Mozes van Kolm, better known as Max, was the son of Abraham van Kolm and Grietje Bouwman. Abraham was a diamond polisher, and Max learned this trade. Later on, however, Max became a sales representative in stationery, and also worked as a garment presser. In 1933 he married a non-Jewish woman. Some time after the outbreak of war, he decided nevertheless to go into hiding. His hiding-place was discovered by chance, and in February 1944, Max was found and arrested. He was initially taken to the Scheveningen prison, where he was detained for five weeks. On 1 April 1944 he arrived at Camp Westerbork, where he was set to work. Since he suffered from sciatica, he was given sedentary work at a battery-wrecking yard. In his letters to his wife, he wrote that he had to get up at 6 a.m. and worked from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. In the five months that Max spent at Westerbork, he exchanged several letters with his wife, who told him that she was pregnant. On 3 September 1944 he was placed on the last transport from Westerbork to Auschwitz. After another few months as a prisoner, he was sent on the ‘death march’, in which prisoners from Auschwitz were forced to cover immense distances on foot in the middle of winter. Since his condition made it hard for him to walk, he collapsed and died during the march. He never knew his child, who was born a few months before his death.
Addition of a visitor of the website
Biography