WE REMEMBER
Joseph de Vries and his two sisters started a butcher's shop on Hoogstraat in 1913. The de Vries family lived on Hoogstraat for thirty years and were part of the Werkendam community.
The de Vries family received a written order to report to the authorities. When word spread in Werkendam that they had to report, people told them to go into hiding and offered them addresses. They said, 'What can they do to us now? We are old people.' Dr T. Brienen wrote: 'Joseph was a kosher butcher and because my father (D.A. Brienen) was also a butcher, there was a mutual connection. The de Vries ladies in particular visited us often and helped my mother with the housework and cleaning the butcher's shop. We called them Aunt Liesbeth and Aunt Hanna. Aunt Hanna taught me how to dry dishes. She told me not to dry the knives with the sharp side facing my fingers, but with the back side. I learned a lot from them. When they were called up to report, they said to my parents: 'Oh, we'll be back soon, because we haven't done anything wrong. You know that too, don't you? Yes, we knew that, they were lovely people. They and others had not yet heard about the madness of the Nazi system. Or perhaps they had heard, but could not comprehend how bad it really was.
In the early morning of Tuesday, 13 April 1943, a German armoured car drove into Werkendam. It stopped at the corner of Kruisstraat and Hoogstraat. The Germans entered Joop de Vries' butcher shop and took Joop, Liesbeth, and Hanneke with them. It was early, the streets were still quiet, and a few children were just on their way to school. Eyewitnesses saw this and recounted what they had seen years later.
Dr. T. Brienen: 'I can still see them leaving. Aunt Hanna with a bag in her hand. And... I never saw them again! Adriaan Visser Corn. zn. recounted: 'We lived on Sasdijk, so when I had to go to school, I walked from Sasdijk into Kruisstraat and from there to the Reformed school on Hoogstraat. On that fateful morning, there was a military vehicle at the intersection of Kruisstraat and Hoogstraat with an officer behind it and a soldier at the tailgate. The tailgate was down. I was standing by the shop of the de Velzen sisters, who lived next to the entrance of the Reformed Church. And I could see clearly what was happening. The two de Vries sisters and their brother Joseph de Vries lived on Hoogstraat, where there is now a hairdressing salon. That morning, they came outside. The sisters each had a handbag with them and Joseph had a small brown wicker suitcase. The de Vries family was helped into the car, the tailgate was raised and the tarpaulin was lowered so that no one could see that they were in the car. I did not know where they were being taken, and perhaps they did not know either.
Many, many years later, there was a programme on television about the extermination camps, showing mountains of hair and shoes. There were also images of piles of suitcases and... on a small brown suitcase, the name “De Vries” could be read. Could that have been the same suitcase with which Joseph de Vries met his death?
Barend van de Werken: I have sad memories of the deportation of the Jews. On the day of their deportation, I was a ten-year-old boy on my way to the Reformed school on 't Opperd. Coming from the direction of the square, I walked to school. At Joop de Vries' house, I saw him and his two sisters coming out of their house and crossing the street, heading towards Hanneske Visser's shoe shop. Behind them walked a German soldier with his rifle at the ready. In front of Hanneske's shop was a German truck. It was a vehicle with a loading platform and tailgate. The loading area was covered with canvas stretched over brackets. Benches were set up on either side of the loading platform. They may have been fixed benches. Joop, Liesbeth and Hanna climbed into the back, after which the soldier raised the tailgate and also took a seat on the bench with his rifle between his knees. That is how I saw Joop and his sisters set off down Kruisstraat, to what later turned out to be the gas chambers. We did not know then what awaited them, but as a young boy I had a miserable feeling about it.
After the war, I heard people claim that they could have gone into hiding, that there were people willing to help them, but that they themselves did not want to. Years after the war, I worked at the municipal office in Werkendam. The then head of the Population, Civil Registry and Military Affairs Department once showed me some identity cards dating from the war. I recognised them immediately and saw that there was something unusual about them. They had a “J” stamped across their entire length. They turned out to be the identity cards of Joop, Hanneke and Liesbeth de Vries. The “J” stood for Jew. After the “Entlösung” of the family, they had been sent back to the municipality of Werkendam with “Deutsche Grundlichkeit”, directly from Westerbork, I assume.
Those identity cards are now in the Biesbosch Museum. After the Germans had arrested our fellow villagers in Werkendam, they were put directly on the train via Westerbork. It was a terrible train journey in freight cars, with no food or drink, hardly any sanitary facilities, and no room to sit. The train carried 1,204 deportees, including Joseph, Hanna, and Liesbeth de Vries. On 16 April 1943, they arrived in Sobibor. ALL of them were immediately taken to the gas chambers. Between 3 March and 20 July 1943, 19 trains left Westerbork. A total of 34,313 Dutch Jews were transported to Sobibor; there were 18 survivors. The remaining 34,295 were destroyed in a horrific manner.