Tjeerd Hulstra |
25-09-2021 |
The Holocaust Names Monument for the 102,000 Dutch Jews and Sinti murdered by the Germans 1940-1945, was inaugurated by King Willem-Alexander in September 2021. On the bricks are individually inscribed all the names.
I just sponsored one of the bricks. That one bears the name of my grandfather Abraham Salomon Cohen, my mother's dad. He was taken from his home in Amsterdam in early September 1942 and gassed in Auschwitz (officially) on the 19th.
Abraham Salomon (born in 1870 in Haarlem) and his wife Eva van der Rijn (born in Groningen) married in 1898 and had four daughters: Clara, Katharina (my mother), Frederika and Jeanne, who all survived the war (and in one case a Japanese camp in the Dutch East Indies. And who all lived to be between the ages of 98 and 102! Abraham and Eva separated long before the war.
I am sure, there are more family members remembered at the new monument in Amsterdam. Just a few to be named here: my opa's sister Jeannette, and many of the Van der Rijn family.
Although I never knew Abraham Salomon Cohen (I was born in 1943), he was my grandfather and as such, the monument (and me) are able to honor and remember him with all the others.
Tjeerd Hulstra
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