The New Camp
ON FEBRUARY 20, 1943, I left for Vught. Saying goodbye to my parents was especially difficult. I had no idea what would become of them in Poland. I controlled myself as best I could, determined not to reveal my concern, not to sadden or upset them. At the same time, my parents maintained their good spirits. They were happy I’d been given the opportunity to go to Vught. After my departure, Magda Coljee received a heartening letter from my mother: “Rosie left last Saturday. She had a smile on her face, strong as always.”
When the train pulled into Vught station and I disembarked, I was surprised to find myself sharing a platform with other people, ordinary free men and women waiting for a train. It was as if nothing was wrong. Just a beautiful winter’s day like any other. Ladies with hats and fur collars, neatly dressed children with tidy haircuts, a man with a hat and a dog on a leash, a girl with a thick brown scarf.
For them life went on as it always had. They were on the “good” side of the line; they still attended work or school, petted dogs, ate biscuits at tea. And us? We were robbed, censored, condemned to slave labor, guns, uncertainty. Surrounded by armed guards, we looked at them as we passed, and they stared back at us sheepishly. We picked up the pace and marched to nearby Camp Vught. On the way we passed the big lake where I went swimming in the summer and the dance hall I knew quite well. I’d performed there on many occasions, but my situation had since changed beyond description. In those days I enjoyed enormous success introducing new dances. There were people and fun galore! Now I looked like a criminal, surrounded by guns and dogs.
Contact with the outside world was impossible in the early days at Camp Vught. I wrote immediately to my parents in Westerbork, but they didn’t reply. My letter to the Coljee family remained unanswered for a full month. I was later told that the letter wasn’t sent to the address in Naarden but rather to the Judenrat in Amsterdam, where it was finally forwarded to the Coljees.
The rules in Camp Vught were stricter than in Westerbork. There were regular roll calls, although I had no idea why. Probably just to annoy us or to teach us some German discipline. Once we had to stand outside for three and a half hours. Three Dutch NSB members from Den Bosch kept guard over the women’s barracks. They were a bunch of sadists, worse than the German SS. They cursed and stomped at the slightest opportunity, and kicked and beat us, often without cause. Censorship was also more rigid. Prisoners had to write in capital letters on preprinted lined paper, no more than thirty short lines, legible, otherwise it wouldn’t be mailed. We were forbidden to write about what happened in the camp. Sometimes they insisted our letters be written in German, other times Dutch was acceptable. The rules constantly changed. We were allowed to send only one letter every fortnight, and a Pack-etsperre, a parcel ban, could always be enforced out of the blue.
I quickly assessed the situation and tried to regain some semblance of control over my life. One day, sitting in front of my barrack, I overheard a conversation between a couple of guards. “Do you remember that dance teacher Crielaars?” one of them said to the other. “See her over there? It’s her double.”
A letter to the Coljees from Camp Vught
“You’re right,” the other said. “But that woman arrived here in Vught from Amsterdam via Westerbork, not from Den Bosch. It can’t be her.”
I couldn’t hold my tongue. “Yes, that dance teacher was me,” I said, loud enough for them to hear.
They looked at me with delight, and before long we were chatting away, sharing plenty of memories.
After a few days, my fellow prisoners began to notice our exchanges and their consternation was obvious. In their eyes I’d made friends with the NSB. To prevent difficulties, I visited each of the barracks and told them in all honesty how things stood. I said I’d do my best to use my new contacts to the other prisoners’ advantage. Slowly, I regained their trust.
Faithful to my word, I managed to arrange for roll call to last no more than fifteen minutes, and the guards agreed not to beat us without reason. I also obtained permission for us to take daily walks through the camp, accompanied by two armed SS men. This gave the women an opportunity to catch a glimpse of their husbands and to quickly pass a note or a small parcel over the barbed wire that separated us. Because of these improvements, my popularity increased, and I was soon appointed leader of my barrack.
