Family Moritz and Erna Schaap

The Schaap family had been based in Nordhorn for a long time. After the business in the Ochsenstraße was destroyed in a district fire, the butcher shop moved to the Lingener Straße. There, son Moritz (born 1895) and his wife Erna, née Oppenheimer from Osnabrück, took over the management of the business. Daughter Lina Schaap married Salomon David de Jong from Utrecht and moved to him in the Netherlands.

A son, Klaus, was born to the Schaaps from Nordhorn in 1933. When moch before the Nazis came to power windows and walls were smeared and 1934 even all windows were smashed, the family fled to Hengelo (Netherlands).

With the occupation of the Netherlands in 1940, the lives of the Schaaps were threatened again: war-related bombings, the „Judenstern“ on clothing, school bans, beatings by incited Schülerbands – and finally, on September 16, 1941: the arrest of the father! He was transported together with 104 other Jewish people from Twente to the concentration camp Mauthausen (Austria); where all deportees died.

The entire family went into hiding with farmers in Twente. In total, the „Onderduikers“ (people in hiding) stayed in hiding for about three years, until Easter 1945, when Canadian troops liberated Klaus and his family.

Klaus returned to Hengelo, but in 1954 emigrated to Winnebago/Illinois, where he married his wife Evalyn.

From time to time, he reported his experiences in hiding to his wife, who wrote them down in a notebook. After a visit of the couple in Nordhorn these notes were übersetzt, edited, provided with photos and documents and supplemented by interviews with the Dutch rescuers of that time. The county of Grafschaft Bentheim published the report in 2008 under the title: „Klaus Schaap – Stolen years: pursued, hidden, saved!“ (in the meantime also published in American version). Klaus Schaap died in 2006 in Winnebago.