Date of birth:

March 30th, 1989 (Salatiga, North East India)

Date of death:

March 6th, 1945 (KZ Ravensbrück, Fürstenberg/Havel, Germany)

Buried on:

Wall of Nations

Nationality:

Dutch

She was a daughter of Mattheus Henricus Burger and Anna Annette Elise d’ Ancona. Her mother probably had a Jewish background.
On 20 January 1910, 21-year-old Clasina Burger married Haijko Gerard Hendrik Bennema, 32 years old, in Utrecht. Hendrik was born in Groningen and after some time the couple came to live in Haren, at Molenweg 36. Clasina and Haijko had three sons and two daughters. Clasina’s husband, Haijko Bennema, died on 31 January 1942 in Haren at the age of 64.
Clasina Bennema joined the National Organisation for Assistance to People in Hiding (LO). In the course of 1943 and 1944, she hid a Jewish girl with her for nine months and a Jewish man for three months. On 18 July 1944, Clasina was arrested by the SD and locked up in the detention centre in Groningen. After five weeks, she was transferred to Vught. She stayed there for three weeks. During that period, Camp Vught was dismantled. The Germans were in a hurry to do so, because the Allies were approaching. In mid-September 1944, Clasina Bennema, together with many other women from Camp Vught, was transported to the women's camp Ravensbrück, 80 kilometres north of Berlin. The transport was brutal: eighty women in a cattle wagon that could hold a maximum of forty people, for three days and nights. A survivor stated that there was only room to squat.
The situation in Ravensbrück was horribly bad in September 1944: due to lack of space, many women had to sleep outside, the hygienic conditions were abominable. There was a shortage of everything: soap, beds, food, reliable drinking water and medicines. On March 6, 1945, seven weeks before the liberation of the camp by the Red Army, Clasina Bennema-Burger died, possibly as a result of illness and exhaustion. She was 56 years old. Clasina was buried in the cemetery of the concentration camp.

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• Photo 1: J.Niemeijer "Hoe Groningen streed".
• - Clasina Johanna Willemina Bennema-Burger | Oorlogsgravenstichting
  - Clasina Johanna Willemina Bennema-Burger (Salatiga (MJav), 30 maart 1888 - Ravensbrück, 6 maart 1945) - Netwerk Oorlogsbronnen
  - Clasina Johanna Wilhelmina Bennema-Burger | Erelijst van Gevallenen 1940-1945
  - Clasina Johanna Wilhelmina Bennema-Burger
  - Nieuw oorlogsmonument Haren - Haren de Krant - Haren de Krant
  - Conc. kamp Ravensbrück te Ravensbrück | Oorlogsgravenstichting
  - Bronnen over 'Ravensbrück' - Netwerk Oorlogsbronnen
  

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