Petronella Katharina (Katja/Toos) Berkers-van Lierop

Petronella Katharina Berkers was born on 4 November 1911 in the Netherlands.1The biographical sketch is based on the following material: WTA Emmen, Berkers-van Lierop, Katharina, interview, 1985, no. 372; WTA Vienna, collected data, 30-10-2001; WTA Emmen, summary interview Willemson-Berkers, Lucia; WTA Emmen, Häftlingsausweis (prisoner identification card) no. 17 Berkers, Petronella, FKL Ravensbrück.

Katharina Berkers-van Lierop, kamppas van het concentratiekamp Ravensbrück
Katharina Berkers-van Lierop, prisoner identification card for Ravensbrück concentration camp. (Historical Archives Watchtower Society Emmen, the Netherlands)

Katja, who was brought up a strict Roman Catholic, became acquainted with the religious community of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the 1930s. She became deeply absorbed in religious literature from Germany and encouraged her husband to also study the faith of the Bible Students. Katja was fascinated by the promise of a Kingdom on earth where war would no longer exist. Towards the end of the 1930s, she began ‘pioneering’, although she was only formally accepted within the religious community when she was baptised in 1941. From Helmond, her home town, she started spreading the ‘truth’ by means of religious literature, in the Eindhoven area. After the German invasion in 1940, when this religious faith was banned, Toos – as she was known to her sisters in the faith – carried on with her missionary work. During one of these preaching missions, Toos Berkers was betrayed and arrested by the Dutch police on 14 March 1941. At the time of her arrest, she had four children between the ages of eighteen months and eight years old. After being interrogated by the Gestapo, the Nazis had Toos Berkers sent to a prison in Düsseldorf. She remained there for more than six months. In November 1941 Berkers was deported to Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp. She was one of the first female Dutch Jehovah’s Witnesses to be sent to this concentration camp. Her registration number – 8188 – was relatively low. Together with other female Bible Students, she was assigned to block 12.

 

Vier kinderen van Katharina Berkers- van Lierop (foto december 1945)
Katharina Berkers-van Lierop’s four children (photo December 1945). (Historical Archives Watchtower Society Emmen, the Netherlands)

What particularly made an indelible impression on her was the women having to walk in their bare feet on the gravel roads in summer. It was only in the cold season that they got shoes – odd ones, which did not fit.

Toos was assigned to the ‘Angora breeding’ detail. This was the first time that work was refused for religious reasons, because the women had heard that the Angora rabbit’s wool was to be used for military purposes. Toos had only been in the camp a short while when she and the others who had refused work, were given a six-week bunker punishment. Undergoing this punishment in the icy cold of 1942, she almost froze to death. Under these harsh conditions, the Bible Students encouraged each other chiefly by discussions about the faith and through prayers. Even though the food situation in Ravensbrück deteriorated by the day, Toos shared the little food she had with her sisters who were worse off than she was. She even threw her bread over the fence to the male prisoners because she was so shocked by the sight of these walking skeletons and she felt herself to be strong enough to give up some of her own frugal rations. After six months in Ravensbrück, Toos had lost so much weight that you could ‘hang a hat on her hip bones’.2WTA Emmen, Berkers-van Lierop, Katharina, interview 1985, no. 372.

The selections were extremely traumatic experiences. Toos found out later that the women who had been selected were to be gassed.

Toos Berkers was among the five Dutch female Jehovah’s Witnesses transferred to St. Lambrecht in Austria in May 1943. She was put to work there in the kitchen. It was her task to cook and bake for both the men’s and the women’s concentration camps. Later on, she had to take care of the children of an officer. The Stadler family lived quite near the monastery. Despite being separated from her own children, she still well remembered both little boys and the baby she had to care for.

Although the living conditions in the concentration camp for women at St. Lambrecht were better than those at Ravensbrück, they could not yet be considered normal. Toos Berkers contracted oedema – presumably hunger oedema – due to the unvaried and frugal meals.

