Klaas Touber

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Klaas Touber at a ceremony in the Farge bunker in 1995

Klaas Touber (born July 27, 1922 in Amsterdam ; † January 23, 2011 in Almere , Netherlands ) was a Dutch deportee, forced laborer and author . As one of the few survivors of the Bremen-Farge labor education camp , he became involved in reconciliation and peace work as a contemporary witness from the mid-1980s .

Life

Klaas Touber trained as a locksmith from 1937. In February 1943 he was deported by the National Socialists to the German Reich , where he had to do forced labor at the Bremer Vulkan shipyard in Vegesack (a district of Bremen since 1946 ). After an argument with a German foreman, he was imprisoned by the Gestapo from September to October 1943 in the Bremen-Farge labor education camp and had to work under inhuman conditions on the construction site of the planned Valentin submarine bunker shipyard in Rekum .

Forced laborers and prisoners building the Valentin submarine bunker

When he was released from the prison camp in Farge, later known as the "death camp", he weighed 40 kilograms. Touber then had to continue working as a forced laborer at the Vulkan shipyard. At the end of April 1945 he fled from Vegesack to Bremen, which had been liberated by the British Army .

After the end of World War II , Touber returned to Amsterdam. As a result of a tuberculosis disease, he had to undergo a year and a half course. From late 1946 to 1956 he worked as a newspaper representative at the daily newspaper Het Parool , which was founded in 1941 as an illegal resistance newspaper . During this time he began to write and has since published several short stories and short stories . From the end of 1956 to 1970 he worked as an office machine fitter and then found a job in a church office in a parish in Hilversum , where he worked until 1980. On the side he wrote down his life story. Touber, who had continual problems with superiors in his professional activities, became “nervous” and unable to work. He was treated by the doctor and psychoanalyst Hans Keilson, who specializes in treating traumatized Nazi victims, and was able to process and overcome his “hatred of everything German”. From 1983 he volunteered in the library of a nursing home for the physically handicapped.

Klaas Touber (left) with his wife Dia Touber (right) at a memorial event of the International Peace School Bremen on the Bahrsplate (2000)

In 1983 Touber traveled to Germany for the first time and visited Bremen-Vegesack, where he met members of the Bremen International Peace School at the Vegesack community center , who campaigned in the region to come to terms with the Nazi crimes and the fate of forced laborers. Friendships developed and since then Touber and his wife, Dia Touber, have regularly visited Bremen-Nord . From then on he was committed to a reconciliation with the Germans and to passing on the memory of National Socialism by speaking as a witness about his time of suffering at events and in front of school classes.

Part of his autobiography manuscript was published in 1995 in the German-language book Hortensien in Farge. Survival in the bunker "Valentin" published, which also contains articles and poems by the former forced laborers Raymond Portefaix and André Migdal and which was published by Donat Verlag in Bremen . In his literary feature article, which gave the book its title, Touber describes , among other things, his memory of the hydrangeas that bloomed near the Farge camp in 1943, "as tall as a man", in "wild splendor", "beauty in a hateful world". "Whenever he [Touber] has seen hydrangeas bloom since then, fear, hunger, pain and humiliation arise in him," said Manfred Sack in his review of the book in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit in September 1996. In 1997, Touber had a reading in the U- Boot bunker Valentin , which was used in part by the Bundeswehr as a material depot for the navy from 1966 to the end of 2010 and in which the International Peace School and other initiatives regularly held guided tours and commemorative events.

In 1999 Touber was awarded the Franco Paselli Peace Prize of the International Peace School Bremen .

Klaas Touber was married. He died at the age of 88.

Works (selection)

  • Several short stories and short stories in various Dutch newspapers and magazines (from the early 1950s; in Dutch )
  • Hydrangeas in Farge. Survival in the "Valentin" bunker . Ed .: Bärbel Gemmeke-Stenzel, Barbara Johr, Donat Verlag , Bremen 1995, ISBN 3-924444-88-9 . (With: Raymond Portefaix, André Migdal ; Review in the period No. 40/1996)

literature

Web links

Commons : Klaas Touber  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gabriele Lotfi: Gestapo concentration camp. Labor education camp in the Third Reich. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-421-05342-1 , pp. 80, 193 (also dissertation, University of Bochum 1998).
  2. ↑ a b c d Klaas Touber: Lost Dignity . In: Federal Association for Information and Advice for People Persecuted by National Socialists V. , Cologne (ed.): Survive ... Issue No. 1 , May 2001, p. 2–3 ( digitized version ( memento of July 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) [PDF; 270 kB ; accessed on December 12, 2016]). Lost dignity ( Memento of the original from July 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nsberatung.de
  3. ↑ Klaas Touber. In: Project Search for Traces Bremen 1933–1945. Remembering for the future e. V., Bremen, accessed on January 29, 2011 .
  4. ↑ Manfred Sack : The Bunker Valentin. Reports and pictures about a Bremen monster. The time , accessed on January 29, 2011 (No. 40/1996).
  5. ^ Franco-Paselli Peace Prize →  Peace Prize Winner since 1998. International Peace School Bremen, accessed on January 29, 2011 .
personal data
SURNAME Touber, Klaas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch deportee, forced laborer and author
DATE OF BIRTH July 27, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Amsterdam
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 2011
Place of death Almere , Netherlands