Nico Andriesse, was the middle of the three children of Salomon Andriesse and his wife Rosa Andriesse. Nico was born on 4 July 1919 in Eindhoven. His father and his mother had settled in Eindhoven on 31 January 1916 and lived at Kleine Berg 34 in the center of the city, where also his sister Elisabeth was born in 1917. Like his father, Nico also became a cattle trader. He lived in Eindhoven at Gestelschstraat 58, with his parents, sister Elisabeth and brother Hans. Nico was unmarried.
Nico was already registered in Westerbork on 29 August 1942 as he had been no doubt called up for the so-called “Arbeitseinsatz” – the provision of additonal work under police surveilance in Germany - and deported to Auschwitz 2 days later, on August 31. A few days earlier, on the 28th, a first transport departed from Westerbork to Auschwitz, which made a stopover in Cosel and what would later turn out to be the beginning of the so-called “Cosel period”.
The transport, of which Nico was also a part, consisted of a total of 560 deportees, of which during that stopover in Cosel, located about 80 km west of Auschwitz, 200 boys and men between 15 and 50 years old were brutally forced to take the train. to leave. They were then put to work in the surrounding labor camps in Upper Silesia. Nico certainly belonged to that group of 200 people.
The route, which followed most of this transport and which Nico Andriesse was part of, (camps in Upper Silesia in which he stayed successively), went from Cosel to the Niederkirch transit camp, then to Fürstengrube, Graditz and other places in the ressort Gross Rosen and finally to Langebielau/Reichenbach.
The investigation of the Red Cross of October 1953 has shown that Nico Andriesse, after having stayed in the Niederkirch transit camp for about ten days, will probably have arrived in Fürstengrube around 10 September 1942, one of the so-called Aussenkommandos of Auschwitz, in the near the Polish town of Wesola. The work in the coal mine there was inhumanly hard.
Until May 1943 it was an extremely bad camp where many died. The number of dead in the period from September 1942 to May 1943 in the camp is estimated differently by the survivors, but it is certain that it amounted to more than half of the transport. At most only 100 survivors will have been transferred to Graditz in July/August 1943.
The majority of these died during the typhus epidemic, which broke out in Graditz at the end of 1943/early 1944 (the time is given differently). From the witness statements, the time of death in Fürstengrube or Graditz of about 50 men has so far been individually determined.
It can be concluded that the existing exceptions to one rule (the men who were able to work got out in Cosel) as well as to the other (all sent on to Auschwitz and immediately gassed) can be summarized as follows that those whose date of death cannot be determined individually, are deemed to be deceased, insofar as they belonged to the transports of August and September 1942: 31 December 1942 at the latest
Partly on the basis of the aforementioned investigation by the Red Cross and testimonials from survivors, the Dutch authorities established after the war that Nico Andriesse died in Fürstengrube. Subsequently, on 25 January 1952, the Ministry of Justice commissioned the municipality of Eindhoven to draw up a death certificate for Nico Andriesse, which states that he died on 31 December 1942 in Fürstengrube.
Sources include: website Openarchives.nl; website wiewaswie.nl and the archives of the Regional Historical Center Eindhoven; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Nico Andriesse; the archive of the Dutch Red Cross, publication “Auschwitz III”/deportation transports in the Cosel period; the wikipedia website Jodentransporten uit Nederland.nl/transport 31 August 1942 and the certificate of death no. 91, drawn up for Nico Andriesse on 25 January 1952 by the municipality of Eindhoven.