#Monument
Jewish monument
More than half of the Jewish residents of Valkenburg (over forty people) were murdered in the extermination camps. They were called up for forced labour in Germany in 1942 and 1943 and had to report at Hotel Tummers opposite Valkenburg station. Their destination was Hooghalen in Drenthe, near Westerbork camp. The unfortunate ones had to pay for the one-way ticket to death themselves.
One of the many names on the Jewish monument is that of the Sajet family. In 1941, Levie Sajet and his wife Grietje came from Amsterdam to Valkenburg, where Levie was appointed teacher of religion. Their teenage son Benny (1926) moved with them.
On 10 and 11 November 1942, there was a major round-up of Jews in Limburg including Valkenburg. Levie, Grietje and Benny were rounded up and transported to Auschwitz, where the couple were killed immediately. Their son Benny died two years later. Their daughter Sara, who worked as a nurse in Amsterdam, went into hiding, but was betrayed. She died in Sobibor camp in 1943. Her sister Gerta Sajet worked as a nurse in the Central Israelite Insane Asylum in Apeldoorn. She was the only member of the family who managed to escape deportation. In 1943, during a round-up in the Apeldoorn Woods, she jumped from the first-floor window and disappeared into the woods. The train with about one thousand two hundred patients and fifty staff departed for Auschwitz. There they were immediately gassed.
Every year, the Stumbling Stone Foundation organises a memorial service for the 42 Holocaust victims from Valkenburg, also near the station.
Since 11 September 1955, the General Cemetery at Cauberg in Valkenburg has featured a built-in memorial plaque made of black natural stone with the names of Jewish inhabitants of Valkenburg who did not return from the concentration camps.