According to Toos, she had more freedom in the concentration camp at St. Lambrecht than at Ravensbrück. She managed to get hold of a Bible from the local baker and she hid it in her straw mattress. In order to retain their dignity, the Bible Students also indulged in some joking among themselves. Toos Berkers told how they once made a set of false teeth out of some orange peel and chased each other with it. Despite the conditions in the camp, the Witnesses set great store by being well-dressed. Toos Berkers was particularly proud of always being well groomed.3The distinctly well-groomed figure of the 91-year-old lady made a deep impression on me as her conversation partner and made it easy to understand how important an attractive appearance was for her, also during her incarceration.

It was distressing for her that there were not enough means or possibilities in the camp for dealing with the monthly hygiene problems. This was very unpleasant for her, but apparently it did not result in disruptions in her gender identity.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses from Germany set a good example for Toos. She respected her German sisters in the faith for having undergone persecution for much longer than she herself had.

During her incarceration, Toos even ventured to voice some criticism of the Nazi regime. On one occasion in St. Lambrecht, she asked a German soldier who had lost both his legs during gunfire, how this had come about. When he answered that this was just what happens in war, she reacted fiercely: ‘That’s the difference. We do not take part in warfare because the Bible says that it is wrong to kill. Go back to Hitler and ask him to give you a new pair of legs!’4PA, interview Berkers, Toos, 16-10-2002.

Shortly before liberation by the British forces, an SS officer bid Berkers farewell and told her that she was the cheekiest of all the women there. Nevertheless, he thanked her for the work she had done at St. Lambrecht. This was the first time that an SS officer had addressed Toos by name.

After they were liberated, Toos Berkers and the other Dutch Jehovah’s Witnesses set out on the journey back home together. The priests in a monastery in Belgium took care of her for a short while before she reached her home town, Eindhoven, by train. She went in search of her husband and children there. Her husband, Nico Berkers, had also been deported by the Nazis to a concentration camp. After she had been arrested, Toos’ parents took her four children to a monastery. Nico Berkers fetched them back after a short while and brought them to various Bible Student families to have them cared for. After that, Nico worked underground and was also arrested, as already mentioned. Toos Berkers’ children were separated from each other for the entire period that their parents were imprisoned. By the time the family was reunited, they had become strangers to one another. The youngest son did not recognise his mother. He looked upon his foster mother as his mother, which was very painful for Toos. The children also hardly recognised each other. Husband and wife, who had both spent years incarcerated in concentration camps, had to get to know each other once again. The traumatic experiences hadn’t left them unchanged.

Katharina Berkers-van Lierop enkele jaren na de bevrijding
Katharina Berkers-van Lierop several years after her liberation. (Historical Archives Watchtower Society Emmen, the Netherlands)
Nico Berkers (datum foto onbekend)
Nico Berkers (date of photo unknown). (Historical Archives Watchtower Society Emmen, the Netherlands)

Living conditions in the years after the war, were exceptionally bad for the Berkers family. In order to survive, Toos even sold her striped camp clothing. She tried to get support from the Institute for War Victims. It took eight years before the formalities had been dealt with. Toos was declared permanently invalid. Incarceration in the camp had left its traces. Toos often dreamt about both the Ravensbrück and St. Lambrecht concentration camps. She used to be jolted awake by these nightmares and then sought solace in prayer. The already difficult situation deteriorated because both her parents broke off contact with Toos due to her remaining an active Jehovah’s Witness. Her Roman Catholic parents no longer regarded her as their daughter – a bitter pill to swallow under those already difficult circumstances.

Toos considered her experiences in both concentration camps as a test of her faith. She remained true to her faith. Summarizing, she said: ‘I received the good things in life, therefore I must also accept the bad things.’5PA, interview Berkers, Toos, 16-10-2002

Katharina Berkers-van Lierop in oktober 2002
Katharina Berkers-van Lierop in October 2002. (Private archives Anita Farkas, Tillmitsch, Austria)


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