The job wasn’t very demanding. I was expected to arrange for the sick to be taken care of, mitigate quarrels between prisoners, and maintain contact with the Aufseherinnen (female guards who were German or Dutch) and the SS. Beyond that there was nothing else to do. It was different in Westerbork, where I had a fulltime job as secretary and spent my evenings with Jorg. Now that I had so much time on my hands, I returned to writing my book. In a new chapter I wrote about my first kiss.
It happened when I was sixteen, at the Mi-Carême (MidLent) ball at the Vereeniging, where I was dressed as a ballet dancer in a white tulle tutu. As I stood against a pillar in the grand concert hall, which had been transformed into a massive ballroom, I surveyed the colorful crowd. I longed to join the chains of laughing, dancing people careening past, and just as I was feeling very lonely, an elegant, blondhaired young man in a tuxedo approached me.
“May I have the pleasure of this dance?” he asked.
“Yes, of course,” I replied, flattered. He took my hand and led me to the dance floor. “With whom do I have the pleasure?”
“Rosie. And you?”
“Hubert.” Before I realized it we were gliding to a slow, undulating waltz.
Hubert danced well, but he was not quite sober, and as he danced me around the room his hand eventually slid down my left shoulder blade and under my right arm. I admit, I was turned on. After a sudden drum roll and applause, the dance was over and we let each other go. Then he offered me a familiar arm and led me down the mirrored corridor. “You’re beautiful,” he said, looking at my reflection in the mirrored corridor. My flushed face turned even redder and I pulled him away with a giggle. I loved this dazzling existence. I was no longer an observer; I was playing the leading role. We made our way to the champagne bar, where Hubert lifted me onto the one remaining barstool, leaned against the bar, and ordered two champagne frappes. It was my first champagne. “To our first encounter,” Hubert toasted, raising his glass. After our drink, we glided through the crowd, close together, a splendid warmth flowing through me.
Rosie at sixteen
Before we reached the dance floor I leaned into Hubert’s ear. “It’s so hot here,” I said. He looked at me and we disappeared into the cooler corridors until we reached the emergency stairs. I stopped. “Don’t you want to go downstairs?” Hubert asked, pulling me closer. We descended the spiral staircase a few steps, and in the dim emergency light I let him take me in his arms without resistance, felt his warm body next to mine, tasted his lips. We stood on the stairs in a long intimate embrace, forgot time, forgot our surroundings, until our lips separated for a moment and then met again.
Rosie in the Vereeniging dressed in her white ball gown (seated, foreground left)
The following spring I went to the Vereeniging a couple of times a week. I sometimes met Hubert there and he always asked me to dance, but he never alluded to that wonderful Mi-Carême night. I sometimes asked myself if he still remembered it. But he always came over to say hello, so I imagined he was going to do the same as before.
One day as I was leaving the tennis club on my bicycle, an open-top car turned the corner and stopped. “Rosie, fancy seeing you here!” said Hubert. “I didn’t know you played tennis. Come, let me take you home. We can collect your bike tomorrow.” He jumped out of the car, took my bike back to the tennis club and locked it up in the bicycle shed.
Hubert steered the car onto the main road and stopped in front of a restaurant. We found a table outside in the shadow of the beech trees. “Rosie,” Hubert said, leaning into me, “am I wrong, or do you have an excellent tan? You look the picture of health.”
“And I feel great too,” I said in the best of spirits. “When I’m with you there’s nothing more to want.”
Hubert raised his eyebrows. “That sounds like a declaration of love,” he said, laughing. “Since when was it up to the girl to make the first declaration of love?”
Rosie at the tennis club
“I went first?” I asked, surprised. “Have you forgotten the Mi-Carême ball, Hubert?”
“No, why would I?” he answered with a smile. “It was fantastic. I had plenty to drink. I remember it well.”
“Is that all you remember?” I asked.
“Yes, more or less,” Hubert assured me.
I frowned, looking him in the eye. “Hubert, don’t you remember telling me you loved me, taking me in your arms and kissing me? I’d never been kissed by another man. Did you know that?”
Hubert pushed back his chair. The gravel crunched. “Did I really say that, Rosie? Sorry, but I don’t recall any of it. Where did I say it?”
“On the emergency stairs,” I said, my voice choked.
