Dr. Ir. Ronald Waterman

February 2, 2026

May 10, 1940, Nazi Germany attacked the Netherlands, with their panzer army, and landed at three airfields surrounding The Hague, aiming to capture the Queen and the Dutch government in what was called the Battle of Ypenburg.

I was born September 1934. As a child, I was awakened in my room in Delft. I called out to my mother, “Let them stop the hammering.”Opposite our house stood a yeast factory. The loud noise came from an air defense battery mounted on the factory roof.

The Germans lost the Battle of Ypenburg. Many planes were shot down, and many Dutch soldiers, including Lieutenant George Maduro from Curaçao, showed heroic resistance. Later, he was captured and sent to Dachau concentration camp, where he perished on February 8, 1945, at age 28. Madurodam, the model city, was named after him.

The Dutch government and the Queen escaped to England just in time. Hitler and Göring were furious and decided to bomb Rotterdam. The city center was destroyed, and many lives were lost. Because the Nazis threatened to do the same to Utrecht, the Netherlands surrendered on May 15th.

I distinctly remember the Wehrmacht, followed by the SS, marching into Delft under a large banner marked with a V, meaning ‘Victory- Germany is winning the war on all fronts in Europe.’ The Orts Kommandantur, with a black-and-red flag featuring a swastika, was established in the center of Delft. The Mayor of Delft was replaced by an NSB member.

All Jews were required to register. Then all Jewish teachers and civil servants were suspended from Dutch universities, including my father, a Professor of Chemical Engineering at Delft University, who lost his job and income. Signs appeared all over Delft, in parks, restaurants, cafés, reading, ‘Forbidden for Jews’. I was expelled from primary school for being Jewish. I felt very isolated. The school director wrote a letter to the municipality listing all pupils with ‘Jewish blood’, including our full names and addresses. From May 2nd, 1942, we were required to wear the Yellow Star, which made me feel unsafe. Our main possessions, financial or otherwise, were confiscated by the Nazi robber-bank Lippmann-Rosenthal. The Germans wanted to concentrate the Jewish population, so an elderly Jewish couple came to live with us in our home. They were deported before we were and later perished.

For my father, going into hiding with his family was too risky for all involved. He actively opted to be on 2 lists: first, the Barneveld List, which offered temporary postponement of deportation to prominent Jewish citizens. and 2, the Palestine Exchange List, to exchange Germans, living in the Palestine Mandate, for Jews. Those promises were false because everyone on the numerous lists was ultimately deported, sooner or later.

Students had to sign a loyalty declaration or face expulsion. One student, Frans van Hasselt (1913-1942), preserved Delft University’s honor. He made a fiery anti-Nazi speech in protest after Jewish professors were sacked. Over the next two days, news spread, and on November 25, 1941, the first student strike in the Netherlands occurred. Van Hasselt was arrested and later perished at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp on September 10, 1942.

We received a letter ordering us to prepare for deportation. We packed our suitcases and kept them under the stairs, along with our backpacks, clothes, blanket-rolls, and utensils.

On March 5, 1943, two Dutch police officers came to our door to take us away. Flanked by the police, we walked through Delft toward the police station, carrying our luggage, the Yellow Star sewn on our clothes. Bystanders stared at us. Together with other Jews, we were locked up in a cell, handed over to the Grüne Polizei, and later driven in a van to the train station in The Hague. Just in time, two friends of my father appeared: Professor Kluyver and Reverend de Voogd, who brought a telegram, the Barneveld List, with our names on it, which temporarily protected us from deportation to Westerbork. It was to be handed over to the notorious SS officer Franz Fischer, who was on the train platform. We were allowed to return home, and the train left without us.

However, that same month, March 31, 1943, we were once again arrested, but this time, we were taken to Barneveld, to De Schaffelaar internment camp. Barneveld felt like an oasis to me, but not to my parents. Finally, I was surrounded by other children who, like me, wore the Yellow Star. There, I emerged from my isolation. Among the other priores was Dr. Emmanuel Speijer, an entomologist. He appointed several children, including me, to be his assistants. We collected insects for him, which were secretly smuggled out of the internment camp. His iconic collection of 23.000 insects can still be seen today at Naturalis. Dr. Speijer is co-responsible for my love of nature and science, which I have cherished my entire life.

