Saul Smit

Saul Smit was a son of Nathan Smit and Heintje de Wolf. He was born 7 December 1887 in Amsterdam. At the age of 27 he married 3 April 1915 in London the 28-year old Nora Wilson Belcher, born there 14 February 1886 as a daughter of William Belcher and Hester Tubb Weaver.

Just as his parents, Saul Smit moved already in 1910 from Amsterdam to Borgerhout, where he lived till 1914 – still unmarried. He…

Saul Smit died on 16 December 1942 in Zwangsarbeitslager Niederkirch, Upper Silesia, Germany (today Poland).

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  Saul Smit as discovered there, stated that he died on 16 December 1942  in the forced labourcamp Niederkirch. In it wa…

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…

This transport includes 1000 persons, among them 344 children. They have never been so numerous before. It indicates a new big raid, the second of the “final solution”, once again in Antwerp with the cooperation of the Belgian police, during the night of 28 to 29 August. The list of the convoy, that was started on the eve of the raid was already complete on 29 August, because of the arrests during…