Overview
- Interview Summary
- Roelof Arnoldi, born in Assen, Netherlands in 1929, discusses attending school with Jewish children; the poverty of his village; the high level of support the Nazis received there; his father’s decision to cut off contact with their Jewish neighbors; watching the arrests of his neighbors by German forces and Dutch police; the disappearance of his Jewish classmates; traveling to Westerbork for work; collecting notes from behind Jewish transport trains; and his feelings that the Dutch people acted incorrectly during the war.
- Interviewee
- Roelof Arnoldi
- Date
-
interview:
2005 July 13
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, courtesy of the Jeff and Toby Herr Foundation
Physical Details
- Language
- Dutch
- Extent
-
1 videocassette (DVCAM) : sound, color ; 1/4 in..
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, Dutch. Altruism--Netherlands. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Netherlands. World War, 1939-1945--Collaborationists--Netherlands. World War, 1939-1945--Concentration camps--Netherlands. World War, 1939-1945--Deportations from Netherlands. World War, 1939-1945--Social aspects--Netherlands. Men--Personal narratives.
- Geographic Name
- Assen (Netherlands) Netherlands. Netherlands--History--German occupation, 1940-1945.
- Personal Name
- Arnoldi, Roelof.
- Corporate Name
- Westerbork (Concentration camp)
Administrative Notes
- Holder of Originals
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- This is a witness interview of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Perpetrators, Collaborators, and Witnesses: The Jeff and Toby Herr Testimony Initiative, a multi-year project to record the testimonies of non-Jewish witnesses to the Holocaust. The interview was directed and supervised by Nathan Beyrak, and it was conducted in the Netherlands for the Netherlands Documentation Project on July 13, 2005. The interview was received by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives Branch in March 2006.
- Funding Note
- The production of this interview was made possible by Jeff and Toby Herr.
The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. - Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 08:59:22
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn518709
Additional Resources
Download & Licensing
- Request Copy
- See Rights and Restrictions
- Terms of Use
- This record is digitized but cannot be downloaded online.
In-Person Research
- Available for Research
- Plan a Research Visit
Contact Us
Also in Oral history interviews of the Netherlands Documentation Project
Oral history interviews of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Netherlands Documentation Project
Date: 2004 May 02-2005 July 15
Oral history interview with Jacob van Proosdij
Oral History
Jacob van Proosdi, born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1921, discusses his childhood in Amsterdam; pursuing a law degree; his family’s involvement in the resistance; becoming involved in Jewish lineage cases during the war; falsifying family records to help hide Jewish people's ancestry; working with a Portuguese synagogue to determine the lineage of the Sephardic Jewish community; working closely with Hans George Calmeyer to determine who was and who was not Jewish; visiting Westerbork weekly to check transport lists; specific cases of aiding the release of Jewish men and women from prison; his relationship with Hans Calmeyer and Albert Gemmeker, the commandant of Westerbork; his suspicions about what was happening to those who were deported; realizing after the war that his decisions determined life and death; being recognized by Yad Vashem; and his involvement in Jewish property restitution cases after the war.
Oral history interview with Cornelis Verbiest
Oral History
Cornelis Verbiest, born in Goeree Overflakkee, Netherlands in 1918, discusses his poor rural upbringing; the prewar Jewish community in his town; the interaction among religious groups in Goeree Overflakkee; deciding to join the police force in 1938 as a way to escape poverty; the German invasion in May 1940; being mobilized into the army; joining the Amsterdam police in August 1940; collecting radios as part of his police work; the atmosphere in Amsterdam and the police force; working with the Resistance; taking part in attacking the National Printing Bureau to collect blank documents for forging; Nazi restrictions on the Jewish population; the role of Dutch citizens in the roundup of the Jewish community; his role in arresting asocials; social and career pressures to follow orders; and holding a press conference in 1946 to call out war criminals among the police force.
Oral history interview with Cornelis van den Bogert
Oral History
Cornelis van der Bogert, born in Hedel, Netherlands in 1917, discusses his childhood in the small religious village; his trade school education; deciding to become a professional soldier in 1937 because it offered more choices; the German invasion; capitulation and the demobilization process; joining the police; feeling loyalty towards the Queen; methods used to avoid arresting people called up for forced labor; his feelings about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ police; working with the Resistance; the organization of the Resistance; the increasing restrictions placed on the Jewish community; working as a guard in the concentration camp Westerbork in 1942 and 1943; his first impressions of the camp; the camp’s organization; living conditions in the camp; building relationships with Jewish prisoners; the deportation process; and smuggling a baby out of the camp.
