Kamp Vught - Visit 26 March 2023 - A fact-finding trip
My father, Johannes Kuilman (Herwen en Aerdt, 25 November 1905 - Amsterdam, 19 Febr. 1982), was a (political) prisoner of the camp. Unfortunately, he never communicated of the experience and I never asked. So a kind of mystery remained over the years in the war. Some evidence pointed to an 'unloyal' behaviour (cartoon of Hitler) during his job as a tax-collector in Amsterdam. Subsequent punishment (in a meeting with Lages, see below) resulted in his imprisonment. These events must have happened in the later part of the year 1943. My fathers actual imprisonment in Vught lasted from 6 - 29 January 1944.
The so-called Bunker tragedy happened in the night of 15th - 16th January 1944 at concentration camp Vught in the Netherlands.
In that night 74 women were held for 14 hours in 1 cell. 10 women died. My father never mentioned this event, although he was inmate at the time.
---
SS-Sturmbannführer Adam Grünewald was in charge at that time, following SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Chmielewski who was in charge from January 1943 .
My father was released three weeks later due to the generous act of a lady (we don't know her name, but it could have been Truus Wijsmuller?) who had saved a German soldier from drowning in a canal (Nassaukade?). As gratitude, she was granted a favour by the German authorities for the release of a random prisoner. Somebody overheared this curious conversation in a bakery shop in Amsterdam Oost and suggested my father. So he was released from Camp Vught - as one of the very few. He never mentioned the Bunker tragedy.
The near absolute silence of my father about this story (and other war stories for that matter) is still puzzling. It must have been a life-treatening and morally damaging event.
---
Ferdinand Hugo (Ferdy) aus der Fünten (Mülheim an der Ruhr, 17 december 1909 – Duisburg, 19 april 1989) was een ter dood veroordeelde Duitse oorlogsmisdadiger die tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog de feitelijke leiding gaf aan de deportatie van tienduizenden Joden, met name vanuit Amsterdam. Tevens was hij betrokken bij talrijke razzia's. Hij behoorde tot de Vier van Breda, nadien tot de Drie van Breda en uiteindelijk tot de Twee van Breda. Hij zat na gratie een levenslange gevangenisstraf uit voor oorlogsmisdaden en werd in januari 1989 vrijgelaten.
---
Truus Wijsmuller Geertruida (Truus) Wijsmuller-Meijer (Alkmaar, 21 april 1896 – Amsterdam, 30 augustus 1978) was een Nederlandse verzetsvrouw die voor en in de Tweede Wereldoorlog Joodse kinderen en volwassenen in veiligheid bracht. Ze ontving van Yad Vashem de onderscheiding Rechtvaardige onder de Volkeren. Samen met anderen die voor het vooroorlogse Kindertransport werkten, heeft ze de levens van meer dan 10.000 Joodse kinderen, op de vlucht voor antisemitisme, gered.
---
Kamp Vught (officieel Duits: Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch) was een van de drie Duitse concentratiekampen in Nederland tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog. De andere twee zijn de doorgangskampen Amersfoort en Westerbork. Kamp Vught bevond zich in de Noord-Brabantse plaats Vught nabij de recreatieplas de IJzeren Man. Het heeft ruim anderhalf jaar als concentratiekamp gefunctioneerd.
De bouw van het kamp werd in 1942 gestart, naar model van Konzentrationslager in nazi-Duitsland en in door dat land geannexeerde gebieden, omdat Kamp Westerbork en Kamp Amersfoort niet genoeg capaciteit meer hadden. Het Duitse Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt (WVHA), de economische poot van de SS in Berlijn gaf daartoe de opdracht. Het WVHA haalde zijn inkomsten door kampgevangenen te werk te stellen bij bedrijfsvestigingen vlak bij de kampen. De bouw werd gefinancierd door Liro, de Duitse roofbank waarin de tegoeden van gedeporteerde Nederlandse Joden waren ondergebracht. Toen de eerste gevangenen uit kamp Amersfoort aankwamen, was het kamp nog niet klaar. De gevangenen moesten het zelf afbouwen. Er werd om het kamp door de gevangenen een gracht gegraven en om de 100 meter een wachttoren gebouwd. Het kamp was 1 kilometer lang en 350 meter breed. De nominale maximale capaciteit van het kamp bedroeg 15.000 mensen.
