My Brother John
Hamme, John
born 03-09-1922 in Amsterdam
died 16-09-1941 at Mauthausen
John Hamme was the eldest of the three children of Manuel Hamme and Roosje Koekoek. In 1925 his brother Nico was born and soon after the family moved to Emmastraat in the south of Amsterdam. In 1933 the family was completed by the birth of the little sister Hanneke.
There in the south of Amsterdam John grew up. He went to the primary school and later to the secondary school in Nicolaas Maesstraat. He was brought up in a family that lived according to the Jewish traditions without being strictly religious. On Jewish holidays they attended service in the synagogue in Obrechtstraat and on his thirteenth birthday John was Bar Mitswa.
In 1937 his father started a business in the fur trade together with a partner, after he had been employed for many years as sales traveller in a similar trade. In spite of the bad economic situation in these years the business prospered and the family Hamme became well-to-do. In 1940 they moved from Valeriusstraat, where they lived from 1937 to the much more modern Stadionweg.
John wanted to work in his father’s business and in order to learn the trade from the beginning he started to work after school as an apprentice furrier, first at fashion-house Hirsch and later at fur-shop Baaij.
John was a lively and cheerful youngman with many friends. He was sporting, played football with AFC for a while, and participated in walking tours in which he won a considerable amount of medals. He was very much interested in what happened globally and the articles in the newspaper which he collected were piled up in his cupboard.
Once John made the newspaper himself. He was about fifteen years old when the newsreel Cineac announced an attractive publicity. On Friday before Easter every hundredth visitor would receive a photo-book of the KLM and the thousandth visitor a return flight Amsterdam-Rotterdam. That Friday John got up early and went to the Cineac where he could see the visitors going in. As soon as the door opened he counted the visitors and he entered himself as number thousand. All the Amsterdam newspapers paid attention to this peculiarity.
In addition on his work John attended lessons at an evening-school and on June the eighth he wanted absolutely to go to school, although he knew that there would be a raid that day. As soon as he left the door he was arrested.
John was deported via Schoorl to Mauthausen where he was killed a few months later at the age of 19.
His parents, brother and sister escaped to Belgium and survived the war.
Text by Hansje E. Dominicus
Publication by "de Stichting Vriendenkring Mauthausen"
Amsterdam, june 1999