The Bunker Drama in Concentration Camp Vught
Concentration Camp Vught (Netherlands), which the Germans called “Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch”, was one of the very few SS concentration camps outside Nazi-Germany during WW2.
Though I could write an entire book about this concentration camp, for this blog I will concentrate on one horrible event that took place there in the night of 15 to 16 January 1944. 74 women - most of whom were resistance fighters - were locked up in a tiny cell. The worst of all was that this was a brand-new cell, and the cement reacted to the women’s perspiration creating horrible burns.
They had no water, no air, no food. Ten, eventually eleven, of the women didn’t survive the ordeal. The rest of them had to live with the mental and physical scars for the rest of their lives.
National Monument Kamp Vught
I visited the Camp for the second time on Thursday (20 July 2023) and made some video footage in and around the cell. I’m still reeling from the visit.
For the rest of this horrible bunker drama, I refer to my new book “The Crystal Butterfly” in which the main character Edda Van der Valk reads about it in the papers. She touches on the incident in her diary. Edda is at that moment in hiding somewhere in The Netherlands after her own act of resistance.
I just read in The Parool (our illegal national newspaper) that a horrible drama involving (mostly) Resistance women took place in Konzentrationslager Herzogenbusch near Vught. Seventy-four female prisoners ‘sanctioned’ another prisoner by throwing water over her, cutting her braids, and taking her mattress. This woman, Agnes Jedzini, had snitched on fellow-prisoners to Camp Commander SS-Hauptsturmführer Adam Grünewald in exchange for an early release. Jedzini reported what the women had done to her to the prison leadership. Horrible retaliatory measures followed. Seventy-four women were locked up in a tiny cell called ‘de Bunker.’ Grünewald himself kicked the door shut. The cell was not even 10 feet by 10 feet, and it did not have any ventilation. After fourteen hours the cell was opened. Ten of the women had died.
I can’t stop thinking about them. I could have been one of them. Instead, I’m relatively safe here, having a lot more food and fresh air than in Amsterdam and great company.
Photo’s taken during fieldtrip to Concentration Camp Vught and the Bunker Drama.
Overview of Camp Vught with the entire camp in detail
The original door to Cell 115 behind which the drama took place
Left, some of the culprits – Right, some of the victims