Organisatie en leiding
Kamp Vught stond onder beheer van de SS, in tegenstelling tot de andere Nederlandse kampen (waar overigens vaak wel SS'ers werkten, zoals in Kamp Amersfoort). De ligging was mede bepaald door de nabijheid van 's-Hertogenbosch, reden waarom het kamp door de Duitsers werd aangeduid als Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch. In 's-Hertogenbosch bevond zich een aantal landelijke Duitse instellingen, terwijl het kamp ook nabij goede wegen en spoorwegen lag. Het kamp moest als 'modelkamp' dienen en is qua opzet, uitvoering en grootte te vergelijken met concentratiekamp Dachau. De wachttorens langs het met dubbele prikkeldraad omheinde kamp werden de klok rond met merendeel Nederlandse SS'ers bemand.
Het kamp had tijdens de oorlog drie commandanten:
SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Chmielewski vanaf januari 1943 tijdens de eerste maanden van het kamp (see below)
SS-Sturmbannführer Adam Grünewald van oktober 1943 tot januari 1944
SS-Sturmbannführer Hans Hüttig van februari 1944 tot de sluiting van het kamp
Gevangenen
In totaal werden er ruim 31.000 mensen in het kamp gedetineerd waaronder 12.000 Joden en verder politieke gevangenen, Roma en Sinti, verzetsstrijders, Jehova's getuigen, homoseksuelen, zwervers, criminelen en zwarthandelaren. Gevangenen waren onderverdeeld in verschillende kamponderdelen:
Schutzhaftlager
Judendurchgangslager
Studentenlager
Geisellager
Frauenkonzentrationslager
Polizeiliches Durchgangslager
In het kamp zelf zijn zeker 735 mensen om het leven gekomen, onder wie 36 Belgen. Het aantal sterfgevallen in Kamp Vught lag veel lager dan in de kampen in Duitsland, namelijk 749 in totaal, door allerlei oorzaken, omgerekend ongeveer een op vijftig gevangenen. In Dachau was dit op een totaal van 200.000 gevangenen ruim 40.000, dus een op de vijf. Vanuit Vught werden echter onder meer 15.000 Joden gedeporteerd, van wie bijna niemand de oorlog overleefde.
Enkele gevangenen, onder wie David Koker, Klaartje de Zwarte-Walvisch en Helga Deen hielden een kampdagboek bij dat bewaard is gebleven. Ze zijn alle drie omgekomen na transport naar andere concentratiekampen.
---
Karl Chmielewski (16 July 1903 – 1 December 1991) was a German SS officer and concentration camp commandant. Such was his cruelty, he was dubbed Teufel von Gusen or the Devil of Gusen.
Chmielewski joined the SS whilst unemployed in 1932 and joined the Nazi Party the following year. After initially serving in the office of Heinrich Himmler, he was transferred to the Columbia concentration camp in 1935, before moving to Sachsenhausen concentration camp the following year. He was promoted to Untersturmführer in 1938 and attached to the Schutzhaftlagerführung"", the 'Protective custody' units of the SS-Totenkopfverbände.
From 1940 to 1942 Chmielewski, by then a Hauptsturmführer, served as Schutzhaftlagerführer at Gusen concentration camp, and it was there that he developed a reputation for extreme brutality. He then became commandant of the newly established Herzogenbusch concentration camp in the Netherlands, where he further developed a reputation for cruelty.
