Eyewitness Testimony Pieter Braaksma

Pieter Braaksma Source: http://vuurvink.ewi.utwente.nl:8080/Buchenwald/ 23.02.2009 12:00 PM Born on August 2, 1923, in Rotterdam Male Occupation? Reason for imprisonment: Raid Date of imprisonment: Early October 1943 Stay in Buchenwald: April 1944 - ??? 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. Therefore, he decided to study and chose architecture at the Higher Technical Institute. The war caused things to decline. To avoid falling into German hands during the occupation, he worked for a few years at the model workshop of the Rotterdam Lloyd. He also played 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 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 female friend of hers. When the girls did not show up, Braaksma and his friend left. When they turned a corner, they saw a raid 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. Occasionally, with a clique, he had fought with NSB members 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 issues of Vrij Nederland, he also had a forged identity card in his pocket. It stated he was born in 1925 instead of 1923. This 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 was harsh beating. 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. Afterwards, 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 – Kommando Kontrolle – and these 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 to the civilians, although they were occasionally toyed with. After Braaksma’s mother found out where he was, 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 clothing. 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 clogs. There were no socks, only rags. During the first days, marching around the roll call square was the main activity. Braaksma says he was lucky to be housed 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 received blows. But he was also lucky. In his barrack lived resistance members 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 did not match. Suddenly, 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 infirmary was pushed back. After the roll call, the other also died. Then Braaksma tells of a Jew who was hidden in the infirmary barrack. He was discovered 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 shocking.Braaksma was lucky to be assigned one day to the NSF command. That was the Dutch Signal Equipment Factory of Philips. He could work sitting down in a barrack and received an extra meal. Before that, 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, in the end he 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 seated on the toilet. But sometimes the toilet blocks were cleared out with clubs. Braaksma was unlucky once to be sitting on the toilet exactly during such a clearing action. He too was beaten out and was unconscious for half an hour, as he was told afterwards. The NSF command was led by Martin, a Limburger. He had good contact with the Germans and had the person who had beaten Braaksma found and then punished. Braaksma had difficulties for quite a while due to his injuries. He remembers that before his assignment in the NSF command he had contracted dysentery. He lay in the hospital barrack for a week. He was also once able to shirk work for a few weeks by hiding after roll call in the barracks where surplus beds and other things were stacked. One day the prisoners were assembled on the roll call square and learned that a transport of about a thousand men was to be assembled for Riga, where they were to be used as front-line workers. One after another they were called into a small office to Berg and Kotälla. Braaksma agreed with seven others that they would refuse to sign. The first who refused was severely beaten and taken to the bunker. Braaksma was number three or four. He had to give a reason for his refusal. He stated that he could not make bombs that could hit his brother’s ship. His brother was sailing in the Pacific. He was allowed to go and was transported shortly afterwards to Buchenwald. During the transport Braaksma did not know where they were going. The way from the Amersfoort camp to the train station was a torment because of dragging the two suitcases full of winter clothes. The train was a passenger train. Alternately the prisoners could even sit. The train stopped at Hengelo station. There his mother and brother stood with a suitcase full of food behind a small wall. A Dutch policeman took the suitcase inconspicuously and threw it through the window to Braaksma in the train. He distributed most of it. It was an unforgettable moment. In the middle of the night they reached Buchenwald. Braaksma suspects it was in April 1944. They were kicked and beaten, stripped, completely shaved, and put into a disinfection bath full of biting filthy broth. Afterwards they received prisoner clothing and a number. Braaksma’s number was 47674; in Amersfoort his number had been 2445. He also received the red triangle of political prisoners on his clothing. His clothing