“Sorry if I hurt you, but when I drink too much I sometimes don’t remember what I say and even less what I do.”
I cringed. He took my hand. “Sorry, I don’t mean to offend you.”
“Take me back to the tennis club,” I said. “I want to collect my bicycle.”
“As you wish,” said Hubert and he quickly settled the bill. We drove back to the tennis club in silence and I jumped out of the car. “Have a good life, Hubert, and thanks for the lesson.” With my head held high I turned and made my way to the bicycle shed, the sound of his departing car fading into the distance.
The summer passed, the winter arrived, and the next major carnival celebration was just around the corner. The shops and department stores had their windows ready for the big event. “Have you thought about what to wear?” my mother asked.
Rosie shopping with her mother
“Of course,” I answered. “I want to be a man this time, a naval officer. I want no one to recognize me at the ball. I’ll even ask girls to dance.”
My mother raised her eyebrows. “What’s the point of that?”
I wasn’t sure if I could give her an honest answer. “I just want to see if I can pull it off,” I said.
She approved, accustomed to her daughter’s whims. “Next week you can have them measure you for an outfit, but don’t tell your father I paid for it.”
“Of course not, I used my savings,” I said with a wink.
On the evening of the carnival ball I took a taxi alone to the Vereeniging. “Have a fine evening, Lieutenant,” the chauffeur said as he opened the door. Tossing my cigarette butt nonchalantly in the snow, I took my wallet from my back pocket and paid him.
It worked. The chauffeur had no idea. As usual, the Vereeniging was overcrowded. I was pretty good when it came to dancing like a man, so I began my adventure, bowing left and right to the assembled young ladies, my face aglow from the warmth of my mask. Now it was time to ask someone to dance, I thought to myself, and I impulsively bowed to a girl with black hair. Poor child was probably feeling the same as I did last year until Hubert approached me. As we danced across the floor in four-four time I pressed my black-haired partner close.
“It’s hot in here,” my partner said.
I nodded.
“Don’t you want to chat?”
“No,” I said with a shake of my officer’s head. When the dance ended I confidently led my partner to the champagne bar, helped her onto the barstool, caught the waitress’s attention, and recalled the illusions that had filled me only a year before. I stuck two fingers in the air and pointed brusquely at the champagne. My “girl,” who was dressed as a butterfly, spontaneously raised her glass. “Bottoms up,” she said. The marine officer bowed, raised his glass, and drank it empty in a single swig.
I danced and cavorted with “my girl” all night but didn’t say a word, until I saw that it was almost midnight. That was the démasqué moment, when everyone removed their masks. I had to stay one step ahead. Having danced up a sweat we made our way to the building’s cooler corridors, and I deliberately led my butterfly to the emergency stairs, to the stairs and their wonderful memories, passionate memories. A voice inside me roared, Hurt someone . . . hurt someone . . . hurt someone! Let someone else feel what I felt a year ago, here in this same place! I grabbed her and pulled her close, but this was clearly the wrong move. The girl wriggled free, hurtled down the stairs three at a time, uttered a cry, and raced back to the main hall.
Rosie and her friend Lydia dressed for carnival in 1932
Now I’d had enough. Drenched in sweat, I heaved a sigh and disappeared into the ladies’ toilets. “Get out! Get out!” the women screamed. I didn’t think the gents’ toilets were a good idea either, so I headed for the stage in the main hall, vanished behind the curtains, and made my way to the cloakroom where I’d left a suitcase containing my own dress for safekeeping. In no time at all I was dressed in a green velvet gown with white fur trim and silver shoes, with a carnation in my hair. On my way to the bar I passed the butterfly. It was clear that she was looking around frantically for the naval hero she had sacked, but her naval hero had become a mermaid.
The following morning I awoke to the sound of someone knocking at my bedroom door. “Miss Rosie, your tea,” said the maid and she left the tray on the table. Irritated and still half asleep I screamed, “Get out, get out, or I’ll kick you out,” and after a string of curses that would have made a dock- worker feel at home I sat upright in bed. Tempted by the tea and biscuits I slowly came to my senses. I looked around the room and saw my marine officer’s uniform draped over a chair. That was the end of that, I thought to myself. The thought of my butterfly made me smile. I stretched. Time for a shower.