We were in Barneveld until September 29, 1943. My mother had promised me an egg for my birthday, but she said she could not smuggle it in until the next day. However, that day we were surrounded by the SS and taken to Westerbork. So I never got that egg.

Arriving at Camp Westerbork was very unpleasant. My parents were interrogated and searched for money and jewelry. Camp Westerbork was completely surrounded by barbed wire. At each corner and in between were watchtowers with armed SS guards. The camp, 500 by 600 meters, was a dusty plain in summer but muddy in fall and winter. Above, the heavens were free from barbed wire, a heaven of hope and despair.

The camp was divided into two by the Boulevard des Misères, the main road within the camp where Jews had to assemble, next to the railway track, for their final, terrifying transport to Sobibor, Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen, and Theresienstadt. Every Monday evening, the names of individuals scheduled for deportation were read aloud. The tension intensified until the train left, only to subside till the next week, when it built up again when the names were read out. This went on from week to week. During the Holocaust, approximately 93 trains departed from Westerbork. These trains carried 107,000 Jews, Sinti, and Roma, of whom 5000 returned alive. 102,000 were murdered.

We were 650 people in one barrack, men and boys on one side and women and girls on the other. In the barracks, there were three rows of iron bunk beds, each with three tiers. The mattresses were infested with fleas. On each side was a place for washing. Outside was a tiny red brick toilet house with a wooden board with two rows of circular openings. It was extremely crowded. I fell ill with a double ear infection, pneumonia, and jaundice, and my temperature went up to 41.3. In the camp was a Jewish doctor, Dr. Wolff, a pediatrician who saved my life. He was a hunch-back, devoted to all of his patients and available day and night. One morning, he came to me and said he wanted to take me to see my mother, who was also in the hospita as was my father as well. He carried me on his back to visit her. Later, he was murdered in a concentration camp. I often asked myself, why? Why did they murder such a devoted pediatrician? Why did he have to die?

We were in Westerbork for almost a year, until we were deported to Theresienstadt on September 4, 1944. We were crammed into a cattle car with fifty-five others for two days and two nights, with only a barrel in the middle for urine and feces. Upon arrival, on September 6, 1944, the doors were unlocked and slid open. There were some beatings and screaming. I saw an SS-er with a dog in front of me.

In Theresienstadt, we were all required to work. Both of my brothers worked in the disinfection building, handling clothing and other items treated with Zyklon B!! Not yet realizing that the same Zyklon B was also used by the Nazis to gas people. They both contracted vlek typhus there, and my eldest brother also contracted tuberculosis.

In the summer of 1944, the Red Cross requested to visit the camp. The Nazis fooled them by painting part of the camp and setting up fake shops. They also carried the sick and elderly away. The ‘healthy-looking’ young prisoners were required to play a soccer game in the courtyard of the Dresdner barracks. Upon arrival, the Red Cross delegation was required to follow a designated route and was well cared for. The Germans made a propaganda film about this: 'Der Führer schenkt den Juden eine Stadt.’ That film still exists. After the film, the Jewish film crew and the ‘healthy-looking’ extras were sent to Auschwitz to be gassed.

Just before liberation by the Red Army, on May 8, 1945, the Germans started to install a gas chamber. and simultaneously began to cover up their tracks.

Under the supervision of the SS, we children had to form a chain from the crematorium to the nearby small river. We passed 34,000 cardboard boxes containing the ashes of those who had perished in the camp. We had to empty them into the river. Each box bore the deceased's name and transport number. I remember a boy next to me suddenly saying, 'I have my grandmother here.' The empty boxes were then thrown onto a pile and burned.”

Towards the end of the war, prisoners from other camps, including Auschwitz and Buchenwald, were taken to Theresienstadt in open battle cars or forced to march on foot. As soon as the train doors opened, corpses fell out. I can still see it in my mind. I had just gotten my bowl of soup when I saw two emaciated people crawling around, picking grass from between the stones. I put my bowl of soup down in front of them, one hit the other, who died, and the other died before he could drink. I left my bowl of soup.

