Rob Wurms

Born:
02 February 1943
Interview:
11 April 2009

"The history of an exterminated family"

Spoken language: Dutch

Rob Wurms was only a two-months old baby at the time he went into hiding. With his parents he lived in Swammerdamstraat in Amsterdam. Both his parents had children from earlier marriages. Two of his half-sisters were killed in Sobibor together with their mother. Rob's parents perished in Auschwitz. A half-brother and many other relatives were also killed by the Nazis, in Auschwitz, Sobibor, and elsewhere.

Three of Rob's elder (half-)brothers survived the war in hiding. Rob knew about his family and relatives only from hearsay. His hiding parents later became his foster parents, whom he considered to be his natural parents: he just didn't know anything else. They were very active members of the reformed community. His foster mother died already in 1949, his foster father remarried in 1951. His new foster mother told him he was a foster child, and Jewish. His natural brothers grew up elsewhere, Rob got to know them little by little. When he was fifteen his foster father died, a good man who did a lot for others and whom Rob was fond of. The discrepancies between reformed life at home and the Jewish life of his other relatives provoked inner conflicts in him. Embarrasment and grief has played a major role in his life. He and his wife brought up their three children in the Jewish tradition. Rob has lived a fully liberal, Jewish life.

In this interview is talked about:

  • Jewish life

    Which Jewish customs and traditions are referred to by the interviewees? Did they observe Jewish holidays before the Second World War? What role does their Jewishness play now? This section deals with Jewish life in the Netherlands and Poland.

    Rob Wurms (1943) was circumcised as a baby, but raised as a Christian in his foster family. The discrepancy between the reformed life at home and the Jewish life in the rest of his family brought him into internal conflict at times. During his studies Rob fell in love with Shifra, whom he was to marry later. She studied the Jewish tradition and went with him to Israel in order to visit his brother. Rob struggled a lot with his reformed and Jewish backgrounds. His wife was decisive in the family's transition to Jewry, following Jewish lessons, and enrolling in the "Liberaal Joodse Gemeente" (LJG, Liberal Jewish Community) in Amsterdam, of which Rob became a very active member.

  • Life before the war

    In this section interviewees recollect their lives before the Second World War. The large majority of them grew up in Jewish Amsterdam. They tell about their childhood, recalling more or less beautiful aspects of family life...

    Rob Wurms was a child of parents who had had earlier marriages with children. Rob had two half-sisters from his father's first marriages and two half-brothers from his mother's. As a baby Rob Wurms was passed to a hiding organization, the so-called Utrecht group.

    His parents looked actively for possible addresses for their children to hide. His mother was a fur stitcher. His father also became a furrier, presumably in order to escape deportation, as this way he was provided with a Sperre. Rob's family lived Swammerdamstraat 54 in Amsterdam. Each Saturday the family gathered at grandpa Juda Wurms' in Zwanenburgwal. It was very poorish there. This has Rob from hearsay as well.

  • In hiding

    Part of the interviewees survived the war in hiding. Members of this group were in hiding with a non-Jewish foster family in the Netherlands as a baby or infant. A number of those surviving Sobibor found a hiding place in Poland after the revolt.

    Rob Wurms went into hiding as a two-months old child. His parents were looking for hiding addresses for all their children and succeeded for Rob. Rob has hardly any recollections from his period in hiding, only that he hid behind velour curtains when Germans went by. His hiding parents later became his foster parents and raised him in lovingly.

  • Life after the war

    How did it feel when many did not return after the war? Interviewees recollect how they resumed their lives, shaped by such huge losses.

    Rob Wurms was given a protective upbringing. He had always considered his foster parents his real parents. They were very active in reformed circled and Rob was raised a Christian, for example, he would go to reformed youth camps. His first foster mother died in 1949, to his immense grief. His foster father remarried two years later and died in 1958, when Rob was fifteen years old. Discussions were scarce and Rob was too young to be able to ask questions in time. During secondary school he gradually became aware of his Jewish background. He was in two boarding schools and found an outlet in music during this turbulent period. 

  • Rebuilding lives

    So many people, so many different lives. Each of the interviewees have their own way of coping with the enormous loss that bears the name of Sobibor.

    Rob has been in a loyalty conflict all his life. On the one hand he had his foster father symbolizing Christendom, on the other his real, Jewish father. He got acquainted to two of his half brothers only years after the war. Rob's foster mother died in 1949. His second mother told him that he was Jewish around his tenth birthday, when he already knew his seventeen-year old brother, as well as an aunt with whom he was in close contact.
    During his studies Rob Wurms is strictly reformed. His wife saved his Jewish soul, he says. The Wurms couple gave their children a Jewish upbringing. In 1992 Rob attended a three-day congress in Amsterdam, "Het ondergedoken kind" (The Child in Hiding) and found out he was not the only and last-born Jewish child in the war.

  • Consequences of Sobibor

    Interviewees lost loved ones and relatives in Sobibor. Here they talk freely about the role these losses still play in their lives.

    Rob Wurms had never known his half-sisters when they were murdered in Sobibor. This applies to the lion's share of his family, whose members were killed in Auschwitz, Sobibor, and other places. He has never dared to go to Sobibor. At times he is gloomy because he has never known his family and because his two half-sisters were murdered in Sobibor after a horrible journey by train. He finds it hard to live with this awareness and not to care. He was in Auschwitz once and has had difficulties ever since. He hoped to visit Sobibor after the trial, but just before its ending, on March 24, 2011, Rob Wurms passed away.

  • Demjanjuk trial

    Next of kin to people killed in Sobibor, and survivors of the revolt played a major role as co-plaintiffs during the Demjanjuk trial.

    In the Demjanjuk trial Rob Wurms acted as a co-plaintiff for his half-sisters who, aged thirteen and fifteen, were murdered in Sobibor. Although he knew nothing about them - a brother told him later that his sister Selma had loved him much - his involvement in the trial as a co-plaintiff is of great personal importance to him. He felt that something could be rectified of what had been left without justice after the war.

  • 2,000 testimonials

    The Jewish Historical Museum made two thousand interviews from the archive of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute accessible to the public.

    An interview lasting 1.29 hours, labeled Rob Wurms, 12099, can be found in the "Joods Historisch Museum".