Horrors at Camp Vught

There were two events that occurred at Vught that were particularly notorious. One is what happened in cell 115. Here is the story. Women in barracks 23B found out that there was a traitor among them. When they had singled her out they cut off her hair in order to punish her. Because of that the 'hairdresser' was locked up in the Bunker prison. Out of solidarity the other women protested by writing a letter to the commander and signed by writing down their numbers. The camp commander and some henchmen drove as many women as possible into one single tiny cell. He managed to squeeze in 74 women in a cell with a surface area of 9 square meters and hardly any ventilation. They were locked up for 14 hours. Some women lost consciousness due to a lack of oxygen. Some went crazy with fear. Perspiration and heat inside the cell caused the brickwork to form nitric acid which caused corrosive burns. When the cell was opened the next morning, 10 women were dead. The woman who caused this drama, committed suicide by running into the barbed wire.

As awful as that was, this is even worse....One day the Germans thought there were too many Jewish children in this camp. They slept in the same cots as their parents but without proper medical care or soap and water, there were many outbreaks of infectious diseases. Since Vught was a labor camp and not a day care center, the Germans wanted to get rid of these children. They promised the Jewish parents to send their children to a brand new children's camp somewhere in Holland. None of the parents believed them but had no choice. On June 6, 1943 all children 0-4 years old were rounded up an taken to the railway station. With only a brief stop at a transit camp, the children went straight to the gas chambers of Sobibor. The next day all the children 4-16 followed the same route. There were 1,260 children killed along with 1,800 parents who were allowed to go with them. The youngest victim was only 6 days old and his story is most puzzling of all. When his train stopped at the transit camp, he was taken off the train and hospitalized in an incubator and cared for by private nurses for two weeks. When he had completely recovered, he was sent on the next train to Sobibor. This monument carries all of the names and ages of the murdered children. Whole families were wiped out.

The grounds around this camp are just beautiful and have lovely bike paths and flowers and canals, etc. But the horrors once committed here are just steps away.