Oral history interview with Trudel van Reemst
Oral History
Trudel van Reenst, born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1914, discusses growing up as a Jewish child in Germany and the Netherlands; experiencing antisemitism in Germany, but not in the Netherlands; becoming involved in communist politics; studying to be a nurse in 1935; volunteering to work at a Dutch hospital in Spain during the Spanish Civil War; marrying a non-Jewish doctor; being stripped of her citizenship when returning to the Netherlands; becoming active in a German resistance group; finding hiding places and smuggling papers and food stamps; her arrest in 1942; the treatment she received in prison because she was Jewish; beatings in prison; being sent to Westerbork; being removed from the official list of prisoners in Westerbork by the Resistance; living conditions in the camp; becoming involved in underground activities in Westerbork; her release from Westerbork because of her husband; her efforts to keep her son out of prison; going into hiding; and fighting for the return of her property after the war.
Oral history interview with Adriaan van As
Oral History
Adrian van As, born in Ambon, Indonesia in 1919, discusses moving to the Netherlands as a young adult; the effect his religious upbringing had on becoming involved in helping Jews; his job at a distribution office in Rotterdam distributing bread to Westerbork; working under the Dutch Ministry of Internal Affairs and not the German camp administration; visiting Westerbork; living conditions in the camp; the food distribution process; helping people to escape and removing names from the transport list; working closely with camp commandants; relations between German and Dutch prisoners; watching prisoners hand over property to the Dutch firm Lippman and Rosenthal; smuggling six Allied paratroopers into the camp before liberation; liberation; organizing the camp administration after the war ended; and the lasting psychological effects of the war.
Oral history interview with Casper Sla
Oral History
Casper Sla, born in Schiedam, Netherlands in 1926, discusses the German invasion; life under the occupation; being called up for forced labor in Germany in 1944; working on train tracks; living conditions while performing forced labor; working with Jewish prisoners from Dachau; witnessing the brutality against the Jewish prisoners by guards; liberation; meeting Jewish people from other camps while in a displaced persons camp; and his time working for the United Nations Refugee Association.
Oral history interview with Tom de Booij
Oral History
Tom de Booij, born in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) in 1925, discusses moving to the Netherlands in 1930; becoming politically aware throughout the 1930s; the German invasion; going into hiding instead of signing a loyalty oath; hiding in the woods; daily life in hiding; his betrayal, arrest, and interrogation; being sent to Amersfoort; living conditions in Amersfoort; anti-Jewish violence in the camp; his job in the radio barracks; being moved to a farm to perform forced labor as a result of his father’s influence; returning to hide at his parents’ home; the famine during the winter of 1944 and 1945; becoming active in the Resistance; and working to arrest collaborators after the war.
Oral history interview with Martinus Schabbing
Oral History
Martinus Schabbing, born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1918, discusses living conditions under the German occupation; the February Strike; Jewish reactions to German restrictions; joining the Resistance; details of the Resistance’s organization and operation; the arrest and execution of members of the Resistance; his work in the Resistance providing ration coupons to Jewish children and helping prisoners escape from Westerbork to Spain; fearing what was happening to Jewish deportees; the famine in the northern part of the Netherlands in winter 1944-1945; liberation; and his postwar work as a courier for the army.
Oral history interview with Jo Wildschut
Oral History
Jo Wildschut, born in Amsterdam, Netherlands, discusses becoming a Jehovah’s Witness in the 1930s; her evangelization work; providing aid to Jewish neighbors during the German occupation; being arrested for her religious beliefs; being sent to the concentration camp Vught; daily life in the camp; violence against the prisoners; continuing to evangelize; being sent for forced labor on a farm near Dachau; her transfer to Ravensbrück; her first impressions of Ravensbrück; liberation; and her return home after the war.
Oral history interview with Cornelis Ten Haken
Oral History
Cornelis ten Haken, born February 7, 1914 in Leiden, Netherlands, discusses his role as a police officer under the German civil administration during the German occupation of the Netherlands; how the police had to implement German law which often conflicted with Dutch law; witnessing various incidents, such as when German authorities ordered Dutch police to seize bicycles from civilians; and his unwilling participation in the roundup of Jews for deportation.
Oral history interview with Engele Schoonbergen
Oral History
Engele Schoonbergen, born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1930, discusses his childhood in Amsterdam; the German invasion; propaganda; antisemitism; the February Strike; increasing restrictions on the Jewish community; witnessing roundups and arrests; witnessing Puls, the local trucking company, removing furniture from Jewish houses; and the deportation process to Westerbork.
Oral history interview with Jan Meijer
Oral History
Jan Meijer, born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1925, discusses growing up in a socialist household; working in the Administration of Enemy Property, an archive of Jewish property; delivering files to the law firm Lippman and Rosenthal; witnessing the roundup of patients at the Jewish Hospital; the murder of a Jewish boy; being called up for forced labor in 1943 (arbeitseinsatz); and the social atmosphere in Amsterdam.
