in Nunspeet. Only about 134 Arn- hem Jews who were arrested, survived the war. The synagogue then remained empty for months. In May 1943 the premises were given a new purpo- se when all Dutch citizens were ordered to hand in their radios. The sets were confiscated so that the population would by unable to listen to broadcasts from Radio Oranje on the British wavelength. The building was packed from floor to ceiling with requisitioned radios. [12] Surrendered apparatus was not destroyed but carefully administered and stored. This job was done by the Arnhem council which fitted out the synagogue with storage racks. It was intended to return the radios to their owners after the “Endsieg” (Final Victory). [13] Children have built a snowman in front of the synagogue in Pastoorstraat; 27 Ja- nuary 1941. L to R: Moosje Cohen, Frans- je Staring, Rudi Bachrach, Jopie Goudeket, Ische Cohen, Kaatje Cohen, Hannie Moo- nen, not identified, Siegfried Bachrach (S. Bachrach collection) The synagogue during the Battle of Arnhem During the fighting in September 1944 the synagogue was once more threatened with destruction when fire broke out in various premises in the inner city, some started by German soldiers. It was not until 20 September that the Arnhem fire service received permission from the Germans to tackle the fires in a limited part of the city. Orderly Theo W. Scholten was one of the firemen who volunteered for this task, and he recalled later: “We were stationed on the Eiland, corner of Wielakkerstraat. There was a hydrant there and we could therefore draw water. From that point we laid out the hoses down the middle of Kerkstraat to Pastoorstraat. In Bentinckstraat German soldiers were sitting drinking and singing in some of the warehouses there. Including in a sack company. [14]. From there I also saw German patrols leaving for the front line. They crept along in single file, keeping close to the houses in Kerk- straat, and they indicated to us that we should do the same. But we were of the opinion that our way would make sure that the British didn’t mistake us for Germans. Therefore we preferred to keep to the middle of the road and trusted that our white-painted helmets would show that we were civilians working as firemen.

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