My thoughts are with my grandfather Jan Verschure (1893, https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Verschure) who worked tirelessly to help people in need, those singled out by the German occupiers for persecution and acted with the few against oppression. Yet, he was betrayed, arrested in March 943, imprisoned in Vught, Sachsenhausen and in February 1945 transported to Bergen Belsen. He died there on 29 April 1945, 2 weeks after the liberation of this “world of a nightmare”. I spoke with Ed van Lambaart who took care of him in Barack 4, the isolation block of the prisoner camp and who placed him in one of the mass graves, dragging him from the prisoner camp. over the “Lagerstrasse” by straps attached to his arms. My grandmother with her 11 children, waiting in the Netherlands, still in the hope that he would return, and then their life-long question about what happened and why he had to die two weeks after the liberation of the camp. One family’s tragedy, in this endless swamp of death, inhumanity and indifference. We still do not know, but we are not giving up finding out and give meaning to the lives of these giants of righteousness and humanity, so they can guide us in becoming “Mensch”.

Never forget