Private Papers of B Natt

Collection

Scope and content:: Ts memoir (41pp) of his childhood in a German-Jewish family in Frankfurt-am-Main during the 1920s and 1930s, against the background of the Nazi rise to power and attendant anti-Jewish hostility, his membership of the `Werkleute', a Zionist youth organisation, apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker, experiences of the 'Night of Broken Glass' (Kristallnacht) in November 1938 when members of his own family were maltreated and arrested, his emigration to the Netherlands shortly afterwards in order to join the 'Werkdorp Nieuwesluis', a training centre for young Jews in preparation for settlement on a kibbutz in Palestine, his parents' emigration to Britain before the outbreak of war in 1939, the impact of war and the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940, his life in the 'Jewish underground' in Amsterdam and the increasingly frequent Gestapo round-ups, brief period of work in Germany in 1943 disguised as a Dutch migrant labourer in an iron foundry in Bielefeld, his arrest whilst crossing the German-Dutch border and imprisonment and interrogation in various Gestapo jails before being transported to Auschwitz concentration camp in November 1943, where he survived 'selections' and serious illness as part of a Jewish work commando until the liberation of the camp in January 1945, after which he regained the Netherlands and eventually joined his parents in England in 1950.

Subject terms:: Antisemitism; Education; Education--Vocational training; Holocaust; Holocaust--Concentration camps; Migration; Migration--Emigration; Occupation (military); Pogroms; Pogroms--Kristallnacht; Zionism

Access, restrictions:: Visit IWM website for Research Room access provisions see https://www.iwm.org.uk/research/research-facilities

Links to finding aids:: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1030013256

Scope and content:: Ts memoir (41pp) of his childhood in a German-Jewish family in Frankfurt-am-Main during the 1920s and 1930s, against the background of the Nazi rise to power and attendant anti-Jewish hostility, his membership of the `Werkleute', a Zionist youth organisation, apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker, experiences of the 'Night of Broken Glass' (Kristallnacht) in November 1938 when members of his own family were maltreated and arrested, his emigration to the Netherlands shortly afterwards in order to join the 'Werkdorp Nieuwesluis', a training centre for young Jews in preparation for settlement on a kibbutz in Palestine, his parents' emigration to Britain before the outbreak of war in 1939, the impact of war and the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940, his life in the 'Jewish underground' in Amsterdam and the increasingly frequent Gestapo round-ups, brief period of work in Germany in 1943 disguised as a Dutch migrant labourer in an iron foundry in Bielefeld, his arrest whilst crossing the German-Dutch border and imprisonment and interrogation in various Gestapo jails before being transported to Auschwitz concentration camp in November 1943, where he survived 'selections' and serious illness as part of a Jewish work commando until the liberation of the camp in January 1945, after which he regained the Netherlands and eventually joined his parents in England in 1950.

Subject terms:: Antisemitism; Education; Education--Vocational training; Holocaust; Holocaust--Concentration camps; Migration; Migration--Emigration; Occupation (military); Pogroms; Pogroms--Kristallnacht; Zionism

Access, restrictions:: Visit IWM website for Research Room access provisions see https://www.iwm.org.uk/research/research-facilities

Links to finding aids:: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1030013256