Abraham Bernard Dobrowitsky, the 3rd child of Joseph Dobrowitsky and Heintje Michel, was born on 1 December 1914 in Amsterdam. At the time, he was employed as a salesman, sales representative and as a carpenter. He was unmarried and lived since the summer of 1936 with his mother and two sisters on the 3rd floor of the Slaakstraat 8.
On the 2nd floor lived Jozeph Fritz, where in October 1941, after she had divorced Abraham Hilsum, the 30-year old Olga Cohen came to live in and thus became the neighbor of the then still 26-year-old Abraham Bernard Dobrowitsky. Olga and Abraham will undoubtly have met each other.
Olga Cohen was born on 29 August 1911 in Watergraafsmeer as a daughter of Mozes Cohen and Adele Hertog. She married 31 July 1935 the religious teacher Abraham Hilsum, from whom she officially divorced on 2 February 1942.
Abraham Bernard and Olga were both summoned to report to Westerbork in the summer of 1942, where they most likely presented themselves as a married couple, while the divorced Olga Cohen and Abraham Bernard Dobrowitsky did not appear to have married. Yet Olga was listed as a married woman, Olga Dobrowitssky-Cohen, on her handwritten Jewish Council card.
And so, hoping to stay together, both werd deported on 31 August 1942 to Auschwitz; that was with the 2nd Cosel transport with a total of 560 deportees,of which in Cosel, located ±80 km west of Auschwitz, 200 boys and men between 15 and 50 years were forced to leave the train.
Those who remained on the train, including his neighbor Olga Cohen, were transported onwards to Auschwitz, where most of them were killed immediately upon arrival in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. However, not Olga Cohen, who was still registered in Auschwitz as Olga Dobrowitsky and who, according to the so-called “Sterbebücher”(death records) of Auschwitz, was murdered there on 19 September 1942.
The boys and men who had to leave the train at Cosel were then put to work in the surrounding labor camps in Lower and Upper Silesia. Post war research has shown that from the transport of 31 August 1942, 200 boys and men, who were appointed by the Germans as “fit for work” had to get off in Cosel.
They were then sent on to transitcamp Niederkirch, from there to Fürstengrube (coal mines), Graditz and other places in the Gross Rosen resort, and finally to Langenbielau (Sportschule, Reichenbach).
The exact fate of Abraham Bernard Dobrowitsky could not be determined with certainty. See therefore also the story “More about the transport of 31 August 1942”.
However, the final conclusion must be, unless it appears otherwise in individual cases and with due observance of the general conclusions as stated in the publication Auschwitz III, that the men of the transport of 31 August 1942, who disembarked in Cosel, must be deemed to have died: after 3 September 1942 but no later than 31 March 1944 in Fürstengrube (Upper Silesia, Poland) or in one of the labor camps in Lower Silesia, (Poland).
After the war, the Ministry of Justice in the Netherlands adopted the conclusions of the Red Cross investigations, after which the municipality of Amsterdam was instructed to draw up a death certificate for Abraham Bernard Dobrowitsky, which states that he died on 31 March 1944 in Mid-Europe.
Soures include the Cith Archive of Amsterdam, archive cards of Abraham Bernard Dobrowitsky, Olga Cohen and Abraham Hilsum; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Abraham Bernard Dobrowitsky and Olga Cohen; the Wikipedia website Jodentransporten vanuit Nederland.nl/31 August 1942; website Museum & Memoriam Auschwitz-Birkenau/prisoners/Olga Dobrowitsky; the archives of the Dutch Red Cross/Publication Auschwitz III - the Cosel period -/conclusions regardingthe transport of 31 August 1942 from Westerbork; the Amsterdam death register year 1947/death certificate 481 made out in Amsterdam on 28 November 1947 for Olga "Dobrowitsky"-Cohen and the death ertificate of Abraham Bernard Dobrowitsky nr. 444 made out in Amsterdam on 18 January 1952/A-register 92-folio 75verso.