Testimony

Pieter Braaksma – Kahla

Mr. Braaksma recounts that after completing the Higher Civic School, he wanted to go to sea. However, due to his poor eyesight, he was rejected. He therefore decided to study and chose the field of architecture at the Higher Technical Institute. Things went downhill because of the war. To avoid falling into the hands of the Germans, he worked for a few years during the occupation at the model workshop of the Rotterdam Lloyd. He also made a lot of music and often performed with a band. Braaksma remembers that he was in downtown Rotterdam, on the Goudse Singel, when the war broke out. Rotterdam was bombed. He fled on his bicycle. To avoid the bullets, he ducked down to the ground. It was terrible, but he survived. He then tells about the day he was arrested. He had an appointment with a girl; together with a friend and a friend of hers. When the girls did not show up, Braaksma and his friend left. When they turned a corner, they saw that a raid was taking place there. Braaksma was stopped and searched. He had two copies of Vrij Nederland with him. He occasionally received some from a friend and passed them on to family and friends. But he was not part of the resistance. That was not for him. It did not seem sensible: a number of resistance actions had led to reprisals. He experienced the occupation as bad. With a clique, he occasionally fought with NSB people and always escaped. It was early October 1943 when Braaksma was caught in the raid. He was interrogated. The treatment was rough and harsh. Besides the two sheets of Vrij Nederland, he also had a forged identity card in his pocket. It stated that he was born in 1925 instead of 1923. That was discovered. He was taken to the Haagse Veer prison and after a week to the Erica camp in Ommen. That was a bad camp. Upon entering, Braaksma saw a tall, thin man chopping wood with a guard at his side. Every time the man fell, he was kicked to keep chopping. Even during registration, there were hard blows. Fortunately, this did not affect Braaksma himself. He had to work terribly hard there: carrying trees. After about two weeks, he was transported to the Amersfoort camp, together with a group from the border guard. He briefly returns to the Erica camp. The person in charge there was a former missionary. In the evening at dinner, there was first a minute of silence for the believers. After that, the prisoners had very little time to eat a few bites. Then all plates were collected and the food leftovers were given to the pigs. Braaksma did not know this on the first day and had barely eaten two bites when he had to hand in his plate. The food was passable, but in this way, one hardly got anything down. The guards in the Erica camp consisted of the so-called KK – Command Control – and they were all Dutch. There were two types of prisoners: the Greens, who really wore green prisoner clothing, and the civilians. Braaksma belonged to the civilians. He saw that the Greens were mistreated by the guards. This did not happen with the civilians, although they were occasionally played games with. After Braaksma's mother found out his whereabouts, she brought him clothes. Later, during the transport from Amersfoort to Buchenwald, he suffered because he was weak at the time and had to carry his suitcases himself. Braaksma continues his story with the arrival at the Amersfoort camp. First, he had to go to the "Rosengarten". That was a room about two meters wide in front of the roll call square, where all new prisoners were sent. Upon entering, he was disinfected and shaved bald and given clothes. The clothing in Amersfoort consisted, among other things, of uniforms from the post office and the army. If someone had tobacco, they got shoes instead of wooden shoes. There were no socks, only rags. During the first days, walking around the roll call square was the main activity. Braaksma says he was lucky to be in the barrack next to Van Heek, a textile magnate. Van Heek was his bunkmate and he befriended him. When Van Heek was released, he visited Braaksma's family. He brought them up to date. He also wrote Braaksma a letter – which he still has – including about the Riga transport. Braaksma was threatened with transport to the Russian front, but he refused to acknowledge it. Braaksma's experiences in the Amersfoort camp were terrible. He worked in the "Kleinholz" command. With a twig broom, he had to sweep small branches together in the forest and then scatter the piles again. In his opinion, this work was solely intended to break people. The guard was half crazy. He hit, jumped around, and raged. Braaksma also got beaten. But he was also lucky. In his barrack lived resistors who gave him a course in survival strategies. Thus, Braaksma learned that he was not allowed to react if something was done to his neighbor. Furthermore, he remembers that one noon during the guard change, two prisoners had escaped. In the evening at roll call, the count was wrong. Suddenly, the dogs were set on them. The escaped prisoners were caught and brought back to the camp. There they were laid on the roll call square. One of them was already dead, the other was dying. A doctor rushing out of the sick barrack was pushed back. After the roll call, the other also died. Then Braaksma tells about a Jew who was hidden in the sick barrack. He was found and put in the "Rosengarten". With a rifle in his hands, he had to squat, with a guard at his side. If he fell, he was kicked until he was upright again. The other prisoners were forced to watch from the roll call square. This man also died. That was very upsetting. Braaksma was lucky that one day he got into the NSF command. That was the Dutch Signal Equipment Factory of Philips. He could work sitting in a barrack and got an extra meal. Previously, he had worked about ten days in the potato command. That was backbreaking work. A load of potatoes had to be unloaded. Because it did not go fast enough, he finally had to run to the pit with two baskets full of potatoes. That was very exhausting. The NSF was a much better command. People from the heavier commands, the so-called punishment commands, occasionally tried to shirk by simply staying on the toilet. But sometimes the toilet blocks were cleared out with clubs. Braaksma was unlucky that he once was sitting on the toilet exactly during such a clearing operation. Also