Robert Willy Suskind

Willy Suskind and Elise Adriana Johanna Kuster married in 1924 in The Hague. Willy was Suskind was a popular teacher of German at the 'MTS' in Leeuwarden. In the weeks before the occupation he told his students he would take his own life in case of an invasion, out of fear that the Germans would use his son Robert for medical experiments. To his students' dismay he took his own life on 11 May 1940…

It is still an extremely sensitive topic: suicide during the Second World War. Historians have not known what to do with it for a long time. What is the place of suicide in war history?

Remarkably little has been written on this subject and there seems to be no list of names or memorial books at all. The Digital Monument (www.joodsmonument.nl) offers a place where relatives, sometimes for the firs…