Eindhoven, The Netherlands 23 Jan. 2011 – speech by Steph Leenhouwers (translation Petra Wenstedt-Pulles)

I was asked to speak a few words just like during the Colonel Sink-tour a few months ago.

Today, the news reached us that Ed Mauser (Easy Co., 506) passed away on 21st January, Major Dick Winters’ birthday.

Welcome everyone, on this special location at the “Dommelhuis” near the Dommel river and close to the Lex and Edo Hornemann park where we will go to shortly to lay flowers.

My roots are here, I was born and raised a short distance away. I went to school on the other side of the Dommel river. This area is and feels like home to me.

Over the years, I have often thought about what I would do if living conditions became threatening. Would I stay or would I run? Many German people wanted to flee or emigrate because of the threats in the 1930’s.

The immigration of Germans was inhibited by the Dutch government under Colijn. The public opinion was based on a “full is full” mentality at the time, fed by the fear of too much competition in terms of labor. After the “Kristallnacht” (1938), and under public opinion pressure, the decision was made to extend the acceptance of “real” refugees. These were people who didn’t flee the threat, but real terror.

The Jewish community in Eindhoven invested enormous amounts for support to these refugees. By both Jewish and non-Jewish refugee committees shelters were found for both religious and non-religious Jewish refugees. At first, large groups of childrens were taken in…they were no competition for the Dutch labor force.

Local committees, coordinated from Amsterdam, organised shelters for these children with the intent of emigration to, for example, the United States or Palestine. This was so successful that the number of shelters was reduced in the beginning of 1940. In some cases, the parents would send their children ahead and would travel on together after they had reunited in The Netherlands. But their were instances where the parents stayed behind and hoped that, whatever would happen to them, their children would be safe.

In Eindhoven, the large Philips factory (lightbulbs and radio production) had offered the building called “Dommelhuis” to the refugee committee. The building had been built in the 1920’s and was used for single employees. On January 4th, 1939, the first group of 115 German-Jewish refugees arrived in Eindhoven. At the beginning of 1940, the “Dommelhuis” was closed. The children still living there were taken to other shelters like the civilian orphanage in Amsterdam. In total, until closure in Februari 1940, 200 refugees lived in the “Dommelhuis”. Half of them emigrated.

Of the remaining 100, approximately 40 survived the war by going underground, by being marked “indispensable” in Camp Westerbork (The Netherlands), or by surviving the extermination- or work camps aided by their young age.

Buth there is more to tell. Jews lived in this building after this episode. Earlier I already spoke about project Stumble Stones (“struikelstenen”) by the German artist Günther Demnig from Berlin. Some of these remembrance stones have already been placed here and more are to follow in Eindhoven in the near future. (See photo’s, or Google on “struikelstenen”).

My story will become a little lighter now, but heavier and indigestable shortly after. But that’s reality.

How could things get so out of hand?

Today we have modern media, our own transportation, TV. During World War II it was a completely different story. When asked if he planned to exterminate the Jews, Hitler responded:

“Nein, sonst müssen wir sie wieder erfinden. Es ist wesentlich dass man immer einen sichtbaren Gegner habe, nicht bloss nur einen abstrakten.” (No, otherwise we will have to invent them again. It is essential that one has a visible opponent, not just an abstract one.)

Chickenfarmer Heinrich Himmler really believed in Hitler. Adolf Eichmann just followed orders.

Reinhard Heydrich was co-inventor of the Endlösung which planned the extermination of not only Jews, but gypsies, homosexuals, mentally handicapped and other Unerwünschten. Heydrich was murdered in Prague (Czechoslowakia) and the revenge measures were terrible: hundreds of civilians were killed and a whole village swept off the map.

In effect, the Führer’s motivation wasn’t even necessary as the prison and extermination camps were big business. Harvest time for a farmer? The camps suppled his labor force, like an employment agency. Payment to the SS-forces….ample supply of workers!

Hell on earth. It wasn’t even hell. It was a sacrificial location for the innocent. God had fallen asleep and some, who held a mirror in front of His mouth, say He has been dead for a long time!

Personally and during several tours I have visited the top 5 concentration camps, leaving them sick to the stomach: Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen and Auschwitz. In Fort Breendonk, South of Antwerp, Belgium, well worth your visit, I once experienced a tour guide who showed us the best re-enactment of German camp guards: goose pimpels and sick to the stomach again.

Witness reports:

Children playing in the streets, picked up by SS-men, thrown in the back of trucks, stuck in cargo trains by the thousands and transported to the gas chambers. Sick children, thrown out of the sick ward into the street, from four stories up. Babies being torn in half, like a piece of cloth, in front of the mother. Random blocks of houses, disconnected from the outside world, inhabitants being starved and houses set ablaze. Occupants who jumped out of the windows and try to crawl away to safety are being ridiculed and thrown back into the fire.

