Hugo Samkalden 1906 - 1943

Born 18.2.1906 in Idi
Died 15.3.1943 in Mauthausen

Biography

Hugo Samkalden was one of the four children of Joseph Samkalden and Debora de Beer. He spent his early years on Sumatra, where he father worked for the Dordtsche Petroleum Maatschappij (Dordtsche Oil Company) as an inspector in petroleum production. One of Hugo’s two brother was killed there in an accident, which left his mother with permanent psychological damage. In 1910 the family migrated back to the Netherlands, where Joseph Samkalden worked as the managing director of the company R. S. Stokvis and Sons in Rotterdam until 1923.

Although at the age of thirteen Hugo celebrated his bar mitzvah in accordance with tradition, the Samkaldens were in fact assimilated Jews and therefore the milieu in which Hugo grew up was not markedly Jewish. After his final exams at the Erasmianum grammar school in 1925 he began to study law in Leiden. He was a brilliant scholar, had a large circle of friends, wrote texts for the student theatre and performed there himself. In addition he was very musical and showed some talent as a song writer. During his years in Leiden he made the conscious choice to live as a homosexual.

In 1927 he took his bachelor’s degree and, on 10 December 1929, his master’s in Dutch civil law, with subsidiary subjects in customary law and criminology. In July 1931 a second master’s followed, which covered customary law, Dutch Indies civil law, Javanese law and sociology. In the meantime he also worked on his doctoral thesis, spending 1930 researching at the Deutsche Institut für Zeitungskunde (German Press Institute) in Berlin. On 26 February 1932 he was awarded his doctorate at Leiden University, becoming a Doctor of Law with a dissertation on Public Opinion, Press and State.

Since it was difficult for Hugo to find a job within his speciality in the Netherlands, he eventually decided on a career as a jurist in the Dutch East Indies. In March 1932 he got a job as an extraordinary substitute court recorder for the court in Medan. It was there that he made his first contacts with the Dutch East Indian press – in particular to the Deli-Courant of writer Willem Brandt – contacts which intensified when, in October 1933, he started working for the General Municipal Administration in Buitenzorg [a town in west Java] in the Department for Constitutional, Social and Legal Affairs. Hugo’s career in the civil service flourished; he was quickly promoted and by April 1938 had attained the service rank of clerk of the justice (second class). By now he was also regularly publishing pieces in the Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad and in the Indischen Courant on literary and historical subjects. He took part in the monthly philosophical discussions hosted by Prof. H. R. Hoetink and continued to be active in amateur theatre. Together with the writer E. du Perron and some Indonesian intellectuals, among others, he prepared for the founding of a general cultural journal for the East Indies, but which was only to appear after the war.

His career came to an end when, in 1938, a moral scandal came to light in Batavia, to which several homosexual civil servants fell victim. In February 1939 Hugo was arrested for sexual contact with – according to the law at that time – underage Dutch men and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment. During his incarceration he wrote numerous articles and aphorisms on the concept of freedom, which were published in the progressive journal Kritiek en Opbouw (Criticism and Development). After the end of his prison term he travelled back to the Netherlands, where he arrived on 3 May 1940. There was hardly a worse point in time to be a Dutch Jew. Under the German occupation he had absolutely no prospects of finding a new job. He began to work for the resistance and was involved in mapping airborne landing sites in Haamstede. On 26 September 1941 he was arrested and on 2 March 1942 the naval court sentenced him to death. On 22 July the death sentence was commuted to a prison term. The many letters written by Hugo, first from the Oranjehotel and then from the military prison in Utrecht, to his father – his mother had died in 1927 – and his friends are testimony to his unbroken strength of mind and stoical attitude.

The date on which Hugo Samkalden was deported to Mauthausen – whether directly or via other camps – is unknown. He was 37 years old when he was murdered in the Mauthausen concentration camp.

The name Hugo Samkalden appears on the Honour Roll of the Fallen 1940–1945.

Henny E. Dominicus

Stichting Vriendenkring Mauthausen

 

References:

 

Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis (ed.): Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland [Biographical Dictionary of the Netherlands], final editing by J. Charité und A.J.C.M. Gabriels (The Hague 1994), pp. 445–447.

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