Mauthausen

Maria Catharina (Robbie) Van Bueren (born Schalker) - Netherlands

„I was convinced that I was never going to return home.“

1916 born in Delft (Holland); grows up in a working class family in Delft and Amsterdam, works in a department store; her father is a politician for the Dutch communist party and member of parliament

1940 after the German occupation of the Netherlands her father goes into hiding, is arrested in 1943 and executed; she and her brother are part of the resistance movement

August 1942 she and her sister in law are arrested in The Hague and imprisoned in the Oranjehotel

August 1943 deportation, together with her sister in law, to KZ Ravensbrück as “Nacht & Nebel Häftlinge”, where she meets her mother shortly thereafter; she is nursing ill prisoners, among them her seriously ill mother, in the camp hospital; her brother is deported to KZ Buchenwald

March 1945 evacuation of KZ Ravensbrück, transport with sister in law and mother to KZ Mauthausen

end of April 1945 liberation by a repatriation transport of the International Committee of the Red Cross, return to Den Haag via Paris

after 1945 marries and gives birth to two children

she is living in The Hague (Netherlands)