Oral history interview with Menno Brouwer
Oral History
Menno Brouwer, born in Utrecht, Netherlands in 1924, discusses growing up under financial hardship; life under the German occupation; being arrested for breaking curfew; being sent to the concentration camp Vught; daily life in Vught; working in a Jewish work commando; anti-Jewish violence in the camp; and being sent home because he was under age.
Oral history interview with Rense Kramer
Oral History
Rense Kramer, born in Foxhol, Netherlands in 1927, discusses growing up in a village where many residents had socialist affiliations; his awareness of what was happening in Germany; increasing restrictions on the Jewish community; the roundup of Jewish men and then women and children from his village; watching their houses be emptied; seeing trains filled with Jewish deportees pass through the village; and liberation.
Oral history interview with Jan Otten
Oral History
Jan Otten, born in Hoogeveen, Netherlands in 1921, discusses his town’s large prewar Jewish community; the German invasion; conditions during the occupation; working in a bakery; being selected to deliver bread to a Jewish work camp, Kremboong; conditions in the work camp; German violence against the Jewish prisoners; and his conversations with prisoners; and deportations of prisoners from the Netherlands.
Oral history interview with Pieter Oldenburg
Oral History
Pieter Oldenburg, born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1921, discusses growing up in a neighborhood with a large number of Jewish neighbors; helping his Jewish neighbors during Shabbat; the German occupation; anit-Jewish propaganda; the expulsion of Jewish students from his school; roundups; witnessing Puls, the local trucking company, empty Jewish houses; the fates of his Jewish acquaintances; and violence between Dutch Nazis and the Dutch police.
Oral history interview with Adriana C. Gÿzenÿ-Epke
Oral History
Adriana Gÿzenÿ-Epke, born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1928, discusses growing up as a child in the Jewish section of Amsterdam; the German invasion and occupation; the reactions of Dutch society to increasing restrictions on the Jewish community; witnessing arrests and roundups; the roundup of patients from the Jewish hospital; visiting the Dutch Theater where Jewish prisoners were kept before deportation; witnessing Puls, the local trucking company, empty Jewish houses; her father’s arrest and escape from Vught concentration camp; her parents’ involvement in helping to hide Jews; and liberation.
Oral history interview with Jan de Jong
Oral History
Jan de Jong, born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1921, discusses leaving school to begin work at 14 years old; becoming more politically aware through his work at a housing cooperative in Amsterdam; the large Jewish population living in the cooperative; the German invasion; witnessing Puls, the local trucking company, emptying Jewish houses; watching the empty houses be given to evacuees from the coast; his work to return homes to Jews who returned after the war; and the laws that supported the new residents' property rights.
Oral history interview with Johannes Zoutberg
Oral History
Johannes Zoutberg, born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1932, discusses growing up in the Jewish neighborhood of Nieuw Markt; attending school with many Jewish children; his father’s matzo factory; the prewar Jewish community; the arrival of Jewish refugees from Germany; restrictions placed on the Jewish community; the arrest and beating of a physically disabled man; the arrest of Jewish people off the street; wondering where Jews were being taken; the suicide of a Jewish family he knew; his parents hiding a Jewish boy; and the Jews and non-Jews in hiding at his family’s factory.
Oral history interview with Hermanus Kars
Oral History
Hermanus Kars, born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1915, discusses marrying a Jewish woman; being mobilized into the army in May 1940; the German invasion; hiding Jewish people in his house; daily living conditions during the war; the arrest of Jews off the street; and his in-laws’ arrest and deportation.
Oral history interview with Mary Ebbe-Pront
Oral History
Mary Ebbe-Pront, born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1926, discusses living in a Jewish neighborhood in Amsterdam; German restrictions on Jews and how they applied to her because of her Jewish grandfather; joining a youth movement for social change; the deportation of her friends; visiting the Dutch Theater to say goodbye to friends; the involvement of the Dutch police; lying about her Jewish grandparent to get a job; witnessing Jewish houses being emptied; and her parents’ involvement in hiding Jews.
Oral history interview with Johanna van der Velden
Oral History
Johanna van de Velden, born in Rotterdam, Netherlands in 1921, discusses the beginning of the war; witnessing the roundup of patients at the Jewish hospital; witnessing the deportation of Jewish families; evacuating from her house and being given a formerly Jewish residence; shortages; and her decision to marry her husband to help him avoid a labor detail.
Oral history interview with Abraham Johannes Bruin
Oral History
Abraham Bruin, born in Rotterdam, Netherlands in 1926, discusses his training in plumbing; the German invasion; increasing anti-Jewish regulations; Nazi propaganda; being called to work at the Loods 24 warehouse where Jews were gathered before deportation; the German forces and Dutch police guarding the warehouse; living conditions in Loods; details of the deportation process; and deceptions told to Jewish prisoners awaiting deportation.
