Jules Schelvis

Jules Schelvis (7 January 1921 – 3 April 2016) was a Dutch Jewish historian, writer, printer, and Holocaust survivor. Schelvis was the sole survivor of the 3,006 people that were on the 14th transport from Westerbork to Sobibor extermination camp, having been selected to work at nearby Dorohucza labour camp. He is known for his memoirs and historical research about Sobibor, for which he earned an honorary doctorate from the University of Amsterdam, Officier in the Order of Orange-Nassau, and Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland.

Schelvis was born in Amsterdam, part of a secular Jewish family. After high school, he trained as a printer and worked for Printing Office Lindenbaum in Amsterdam. He worked at various newspapers and participated in a local youth labour organization, where he met and courted a woman named Rachel Borzykowski. Schelvis grew close to Borzykowski and her family, whose residence was a local center of Yiddish culture. Schelvis and Borzykowski married on 18 December 1941. It was a double wedding since Borzykowski's sister Hella married Abraham Stodel at the same place and time. Each couple thought it would be a good opportunity to bring their friends and families close together through the occasion of a matrimonial wedding. They opted for this because the times were uncertain. No one knew if such a gathering would be possible if they delayed.

The measures of the German occupation authorities initially began to target 'foreign Jews' with the intention of sowing discord within the Jewish community. After the strikes organised by the Dutch Underground in February 1941 the situation began to radicalise. The Germans carried out an impromptu raid inside the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam on 22 February 1941, and arrested 427 men who were sent to Mauthausen concentration camp. Against this backdrop of fear Schelvis and Borzykowski decided to marry in the hope that this would protect her and her Polish Jewish immigrant family from deportation.

However, Schelvis and his family, including his wife Rachel Borzykowski and her sister Hella and her husband Abraham Stodel were rounded up in Amsterdam on 26 May 1943. They were deported to Westerbork transit camp, where they spent six days before being sent to Sobibor extermination camp. They were among the 3,006 Dutch Jews on the 14th transport to Sobibor which left Westerbork on 1 June 1943.

The transport from Westerbork to Sobibor took three days. At the Sobibor arrival ramp, Schelvis was selected with Abraham Stodel to join a work unit (Arbeitskommando) sent to Dorohucza labor camp. The rest of his family and the Borzykowskis were gassed immediately, including his wife Rachel Borzykowski and her sister Hella.At Dorohucza, Polish and Dutch Jews were forced to work in abominable conditions building latifundia for Generalplan Ost. On 30 November 1943 Abraham Stodel died through hunger and exhaustion. Schelvis survived because he asked for a meeting with the camp commandant, who happened to be aware that another nearby labor camp needed a printer. However, for unclear reasons, Schelvis was instead sent to Lublin airfield camp, where he was forced to build barracks. From there, he was transferred to Radom Ghetto, where he was tasked with reassembling a printing press which had been disassembled for transport from Warsaw. Conditions in Radom where significantly better than Schelvis had experienced in Lublin or Dorohucza. With the Red Army approaching, Schelvis was sent on a death march to Tomaszów Mazowiecki. From there he eventually reached Vaihingen near Stuttgart, where he was liberated by the French army on 8 April 1945.

Schelvis returned to Amsterdam after his terrible experiences on 30 June 1945. He remarried and tried to begin his life anew whilst accepting the need to comprehend his experiences. He turned to writing and from the beginning of the 1980s devoted his research to the memory of those who died in Sobibor. He has written the standard work over the history of the camp.
In his last years he gave talks and lectures and held informal gatherings with German teenagers through visiting schools and university establishments. He was a plaintiff and expert witness during the trials of Karl Frenzel, John Demjanjuk, among other Holocaust perpetrators. He was the founder of Stichting Sobibor as well as the author of several memoirs and historical studies about Sobibor.

Notable works

*''Sobibor: A History of a Nazi Death Camp'' (2014) Bloomsbury Academic.
*''Vernietigingskamp Sobibor'' (1993) Amsterdam: Bataafsche Leeuw.
*''Binnen de poorten'', 1995, Amsterdam: Bataafsche Leeuw.
*''Sobibor. Transportlijsten'', 2001, Amsterdam: Bataafsche Leeuw.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schelvis, Jules
1921 births
2016 deaths
20th-century Dutch diarists
Dutch essayists
20th-century Dutch historians
Dutch people of World War II
Historians of the Holocaust
Historians of Nazism
Historians of World War II
Jewish anti-fascists
Jewish historians
Jewish Dutch writers
Nazi hunters
Sobibor extermination camp survivors
Writers on antisemitism
Writers from Amsterdam
Holocaust diarists