Eddy Boas (M / Netherlands, 1940), Holocaust survivor

Eddy Boas (M / Netherlands, 1940), Holocaust survivor

• KEYWORDS : <Westerbork> <Bergen-Belsen> <Troebitz Train> | <Australia>

• MEMOIRS : I'm not a Victim, I'm a Survivor (2019)

Biography

• [ wiki.en] -- wiki.it

Born in The Hague, Holland, in 1940, Boas was just three months old when the Nazis invaded and three years old when his family was rounded up and sent to Hollands Spoor train station. From there, he was loaded into a cattle wagon with his mother Sara, his father Philip, and his older brother Samuel. They were deported to Westerbork concentration camp, and taken from there to Bergen-Belsen. They were kept in Star Camp along with 6,000 other prisoners who had been designated for possible exchange with German prisoners of war.

Book : I'm not a Victim, I'm a Survivor (2019)

This book tells the story of how the author, his father, mother and brother survived the Holocaust intact, as a family of four. Eddy was born 26 January 1940 in The Hague, Netherlands (Holland) both parents were Jewish. Three months and 15 days later Nazi Germany invaded Holland. The odds of Eddy surviving were 6000,000/1. Both parents families had lived in Holland since the 1700's. Since 1926 his father, Philip ,was a conscript in the Dutch army and fought the Germans at the Grebbeberg, in central Holland. When on 15 May 1940, Holland surrendered. Both Eddy's father and mother's families were hard working people, paid their taxes, had both Jewish and non Jewish friends. After the German occupation, Jews were rounded up off the streets and from their homes. The Dutch Census Bureau handed the full 1939/1940 Census to the Nazis: showing where 120,000 Dutch Jews were living. Dutch police accepted rewards for rounding up Jews and citizen groups betrayed Jews for money. Serving his country of birth in war and his ancestors having lived in Holland for over 200 years, Philip would have been entitled to believe that he would be treated as a Dutchman. However suddenly he was no longer a Dutchman.......he was a Jew! Between May 1940 and September 1943 the family managed to keep out of the hands of the Nazis. On the night of 28 September 1943 their time was up a Dutch Nazi and a German soldier broke down their front door they were forced out of their second floor flat onto the streets and into an army truck. Philip was 37, Suze 32, his brother called Boy, was just 8 and Eddy was 3 yrs 8 months old. All four were taken by Dutch Railways to Kamp Westerbork in north east Holland. From there, on 1 February 1944 the family was forced onto a train to concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. Philip was given the job with a horse and cart, of collecting dead bodies which were lying around the camp this gave him the opportunity to steal extra food, the Germans fed horses better than Jews. After 14 months, on 9 April 1945 they were again forced onto a train, destination Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. The train, became known as the Lost Train. After 14 days on the train with no food or water, the Russian army liberated the 2400 prisoners. It would take another 52 days before the family managed to return to Holland, on 13 June 1945. Of the 107,000 Dutch Jews deported to concentration camps only 5000 survived. The Dutch Bureaucracy had no sympathy and offered no help to the 5000 surviving Dutch Jews. When Philip and Suze went to reclaim their flat and their belongings, the new occupiers refused them entry, neither the police or the Hague City Council offered any assistance. The family had nowhere to live. With no money or income, no home, no relatives-all murdered, the Boas family had to start their life all over again. According to Red Cross and Yad Vashem records, Eddy’s family was remarkable - this family of four entered Bergen-Belsen concentration camp together and uniquely, emerged an intact family unit. Despite this, their lives would never be the same again. Philip passed away in 1948. Wanting to put the horrors of the Holocaust behind her Suze decided to immigrate, with her children, to Australia, to start a new life. They arrived in March 1954 and Eddy started school. In November 1955, at 15 years, he took his first job, to help his mother, to pay for food and rent. Over the next 35 years he had various jobs as a salesman. In 1989 he was offered job in New Jersey and living in New York, with a direct Marketing company owned by IMS Inc., a subsidiary of Dun and Bradstreet. This gave him an opportunity to set him self up for the rest of his life, returning to Australia in 1993. It’s these early and later events that make for a challenging, moving and ultimately, uplifting read. In trying to understand what his life has brought and what it means, Eddy can truly say: I’M NOT A VICTIM I AM A SURVIVOR.

Sydney Jewish Museum

“We are the only family that went into the camps together and came out together” says Eddy Boas, one of the youngest Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and author of I’m Not A Victim, I Am A Survivor.

Born in The Hague, Holland in 1940, Eddy was three months old when the Nazis invaded and three years old when his family was rounded up and sent to Holland’s Spoor train station. From there he was loaded into a cattle wagon with his mother Sara, his father Philip and older brother Samuel. They were deported to Westerbork concentration camp where they were kept in the largest barrack.

In 1944 the family was transported in a cattle wagon to Bergen-Belsen. They were kept in Star Camp along with 6,000 other prisoners who had been designated for possible exchange with German prisoners of war. Philip was selected to care for the horses in the camp and to move the bodies of deceased prisoners. “That gave him an opportunity to steal food from the horses and give it to us” Eddy explains. “My brother would follow him around the camp as he was picking up bodies. My brother would crawl through the crowd and my father would drop a potato or a turnip and a carrot onto the ground and my brother would pick them up, crawl back and run to my mother. That is part of why we survived, because food in Bergen-Belsen was very scarce.”

On 8 April 1945 as the British advanced, the Star Camp prisoners were divided into three groups and were loaded onto trains bound for Theresienstad. The train with Eddy’s family was forced to take a long, tortuous route back and forth between the Russian and German front lines due to Allied bombing and became known as ‘the lost transport’.

The train was eventually liberated by the Red Army near the German village of Troebitz.

Finally after many years of further trauma, the family arrived in Australia in 1954.