Oral history interview with Gerard van de Beld
Oral History
Gerard van de Beld, born in the Netherlands, discusses growing up near the Dutch German border; working on a farm in Germany; the pro-Nazi leaning of the family with whom he lived; witnessing Kristallnacht; returning to the Netherlands; joining the police; his orders to arrest Jews in Amsterdam; methods used to help Jews escape arrest; guarding transports to Westerbork, Vught, and Amersfoort; living conditions in the camps; anti-Jewish violence by Dutch guards; details of the transport process; his arrest after attempting to join the Resistance; being sent to Amersfoort and Vught; his transfer to Berlin to perform forced labor; and liberation.
Oral history interview with Margretha Ingekamp-Swart
Oral History
Margretha Ingekamp-Swart, born in Rotterdam, Netherlands in 1921, discusses the political identification of her parents; prewar relations between Jews and Christians; the German invasion; the German occupation; witnessing the rape of a girl by a German soldier in May 1940; and witnessing the arrest of a friend.
Oral history interview with Henri Vles
Oral History
Henri Vles, born in Rotterdam, Netherlands in 1916, discusses his family and Jewish upbringing; his parents’ political awareness and their escape to the United Kingdom; working in his father’s business; being fired after the business was taken over by a non-Jewish manager; the German invasion; the German occupation; working in an office where residents could petition to be removed from the lists identifying them as Jewish; being arrested and taken to Westerbork; living conditions in Westerbork; working with Hans Kalmeyer; his wife’s job as Adriaan van As’ secretary; falsifying documents; continually being removed from transport lists; issues involving Portuguese Jews who claimed not to be Jewish; meeting the camp commandant Gemmeker; liberation; and the committee created to run the camp after liberation.
Oral history interview with Klaas Lub
Oral History
Klaas Lub, born in August 1919 in Andijk, Netherlands, discusses his military service which began in 1939; engaging in heavy fighting against German forces; becoming an engine driver in-training with the Dutch Railways (Nederlandse Spoorwegen); the behavior of the Germans during the first few years of the war; serving as an assistant engineer on a train that took Jews to Westerbork; discovering that the train cars were full of Jews; how railway personnel were restricted from talking about the transportation of prisoners; seeing a woman flee from the train and successfully evade the Germans; and his memories of the Dutch Railways.
Oral history interview with Simon Kalf
Oral History
Simon Kalf, born in Landsmeer, Netherlands in 1917, discusses working for the post office; his side business selling eggs in Amsterdam; becoming a part of the black market; selling food to Jewish people; working with a Jewish man named Leo Frijda; being arrested for selling food to Jews; Frijda’s role in killing a German general; and his contact with the Frijda family after the war.
Oral history interview with Anna Kool
Oral History
Anna Kool, born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1920, discusses her engagement to a Jewish man; her relationship with his family, the de Raaij’s; her fiancé’s summons for deportation; his family’s failed attempt to flee to Switzerland; going into hiding; visiting her fiancé in hiding; their living conditions while in hiding; being blackmailed and betrayed by the family hiding them; the arrest of her fiancé's family; the fates of his family members; the return of Frida de Raaij, the only family member to survive; her brother joining the police and arresting the family that betrayed her fiance; the trial and imprisonment of that family; and her continued friendship with Frida after the war.
Oral history interview with Frida de Raay
Oral History
Frida de Raaij, born in Haarlem, Netherlands in 1922, discusses living in hiding with her family at the beginning of the war; her family’s betrayal and arrest; saying goodbye to her family; being sent to nine different concentration camps, including Westerbork and Auschwitz; being a part of the Phillips Transport; her liberation; her recovery in Sweden; returning to the Netherlands; attempting to regain ownership of her family’s property; and her continued friendship with her brother's fiancé Anna Kool.
Oral history interview with Pietertje Hoevers-Kort
Oral History
PIeterje Hoevers-Kort, born in Meerkerk, Netherlands in 1931, discusses her upbringing in a socialist family; living in a working class neighborhood with a large Jewish population; the German invasion; the reactions of Dutch society to increasing restrictions on Jews; witnessing roundups in her neighborhood; hiding Jewish children in her family’s home; witnessing the theft of her neighbors’ property; and her feelings about Germans.
Oral history interview with Alexander Voorzaat
Oral History
Alexander Voorzaat, born in Utrecht, Netherlands in 1916, discusses the German invasion; working at the Central Distribution Office during the war; his involvement in the Resistance; providing people with blank ration cards; the process of forgery; staying with a Jewish man who was living under an assumed name; being arrested by Dutch Nazis for his involvement in the Resistance; paying a bribe so the Jewish man's daughter Bella would be sent to a work camp; and receiving compensation from the government after the war for his role in the Resistance.
