Samuel Holländer

Samuel was born in Berlin as the son of Anny and James Holländer. Horrified by the events of the Kristallnacht, Anny and James decided to seek a safer place for their children and three weeks after Samuel’s birth Anny left with him for the Netherlands. They lived in Den Haag and Leeuwarden until July 1942, when Anny decided to join her husband who was a prisoner in the Police transit camp in Westerbork in the Northeastern part of the Netherlands. They stayed in Westerbork until February 1944, when Samuel, along with his family, was sent to Bergen Belsen. Diseases spread around the camp and Samuel was infected with Typhoid.
On 10th of April 1945, five days before Bergen Belsen was liberated by the British, Samuel and his family, along with 2500 prisoners, were ordered to board a train. Destination: Theresienstadt. The journey continued for days. The train had to change route due to allied bombing until its final stop outside the village of Tröbitz in Brandenburg.
On the 23rd of April, Soviet soldiers freed the train. Of the prisoners, 198 were already dead, from malnutrition and disease, and 320 additional people would die due to exhaustion and disease.
After two months in Tröbitz, American soldiers transported Anny and the children along with the rest of the surviving Jews to Maastricht, the Netherlands. Samuel was ill and was taken to the hospital. After 7 days, on the 4th of July 1945, he died. He was 6 years old.