Walter Holländer in Camp Sachsenhausen

In the night of 9 - 10 November 1938, Jews and their properties were attacked throughout Germany. Synagogues were set on fire and demolished, shops and businesses belonging to Jews were vandalised, 96 Jews were murdered in the streets, and thousands arrested,^[1] including 248 Jewish men from Aachen - the hometown of the Holländer brothers - and the surrounding area.^[2] By his own account, Walter Höllander was arrested two days later by the Nazis, on 12 november 1938.^[3] His brother Julius, who had been arrested on the same day, was soon released: he was a war veteran and, thanks to an injury sustained in the First World War, was left alone. Walter, however, had never served in the military and was not treated so leniently: on 15 November, he was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, ten kilometres from Berlin.

After Kristallnacht in 1938, 1800 Jews were transported to Sachsenhausen. Many of them were murdered in those first weeks, but Walter Holländer was spared. HIj was told that he would be released on the condition that he would leave Germany immediately and permanently. Thanks to Julius, who had filed an application with the Dutch embassy and managed to secure a guarantee from his brother-in-law, Otto Frank, Walter Holländer was released from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on 1 December 1938. Later that month, he left for the Netherlands, where he was placed in the Jewish Refugee Camp Quarantine Institution Zeeburg.^[4]