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Hessel Louws Groeneveld

Inmate Registration Card of Hessel Louws Groeneveld from the Buchenwald Concentration Camp
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Inmate Registration Card of Hessel Louws Groeneveld from the Buchenwald Concentration Camp
(Arolsen Archives)
Document proving Hessel Louws Groeneveld’s service as inmate doctor from 28 August 1943
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Document proving Hessel Louws Groeneveld’s service as inmate doctor from 28 August 1943
(Arolsen Archives)

Hessel Louws Groeneveld was born in 1907 in the Dutch seaside resort of Scheveningen. He studied medicine at the University of Amsterdam and subsequently opened a practice in Nijmegen. He was arrested in September 1942 and was sent to Buchenwald via the Compiègne transit camp in late June 1943 as a political inmate. Just two months later he was put on the first transport to Dora.

As an inmate doctor he helped put together the camp infirmary and tended to sick and injured inmates until the camp was evacuated in April 1945. He was able to flee while on a death march. After the war he testified in Dachau against former members of the SS in the Dora Trial. His testimony during the trial is still the primary source of information about the medical care in the camp.

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