consisted of a striped jacket and striped trousers and an undershirt. He was housed in a quarantine camp. There he slept with eight men in a room designed for four people. They each slept with their head at the feet of the next man. It was teeming with fleas. They sat on his head, on the inside of his hands, and even on the soles of his feet. In the first days he almost went crazy from it, but later he became less sensitive. On the first night he did not sleep, eight men lying in a box on some straw. In the quarantine camp one did not have to work. They only had to assemble for roll call occasionally. After the time in the quarantine camp, however, work had to be done again. Braaksma was in the command of the quarry. That was a pit thirty to forty meters deep. There was a sloping track with rails. The carts with stones were pushed up the track by the Jews; the other prisoners pushed the carts up the path. Braaksma was assigned to this pushing. In the heat this work was impossible. After the work in the quarry he worked on the railway line and filled carts with sand. When they came back from the command, they ran through the gate with the inscription “Arbeit macht frei” (Work sets you free). They always had one or more dead with them. These were prisoners who had died during work. At the gate stood a brass band playing cheerful march music. Braaksma found that extremely bizarre. In the large camp Braaksma lived in a Dutch barrack. He no longer remembers the time in the barrack exactly. But he does remember very well the dead at the work command, the many beatings, and the screaming. One day Braaksma was called for a medical examination. He had to come naked into a room where a man with a cane stood. Braaksma had to bend over, the man examined him and found him fit. Braaksma did not know at first for what. But shortly afterwards he was brought to the Wille camp near Tröglitz near Jena. There Braaksma and the others were housed in a kind of ballroom with wooden beds. They formed a command consisting of fifty Dutchmen. From this camp they built a tent camp near the Brabag factory. At first they worked in this factory and pulled cables. That was backbreaking work. Afterwards they built the camp. They had to fence a large area with barbed wire. In the evening they went back to the ballroom and got soup there. Once this soup was spoiled. On the way Braaksma got diarrhea from it. He had to keep going, was not allowed to stop, and just let everything run. Back at the sleeping place he could rinse his clothes and then had to put them on wet again. He felt treated like a piece of cattle. He also remembers that someone who had obviously stolen a loaf of bread was beaten so badly by the guards that he lost an eye. He was severely beaten and made an example of. The others had to watch.One day, tents had been set up there. Inside were wooden boxes standing on posts, and mattresses lay inside them. A group was housed in one of these tents, which included Braaksma. Later, four thousand Hungarian Jews arrived, among whom were also some Amsterdam Jews born in Hungary. During the bombings, they began to pray. Braaksma found this terrible. It was a spectacle like at the Wailing Wall. He and others could not watch, so they left the tent and sat outside. Braaksma and a friend had contact with the block elder of one of the tents. They took on small tasks for him. Since the Dutch were Aryans, they got somewhat better jobs. One day, Braaksma was made foreman in the factory. This lasted only two weeks because as a foreman, it was expected that he would beat Jews and shout around. He did not do that. But in those two weeks, he was able to do something good. The factory had been bombed, but parts had been spared. At a well where a work detail was working, there was a laboratory with glass cases full of magnificent copper instruments. Since there was little guarding there, Braaksma took his chance and smashed everything to pieces. That felt wonderful! Braaksma remembers that once they were standing at roll call and someone was missing. It was a fourteen-year-old boy who had hidden in the factory. He was caught and received fifty lashes at the roll call square. Then he was dead. This time, too, the others had to watch. From the tent camp, the Jews had to build a stone barracks camp. When that was finished, the entire camp was moved into this barracks camp. At that time, Braaksma got an ear infection. He tells that one night he also had terrible toothache. He got up and ran to the infirmary barracks. There was a whole line of Jews. They let Braaksma go ahead, which he initially did not want, until the pain became too intense. His tooth was pulled with forceps. Referring again to his ear infection, he says that there was no medical care in the stone barracks. He lay awake at night with terrible pain. It did pass, but he still has complaints about his ear today. After they had lived in the barracks camp for some time, the Dutch were sent back to Buchenwald. Braaksma does not