Prof. Titus Brandsma Mijn cel en dagorde van een gevangene – the first publication of the daily diary written by Titus Brandsma in Scheveningen prison after being captured by the Gestapo, the diary is the last document published before he was murdered in Dachau. Published by W. BERGMANS -TILBURG . [Netherlands], 1945. The copy of the Jewish-Dutch Holocaust survivor, historian, and Nazi hunter Jules Schelvis – the only survivor of the 3005 people transported in transport 14 from Westerbork to the Sobibor extermination camp! With his signature on the page next to the title page.
Titus Brandsma was a Dutch monk, Catholic priest and professor of philosophy. Brandsma strongly opposed Nazi ideology and spoke out against it many times before World War II. He was imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp, where he was murdered. After the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940, they learned about the longtime struggle Brandsma had led over the years against the spread of Nazi ideology and for freedom. The Nazis looked for him, and on January 20, 1942 he was arrested. The book before us is the first publication of the diary pages written by Brandsma during the first week of his arrest before being taken to Dachau. Professor Brandsma was arrested on January 20, 1942 and put in cell 577. The next morning as he awaited interrogation in The Hague, the diary shows that he believed with all his heart that he would pass the interrogation safely and be released soon. He describes the conditions in the detention center, the meager food he received, and the morning roll call he underwent, as well as the ways in which he prepared for the SS interrogation. After being held captive in Scheveningen, Brandsma was transferred to Dachau concentration camp on June 19, 1942. His health deteriorated rapidly, and he was transferred to the camp hospital, where he was murdered on July 26, 1942 by a lethal injection from an SS nurse in the camp, as part of the Nazi medical experiments on prisoners’ bodies, his corpse was cremated a few days later. In 2005, Brandsma was chosen by the residents of Nijmegen as the most important citizen ever to have lived there.
Jules Schelvis [1921-2016] Jewish-Dutch Holocaust survivor, historian, writer, printer and historian. After the Germans occupied the Netherlands, Schelvis was fired from his job because he was Jewish. He then worked for various newspapers and participated in organizing a local youth movement. He and his family were arrested in Amsterdam on May 26, 1943. They were deported to the Westerbork transit camp, where they stayed for six days before being sent to the Sobibor extermination camp. They were among the 3,005 Dutch Jews in transport 14 to Sobibor. The journey took 4 days. Upon arrival at the camp, Schelvis was selected to join a work unit sent to the Dorohucza labor camp. The rest of his family and the Bożykowscy couple were sent to be killed in the gas chambers.
Schelvis was the only survivor of the 3,005 people transported in transport 14 from Westerbork to the Sobibor extermination camp (and one of only two Dutch Holocaust survivors from Sobibor alongside Selma Engel-Wijnberg). In Dorohucza, Jews from Poland and the Netherlands were forced to work under terrible conditions and hard labor. Schelvis managed to survive after meeting the camp commander, who happened to be aware that a nearby labor camp needed a printer. However, for unclear reasons, Schelvis was instead sent to a camp near Lublin, where he was forced to build barracks. From there he was transferred to the Radom ghetto, where he was tasked with reassembling a printing press that had been dismantled and brought from Warsaw. Conditions in Radom were significantly better than what Schelvis had experienced in Lublin and Dorohucza. As the Red Army approached, Schelvis was sent to Tomaszow Mazowiecki. From there he eventually arrived in the Stuttgart area, where he was liberated by the French army on April 8, 1945. Schelvis was a key prosecution witness during the trials of Karl Frenzel, John Demjanjuk and other war criminals who served at Sobibor. He founded the Sobibor Museum and is also the author of several books and historical studies on the camp. Schelvis holds an honored place thanks to his memoirs and historical research on Sobibor, for which he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Amsterdam, an officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau and the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. After the war Schelvis remained living in the Netherlands and died there on April 3, 2016 at the age of 95.
[1] 31 p. Stains on cover, adhesive paper reinforcement on the title page and the last page. Open tear on upper and lower part of title page without damage to text. Otherwise Good condition.