Amongst the claims made against him was that during inspections he ordered the drowning of prisoners in buckets of water. Fellow camp commandant Franz Ziereis claimed after the war that Chmielewski had used the skin of prisoners to make things such as wallets and book bindings, something Ziereis claimed was strictly forbidden by the Nazi authorities.
During his reign at Herzogenbusch, Chmielewski gained a reputation for corruption, and he was eventually tried for personally enriching himself through stealing diamonds from prisoners. He was deprived of his position and rank in 1943, being succeeded as commandant by Adam Grünewald. In 1944, an SS court sentenced Chmielewski to 15 years in prison for rape and embezzlement. He spent the rest of the war as an inmate at Dachau concentration camp.
Chmielewski disappeared into Austria after the war. By 1953, he was back in Germany, under an assumed identity, where he had taken up farming. He was tried in that year for perjury, fraud and bigamy, and sentenced to a year in prison. After his real identity was established, he was arrested by West German police in January 1959, accused of nearly two hundred counts of murder. At his trial in 1961, he was found guilty of causing the deaths of prisoners through his brutality, and was sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour. The court pronounced him a sadist who took pleasure in killing prisoners, whom he did not see as human, by scalding them with boiling water.
He was released from prison in March 1979, on mental health grounds, and spent his last years in a care institution at Chiemsee.
---
Adam Grünewald (20 October 1902 – 22 January 1945) was a German Schutzstaffel officer and Nazi concentration camp commandant.
The son of a carpenter who died when he was 8, Grünewald apprenticed as a baker but found work difficult to come by when the First World War ended and the demobilised soldiers entered the labour market. Attracted to the nationalist propaganda prevalent at the time Grünewald joined the Freikorps before signing on with the army for a 12-year stint. Leaving the army as a staff sergeant in April 1931 Grünewald again struggled to find employment and so joined the Sturmabteilung. He rose to the rank of Obersturmbannführer in the SA before switching to the SS shortly after the Night of the Long Knives.
In 1943, Grünewald succeeded Karl Chmielewski as commandant of Herzogenbusch concentration camp (aka Kamp Vught). However, like his predecessor he was also removed. He was found guilty of excessive cruelty to prisoners for his role in the Bunker Tragedy in January 1944. Grünewald was investigated by SS judge Georg Konrad Morgen. Oswald Pohl, the head administrator of the Nazi concentration camp system, told Morgen not to bother with a court-martial, saying the lives of the women were meaningless in comparison to the many German women who had died in Allied bombing raids. However, Morgen proceeded with his investigation, which Pohl unsuccessfully attempted to block. Part of the reason Morgen was allowed to continue the investigation was that the incident was linked to the Dutch public. The regime figured that punishing Grünewald would most likely soften public anger over the incident.
Before the court-martial reached its verdict, it decided to define the limits of "disciplinary authority" of camp commanders. "In the case the situation required it", camp commandants were authorized to carry out the punishments that "may significantly harm physical well-being." Under those circumstances, such punishments were legal and "can never be punished as abuse." However, in Grünewald's case, they said he went too far.
"The disciplinary measures led to the health damage that exceeded the legalized scope. A detention of a big number of prisoners in one cell with extraction of possibility to seat and sleep might still be seen as a measure that is necessary under certain circumstances. However, if the punished prisoner is not physically able to take the punishment without suffering a significant health damage then it exceeds the permitted measure."
Grünewald was found guilty of 10 counts of manslaughter and sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for 10 counts of manslaughter.[ He was spared a harsher sentence on the grounds of his military service and the court accepting his claim that he "didn't wish for the death of ten women." The court found that his crimes "did not come in the slightest out of dishonorable motives."
In March 1944, after serving nearly a month in prison, Grünewald was pardoned, but stripped of his rank and ordered to fight on the Eastern Front as a common soldier. He finished the war with the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf and died during a German counteroffensive in the siege of Budapest. His final rank was SS-Sturmbannführer.
