Erfgoed van de Oorlog, Bystander Memories, interview RG-50.570.0001

In Westerbork werd hij eveneens gedwongen de zogeheten Calmeyerlijst te halveren. Na de oorlog is hij betrokken geweest bij de zogenoemde rechtsherstelzaken, waar hij veel levendige anekdotes over vertelt. The interviewee was born on 15 April, 1921.

From 1943 onwards he worked for the German official Hans Calmeyer. Calmeyer decided on questions of descent of Dutch Jews in cases where there was uncertainty about this. The interviewee describes how he won Calmeyer’s trust and tells us how he attempted - among other things through falsifications - to declare as many Jews as possible to be non-Jews according to Nazi definitions, so they would escape deportation.

He talks specifically about the experiences of the Portuguese Jews. His work for Calmeyer meant he had to go to Camp Westerbork every week, in order to decide, together with the camp commander Gemmeker, about the Jewish descent of a specific prisoner there. In Westerbork he was also forced to reduce the so-called ‘Calmeyerlijst’ (list of names of Jews who had been declared non-Jewish) by half.

After the war he was involved with many so-called restitution of rights cases, about which he tells many lively anecdotes. Van dit interview zijn eveneens uitgebreide samenvattingen met tijd-codes beschikbaar in zowel het Nederlands als Engels. Zie de Inleiding voor een snel overzicht van de gehele collectie en de contactgegevens.

Er zijn tevens verschillende bestanden bijgevoegd betreffende het project en dit specifieke interview. Besides the transcript there is an extensive summary available of the interview in both Dutch and English with time-codes inserted. See the Introduction for a quick overview of the entire collection and the contact details.

There are also several documents and reports available concerning the project and this particular interview.