Lotty (Charlotte) Veffer

Lotty Huffener-Veffer was born on 10 July 1921 on the Tugelaweg into a non-believing Jewish family in Amsterdam-East and had a pleasant childhood. Her mother comes from a large family and her grandparents live nearby. The family plays a lot of music, for example, they regularly sing, her sister, seven years younger, plays the violin and Lotty plays the piano. She will never forget her first concert as a child in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw with Willem Mengelberg as conductor. Lotty wants to study French, but first has to learn a trade. After the ULO she starts working as a diamond cutter.

Germans invades The Netherlands

Lotty Veffer is 19 years old when the war starts in May 1940. She tries to flee the Netherlands with her fiancé, but fails. Despite the increasing anti-Jewish measures, Lotty is optimistic: the war will not last that long. In 1942 many friends and acquaintances of the Veffer family already received a call to work in Germany. When they come to say goodbye, Lotty certainly expects to see them again when the war is over.

Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch (Kamp Vught)

On February 11, 1943, Lotty is taken from home in the evening. This roundup mainly concerns young people, diamond workers. Her parents and Carla stay behind. But later in the evening they are also picked up. The whole family will be transported to Vught on 13 February via the Hollandsche Schouwburg. The camp is then barely ready. It's a big chaos. Everyone has to be on call endlessly.

Lotty, now 22, comes to the women's camp with her mother. Carla has to go to a barracks for girls from 13 to 16 years old. Lotty and her father are not allowed to work because they have to save their hands for the work in the diamond processing department that the German occupiers want to set up in Vught. On June 5 it becomes clear that Carla and her mother have to leave the camp, with the Kindertransport. Lotty's father can come with us but does not have to. Lotty's mother thinks it is better that he stays in Vught, with Lotty. Then Lotty wants to come too. They decide that father will come along to help his wife and Carla and that Lotty will stay in Vught. “Then at least someone will be there when we get back here,” her mother says.

From Westerbork to Poland Sobibor and Auschwitz

On June 6, Carla and parents will be transported via Westerbork to the Sobibor extermination camp. They will be gassed there on 11 June. People who fear Lotty will come along have stopped her and other girls from saying goodbye. A few days after the Kindertransport, Lotty is employed by the Philips Kommando. Thanks to this work she can remain in camp Vught until June 1944. A year after her parents and sister, Lotty and all other Jewish Philips workers, including Ernst Verduin's mother, are deported to Auschwitz. As skilled craftsmen, not all of them are sent to the gas chambers. They arrive in a labor camp and get a number tattooed on their arm. After a few days, Lotty is sent on to Reichenbach, a day's travel from Auschwitz. There she has to work with other Facharbeiter from Vught at Telefunken. They are housed in a small camp near the factory.

Lotty stays there until January 1945. When liberation is approaching, the women have to leave Reichenbach. Lotty embarks on a horrific journey through the cold, one of the so- called death marches, which takes them partly on foot and partly in open train cars through thirteen camps. Sometimes they have to work along the way.

On May 4, 1945, the women are exchanged by the Nazis for German soldiers. She is brought to Sweden via Denmark. After more than three months, she travels home by train to the Netherlands, to Amsterdam. She arrives in Amsterdam on August 26, 1945, but there is no longer a home. The first night in Amsterdam she and her friend Beppie Schuier sleep on a bench in the Apollolaan.