Four hundred Jews were arrested by the Nazi authorities in Amsterdam and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany, in retaliation for an explosion which took place in a house in Amsterdam used by the Nazis as a jamming station for foreign broadcasts to Holland, it is reported here today in the Vrij Nederland.
The report says that before the Jews were sent off to the camp, they were paraded in front of the Amsterdam synagogue and ordered to stand there for hours with their arms lifted. Many Jewish parents later received notification from the Nazi authorities stating that if they sent forty dollars they would receive urns containing the ashes of their sons.
The same report relates how a prominent Jewish doctor in Amsterdam was forced by the Nazis to bale out the water from a flooded cellar. The Nazis were not pleased with the manner in which the victim carried out their order and therefore punished him by forcing him to stand with outstretched arms in ice cold water to which ice was added at intervals. This “arctic footbath” is now one of the most frequently used punishments imposed upon Jews by the Nazis.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
