Tag: Simon Gronowski

Berlingen • 20240712

Berlingen, Belgium. May 20, 2011.

After running through the woods all night, after his escape from Transport XX, the 11-year-old Simon Gronowski went to this house – a simple house, he trusted – at early dawn on Tuesday April 20th 1943. At the time, the number 14 in the Langstraat street [now renumbered 42] in Berlingen, Belgium.

Mrs Reynders answered the door when Simon rang the bell, and was the first to help Simon to get back to Brussels.

Photo (edited) by Michel van der Burg, taken close to midnight on May 20, 2011.

Citation info : Berlingen | Miracles•Media | 20240712 | TakeNode deacfa40-7fc2-47e3-b1d6-af487a54bff7

Kuttekoven 2014 | Miracles Making | 20240707

Newspaper image Jan 28, 2014 | André Rouvrois | Het Belang van Limburg | URL https://www.hbvl.be/cnt/eid201382# | Miracles•Media | 20240707_01

Miracles Making… behind the scenes : Kuttekoven (Borgloon, Belgium), Jan 26, 2014. Filming Simon Gronowski’s talk in Clee Castle, and afterwards interviewing Mrs. Mia Valkeneers who recounted her childhood experience with the escapes from Transport XX in Kuttekoven.

Filming Simon Gronowski’s talk in Clee Castle, Kuttekoven, Jan 26, 2014 | Miracles•Media | 20240707_02 | TakeNode 2ecf8775-017b-4ea4-a019-a7b47aaf1a8a

Then, with a select company of some 10 residents of Kuttekoven, we went to the former train track, and while it started to rain — and one of the women bravely assisted me by holding my umbrella while I was recording on video – Simon spoke about his escape at that very spot at the track – the spot we had discovered two years earlier, Jan. 2012.

Still film Simon Gronowski’s talk in Clee Castle, Kuttekoven, Jan 26, 2014 | Miracles•Media | 20240707_03 | TakeNode b72f0ee1-0524-408a-9852-d06c2d4e090f

Later, that night while driving home (a ca 2 hour drive to Holland) – I was no longer thinking about perhaps paying Max De Vries a visit – the former resistance fighter, who had become 100 y old that month. But, by serendipity, when I crossed the town, Wellen, were Max lived, I briefly noticed , through the pouring rain, the road sign were Max lived, and in a reflex turned into that street, stopped somewhere – it was raining too hard for me to be able to look up Max’s house number in my papers – so I just rang a bell of one of the houses, and this turned out to be a neighbour, living 2 houses away from Max’s place. For 15 minutes (I really needed to continue that difficult ca 2 hours rainy night drive home) I was in the cosy kitchen talking with Max at the kitchn table and his wife Nicole, and congratulated him being 100 (no images made). Max passed away October 2014.

Citation info : Kuttekoven 2014 | Miracles Making | Miracles•Media | 20240707

Escape | Miracles Docs #4 | 20240705

Kuttekoven (Borgloon), Belgium. Sunday, January 26th, 2014. At nightfall, Simon Gronowski recounts to people of Kuttekoven, his daring escape – helped by his mother Chana Kaplan that rainy night of April 19, 1943 – from the 20th deportation train to Auschwitz, at this very spot on the railway track bed (of the so-called ‘Fruitspoor’) where it enters the village of Kuttekoven.

Watch film at Miracles•Media – link
https://miracles.media/2024/07/05/escape-miracles-docs-4-20240705/

Visit Transport Z | 20240528

Open Memory, May 2010, Cologne | Miracles•Media | 20240528

Open Memory in Cologne (Köln) , Germany, May 8, 2010. Photo at the opening of the Open Memory installation with Simon Gronowski (survivor Transport XX to Auschwitz) together with Maria Baumeister (Cologne Initiative ‘Die Bahn erinnern’) and, seen from behind, Gitta R. (Lovara group of Roma) in front of one of the canvases with photographs and silhouettes of 351 Sinti and Roma from Northern France and Belgium, deported with “Transport Z” in January 1944 from Kazerne Dossin in Mechelen, Belgium to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.

Notes

Documentary ‘Open Memory’ in :
Open Memory | Miracles Docs #3 | 20240523 | https://miracles.media/2024/05/23/open-memory-miracles-docs-3-20240523/

Edited image (anonymous photographer) selected from web gallery photos by Bahn erinnern , and S. Grollmuss at the Open Memory site open-memory.info – retrieved on Apr 13 , 2017.

Citation info : Visit Transport Z | Open Memory, May 2010, Cologne | Miracles•Media | 20240528 | TakeNode 85faa3e6-5168-4909-9c02-fd233fa4a1bd

Number 1234 | 20240303

Door number 123 on our junior suite in Hotel Leopold Brussels that weekend 27 February to 1 March 2009 — a major free upgrade of the standard room that was included in our voucher. I associate, in retrospect, 123 with Simon Gronowski’s Transport XX story, that he told me two years later, and his fascination for numbers and coincidence.

Citation info : Number 1234 | 20240303 @1MEMO | Miracles•Media | TakeNode 5a43c6ef-feed-4d97-95d0-03fa4620649f | URL 1-memo.com/2024/03/03