Eva Weyl knows exactly what she saw, heard and tasted when camp Westerbork was freed. Images, sounds and flavors they did not know form the memory of April 12, 1945.
That is the day that the Canadians enter the camp at Hooghalen. People fly the liberators around their necks and sing English and Dutch songs. Where after two and a half years of imprisonment in Camp Westerbork she has now ended up, she does not understand exactly. But Eva Weyl keeps up with the impressions. “You were crying and you laughed with it. The awareness came later.”
She remembers exactly how she gets a bar of chocolate pressed. “I hadn’t had that for a long time. I don’t know if I have taken small or large snacks,” says Weyl Wednesday afternoon. She is sitting at the home of camp commander Albert Gemmerker and has just told Prime Minister Schoof about her memories.
During the Second World War, the Germans transport 107,000 people from camp Westerbork to Kampen in Auschwitz, Sobibor, Bergen-Belsen and Theresiënstadt. Around 5,000 Jews, Roma and Sinti survive. Eva Weyl tells the prime minister that she has ‘had happiness all life’. Schoof does not know what he hears and asks if she really thinks so. “Yes”, she is clear.
Weyl says she was lucky that she and her parents were never put on transport. Her parents are German Jews, they come to the Netherlands in the 1930s. German Jews are ahead of camp commander Gemmeker. Her father carries out administrative work. Partly due to his ‘job’, the Weyl family escapes transport.
The last transport is on September 4, 1944. D-day has already been and the Allies are steadily driving back the Nazis. The liberation of Drenthe begins in April 1945. At that time, 876 people are still trapped in Westerbork. Gemmeker sees the shower hanging and leaves with his staff.
A day later shots can be heard in the morning. Civil servant Aad van As has been in charge of the camp and calls everyone together in the main hall. If he gives a speech, a message comes in for him. “Mr. Van As, there is a phone for you,” it sounds. “The Tommies are at the camp farm.”
Camp Westerbork has been liberated. Those present are storming out of the room. The Canadian liberators are flown around the neck. People put white carnations from the garden of Gemmeker in the vehicles. In turn, the liberators hand out cigarettes and white bread. And chocolate.
Of course Eva Weyl had sometimes had chocolate as a child in Arnhem before she was imprisoned with her family. And even in the beginning of the camp time, there is occasional sweetness. But that ends in the last part of the war. The little Eva can hardly contain that she has another bar in her hands. “Maybe I eat it very greedily,” she says laughing when she thinks back to those first bites chocolate.
She not only associates chocolate with the liberation. “I also saw adults singing. They sang English songs. It’s a long way to tipperary“She remembers.” My father sang that. The Wilhelmus was also sung. “
What Weyl also remembers well: “Life was kissed and cuddled. With soldiers, together. I don’t really know if I was kissed myself. I remember that it was a radiant day, a hot radiant day,” she says. “At that time, the elderly realized what was going on, I didn’t get it all.”
But the liberation does not immediately mean freedom. “Everyone shouted. But we couldn’t go anywhere.” The fighting in the north went on. “We were still there until the end of June. So we had to wait a while.”
And then it is not yet done for Jewish Dutch people with the misery. “Everything had taken us,” says Weyl. Jews who come back from the camps see how their houses are inhabited by others. Their things are also often gone. Weyl says that her parents have housed the furniture with reliable contact. They get them back. “I have a few things left.”
Every year Weyl thinks back with girlfriend Hans Dresden to what happened. As a child, Dresden is in hiding and after the liberation returns to her parents who are in the camp, in the same barracks as the Weyl family. The women share a history and both lose many family members during the war.
April 12 is still a special day for Weyl. More important than May 5, she says. “We celebrate it every year. We then talk about our parents and about ourselves.”