In the foreword to our new release book DEBUNKING HOLOCAUST DENIAL THEORIES: Two Non-Jews Affirm the Historicity of the Nazi Genocide, Bergen-Belsen concentration camp survivor number 10564, author Hetty E. Verolme-Werkendam writes from personal experience when she says, “Those who deny the Holocaust are not only ill informed, but their resistance to accepting a well establish fact comes from a deep-seated hatred of the Jewish people.”
Holocaust survivor and author Hetty Verolme.
Hetty ‘s foreword to Debunking Holocaust Denial Theories follows in full:
This book has been written for those who believe the Holocaust is a fairy tale. It has been excellently researched by authors James & Lance Morcan, and they have proven beyond any doubt that the Holocaust did occur.
Those who deny the Holocaust are not only ill informed, but their resistance to accepting a well establish fact comes from a deep-seated hatred of the Jewish people. In other words they are anti-Semites.
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the Nazis committed this heinous crime and the German people – who in the main were aware of the atrocities but kept quiet about them – are therefore guilty by association.
SIX MILLION Jewish people were murdered in a manner which can scarcely be imagined except in the evil minds of the Nazis who set about bringing to fruition ‘The Final Solution’ – which they very nearly achieved. In total, they murdered and slaughtered 11,000,000 innocent people without mercy, and this figure does not include deaths resulting from the battles of war.
As a Holocaust survivor I can speak of it as I did experience the terrible conditions for fifteen long months in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. I vividly recall the hours standing for roll call during snowfalls, heavy rains, heatwaves and storms. We could not sit on the ground as we would lose our food rations for two days if we did.
They counted us, but the SS always concluded two or three were missing, even though this was never the case as there was no way anybody could ever escape the camp with the watch towers everywhere and the SS men constantly on patrol with their dogs. They often forced us to stand for three or four hours, and sometimes up to nine hours, during roll call. Young and old were meted out this mental and physical cruelty.
Food was 4 cm (1.5 inches) of black bread which was already weeks old. The SS had to put vinegar in the bread so that fungus would not grow in it. We also received three quarters of a litre of brown watery soup with a piece of carrot or parsnip floating in it. Those were our entire rations day in, day out for every 24 hours.
The beatings, the terrors, the unspeakable sufferings, the deprivation of water, the lack of protection from the harsh weather conditions, and being dressed in cotton grey and white (the colours of a slave labourer), all combined to strip us of our identities. We were only known by a number. Number 10564 was mine.
I was a 13-year-old girl when we were taken from our home in Amsterdam at 4.00am. Together with my parents and two little brothers we were deported to the transit camp Westerborg where we stayed for four months. During this time we saw many, many trains leave for Auschwitz. My father’s parents were on one of these trains and they went straight to the gas chambers.
Above: Hetty as a young girl during WW2.
How unspeakably evil the Nazis were. They told the Dutch people that those detained would simply be put to work in Germany to support the war industry. The Nazis also told the Dutch public that detainees would be given a home and that the father in each detained family would work in a factory and the mother would stay home to care for her children. That’s how the Nazis managed to orchestrate a quiet and orderly transportation of 105,000 people from the Netherlands.
On the 1st of February 1944 we were on the train to Bergen Belsen where for 10 months we were together with my parents. After eventually being separated from my parents it was my task to take care of my little brothers and also 40 other younger children. With the help of two Polish nurses we managed to stay alive as a group and were liberated by the English army on the 15th of April, 1945.
On the 1st of January 1945 there were 60,000 people in Belsen in an area not bigger than three football fields. By the 15th of April 1945, some 40,000 had died of malnutrition and typhus and in the months following the liberation another 17,000 died.
Of the 105,000 people deported from the Netherlands, only 5000 returned from the camps alive.
It is most important that the Holocaust is remembered. Let’s hope this book will contribute toward that.
Hetty E. Verolme-Werkendam
Hetty is the author of Hetty: A True Story and the award-winning memoir The Children’s House of Belsen (below).
The Children’s House of Belsen is available via Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/The-Childrens-House-of-Belsen/dp/B0058EEMES/
Debunking Holocaust Denial Theories is exclusive to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/DEBUNKING-HOLOCAUST-DENIAL-THEORIES-Historicity-ebook/dp/B01EYY7T7Y/
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Morcan Books & Films 