#Story
The Jewish furniture maker
This is where the Jewish couple Justus and Marianne Mogendorff lived with their three daughters. Justus and his brothers owned a furniture factory. When a summons arrived by post ordering them to report to the authorities, they decided to comply.
Justus had done business with German entrepreneurs for years and could not imagine that the Germans would harm them. But their twelve-year-old daughter Maud was ill. The doctor warned that she would not survive the journey. She was taken into hiding. Her sisters, Sonja and Jenny, also went into hiding. Justus and Marianne reported as ordered and were deported to Sobibor, where they were murdered in the gas chambers on 11 June 1943.
Maud
After nine months in hiding in Eindhoven, Maud's location became unsafe. She was moved to a new hiding place, first in Doetinchem, then in Gendringen. Resistance members transported her at night on the back of bicycles. Three months later, she was moved again, this time to Sinderen.
She didn’t stay there long either. Eventually, she ended up in a so-called “pilot’s hut” in the Idinkforest near Varsseveld, where she was reunited with her two sisters for the first time. But the hiding place was discovered by the son of an NSB member. Shortly afterwards, the Grüne Polizei raided the site. But, the girls had left the day before.
Homecoming
After the liberation, Maud and her sisters returned to the bombed-out town of Doetinchem. They were shocked to find their family’s furniture shop and half the street in ruins. Strangers were living in their old home, and all their belongings were gone. They had nothing left. Later, they found the family piano in Villa Ruimzicht, which had been used by the Germans during the occupation. The girls eventually found shelter in an overcrowded house. With time, they came to realise that more than half their family had not survived. Of the 180 Jewish residents of Doetinchem, only 56 lived through the war.