Alfred de Jong

Alfred de Jong, born in Den Haag on 1 April 1926, was a son of Leo de Jong and Ida Wertheimer. Alfred was the eldest of four children in the family, which also consisted of his sisters Marianna, Nanny and brother Emanuel Ernst. The entire De Jong family was killed during the Holocaust.

The family was carried off from Den Haag to Westerbork, where they arrived on 3 Octber 1942. Two days later, on 5…

Alfred de Jong died on 4 December 1942 in Reichsautobahnlager Annaberg, Upper Silesia, Germany (today Poland).

The official cause of death: heart failure (Herzschwäche).

Source: the official death certificate issued by German authorities (Standesamt).

Research into the wartime civil registries of one of the civil registry offices in Upper Silesias (Poland) discovered many records that corresponded to deaths of inmates from the "Reichsautobahnlager Annaburg" and "Zwangsarbeitslager Niederkirch" camps.

A certificate of death for Alfred de Jong as discovered there, stated that he died on 4 December 1942  in Camp Annaberg. In it was mentioned an of…

The period from 28 August to 12 December 1942 was known as the so-called Cosel period. Deportation trains  made a stopover at the freight station of Cosel, located 80 km west of Auschwitz. During that stop, boys and men who were considered fit for work by the Germans, were usually forcibly separated from their families and taken off the train and put to work in the surrounding labor camps of Upper…