remember much from this time. But he can recall that for a short time he was sent with a friend, Gerard Maisan (spelling unknown), to Camp E. That was a re-education camp. He was quite sick at the time but still had to work. He was just loading carts when he collapsed. He came to on a stretcher, but his friend whispered to him to stay lying down. He went to the infirmary barracks, where a Czech doctor diagnosed heart failure. He was then placed in a kind of small infirmary barracks. There were more lice than people. The clothes he wore seemed alive with lice. No one came except his friend, who brought him food. Occasionally a nurse came to ask how he was doing. Braaksma was one of the few who answered because he spoke German. In this way, he had some contact with the nurses. One day, someone from the Organisation Todt came. Braaksma heard that he was from Rotterdam and spoke to him. The man had to collect and remove the bodies and told him that they were thrown into the ravine. Another time, a kind of nurse came and asked Braaksma to take his blankets and come along. Outside stood a truck with straw. Braaksma and some others climbed onto the truck. It drove with them into the mountains. It was terribly cold. That’s how he came to a real infirmary barracks with Red Cross nurses. That was in the vicinity of Hummelshain. It was a castle with barracks around it. For Braaksma, that was heaven. He was deloused, disinfected, put in a bath, given other clothes, and laid in a bed. He was treated by a Dutch doctor and stayed there for some time. He suspects that after his recovery he returned to the small camp. That was shortly before liberation. He remembers that suddenly there were no more Germans there. The prisoners were left to their fate. Braaksma no longer knows exactly how he got back. He suspects by truck. On the way, he saw military activity: tanks, vehicles, and the Volkssturm. There was not much left behind it. Braaksma and others had left the camp because there was no more food there. On the way, they went into a kitchen to look for something to eat. Everything was spoiled. Outside, shots were fired. Suddenly, they saw a group of Americans coming toward them. They received packs of cigarettes and cookies. Afterwards, they were housed in a camp. People from the village were recruited to clean up the camps. Braaksma now saw that exactly what had been done to him was happening. That did not make things right again, and he no longer had a good opinion of humanity. One day, a jeep drove up and stopped. Because Braaksma spoke English, he was asked to translate. That’s how he worked as an interpreter for two weeks. He received milk, extra food, and recovered. It is ironic that afterwards he still got typhus and became seriously ill. He stayed in the hospital for several weeks to get well again. Back in the Netherlands, he weighed only forty-nine kilos. He traveled home by freight train. The reception in the Netherlands was initially good. He first arrived in a small border town from which he could not go further. He was first housed in a church and then with a family. He visited the family of a boy who had worked in the kitchen of the Jewish camp and had died one week before Braaksma was transported. After a week, Braaksma was able to go home. He had himself dropped off a few streets away from his home by the truck and went to a friend’s house. He did not want to just show up unannounced. His friend prepared his family, and so he was received fantastically at home. The situation at home was good. They had always had enough to eat. His brothers seemed to have been active in the resistance. Braaksma’s family doctor, who had collaborated with the NSB, refused to give him extra food stamps. It took a year for Braaksma to get back on his feet. During that time, he lived on a farm. Afterwards, he took his life back into his own hands and went back to the HTS (Higher Technical School). He did not complete the training but teamed up with a friend who started his own business.Because of his past in the camp, Braaksma has become very distrustful of other people. He carefully chooses the people he can get along with well and whom he trusts. But the suspicion remains. He often wonders how the other person would act under certain circumstances. Then he returns once again to his time in Buchenwald. He was once given the task of loading laundry onto trucks and taking it out of the camp. The intention was that two guards and two prisoners were supposed to ride along. Instead, the guards took four prisoners, two of whom hid. The guards were Germans named Heinz and Karl. One had an eye patch and the other a broken leg, with which he could walk poorly. They stopped along the way at fruit trees to let the prisoners eat something extra. They also gave them bread. Braaksma owes these guards that he was out of the misery of the camp for a few weeks. Braaksma emphasizes that not every German was bad. These two perhaps let Braaksma endure the few weeks that were necessary.