Jo Theo Wallig was born 30 March 1924 in Amsterdam as the 3rd child in the family of Daniel Wallig and Rachel Mok. His eldest brother Rudolph Daniel survived the Shoah. His siblings Alexandrine Jacqueline and Henri Edward have been killed during the Holocaust, just as Jo Theo himself. His father Daniel Wallig passed away in Amsterdam 24 August 1940 but also his mother Rachel Mok was killed in Sobibor.
Jo Theo lived with his parents and sibs at Paramariboplein 28 2nd floor in Amsterdam. During the large scale raids of early October 1942, Jo Theo was arrested and taken to Westerbork, where he arrived somewhere between 3 and 5 October. This happened to him, despite the note on his registration card from the Jewish Council that Jo Theo “was mentioned earlier already in the so-called “Bolleletter”" (*).
Whether this has lead to the fact that Jo Theo not immediately but only on 2 November 1942 has been put on transport direction Auschwitz, is unknown. The transport of that Monday 2 November contained in total 954 persons. During the stop at Kozel, about 80 km. west from Auschwitz, 260 men were forced to leave the train to be employed as forced labourers in the surrounding satellite camps of Auschwitz. In that way, Jo Theo ended up in the workcamp Blechhamer.
Eventually Jo Theo Wallig has lost his life in Blechhammer 11 May 1943 due to exhaustion, diseases or other hardships. As this date of death only was rediscovered in Poland in 2016, the Dutch authorities has established his date and place of death as on 31 March 1942 in Mid Europe.
Sources: City Archive of Amsterdam, archive card of Jo Theo Wallig; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Jo Theo Wallig; from the book “Ondergang”, volume I by Dr. J. Presser, the “Bollebrief”, page 287 and 288-289; and Edward Haduch, Panstwowe Muzeum, Auschwitz-Birkenau, protocol 6 march 1946
(*) read in “stories”the other story about the meaning of the “Bollebrief”