#StolenMemory: The new ITS campaign

Originally Titia Vuyk was only researching her grandfather’s path of persecution. But then the ITS told her that his engagement ring, pocket watch and a fountain pen were preserved in the archive. The ring is inscribed with a date: October 12, 1930. “My grandparents got married two years later,” Titia Vuyk says. The inscription also includes the name Anske. “That was my grandfather’s nickname for his wife, and later my mother was given that name.” Anske can still remember the watch. “We used to go hiking on Sundays and collect different kinds of grass and plants, which we took home to dry,” she explains. “I can still remember exactly how my father used to pull the watch out of his pocket.” He was a friendly and downright poetic person who played the violin and wrote poems. After he circulated an anti-war petition, the Nazis arrested him in 1942. He died in 1945, shortly after the liberation, as a result of hard physical labor and the conditions of imprisonment in various concentration camps. The family plans to consider carefully how best to keep these possessions in the future. “This is a historical day for us, and a very emotional one.” (The three siblings Anske (84), Marieke (80) and Jan (76) Bosdriesz sit side by side, contemplatively looking through their father’s few possessions. Photo: ITS)

It is something that Mirosław Woźniewicz had not expected: 73 years after his father, Stanisław Woźniewicz, was arrested and later deported to Neuengamme, his father’s personal belongings were returned to him. He carefully picked up the comb, a tie, a wallet and papers. “I was very surprised to get a phone call from the ITS. I have the feeling my father steered this from heaven,” says Woźniewicz, who was visited by an ITS employee and a Polish TV station when the objects were returned. “I am very happy about the fact that all Poland is learning about my father, because he was a very special person.” He suspects that the Germans arrested his father for being a Polish patriot. After returning home, he rarely talked about the war. This makes the objects that the family unexpectedly received from this time all the more important. “They should have a special place,” Woźniewicz says. “His personal belongings are of immense value to my family.” (Personal belongings of Stanislaw Wozniewicz, Photo: ITS)

Nicole van Winkoop-Schleicher and Monique Buitenhuis-Schleicher never knew their grandfather, Johan Pieter Mackenbach. They were therefore all the more surprised when they were asked on Facebook whether they were his descendants. They then saw photos of their grandfather’s personal belongings in the online archive of the ITS: a signet ring, a wedding ring, a pocket watch and a ballpoint pen. “It was important to us to pick up the objects in person,” Buitenhuis-Schleicher explains. Furthermore, up until then they had only known that their grandfather was in the resistance, but not when or where the Germans had arrested him. According to the documents, he was imprisoned in the Amersfoort transit camp in 1944, deported to Neuengamme in 1945 and then forced to work in the Wöbbelin satellite camp. The Dutchman survived the liberation by only a few days: he died on May 15, 1945. “There are no words to describe what it means to us to receive his personal belongings and see the documents,” says Nicole van Winkoop-Schleicher, who, like her sister, had hardly any information about her grandfather. (The sisters Nicole van Winkoop-Schleicher and Monique Buitenhuis-Schleicher. Photo: ITS)

When the Nazis arrested Wanda Różycka-Bilnik’s father in 1943, she was four years old – and she would never see him again. Now almost 80, she still remembers how she and her sister cried and screamed. “If the Gestapo had known we were hiding a wounded partisan at the time, they’d have set the whole house on fire.” Czesław Bilnik was a member of the Polish Home Army who was deported to the Gross-Rosen and Neuengamme concentration camps and died just before the liberation in the tragic bombing of the Cap Arcona in the Bay of Lübeck. His daughter was finally able to retrieve his pocket watch from the ITS. She brought with her two letters her father had written before he died. “My mother watched over these letters like relics,” she says. “After National Socialism, we were persecuted by the Communists. We were dispossessed. Nothing else remained of my father.” The silver pocket watch is all the more meaningful to Różycka-Bilnik: “I’m never going to part with it again. I might even take it with me to my grave.” (Wanda Różycka-Bilnik retrieve her father’s pocket watch from the ITS in July 2017. Photo: ITS)

As a railroad worker and member of the resistance, Gustave Oeyen had passed on information about German troop movements until he was betrayed and deported by the Nazis to Neuengamme – two weeks prior to the birth of his first child. “Every day my mother showed the baby, my sister, a photograph of our father so that she would recognize him when he came home,” recalls Jean-Marie Oeyen, who was born later. After a surprising call from the ITS, he reclaimed his father’s wedding ring and wristwatch to bring them to his sister – a moving moment: “I never thought this would be so emotional for me.” When his father was found in 1945, he weighed just 85 pounds, but after many weeks in a hospital, returned to his wife and daughter. He died in 1974 of the long-term consequences of imprisonment and abuse. His son remembers that he was brave and tolerant: “My mother never wanted to meet our German friends. I understood that. But my father never felt hatred towards Germans. To this day, he’s a shining example of tolerance.” (Gustave Oeyen with his wife and his daughter - August 1945. Photo: Private)

78 years after the Stutthof concentration camp opened near Gdansk, the ITS was able to return the personal belongings of former prisoner Zygmunt Boboli to his granddaughter. Working together with the Stutthof Memorial, the ITS was able to track down the woman; a Polish TV station followed the research. After just a few days in Stutthof, Zygmunt Boboli was transferred in 1944 to Neuengamme, and from there to the Watenstedt satellite camp, where he had to work in grenade production. He also survived the Ravensbrück concentration camp. "Trembling and emaciated, he returned home to his family on the shoulders of a colleague," reports his granddaughter Ewa Sioda. "He was very ill and needed years to recover. He never wanted to talk about wartime.” Ewa Sioda views the pocket watch, which has now been returned to the family, as tangible proof of the time. "My grandfather had it with him until the end – a memory that we will pass on through the generations.” (Zygmunt Boboli's family. Photo: ITS)