Children are taught about Jewish families in their neighborhood

Which Jewish families were rounded up in your neighborhood during World War II? Children from group 8 of NSV2 elementary school in the Hazenkamp recently received a special history lesson.

In front of Leeuwstraat 39, teacher Martijn Vermeulen pauses. A large group of children gathers around him. Vermeulen begins narrating. "This is where Esther and Sander Frank and their children Jaap and Hanna lived. On the night of November 17-18, 1942, police were at the door. Mother Esther was not at home, father Sander and the children had to come with her to the train station in Nijmegen. There they were put on transport to Westerbork the next morning."

Stolpersteine
Father and children wrote another reassuring bill to mother. They said they felt calm and that I'm sure all would be well. "Not much later, mother was also rounded up and sent to Westerbork. Unfortunately, the family did not survive the hardships in Poland." In April, four Stolpersteine, small memorial stones, will be placed here to commemorate the Frank family. Vermeulen: "And this is just one family. In total, more than 400 Jewish Nijmegen people were murdered." Normally Vermeulen is a history teacher in secondary school. But he regularly tells about the persecution of Jews in Nijmegen in elementary school, as a volunteer with the Stolpersteine Nijmegen Foundation. Vermeulen tells how Hitler came to power, how the Jews were increasingly bullied and excluded. And were eventually arrested en masse. He makes the great history of World War II concrete on the basis of stories that took place in his own neighborhood. The children listen breathlessly and occasionally ask a pointed question. "Why did Hitler blame Jews for the problems in Germany? They hadn't done anything wrong, had they?"

'My own war'
The children also get to work with history themselves. For example, they decipher bills written by sisters Joke and Kitty de Wijze. These two girls from Nijmegen were also arrested during the raid on the night of November 17-18. They had to be put on transport from Westerbork to Auschwitz without their parents. On the way, they threw several cards from the train, addressed and stamped. The girls perished less than a month later in Auschwitz. The children from grade 8 found it very impressive to read and hear the stories. They already knew quite a lot about World War II, but these stories are really new to them. Mohammad (13) found it interesting. "I'm not from here. When I was eight we fled from Syria," he says. "I experienced my own war." For that reason, he finds it quite difficult to hear the stories about World War II. "It's different, but there's also a lot of the same. I try not to let it come in too much." Anna (11) and Merle (11) found the lesson very impressive. "I can't imagine being taken out of bed in the middle of the night. My mom does that when we go on vacation or when we get to watch fireworks. But that's fun. And this was just really, really bad."

Photo: Martijn Vermeulen with a group of schoolchildren on Lion Street.