Henri Roos was born in Meppel, in the eastern part of The Netherlands, on August 19, 1920. In Leiden he was trained as a laboratory technician at the Instrumentmakersschool, in the low-temperature physics laboratory founded by H. Kamerlingh Onnes. In the evenings Henri followed courses in electrical engineering at the Mathesis school.

The Netherlands was occupied by the German Nazis in May 1940. The repression of Jews started soon afterwards. All public servants of Jewish origin were dismissed in November 1940, including university professors, and Leiden University was shut down after protests broke out. Schools remained open. At the start of the new school year in August 1941, it was decreed that Jewish students could only attend designated Jewish schools. The director of the Instrumentmakersschool, C.A. Crommelin, tried to argue that his school was unique in the country, and so should be exempt from this rule, but to no avail.

Henri Roos had to leave both the Instrumentmakersschool and the Mathesis, together with the Mathesis student Jacob Kuyper from Rotterdam. Both Henri and Jacob were killed in the Sobibor extermination camp, on respectively May 21 and March 5, 1943. Henri's parents, sister and two brothers, had been killed a year earlier in Auschwitz (here is their story).

If you can read Dutch, the correspondence reproduced above is disturbing in its bureaucratic banality. You can read how the director Crommelin struggles with the task imposed upon him, to expel the only Jewish student in his school. A first request for an exception for this "outstanding student" is denied "for the time being", a follow-up a few months later remains unanswered.

I can't help thinking what I would I have done in a similar position. Refuse and risk the shut down of the whole school, as happened to the University a year earlier? I am reminded of this song from a musical: We zien toch dat dit niet kan, als wij niets doen, wie dan?

Carlo Beenakker