It made a lasting impression on me, which I often remember, and was a defining moment of the war. I still wonder how it is possible that people can inflict such misery on each other?

After liberation on May 8, 1945, we remained in Theresienstadt under Russian supervision for about six more weeks. We were then transferred to the American zone, where, strangely, both captured SS officers and Jewish camp survivors were housed together. Eventually, we flew to Eindhoven. There, we had to go into quarantine before returning to Delft. Upon our return, we found that others had taken over our house and that we had lost our possessions. We temporarily stayed with different families. It was only later that our house became vacant again, and we could move in.

We survived and recovered.

After the war, I became a chemical and environmental engineer, followed by a doctorate in civil engineering and geoscience. I developed an innovative, nature-based approach to water management and land reclamation. I called this approach an ‘ Integrated, Multifunctional, Sustainable Coast and Delta Development via Building with Nature’. It is based on long-standing Dutch traditions and natural resources. Its core idea stems from centuries of Dutch experience managing coast and delta areas where land and water meet. Good plans have their roots in the past and point to the future. To keep land dry and people safe, Dutch water management evolved over time—from artificial mounds, dikes, and polders, to storm-surge barriers, sluices, harnessing rivers, building canals, developing harbors, and creating new land (first using windmills, later stream and electric pumps) for major projects like the Zuiderzee Works and the Delta Works. I developed solutions to these challenges. I laid the foundations for ‘Building with Nature’ and was involved in 12 projects that developed and expanded the Dutch coast between Hoek van Holland and Den Helder. My focus shifted to flexible, natural solutions that interact with the sea, such as dunes and beaches. No longer dams and dikes as bulwarks against the sea, but instead dunes and beaches in harmony with the sea.

In the Netherlands, I served as an advisor to national, regional and local government organizations, research institutes, and a visiting professor at several universities. Abroad, I provided advice to 56 countries. I served on the Provincial Council of South Holland for 33 years, being elected eight times. I received numerous awards, including my first, the Silver Pennant of the Order of Dutch Engineers, for future-oriented thinking that benefits mankind.

I believe that if you have survived the Holocaust, you have an obligation to live your life meaningfully, in remembrance of all those who were killed by the murderous regime.

In the end, after all is said and done, I could state that every shadow is a child of light.

I should like to close with still relevant words of the resistance fighter, Henk van Randwijk:

Een volk dat voor tirannen zwicht, zal meer dan lijf en goed verliezen; dan dooft het licht……

A people that bow to tyrants will lose more than their body and belongings; the light fades away.

Addendum:

When the Nazis seized power in 1933, they ended democracy. They replaced it with a dictatorship under Hitler, followed and backed up by a group of criminal murderers like Himmler, Heydrich, Göring, Goebbels, Hess, Frank, Seyss-Inquart.

Rauter, Mengele, Eichmann, and Hoess, during and before their reign (12 years), they used an extensive propaganda campaign that involved a daily web of lies and false information to influence, inflame, and incite the population against the Jews by controlling and manipulating all media: speech, radio, film, racial laws, events, marches, book burnings, and symbols like Swastika flags and the Totenkopf. They replaced existing institutions with Nazi organizations like the Hitlerjugend. They instilled fear through terror groups like the SA, SS, SD, and the Gestapo, along with concentration camps. Their slogans included: ‘Don’t buy from Jews. Jewish women and girls will poison everyone, they are the poisoners of all peoples in the world.

Before Hitler began the Second World War, he delivered a speech to the Parliament, and I quote, “If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!”

The Nazis started this annihilation in steps with the registration of the Jews, either voluntarily, by coercion, or by treason.

1. Registration of the Jews

2. Stigmatization through the visualization of a Jewish mark: J in the passport and a Yellow Jewish Star on clothing

3. Confiscation of all Jewish property, financial or otherwise

4. Concentration in ghettos

5. Transportation to concentration camps

6. Annihilation through shooting, killing through forced labor, starving, medical experiments, gas (Zyklon B), and carbon monoxide.

All of this ultimately led to the mass murder of 6 million Jews.