About 140,000 Jews were living in the Netherlands when Nazi Germany invaded in May 1940. Within five days, the country was under complete occupation, and persecution of the Jewish population began almost immediately. By January 1941, Jews were forced to register, and by the following month, the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam was sealed off and handed over to the Judenrat. Jews were barred from public places, their children expelled from schools, and prohibited from entering parks, markets, or using telephones.
In 1942, the Nazis forced Jews to wear yellow badges and deported thousands to forced labor camps. Many were initially sent to the Westerbork transit camp in the northeastern Netherlands before beginning the grim journey to Auschwitz.
Among those who endured most of this horrific journey—but did not survive to witness liberation—was Vroutje Bloemist.
Bloemist had once been an exceptional student. She attended a Jewish school for impoverished children in Amsterdam, and in 1886, she received a certificate of excellence from the school’s administration, commending “her diligence in studies and her superiority among peers.”
The story of a Jewish schoolgirl in the Netherlands 150 years ago might not have seemed especially noteworthy had I not found this very certificate here at the National Library of Israel, folded neatly inside a Dutch-language Book of Esther printed in Amsterdam in 1867. The book might have been a school prize, as she received the certificate in the Hebrew month of Adar, during which the festival of Purim is celebrated with readings from the Book of Esther.
This old volume arrived at the National Library as part of the “Treasures of the Diaspora” initiative in the 1950s. “Treasures of the Diaspora” refers historically to books looted by the Nazis during the Holocaust, later recovered by the National Library from across Europe. However, books belonging to Dutch Jews, like Bloemist, generally were not actively looted but were discovered after the war in synagogues and homes of murdered Jewish families. These books were later collected by the National Library and are now preserved in Jerusalem.
I wondered what had become of that outstanding student. Was she alive when the Holocaust began? If so, what was her fate?
Tracing Vroutje Bloemist’s life proved relatively straightforward. Her name soon came up in Yad Vashem’s database, though details were sparse and tragic.
From the Yad Vashem records, I learned she was born in 1873, meaning that she received her certificate at thirteen. The genealogy website MyHeritage revealed that Bloemist married Barend Pront in 1914. The couple lived in an Amsterdam building, alongside Bloomist’s sister, who was married to Barend’s brother.
During the Holocaust, Bloemist was imprisoned in Bergen-Belsen. Towards the end of the war, she was transferred to Theresienstadt and murdered. I sought to uncover more than this stark summary. What exactly happened to Bloemist, who was an elderly woman by then?
During the war, the Allies established a missing persons tracing service, later managed by the Red Cross. Only recently have its archives been opened to researchers. The service’s records, located in Bad Arolsen, western Germany, contain tens of millions of documents detailing the fate of countless Nazi victims, many of them Jewish. Bloemist is listed among them. In Amsterdam, she worked as a milk distributor for the Jewish community—an essential occupation, delaying her deportation to Westerbork until September 29, 1943.
After four months in Westerbork, she was moved to Bergen-Belsen, remaining there for fourteen months. Originally a prisoner-of-war camp, Bergen-Belsen also held Jewish hostages from neutral or Allied nations as bargaining chips. Thousands of Dutch Jews, including Anne Frank and Vroutje Bloemist, ended up there.
Yet this was not the end of Bloemist’s tragic story. Her name also appears on the grim list of those who perished aboard the Nazis’ “Lost Train.”
By April 1945, British forces were closing in on Bergen-Belsen. Josef Kramer, the camp’s commandant, decided to evacuate the surviving prisoners who were still able to travel, sending them by train to Theresienstadt. Three trains carrying approximately 7,000 Jews, many of whom were from the Netherlands, departed southeast. The first train, leaving on April 6, was liberated along the way by American troops. The second train, departing the following day, managed to make its way to Theresienstadt.
On April 9, Vroutje Bloemist and roughly 2,500 fellow prisoners marched to the nearby town of Bergen and boarded the third train the next day. This final transport moved very slowly, often standing idle for hours or even days. Occasionally, prisoners were permitted to leave the train briefly to search for food.
