Henricus Rooijmans

This memorial page is dedicated to Henricus Rooijmans, one of more than 725 war victims connected to the municipality of Deurne documented by Stichting Oorlogsslachtoffers. The municipality of Deurne and the surrounding villages of Liessel, Vlierden, Helenaveen, Neerkant and Zeilberg were liberated in the autumn of 1944 during heavy fighting. Victims fell on all sides: Allied soldiers from countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and New Zealand, and German soldiers.

But the archive covers more than just the combat victims on Deurne soil. Residents of Deurne who lost their lives elsewhere are also commemorated: civilians who were murdered in concentration camps, forced labourers who died in Germany, people who were executed or succumbed to the effects of persecution and oppression. In addition, residents of Deurne who entered German military service and were killed elsewhere are also included.

Stichting Oorlogsslachtoffers has been documenting the story of all these people since 1995, without distinction of nationality, side or background. The goal is to give every person a name and a face, and to keep their memory alive.

Additional information

Son of Driek Rooijmans and Hanneke Rooijmans-Meulendijks.

On Monday 21 August 1944, Henricus Rooijmans travelled by train to ‘s-Hertogenbosch with his father. During this journey, their papers were checked by the Grüne Polizei; Henricus Rooijmans’s papers were found to be in order, and he was arrested. It was thought that Henricus Rooijmans would be home soon, as it was believed to be a misunderstanding, but nothing could have been further from the truth; he was transferred to KZ Herzogenbusch, also known as ‘Kamp Vught’. Two weeks later, Henricus Rooijmans was transported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp and ended up in ‘Häftlingsblock 37’ – prisoner block 37 of the notorious ‘KZ-Außenlager Klinkerwerk’, an external camp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Lehnitz. This SS penal battalion was also known as the ‘Toteslager’ – the death camp of Sachsenhausen. Here, bricks were produced for the ‘Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke’, amongst other things, for use in nearby Berlin, primarily for the construction of ‘Germania’, the capital of the Third Reich, designed by Albert Speer.

In addition, a new grenade foundry produced around 10,000 hand grenades a day. On the earthworks and stoneworks site, several halls were later used as assembly halls for various aircraft components; the firm ‘Heinkel-Flugzeugwerke GmbH’ relocated some parts of the assembly process to the Klinkerwerk satellite camp.

Henricus Rooijmans was admitted to the infirmary on 13 December 1944; according to the ‘Häftlingsnummernliste des Krankenreviers’ (list of prisoner numbers in the infirmary), probably due to the inhumane working and living conditions in the camp; prisoners were gradually killed here by the heavy labour or murdered by the SS. Although it is not certain, Henricus Rooijmans died on 31 March 1945 and was subsequently cremated.

In January 1945, the last director of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp satellite camp at the Klinkerwerk, Heinrich Fresemann, on the orders of his Commandant, had approximately 9 tonnes of human ashes from the crematorium of Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp dumped into the Hohenzollern Canal (now the Oder-Havel Canal) in order to erase all traces of the killings.

Death Register

View all persons in the category: Died in concentration camps and as a result of forced labour