On the occasion of International Holocaust Day - the children of the tags: Leah Yehudit Delpaniya, Dedi Zak, Annie Caper, the child David Yehuda. Yoram Chaimi, archaeologist of the Antiquities Authority: "I have been digging at the site for ten years, and on this day I broke down."
Chilling evidence from the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland: personal identification tags, made of metal, of four children aged 5-11 from Amsterdam in the Netherlands, were uncovered during archaeological excavations conducted in the camp. The tags - from the metal pendants that the children wore around their necks, bore their names, their date of birth and the name of the city they came from. The extraordinary archaeological dig, which is being conducted before the construction of the new visitor center in the camp, is being managed by the team of archaeologists Wojciech Mazurek from Poland, Yoram Chaimi from the Antiquities Authority and Ivar Schute from the Netherlands, with the help of local residents.
The names of the children whose tags were found are Leah Yehudit Delpania, Dedi Zak, Annie Caper, and the late David Yehuda.
According to the archaeologist of the Antiquities Authority, Yoram Chaimi, "As far as we know, pendants with children's names were found only in the Sobibor camp, and they are not known from any other site. It is interesting to see that the labels are different from each other, so it seems that this is not an organized initiative, but rather a private initiative of parents, who prepared an identification label for their children. It is likely The parents wanted to make sure that their loved ones could be located in the chaos of World War II. The metal tags of Leah, Daddy, Annie and David, allowed us to connect a face and a story to the names, which until today were an anonymous line in the Nazi records. The archaeological dig gives us an opportunity to tell the story of the victims and honor their memory," he says. In order to obtain details about the children, the researchers contacted the Camp Westerbork center, which during the Holocaust served as a concentration camp for Jews deported from the Netherlands to Eastern Europe, and today - serves as a visitor and memorial center. "I've been digging in Sobibor for ten years," says Chaimi, "and that was my hardest day. We stood with the discs in the field, near the crematoria, called the center, and gave them the names. The response was immediate. We received pictures of soft, smiling children on the phone. The hardest, I heard that one of the children whose tag we held in our hand, arrived in Sobibor in a shipment of 8-4 year old children, who were sent here to die alone. I looked at the pictures And I asked myself - how can someone be so cruel?"
Below are the children's names, their photos and their tags:
De La Penha Lea Judith, 6 years old at her death:
Deddie Zak, 8 years old at the time of his death:
Daddy's name appeared on a burned metal tag, which was found in one of the crematoriums. engraved with his name - Deddie Zak, date of birth – 23.02.35 and the family's residential address Amsterdam Uiterwaardenstraat 71 III Dadi arrived at the camp in a shipment called "Kindertransport" named after the large number of children who were transported to their deaths in it: about a third of the 3017 Jews sent to Sobibor from the concentration camp and 4 were children between the ages of 8-11, many of them unaccompanied by their parents. Dedi was murdered with the members of his family upon their arrival at the Sobibor camp on June 1943, XNUMX, and he Only eight years old.
Annie Caper ANNIE KAPPER. 12 years old when she died.
Annie's aluminum tag was found near one of the mass graves.
On one side of the tag is engraved the girl's name, the family's address in Amsterdam Holland. AMSTERDAM Z. HOLLAND. On the other side of the tag Annie's date of birth is engraved - GEBOREN JANUARI 1931. The Caper family was sent to Sobibor on March 30, 1943, in the fifth shipment, with 1255 Jews in 25 wagons. The train arrived in Sobibor on April 2, 1943, and all its passengers were sent to their deaths in the camp's gas chambers.
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David Juda Van der Velde, 11 years old when he died.
Half a broken aluminum tag was found west of the gas chambers. David's initials DJV/D are engraved on it, and below the name is engraved the inscription PRES.RD... Below the address appears the name of the city AMSTERD…. And on the bottom line - part of David's date of birth - GEB. 21.1 - November 21, 1932. David and his family were sent in shipment number 5 from Westerbok to Sobibor on March 30, 1943, arrived at the Sobibor camp on April 2, 1943, and were immediately sent to the gas chambers.
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