---
Kamp Vught - Visit 26 March 2023 - A fact-finding trip
My father, Johannes Kuilman (Herwen en Aerdt, 25 November 1905 - Amsterdam, 19 Febr. 1982), was a (political) prisoner of the camp. Unfortunately, he never communicated of the experience and I never asked. So a kind of mystery remained over the years in the war. Some evidence pointed to an 'unloyal' behaviour (cartoon of Hitler) during his job as a tax-collector in Amsterdam. Subsequent punishment (in a meeting with Lages, see below) resulted in his imprisonment. These events must have happened in the later part of the year 1943. My fathers actual imprisonment in Vught lasted from 6 - 29 January 1944.
The so-called Bunker tragedy happened in the night of 15th - 16th January 1944 at concentration camp Vught in the Netherlands.
In that night 74 women were held for 14 hours in 1 cell. 10 women died. My father never mentioned this event, although he was inmate at the time.
---
SS-Sturmbannführer Adam Grünewald was in charge at that time, following SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Chmielewski who was in charge from January 1943 .
My father was released three weeks later due to the generous act of a lady (we don't know her name, but it could have been Truus Wijsmuller?) who had saved a German soldier from drowning in a canal (Nassaukade?). As gratitude, she was granted a favour by the German authorities for the release of a random prisoner. Somebody overheared this curious conversation in a bakery shop in Amsterdam Oost and suggested my father. So he was released from Camp Vught - as one of the very few. He never mentioned the Bunker tragedy.
The near absolute silence of my father about this story (and other war stories for that matter) is still puzzling. It must have been a life-treatening and morally damaging event.
---
Ferdinand Hugo (Ferdy) aus der Fünten (Mülheim an der Ruhr, 17 december 1909 – Duisburg, 19 april 1989) was een ter dood veroordeelde Duitse oorlogsmisdadiger die tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog de feitelijke leiding gaf aan de deportatie van tienduizenden Joden, met name vanuit Amsterdam. Tevens was hij betrokken bij talrijke razzia's. Hij behoorde tot de Vier van Breda, nadien tot de Drie van Breda en uiteindelijk tot de Twee van Breda. Hij zat na gratie een levenslange gevangenisstraf uit voor oorlogsmisdaden en werd in januari 1989 vrijgelaten.
---
Truus Wijsmuller Geertruida (Truus) Wijsmuller-Meijer (Alkmaar, 21 april 1896 – Amsterdam, 30 augustus 1978) was een Nederlandse verzetsvrouw die voor en in de Tweede Wereldoorlog Joodse kinderen en volwassenen in veiligheid bracht. Ze ontving van Yad Vashem de onderscheiding Rechtvaardige onder de Volkeren. Samen met anderen die voor het vooroorlogse Kindertransport werkten, heeft ze de levens van meer dan 10.000 Joodse kinderen, op de vlucht voor antisemitisme, gered.
---
Kamp Vught (officieel Duits: Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch) was een van de drie Duitse concentratiekampen in Nederland tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog. De andere twee zijn de doorgangskampen Amersfoort en Westerbork. Kamp Vught bevond zich in de Noord-Brabantse plaats Vught nabij de recreatieplas de IJzeren Man. Het heeft ruim anderhalf jaar als concentratiekamp gefunctioneerd.
De bouw van het kamp werd in 1942 gestart, naar model van Konzentrationslager in nazi-Duitsland en in door dat land geannexeerde gebieden, omdat Kamp Westerbork en Kamp Amersfoort niet genoeg capaciteit meer hadden. Het Duitse Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt (WVHA), de economische poot van de SS in Berlijn gaf daartoe de opdracht. Het WVHA haalde zijn inkomsten door kampgevangenen te werk te stellen bij bedrijfsvestigingen vlak bij de kampen. De bouw werd gefinancierd door Liro, de Duitse roofbank waarin de tegoeden van gedeporteerde Nederlandse Joden waren ondergebracht. Toen de eerste gevangenen uit kamp Amersfoort aankwamen, was het kamp nog niet klaar. De gevangenen moesten het zelf afbouwen. Er werd om het kamp door de gevangenen een gracht gegraven en om de 100 meter een wachttoren gebouwd. Het kamp was 1 kilometer lang en 350 meter breed. De nominale maximale capaciteit van het kamp bedroeg 15.000 mensen.