They traded their few remaining belongings for bread in nearby villages, or scavenged wild vegetables in the forests beside the tracks. Every day, numerous prisoners died from typhus. Each time the train halted, graves were hastily dug alongside the rails. On April 17, the train entered the ruins of Berlin, taking two entire days to pass through the devastated city from west to east.
The original objective—to reach Theresienstadt—soon became impossible. American forces were approaching from the west, Soviet troops from the east, and the train and tracks were bombarded nightly. The “Lost Train” wandered aimlessly, first moving south, then west, depending on the conditions of the tracks and remaining bridges across German rivers. Eventually, realizing the war was effectively over, the German guards fled, leaving the train abandoned roughly two kilometers from the village of Tröbitz. Russian soldiers soon arrived, opening the doors of the train cars. For the surviving Jews aboard, the war had ended.
The exhausted passengers disembarked and made their way to the abandoned village, temporarily settling there and subsisting on leftover food they found. Approximately 200 had died of starvation and illness during the journey and were buried in mass graves. Another 300 perished in the days immediately following liberation. Vroutje Bloemist, already 72 years old, did not survive.
Another document found in the archives at Bad Arolsen—originally from the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum—provided further insight into Bloemist’s final days. It was written by Josef (“Jupp”) Weiss.
Josef Weiss was born in Germany in 1893. After the Nazis rose to power, he fled with his family to the Netherlands, where they were deported in 1942 to Westerbork. There, Weiss and his wife assisted younger inmates and tried to provide supplies for Jews deported to extermination camps in Poland. In 1944, he was transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where after several months he was appointed to the position of “Elder of the Jews.”
In this capacity, Weiss maintained detailed records of prisoners, documenting births, deaths, and deportations. Weiss and his wife were also placed aboard the “Lost Train.” During the journey, Weiss continued keeping meticulous records, noting those who died along the way and recording the locations where their bodies were buried. Weiss survived the journey, but his wife died of typhus shortly after liberation. He later immigrated to Israel.
In his notes, Weiss mentions Bloemist. He recorded that prisoners who died on April 20 and 21 were buried:
“On the railway segment between Finsterwalde and Falkenberg, at kilometer 101.6, about ten meters south of the tracks, within the forest.”
Among the sixteen names listed at this location (with one additional name crossed out) was Vroutje Bloemist-Pront. However, a second entry by Weiss offers slightly different information, listing Bloemist as one of those who died on April 23—likely just before the train’s final stop. According to this record, she was buried alongside 27 others: “On the way to the village of Wildegrube, just before a sharp left turn, on the left side of the slope, approximately 20 meters from the railway tracks at kilometer 106.7.”
The kilometer measurements cited by Weiss refer to specific points along the former railway connecting Halle and Cottbus.
In a book published in 1999, Erika Arlt, a resident of Tröbitz, described how the train passed through her village, reaching the town of Beutersitz, where it stopped at the railway station. Unable to proceed further, the train reversed and headed back eastward. Its temporary destination had likely been the nearby town of Falkenberg—an important railway junction—but it had been heavily bombed by Allied forces just days earlier, making it inaccessible. Additionally, the small bridge over the Schwarze Elster River near Beutersitz had been damaged. According to Arlt, sixteen passengers from the train—likely those from Weiss’s first list—were buried near this site. The train then traveled about three kilometers back in the opposite direction before finally stopping two kilometers from Tröbitz, where the 28 victims from Weiss’s second list were buried. Memorials were eventually erected at both burial locations.
As far as is known, Vroutje Bloemist had no children, and her immediate family perished during the Holocaust. Beyond an uncertain mass grave hidden within the forests of eastern Germany, all that remains of Vroutje Bloemist-Pront today are an old Book of Esther and a certificate honoring her academic excellence, both preserved at the National Library of Israel.