I couldn’t help laughing as I wrote it all down. I was so naive and uncertain in those days, and that business with the butterfly was both crazy and mean. I was making steady progress with my book.
While life was more difficult than it had been in Westerbork, I still tried to maintain contact with the outside world. I continued to receive De Telegraaf (The Daily Telegraph), but delivery was irregular. Letters were even more problematic. Some didn’t arrive at all, others after a long delay.
At the end of April, I received a postcard from my mother in Westerbork written at the end of March. It contained a terribly sad message:
Tomorrow your father and I begin the great journey into the unknown. We don’t know where it will take us. Pray for us often and try to find your dear brother. A tender kiss from your loving mother.
This was a disaster. I had feared this outcome since the beginning of our imprisonment, but at the same time hoped it would not happen. The message made me feel terribly desperate. I knew what it implied, but I could do nothing about it. My hands and feet were tied.
I had to move on. I managed to improve my connections with the outside world through a driver who delivered goods to the camp on a weekly basis. He took my letters outside and smuggled things in. I also had a second contact who lived outside the camp and was willing to smuggle out my messages. But in spite of such conveniences, I still found it a horrid place. The harassment continued unabated. One night the guards made us stand outside naked while they did a roll call. Other times they gave us nothing to eat or set their growling dogs on us. The atmosphere was tense.
Meanwhile, I met some nice women, and because of the tension and boredom we organized a cabaret. We made up sketches and jokes. I wrote songs and lyrics. Our performance was a great success and a welcome distraction.
That May they established a work camp in Vught, and I began working for a clothing manufacturer. I was fine with it. Moreover, I knew from my own experience and from Jorg how important work was. More and more prisoners, especially the unemployed, were being transported to Poland.
Since the censor didn’t allow us to write about life in the camp, I included those details in a letter to the Coljees that was smuggled out by the driver:
Vught, June 7th, 1943
Dear Magda and Henk,
Here I sit, three high on my bed (honestly, the beds here are piled three high). After three months, this is finally the first opportunity I have to send a clandestine letter. Thank God I’m here alone in this camp and don’t have my parents with me. It can’t be any worse in Poland than it is here.
Men and women live separately, and if they’re very, very good they’re allowed to see each other once a week. Westerbork was paradise by comparison, can you understand that? This place is run by the SS, enough said. The female guards are German and Dutch, the so-called Aufseherinnen, the Dutch are NSB members.
When I first arrived here it was truly awful. Things have improved a little of late. The food is bad. We’re poorly fed every day, mostly cabbage soup and 4 slices of bread with a thin layer of margarine. Drinking consists of artificial coffee, black.
I was sports leader at first and exercised with people all day, but that made me twice as hungry as you can imagine. I never received food parcels.
I arrived here on February 20th and at the beginning of April I received a farewell card from my mother. A few days later your first large parcel arrived. I was delighted beyond words and was extremely grateful. From then on De Telegraaf followed on a fairly regular basis, 3 or 4 times a week; the censor appeared to withhold the rest. A week later I received another parcel from you and that was also wonderful. The cigarettes were particularly criminal. What I need most is bread, butter, sugar, jam, and cigarettes. Everything else is welcome but not essential. If you send tins of milk or porridge the censor confiscates them.
Then there was a 14 day penalty for the whole camp and no one received their parcels. I don’t know how many, but there will surely have been some from you. When the parcel ban was over, I suddenly received tiny parcels with your handwriting and Walterlaan (?) as sender. I wasn’t sure what was going on. I first thought that Henk had gone to Germany and had stayed at the aforementioned address. I was also worried about the lockbox. The parcels were getting smaller and smaller and I associated the two. Then I received nothing for three weeks and finally your letter arrived with the old address. I was pleased as Punch, as I’m sure you’ll understand. I understood from your letters that you were receiving mine; otherwise you could not have known my laundry and barrack numbers.