Churches filled with churchgoers, set on fire. Old priests who are forced to compete in a game of “horse back riding” on each others back. Fragile old women who are forced to scrub the village square with a toothbrush. Orchestras who are forced to play while thousands of naked familes are being executed. An old woman with hair the color of snow, held a child in her arms, sang a song and tickled the child. The child shouts with joy. And a couple watches with tears in their eyes.

The father of a 10-year old boy speaking softly. The boy fighting his tears. The father pointing towards heaven, stroking the boy’s head and explaining. And the SS-man shouts.

Dogs who receive their treat after biting off a piece of flesh from a little girl. Mountains of corpses, shoes, glasses, artificial limbs, women’s hair. Buckets filled with gold teeth. Fields covered with skulls and bones. Naked people, soaked with water in wintertime and frozen. People killed by syringes and cooked in large pots in order for their skeletons to displayed in museums.

Others eating from corpses. People eating from corpses long after turning black. Large groups of gentlemen, in tuxedo’s with black hats and walking canes, visiting the concentration camps. A man having to chose between his wife and his mother.

Torture and executions in cellars in the centre of all cities. Gas chambers filled with naked people having to hold up their hands above their heads in order for the children to be laid on top of the hands. A man, forced to search through hundreds of corpses, in order to find his daughter, his father and his wife.

This world, for ever having ruined Europe’s history, is out there, as a threat.

The person to sigh with relief when speaking about the past is wrong.

The Europe of Rafael and Goethe compares to present-day Europe like the bucket with milk to the bucket filled with the sour liquid which is caused by the vinegar thrown in the milk. Even though we have distilled the sour liquid with democracy and worked the result into a welfare yoghurt, it is no longer milk. We need to guard all paths, so they will not lead to Auschwitz.

Anyone can be thrown into the fire of his own home in less years than fingers counted on one hand. Just because he can read, for example. Or because he has blond hair, or for reasons who are not being justified towards him.

Artists and philosophers ache for this world of witnesses, in France like in Germany. The French, admired champions of Latin clarity, have excercised their feast of torture over the past hundred years towards non-Caucasians. Collectively, we limit ourselves to saying “t-t-t” to this. The word “sadism”, preferably used in connection with the Germans, is derived from a French family name. André Breton, inventor of surrealism and friend of Salvador Dali, one of my favorite painters, once said:

“If I obeyed the strongest and most frequent impuls I feel, I would be forced to walk the streets with guns in my hands and see what happens.”

Only an anti-semite will persevere in his opinion that there is a difference between the shooting of random passers-by and the limitation towards passing Jews and gypsies. In that time frame the German expressionist Arnolt Bronnen stated: “Viel schreien ist besser als sehr klug sein.” (Crying in abundance is better than being clever).

Bill Guarnere (506 Easy Co., WWII) once told me: “Every man holds a killer. It’s just a matter of waiting for the right moment for someone to entice the killer to come out.”

The result of all this was the world set ablaze: war.

“War is an enormous conflict in which a few gentlemen who know each other but do not kill each other, give orders to people to kill people they do not know.” – Quote Eisenhower.

Here we are then, Belgians and Dutch. 170 years ago we were at war with each other. Today we are friends. In our daily lives we laugh at war-related things too. There are tv series like Fawlty Towers, Inch Allah by Adamo or Michael Kamen’s requiem…the Band of Brothers’ music would never have been composed if they had not existed.

Allied forces worked together, and there was Dick Winters, a natural talent. His passing is the cause of our little get-together. Dick Winters and his group of streetwise boys from South Philly, miners, farmer sons and other riff raff made history in Eindhoven and else where. They liberated our parents here in Eindhoven on 18th September 1944 from the German occupier. “Angels from the sky!”

I can’t tell you much about Winters. I only met him once. Peter can tell you more about the man having spoken with Winters on many occasions. It was in Normandy that Winters first promised himself to lead a quiet life on a firm in Lancaster, Pennsylvania once the war was over. I made the same sort of promise to myself on numerous occassions, but haven’t succeeded yet. Winters did.

HANG TOUGH was not his only motto. He also felt that war was the foundation of many friendships. A good example to us which we can continue in peace time. Old soldiers never die. Bill Guarnere’s answer to the question where soldiers who died go to was “They go to hell and regroup.”

For information on the “Dommelhuis” I used the book “De joodse gemeenschap van Eindhoven 1940-1945” by Phocas Kroon. Witness reports and some other pieces in my speech come from the book “De zaak 40/61” by Harry Mulisch on the Adolf Eichmann trial in 1961.

The flowers we brought are now going to be placed at the Lex and Edo Hornemann monument nearby, in memory of Dick Winters. The Eindhoven boys Lex and Edo Hornemann were taken to Germany for medical experiments. When the allied forces moved in on Berlin, orders were given to destroy all evidence: Lex and Edo were tranquilized and hung from heating pipes in a Neuengamme school on the Hitler’s last birthday: April 20, 1945.

The park is close to the Anne Frank park: let’s honor Anne, Lex, Edo and Dick with flowers, keeping in mind all who did not make it back.

HANG TOUGH,

Steph Leenhouwers.

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