Organisatie en leiding
Kamp Vught stond onder beheer van de SS, in tegenstelling tot de andere Nederlandse kampen (waar overigens vaak wel SS'ers werkten, zoals in Kamp Amersfoort). De ligging was mede bepaald door de nabijheid van 's-Hertogenbosch, reden waarom het kamp door de Duitsers werd aangeduid als Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch. In 's-Hertogenbosch bevond zich een aantal landelijke Duitse instellingen, terwijl het kamp ook nabij goede wegen en spoorwegen lag. Het kamp moest als 'modelkamp' dienen en is qua opzet, uitvoering en grootte te vergelijken met concentratiekamp Dachau. De wachttorens langs het met dubbele prikkeldraad omheinde kamp werden de klok rond met merendeel Nederlandse SS'ers bemand.
Het kamp had tijdens de oorlog drie commandanten:
SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Chmielewski vanaf januari 1943 tijdens de eerste maanden van het kamp (see below)
SS-Sturmbannführer Adam Grünewald van oktober 1943 tot januari 1944
SS-Sturmbannführer Hans Hüttig van februari 1944 tot de sluiting van het kamp
Gevangenen
In totaal werden er ruim 31.000 mensen in het kamp gedetineerd waaronder 12.000 Joden en verder politieke gevangenen, Roma en Sinti, verzetsstrijders, Jehova's getuigen, homoseksuelen, zwervers, criminelen en zwarthandelaren. Gevangenen waren onderverdeeld in verschillende kamponderdelen:
Schutzhaftlager
Judendurchgangslager
Studentenlager
Geisellager
Frauenkonzentrationslager
Polizeiliches Durchgangslager
In het kamp zelf zijn zeker 735 mensen om het leven gekomen, onder wie 36 Belgen. Het aantal sterfgevallen in Kamp Vught lag veel lager dan in de kampen in Duitsland, namelijk 749 in totaal, door allerlei oorzaken, omgerekend ongeveer een op vijftig gevangenen. In Dachau was dit op een totaal van 200.000 gevangenen ruim 40.000, dus een op de vijf. Vanuit Vught werden echter onder meer 15.000 Joden gedeporteerd, van wie bijna niemand de oorlog overleefde.
Enkele gevangenen, onder wie David Koker, Klaartje de Zwarte-Walvisch en Helga Deen hielden een kampdagboek bij dat bewaard is gebleven. Ze zijn alle drie omgekomen na transport naar andere concentratiekampen.
---
Karl Chmielewski (16 July 1903 – 1 December 1991) was a German SS officer and concentration camp commandant. Such was his cruelty, he was dubbed Teufel von Gusen or the Devil of Gusen.
Chmielewski joined the SS whilst unemployed in 1932 and joined the Nazi Party the following year. After initially serving in the office of Heinrich Himmler, he was transferred to the Columbia concentration camp in 1935, before moving to Sachsenhausen concentration camp the following year. He was promoted to Untersturmführer in 1938 and attached to the Schutzhaftlagerführung"", the 'Protective custody' units of the SS-Totenkopfverbände.
From 1940 to 1942 Chmielewski, by then a Hauptsturmführer, served as Schutzhaftlagerführer at Gusen concentration camp, and it was there that he developed a reputation for extreme brutality. He then became commandant of the newly established Herzogenbusch concentration camp in the Netherlands, where he further developed a reputation for cruelty.
