In connection with the commemorative events in May 2026, the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial Archive received a very special gift. During his visit, Rien Zegers, the son of Marinus Zegers and Paulina de Bruin, presented the archive with his father’s still-functioning pocket watch and lighter, along with the certificate and medal of honor awarded to his family upon their designation as “Righteous Among the Nations.”

Resistance

For the Dutch Zegers family, it was a matter of course during the Nazi era to resist the German occupation and offer help to persecuted people, as Rien Zegers reported during his visit to the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial. Arie Jan Jacob Zegers forged identity cards, ration cards, and similar documents for resistance members in hiding and for persecuted Jews. His sister Maria Johanna sheltered a Jewish family in her home. Arie persuaded Marinus and Paulina Zegers to also offer shelter to persecuted people in their home. In 1943, the Vleeschhouwer family was the first to move in with Marinus and Paulina, followed later by Louis Dormits, whom Rien Zegers, born in 1939, still remembers. In total, the Zegers family sheltered about 23 Jews in hiding during the war.

Arrest

During a raid on August 8, 1944, Arie Jan Jacob and his sister Maria Johanna were first arrested along with the people they were hiding. Arie was shot shortly thereafter, on August 30, 1944, at Kamp Vught.

On August 9, 1944, the home of Marinus and Paulina Zegers was also searched, and Marinus was arrested on charges of “aiding Jews.” On September 14, 1944, he was transferred to Kamp Amersfoort, from where he was deported to the Neuengamme concentration camp on October 11, 1944. There he was given prisoner number 56385. He died just a few months later, on February 3, 1945, as a result of the inhumane conditions of his imprisonment. Marinus’s wife learned of her husband’s death in April 1945, but refused to accept it and continued to hope for years that her husband would return home.

Remembrance

Since the 1990s, his son, Rien Zegers, has regularly visited the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial to honor his father and his family’s history. A symbolic headstone for his father, Marinus Zegers, stands in the memorial grove at the site. This past May, Rien was once again able to lay flowers there in his father’s memory.

He has cherished and cared for the few personal belongings of his father that remained to him—a pocket watch and an engraved lighter. He has now donated these mementos to the memorial’s archive for safe keeping. A special feature of the pocket watch is its impeccably maintained antique movement. When Rien wound the watch once more, the soft, steady ticking of the hands could be heard, like a heartbeat from the past reawakened.

In addition to the personal items, the archive also received from the Zegers estate the certificate and medal of honor from Yad Vashem, which confirm that Marinus Zegers and his wife Paulina, as “Righteous Among the Nations,” hid and helped Jewish people. The memorial ceremony marking their recognition took place on March 28, 2022.

The staff at the memorial’s archive are delighted to now be able to preserve the items associated with the moving story of the Zegers family.