Samuel Walvis

Samuel Walvis was the youngest son of Michel Walvis and Duifje Kat. He was born on 12 October 1916 in Amsterdam and was unmarried. His father had come to Antwerp in May 1913 to work as a diamond worker while his mother Duifje and his sister Dina Walvis stayed behind in Amsterdam.

His parents' marriage was not a happy one. When his mother and sister Dina came to Antwerp in March 1914, his mother fi…

Samuel Walvis joined the Hollandia-Kattenburg textile factory in Amsterdam on 19 February 1940. On Wednesday, 11 November 1942, around 4:30 PM, Willy Lages conducted the Sicherheitspolizei raid on the Hollandia factories. All exits were blocked and the Jewish staff members were taken away that evening. Photographs of all workers taken away that evening, as well as those deported previously, appear…

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…