Amongst the claims made against him was that during inspections he ordered the drowning of prisoners in buckets of water. Fellow camp commandant Franz Ziereis claimed after the war that Chmielewski had used the skin of prisoners to make things such as wallets and book bindings, something Ziereis claimed was strictly forbidden by the Nazi authorities.
During his reign at Herzogenbusch, Chmielewski gained a reputation for corruption, and he was eventually tried for personally enriching himself through stealing diamonds from prisoners. He was deprived of his position and rank in 1943, being succeeded as commandant by Adam Grünewald. In 1944, an SS court sentenced Chmielewski to 15 years in prison for rape and embezzlement. He spent the rest of the war as an inmate at Dachau concentration camp.
Chmielewski disappeared into Austria after the war. By 1953, he was back in Germany, under an assumed identity, where he had taken up farming. He was tried in that year for perjury, fraud and bigamy, and sentenced to a year in prison. After his real identity was established, he was arrested by West German police in January 1959, accused of nearly two hundred counts of murder. At his trial in 1961, he was found guilty of causing the deaths of prisoners through his brutality, and was sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour. The court pronounced him a sadist who took pleasure in killing prisoners, whom he did not see as human, by scalding them with boiling water.
He was released from prison in March 1979, on mental health grounds, and spent his last years in a care institution at Chiemsee.
---
Adam Grünewald (20 October 1902 – 22 January 1945) was a German Schutzstaffel officer and Nazi concentration camp commandant.
The son of a carpenter who died when he was 8, Grünewald apprenticed as a baker but found work difficult to come by when the First World War ended and the demobilised soldiers entered the labour market. Attracted to the nationalist propaganda prevalent at the time Grünewald joined the Freikorps before signing on with the army for a 12-year stint. Leaving the army as a staff sergeant in April 1931 Grünewald again struggled to find employment and so joined the Sturmabteilung. He rose to the rank of Obersturmbannführer in the SA before switching to the SS shortly after the Night of the Long Knives.
In 1943, Grünewald succeeded Karl Chmielewski as commandant of Herzogenbusch concentration camp (aka Kamp Vught). However, like his predecessor he was also removed. He was found guilty of excessive cruelty to prisoners for his role in the Bunker Tragedy in January 1944. Grünewald was investigated by SS judge Georg Konrad Morgen. Oswald Pohl, the head administrator of the Nazi concentration camp system, told Morgen not to bother with a court-martial, saying the lives of the women were meaningless in comparison to the many German women who had died in Allied bombing raids. However, Morgen proceeded with his investigation, which Pohl unsuccessfully attempted to block. Part of the reason Morgen was allowed to continue the investigation was that the incident was linked to the Dutch public. The regime figured that punishing Grünewald would most likely soften public anger over the incident.
Before the court-martial reached its verdict, it decided to define the limits of "disciplinary authority" of camp commanders. "In the case the situation required it", camp commandants were authorized to carry out the punishments that "may significantly harm physical well-being." Under those circumstances, such punishments were legal and "can never be punished as abuse." However, in Grünewald's case, they said he went too far.
"The disciplinary measures led to the health damage that exceeded the legalized scope. A detention of a big number of prisoners in one cell with extraction of possibility to seat and sleep might still be seen as a measure that is necessary under certain circumstances. However, if the punished prisoner is not physically able to take the punishment without suffering a significant health damage then it exceeds the permitted measure."
Grünewald was found guilty of 10 counts of manslaughter and sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for 10 counts of manslaughter.[ He was spared a harsher sentence on the grounds of his military service and the court accepting his claim that he "didn't wish for the death of ten women." The court found that his crimes "did not come in the slightest out of dishonorable motives."
In March 1944, after serving nearly a month in prison, Grünewald was pardoned, but stripped of his rank and ordered to fight on the Eastern Front as a common soldier. He finished the war with the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf and died during a German counteroffensive in the siege of Budapest. His final rank was SS-Sturmbannführer.
---