A shocking message from the past: children's identification stamps in the Sobibor extermination camp

Excavations at the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland have revealed four identification marks of murdered Jewish children. They all came from Amsterdam, which was part of the targeted extermination of Dutch Jews in the spring and summer of 1943. In this camp alone, more than a quarter of a million people, thousands of young children, including infants, were cruelly murdered in just 16 months.

Researchers have been able to trace the last movements of the children because they were all sent to Westerbork before their final deportation to Sobibor. Today, the Herinneringscentrum Kamp Westerbork is a memorial centre dedicated to the 102,000 people who were imprisoned there. Records of all four children, their pasts and tragic endings have been found in the archives:

• Annie Kapper, born January 9, 1931, murdered April 2, 1943.
• David Juda Van der Velde, born 21 November 1932, murdered 2 April 1943
• David "Deddie" Jacob Zak born 23 February 1935, murdered June 1943
• Lea Judith de la Penha, born 11 May 1937, murdered in July 1943

The oldest of the murdered children was Annie Kapper. She was just 12 years old when she was loaded onto a freight train with her entire family and sent to the Sobibor extermination camp on March 30, 1943. They arrived two days later. All 1,255 Jews from the train were sent to the gas chambers. Her aluminum identification tag was discovered in close proximity to one of the mass graves in the camp.

David Yehuda Van der Velde was part of the same transport as Annie Kapper. He was 11 years old when he and his family were deported from the Westerbork internment camp to Sobibor on 30 March, where he was gassed on 2 April. His broken identification tag was discovered west of the gas chambers.

Deddie Zak' s stamp was found right on the site of one of the camp crematoria. It had been through the fire. Deddie was first imprisoned in the Vught concentration camp set up by the Nazis in southern Holland. On June 6-7, 1943, he was part of the mass deportation of Jewish children to the Westerbork transit camp. From there, the children were transported alone without their parents by freight train to Sobibor on 8 June. Three days later, more than 1,000 children were gassed there, including 119 newborns, 55 infants and 123 toddlers. The oldest was 16 years old.

Lea Judith de la Penha and her mother Judith and father David were arrested and imprisoned in Westerbork in July 1943. Immediately on July 6, a total of 2,417 Jews were deported to Sobibor in a joint transport. They arrived there on 9 July. The mother, father and little girl had already been murdered that day. The girl was only six years old. Her tag was found near the camp's railway platform.

"As far as we know, the identification tags with the names of the children were found only in Sobibor and nowhere else. Since the tags vary greatly from one another, it is obvious that they were probably not some kind of organized registers. The children's identification tags were prepared by their parents, who were probably desperate to ensure that their children did not get lost in the chaos of World War II. Leo, Annie and Deddie's tags allowed us to link the faces and their fateful stories to names that had previously been merely anonymous entries in Nazi lists. Archaeological research provides us with the opportunity to tell the stories of the victims and to honor their memory," explained Yoram Haimi of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

"I have been excavating Sobibor for ten years, but this was the hardest day I have ever had. Standing with the stamps in the field next to the crematoria, we contacted the centre and sent them the names. They replied immediately. They sent us pictures of smiling little children on the phone. The hardest part was discovering that some of the children whose tags we held in our hands had arrived at Sobibor on the children's transport - 1,300 young children between the ages of four and eight who had been sent there to die alone without their parents. I looked at the photos and asked myself, how could anyone be so cruel?"

Author's Note: I just finished writing this article and I have a thousand thoughts running through my head and I am experiencing horrible feelings. The strongest ones belong to those children whose happy and smiling faces in the photographs hurt my heart when I think of what their last days were like... I am a father myself and I cannot breathe at the thought of my two young sons being kidnapped, imprisoned, abused and finally murdered in a cruel way by a stranger for no reason. After all, those children have not even known the world, they could not hurt anyone or anything! How much pain did their parents, the children themselves, endure during the separation and the cruel hours of death. Terrible and unimaginable. Unforgivable!

I can't help thinking about the thoughts that link the past with the present. After all, we are still witnessing today how some political parties and their leaders across the world are spreading the same hatred and evil that came from Nazi Germany back then. The rise of nationalism, the targeted spread of fear and hatred, the same methods of manipulation. The circumstances or the reasons may be seemingly different, but the essence of hatred is always the same. Nothing good ever comes out of it.

Please, let us learn our lesson, let us hear the remorse, the painful message of the past, and let us never again allow sick minds to reach absolute power through the spread of evil and hatred! So that we do not have to be powerless. Because hate will eventually eat everything in its path. Until there is nothing left.

Let us not forget...

Roman Němec

Annie Kaperova

Lea Dudith - right

Lea Dudith

Dedie Zak was murdered when he was just nine years old.

Dedie Zak's stamp has gone up in flames

David van der Velde

Sources: jewishnews.timesofisrael.com, thehistoryblog.com, livescience.com, the