Eva and Abraham Beem

Eva Beem (21 May 1932 – 6 March 1944) was a Dutch Jewish child and victim of the Holocaust who was gassed to death along with her brother Abraham upon arrival at Auschwitz concentration camp in March of 1944. The Beem children had been given new identities with a Christian family in an attempt to evade the Holocaust.

Biography

Beem was born in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands and was the daughter of Hartog and Rosette Beem, and older sister to her brother Abraham. Beem's parents were Jews and part of the well integrated Jews of the Netherlands. When Nazi Germany invaded the country in 1940, the Nazis started to separate the Jews from the general population and prohibited them from working. Beem's parents, realizing that they were in danger, decided to go into hiding. Eva and her brother were sent to the Dutch town of Ermelo to live with a Christian family. The two were given new identities. Beem was given the name Linni de Witt and attended school with the village children.

However, by 1944, the Nazis had realized that Jewish children were being sent to rural villages to hide. They found that people were willing to tell them names for payment. In February of 1944, four Dutch policemen arrested the family that had housed Eva Beem and her brother, as well as the two children.

At the age of 11, Eva Beem was gassed to death in the gas chambers of Auschwitz immediately upon arrival. The Beem children's father and mother survived the Holocaust and were not told about their children's deaths until after the war.