The fact that Dutch people in Auschwitz served is an almost forgotten chapter from our history. Investigative journalist Stijn Reurs (38) tries to change that. He dived into these black pages of Dutch history for almost twenty years.
He started broadly, with archive research and hundreds of conversations with former SS’ers and NSB people. In the end, his research focused on Dutch camp guards. “In many concentration camps, Dutch nationality was the only others besides the German. A fact that is rarely focused on in the Netherlands.”
For his new two -part documentary, seen on Streaming Service Videoland, Reurs focuses on 24 Dutch people who have served as guards in Auschwitz, the best known and largest extermination camp from the Second World War.
Relatives often knew nothing
Reurs tracked down the family members and relatives from ten to fifteen of the 24 former employees. Also for them it was often not known that their father or mother had served in Auschwitz.
“How do you tell someone that his father or mother served as a guard in a concentration camp? For many relatives, it is a terrible idea that their parents might be involved in Massamoord.”
Guard in forced labor and gas chambers
Sometimes that was the truth. One of those men is Heinz Lariviere. He served with the dog unit, where he guarded women during forced labor, but also Jews guided towards the gas chambers.
Lariviere was transferred to Auschwitz after he had contracted frozen feet on the Eastern Front. Because of this he could no longer do an active front service. “I know he probably already killed several prisoners a day after arrival,” says Reurs. That was stated in a few documents from the camp.
Lariviere’s family moved to Amsterdam in 1945, where she lived in De Pijp. He himself was interned between 1945 and 1949, because of his membership at the SS. In those interrogations, the Amsterdammer did not let go of his past in Auschwitz.
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