“Heinrich Zysmanowicz, nineteen years”, says surviving Hans Peeper from the mouth of Bergen-Belsen. Then it is quiet. After six days and five nights it is over. All more than one hundred thousand names of the Dutch Jews, Sinti and Roma who were persecuted, deported and killed during the Holocaust. 103.124 names to be precise.
“Yes, deep sigh, it’s over,” says Bertien Minco, the director of Kamp Westerbork Remembrance Center. “Moved, also because of the lock and satisfied that we did it and that it worked.” In recent days she was often present on the site and in the tent where the names were read. “That goes beyond your imagination what the low point in humanity has been.”
Around eight hundred people have read in recent days and nights. Among them camp survivors, relatives, well -known and unknown people. Everyone read names and ages for ten minutes. Some relatives read the names of their own family members. “I came in early this morning and three hours later I still heard ‘Wolf, Wolf, the Wolf family’, through each other. As long as you start to realize something of the enormous size,” said Minco.
Reading names ended this afternoon because today it was eighty years ago that Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated in Poland. Afterwards, the prayers were Yizkor and Kaddish. They were nominated by Sacha van Ravenswade, the Chazan (Sidelier) of the Synagogues in Amsterdam and Amersfoort.
It was the fifth time that the names were read on the site of former Westerbork camp. Each time there was five years in between. MINCO does not yet know whether the names will be read again in five years.