Category: post

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 Stop Transport XX | Miracles Docs #5 | 20240708

Mrs Mia Valkeneers recounts her childhood memories, how she and her brother Marcel – both circa Simon Gronowski’s age – were living in Kuttekoven in a house at the railroad track at the time, some 50 meters from the site Simon Gronowski escaped from the 20th deportation train to Auschwitz, April 19, 1943.
That night they woke up, when the train had stopped, hearing the hissing of the locomotive, the Nazis shooting and shouting, and people crying during the escapes from the train, and…the next day, brother Marcel watched an open (flat) car passing by at the track with dead bodies…

Podcast at Miracles•Media – link
https://miracles.media/2024/07/08/kuttekoven-stop-transport-xx-miracles-docs-5-20240708/

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

Strange Fruit | 20240706

Kuttekoven track to Auschwitz… Right after the site where Simon Gronowski escaped from the 20th convoy, ‘Transport XX’, the railway bed of this former so-called ‘Fruitspoor’ (Fruit Track) crosses the village of Kuttekoven, with – on the horizon – the Church of Saint John the Baptiser , currently with the expo ‘Witzwart’ (Whiteblack) – aka Land(es)capes from the 20th Convoy – by the local photographer Jo Struyven.
Filmed Sunday early afternoon, January 26th, 2014, while scouting the place for a reportage with Simon Gronowski later that day.

Watch film at Miracles•Media or Miracles•Media’s Substack … https://substack.com/@michelvanderburg/note/c-61114479

Citation info : Strange Fruit | Miracles•Media | 20240706 | TakeNode d929ede7-817f-476d-854c-4c358012ec82

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/