At the Middenmeer sports park in the Watergraafsmeer district of Amsterdam stands a memorial with the names of over 220 men. It commemorates the Jewish members of the club "Wilhelmina Vooruit - Hortus Eendracht Doet Winnen" (WV-HEDW) who were murdered during the Second World War. Today, the club is one of the largest amateur football clubs in the Netherlands.
The clubs Wilhemina Vooruit (WV) and Hortus Eendracht Doet Winnen (HEDW), which only merged in the 1950s, were not Jewish clubs. However, the proportion of Jewish members was very high in both clubs before the Second World War. They played in the third and fourth leagues. Bernardus Polak, Louis Schenkkan, Gerrit Wijnschenk and Herman van Zuiden also played for WV and HEDW at times. All four were born between 1913 and 1920 and worked as employees, salesmen or tradesmen. We know little about their lives. However, we do know that Schenkkan and Wijnschenk took part in a charity match for Jewish refugees in November 19.
In retaliation for alleged resistance activities by the Jewish population, the German order police rounded up around 400 Jewish men between the ages of 18 and 35 on Jonas Daniël Meijerplein in Amsterdam on 21 and 22 February 1941. The four footballers were among them. A few days later, all those arrested were deported to Buchenwald via the Schoorl transit camp, where the SS forced them to perform the hardest labour. The survivors were sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp at the end of May 1941, where Louis Schenkkan, Gerrit Wijnschenk and Herman van Zuiden died a few months later. Bernardus Polak was murdered by the SS in the Hartheim killing centre in August 1941.
