Rudi Westerveld

Born:
26 November 1942, Amsterdam
Interview:
27 May 2010

"Hiding with the servant-girl"

Spoken language: Dutch

Rudi Westerveld was born Jaap Rudolf Isaac by the end of 1942. His parents were summoned to Westerbork when he was five months old. Rudi was then sent into hiding with an Austrian friend of his mother's, while his parents were forwarded to Sobibor and gassed there.

Rudi was unaware of his past during childhood and had a care-free youth. He learned of his background only gradually.
 By the time he went to university he had himself adopted officially.
 Rudi studied engineering in Delft and after graduation stayed there for another forty years teaching. Within this period, Rudi worked as a development-aid worker in Mozambique for nearly five years, assisting at the upcoming telecommunication revolution. In Mozambique he also met his current wife, Monique. They have a son together.

In this interview is talked about:

  • 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.

    Rudi Westerveld was handed over by his parents to a good friend of his mother's as a baby of not yet six months old. His foster mother had come to the Netherlands from Austria in the middle of the 'thirties and was a servant-girl with Rudi's grandparents. She was married with a half-Jewish cousin of his real mother. There were more people in hiding with Rudi's foster parents. Rudi stayed with them after the war, regarding them as his real parents.

  • 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.

    The Jewish family of Rudi Westerveld's father was from Friesland. His father had a butcher's shop. He heard once that his parents were decent, but poor. His mother was also from a butcher familie, but from well-to-do descent. His foster father, Sam Westerveld, was a butcher as well. Immediately after the war Rudi Westervelds upbringing became subject of a conflict, but his foster parents did never let on to him about it.
    Rudi Westerveld had a warm and care-free childhood with his foster parents, with whom he stayed from May onwards regarding them as his real parents. He remembers the yearly summer holidays in Steyr, Austria, close to Mauthausen. He is dubious about his personal history: on the one hand many Austrians were positive about Hitler, the main culprit in the murder of a large part of his family; on the other hand he was saved by his foster mother, who was Austrian.

  • 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.

    Rudi Westerfeld found out that his real name was Jaap Rudolf Isaac as a teenager. He was to experience the grief behind this reality only later in life. Because of his Jewish background, he did his internship abroad as a student at Delft in Israel. Chauvinism there struck him deeply. Alhough not religious himself, he has got involved in Jewish-oriented activities more and more when growing old.

  • 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.

    Rudi Westerveld's parents were murdered in Sobibor. As a baby of five months old he had hardly known them and he doesn't have any recollections of them. Although he had a care-free childhood, he is full of sorrow at the thoughts that his parents were murdered and his family exterminated.

  • 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.

    Both parents of Rudi Westerveld were killed in Sobibor. It is in their name that he acted as a co-plaintiff. But many other relatives of Rudi's have been murdered in this destruction camp. To be a co-plaintiff was, he felt, the least he could do for his parents. He blamed Demjanjuk's "unworthy" behaviour but would have had respect for the man, had he acknowledged that as a POW he chose to join the Trawniki. But more important than what happened to Demjanjuk, he held, was the fact that the history of Sobibor was brought to people's attention another time.