Eva, along with her younger brother Abraham, was soon deported to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, where both were murdered upon arrival. Eleven year-old Eva was denounced as a Jew in February 1944. They found collaborators willing to turn them in for payment. The Nazis, realizing that many Jewish children had been sent into hiding, intensified their search. She was known as Linni de Witt, and she attended school along with the other village children.

Eva and her younger brother were sent to the village of Ermelo, and a Christian family, willing to risk death to save them, was found. They felt that the children would be safer posing as non-Jews in a rural village. They were first taken to transit camps, and from there to death camps in Poland, where they were murdered.Įva's parents decided that the family would go into hiding. Beginning in mid-July 1942, the Germans began rounding up Holland's Jewish citizens. Many Jews were forced into restricted ghetto areas in July 1941, and after May 1942, all Jews had to wear the yellow star. But the Germans reacted brutally, and were able to break up most organized resistance. At first, the Dutch population resisted the anti-Jewish measures enacted by the Germans. The rich became poor and the middle class was reduced to subsistence levels. Beginning in October 1940, they liquidated Jewish businesses and banned Jews from most professions. When the Germans invaded, they immediately embarked upon steps to separate the Jews from the rest of the population. The Jews of the Netherlands were well-integrated into the general population and they were active in all aspects of the country's social, cultural and economic life. Eva's father was a high school teacher in the small city of Leeuwarden, in northern Holland. The subcamp complex of the Buchenwald concentration camp developed in similar ways to other subcamp systems in the. The collection guide for the David Enoch Beem Papers, 18211954 can be found here.Eva, the daughter of Hartog and Rosette Beem, was an eight year-old schoolgirl when the Germans invaded Holland in May 1940. David Beem’s letters have been digitized. David Beem’s wife is reading a letter sent just after the Battle of Gettysburg ended. Eva Beem was only 8 when she was sent to a labor camp. She looks like such a sweet innocent girl to us, but to them, they saw a brat, someone who was a threat, and someone they hated. Children were abused and starved, just like Eva Beem. You Are There 1863: Letter Home from Gettysburg will open Sept. They were equal to us, but treated like dirt. Sometimes our collections cause me to ask how we got to now. Larry Foster photographed the attendees at the final G.A.R. This brings me to the connection between two very different collections. Not only had they seen several wars, they also saw the rise of the automobile, airplane and atomic bombs. Imagine being one of the fellows who attended the last G.A.R. Those of us born in the 20th century often reflect on the tremendous change wrought by World War I, but that’s nothing compared to the changes seen by a large number of Civil War veterans. In fact, he died less than 40 years before I was born.

I enjoyed getting to know him and was glad as I read the letters to already know he survived the war. Beem was not someone to do things halfway. In a word, I think I might describe him as devoted. He also loved his wife and his friends deeply. I can imagine David Beem was a very precise person and had a well-developed sense of himself. The urgency comes through in the paper, the penmanship and his “voice.” Surely he knew the battle would be in the newspaper before she could get his note, and all he could do was communicate as quickly as possible.Ĭollections as large as Beem can really give an insight into the person behind those letters. Beem’s immediate concern was getting a message to his wife to let her know that he had survived. And the battle was not won by either side. With more than 20,000 killed or wounded, this is known as the bloodiest day in American military history. They had been given new identities with a Christian family. Indeed, he wrote this note just after the Battle of Antietam. Eva and Abraham Beem were Dutch Jewish siblings and victims of the Holocaust in the Netherlands. Unlike other letters, he did not identify his location at the top of the page. Written hastily after a “terrible battle,” it actually made my heart race. Reading it was really an experience, though. Beem generally wrote on stationery, so finding a letter written on a piece of torn out ledger page was odd. Reading a group of Civil War letters can be emotional and can leave a person feeling cold, tired, a little frightened and even a bit breathless at times. David Enoch Beem, I have returned to working on the Larry Foster Collection. After spending time fighting the Civil War with Capt.

Eva beem holocaust