Abraham Elzas

Abraham Elzas was a son of Mozes Elzas and Naatje Peperwortel. He was born on 13 July 1908 in Amsterdam and married there as a 21-year old the 20-year old Rebecca de Swarte, who was born on 8 April 1909 in Amsterdam as the first born of the first marriage of Hijman de Swarte and Louise van Dal. Before Rebecca got married, she stayed also for some time in Antwerp with her parents and her brother Is…

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…

On 16 October 1942, a deportation train left Westerbork for Auschwitz with a total of 1710 deportees. During a stop in Cosel, ±80 km west of Auschwitz, 570 "arbeitsfähige" (labor suitable) boys and men were forced to leave the train and were generally of the age group of ±15 to 50 years, in some individual cases something older.

Those who remained on the train to be transported to Auschwitz were, …