WWI Memorial Plaque

[Alex van de Wetering]

Attached are two pictures of the Memorial plaque at the train station in Beverwijk, Noord Holland.
"Dirk J. Koopman" was my fathers uncle......a typical case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. As a reprisal for a number of liquidations by the local resistance, the Germans captured 486 young man. Some people were picked up after door to door searches, others were just picked off the street.

We still don't know what Dirk was doing in Beverwijk (he lived in Haarlem)....he might be looking for work at the Steel factory, but he certainly was at the wrong place at the wrong time. He was captured at the Beverwijk train station, transported with nearly 500 others to Amersfoort by freight car, than to Germany, never to be seen alive again.

We have since found out he spent time in two camps and had to do forced labour in chemical factories. The second one was "Leuna Werke", started by BASF, but owned by IG Farben at the time. The camp was located in Ammendorf, which is where he died in early 1945.
We have managed to find detailed reports of the regular allied bombing raids on the factory, but the date he died, doesn't match any of the bombardments. However the Germans forced the prisoners to clean up rubble and unexploded bombs after each bombing raid.....who knows, he might have died from an unexploded bomb.....or spilled chemicals?

https://razziabeverwijk.nl/persoon/160/dik-koopman

Alex

[Alex van de Wetering]

Sorry guys, it was last late last night and I hadn't spotted I posted the WW2 memorial plaque in a WW1 thread!

Hanno, could you move it to a more appropriate thread?

Alex