I’ve no further news. I look more or less the same as I did when Magda saw me in Westerbork.
The absence of my parents is terribly stressful, as you can imagine. My hair has turned very gray. Things like that get to you after a while. There is so much indescribable suffering around that you would have to be a monster not to be disturbed by it.
Then I became leader in my barrack. Just when all those provincials arrived. Three of my mother’s sisters were among them, one of whom was a year older than my mother and looked just like her. She was suffering from asthma and when they were forced to stand naked in front of the Commander while they were sprayed with delousing powder she died. Sad isn’t it?
Then I became leader of the Women for Women cabaret, 40 professional artists participated. We worked in all the barracks with enormous success last week until we received word that this wasn’t a so-called Auffangslager or reception camp but Durchganslager, a transit camp, and then suddenly all the old people disappeared. Yesterday and today they dispatched 3,000 mothers with children and the men were not allowed to go with them. The panic that prevails here I cannot describe. All the children and their mothers have to leave, just like the people over 45. On top of that, 1,000 men have left to work in Moerdijk and Amersfoort, doing various jobs for the Wehrmacht. All families are torn apart. It is simply terrible. I have enough “content” and continue to work on my book.
I hope this letter will reach you. As for the cabaret . . . In spite of the huge success we enjoyed, it seems pointless after what’s happened here in the last few days.
I’ve signed up for a job with Philips, the real Philips factory in Eindhoven. They’ve built special barracks in the camp where selected girls work. They’re expected to solder wires and radio tubes. They call it Wehrmachtsarbeit. It’s for airplane communication. I find it interesting. They give me a set of overalls and I have to play the factory girl. It’s also useful material for my book.
I write in the middle of transport uncertainties. If I want I could be back in Westerbork tomorrow, but in spite of the terrible conditions here I don’t plan to volunteer and I hope I can stay in Vught.
Please send my raincoat. My fur coat was stolen from my bed in a nighttime raid and I had to hand in my black jacket. And please send a couple of summer dresses and those brown suede shoes. Also make sure that I have a food parcel every week; otherwise I would definitely starve to death here. Write to let me know that you’ve received this letter, and reply quickly with news. Much love and lots of kisses from
Rosie
The address is unchanged.
Despite the awful atmosphere I did my best to stay positive. My fellow prisoners often got into arguments with one another. They usually didn’t go beyond cursing and swearing, but occasionally things got physical: hair pulling, scratching, screaming, even biting. One prisoner was left with teeth marks on her arm. Most of the arguments were about minor matters, and as barrack leader I spoke to them after they cooled down. It sometimes helped if I assigned a different bunk to one of the parties, well out of the other’s way. Sometimes it took a long time to talk things through. Everyone was irritable and short-tempered. Logical when you thought about it with so many families separated from one another. Children under sixteen had been removed, along with their mothers, since they often got sick and infected one another with whooping cough, measles, dysentery, scarlet fever, and such. The camp leaders feared too much inconvenience. Vught was supposed to be a model for the other camps, and too much illness might give it a bad name. So they left on June 6 and 7. I saw them go, mothers carrying their babies, toddlers, and older children with sacks on their backs made from old towels. I saw them go, a few thousand of them. Everyone here was devastated, fathers were in tears; you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. What kind of madness was this?
Rosie’s barrack (photo taken by Rosie in 1953)
Everyone lost interest in exercising and the cabaret, and with nothing to do boredom returned and some were inclined to passivity. It was a good thing I had a job with the Philips Command to look forward to. I’d heard things were better there. Only a small group of women were involved, and I managed to wangle a place among them. A lot of women were employed making clothes at the moment, various sorts intended for retail trade. You saw them heading for work every morning in their overalls.
One day we were ordered to assemble outside. The camp commandant, the Obersturmführer, the führer in charge of labor, and a few other uniforms were waiting to meet us. They walked up and down among us and appeared to be looking for someone. What had we done wrong now? The presence of the commandant and so many officers made me think it must have been pretty serious, but to my surprise they turned out to be looking for someone to model garments from the clothing workshop to the camp leadership and their clientele. To my even greater surprise they selected me from the group. In retrospect it wasn’t so curious when you considered that most of the other women were wearing blue overalls and clogs, with headscarves tied around their heads. Apparently I looked a little more fashionable.
