Drielsma: family documents

The Drielsmas were an upper middle-class secular Jewish family. Lisette was born in The Hague in April 1942, just a few months before the deportation of Jews from the city began. The family had the good fortune to be placed on the ‘Frederikslijst’, a list of names of Jews who, it was said, would receive preferential treatment due to contributions made to Dutch society. However the preferential treatment soon came to an end, and the family was sent with many others to the Westerbork transit camp in the north of the country before being eventually forced to make the two and a half day journey by train to Theresienstadt. In April 1945 they chose with 1200 other inhabitants of the camp to board a train bound for neutral Switzerland. At this point late in the war, Himmler agreed to this release in exchange for funds raised by American Jews. There were fears that the train would be bombed, but it reached the Swiss border in safety. Lisette and her family returned to The Hague after the war. Later she would move to Geneva to study and subsequently to Canada and France. Various family members survived the war by going into hiding. Others were less fortunate and were murdered at Mauthausen and Auschwitz.

Donated 23.01.2012

Donor: Nina Vangessel