From June 15 onward I was expected to make regular visits to the workshop to try on new outfits. They made a sample of each outfit in my size and in a color I was allowed to choose myself. When there were guests and potential buyers I was given my own dressing room with mirrors, face powder, lipstick, the finest underwear, new shoes, and stockings. It was nice to have all the things at my disposal that hadn’t been available outside the camp in a long time. After a while all the officers knew who I was. I drank coffee and chatted with them after the show, and had much more freedom of movement in the camp.
A few weeks later I also start working with the Philips Command at a factory making radios for the Wehrmacht. My job was to solder wires to a circuit board, a fastidious task that was reserved for women, but I quite enjoyed it. We sat at rows of tables with hot soldering irons and a powerful light above our heads. We also got extra food, which we called “Philips hash.” It was a bit ironic, actually . . . my mother’s maiden name was Philips, and she was related to the successful factory family, which had Jewish ancestry. There I was, a Philips, working on the Philips Command and eating “Philips hash.” It wasn’t the sort of family connection I had in mind. But the work and extra food did me good. I often sang at the factory, sometimes for an hour at a time, not only jazzy songs but also some pieces from opera.
After work, some of the men from the camp tried to chat us up—both prisoners and guards. Some of the women were pretty uninhibited toward just about every man they saw; whatever standards they’d previously held had vanished. On a number of occasions I was approached by one of the SS officers, but I didn’t encourage him. You had to be on the lookout for jealous female guards, the Aufseherinnen. They had sex with the SS all the time, but they begrudged us the least contact with men.
One day, one of the Aufseherinnen—not one of my former dance students—stormed up to me and started cursing and screaming that I should keep my hands off her SS boyfriend. She then got even angrier and started to hit me. I stayed calm and fended off her blows, but when she started to pull my hair and kick me I threw myself at her and she landed on her back with a thud. She scrambled to her feet and ran off screaming. A few moments later a couple of SS guards appeared and arrested me. This was the third time I’d been locked up in a cell. Luckily they let me go after a few days.
Meanwhile, reports in the camp were becoming increasingly worrying. There was a rumor making the rounds that even working prisoners were set to be transported to the east. I had no idea what was going to happen to us. Contradictory reports only confused the situation: we could stay, we had to leave. The camp leadership didn’t seem to know what to do with their prisoners or with the Philips Command.
As the uneasiness mounted, I had my driver friend smuggle out my diary and deliver it for safekeeping to Mr. Pijnenburg, my former neighbor in Den Bosch. He could always send it back to me if I needed it. And once my diary was on the outside I figured I should be there too. A week later, the same driver managed to smuggle me out in the trunk of his car. It worked! The feeling I got when the car picked up speed beyond the gate was simply wonderful. But then we ran into problems. My escape had been spotted, and we were stopped at a roadblock outside Utrecht manned by four motorized SS officers. The driver and I were brought back to the camp, but they soon let him go when I said I had hidden in the car without his knowledge.
A week later, on September 10, 1943—my birthday—I was transported by train to Westerbork together with a group of roughly three hundred young people. Our final destination was Poland. That evening the train passed through Den Bosch, where I used to live, and Nijmegen, the city of my birth. Seeing my cherished cities on my birthday made me sad and reminded me of the many birthdays I had celebrated in both places with friends and family. Now I was all alone, peering out of a dark train, and things were very different. I had managed to pass on a message to Mrs. Coljee via a certain P. Derks, letting her know not to send any more parcels to Vught. I knew from Jorg what Poland meant and decided to do my best to stay in Westerbork when I arrived. Jorg may not have been there anymore, but I still knew plenty of people in the camp.
But I didn’t get much of an opportunity to try my luck. In Westerbork I was locked up in an enclosed space for two days and then we continued our journey eastward, to an old village at the foot of the Beskid Mountains, a village called Auschwitz.
