NL Times, Vandaag om 07:15, 3 min lezen
Researchers raise doubts about WWII account of imprisonment in Dachau concentration camp
Saturday, 10 October 2026 - 07:15
Two researchers have independently raised doubts that Dutch Second World War veteran Willem Wilbrink (99) was ever imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp, as he has told at countless commemorations and in his biography. Looking at the researchers’ findings, the Dutch Dachau Committee has concluded that the Arnhem man’s accounts are likely untrue, RTL Nieuws reports.
Wilbrink, from Arnhem, has shared his story on various occasions in recent years, including at commemorations, talking to the media, and in his biography, written by Laurens van Aggelen and published in 2023.
Wilbrink said that, as a 15-year-old, he was caught while involved in the resistance and sent to the Dachau concentration camp, where he became a corpse carrier. He said he saved around 40 people’s lives while transporting the bodies of murdered prisoners to Dachau’s crematorium. If he noticed someone was still alive, he smuggled them to the infirmary, he said, among other things.
The biography is what made historical researcher Jos Sinnema, who has been researching Dachau since 2002, suspicious in 2024. In the book, Wilbrink describes a clandestine Christmas celebration held in the camp in 1942. According to Wilbrink, one of the camp guards emptied his submachine gun inside the barracks, causing a “terrible bloodbath” that he “miraculously” survived.
Researcher Sinnema found no record of this shooting in his archival research. In fact, other camp memoirs describe the same celebration as peaceful and festive. Looking into it further, Sinnema found no evidence that Wilbrink had ever been in Dachau at all. “Evidence that does exist for other prisoners,” he told RTL Nieuws. “Based on my research, I know with near certainty that he was never there.”
Separately, writer Hans Vogelzang, whose father-in-law was imprisoned in Dachau, became suspicious of Wilbrink’s accounts and looked into it further. Vogelzang found multiple inaccuracies in what Wilbrink said, but the most significant is that the man does not have a camp number.
All prisoners were assigned a number upon arrival at camp Dachau, which became their identity. They weren’t addressed by their names, but by their numbers. "Every prisoner knew that number perfectly by heart and never forgot it. Records of all numbers and names from the period of Wilbrink's imprisonment have been preserved. He does not appear in the Nummerbuch [camp register],” Vogelzang said.
Researchers Sinnema and Vogelzang presented their found inaccuracies in Wilbrink’s accounts to the Dutch Dachau Committee, which now considers it unlikely that Wilbrink was imprisoned in the concentration camp as he says.
"You have to realize that hundreds of thousands of people were imprisoned at Dachau. They all had numbers, and those numbers were recorded. That entire archive was meticulously maintained and has survived. There is not a single documented case of someone having been held at the Dachau concentration camp without a number," Wimar Jaeger, chairman of the Dutch Dachau Committee, told RTL Nieuws.
"As the Dutch Dachau Committee, we know better than anyone the impact war trauma can have on people's minds," Jaeger continued. "We want to be very empathetic about this, too. At the same time, however, it is crucial that—when such accounts no longer align with the facts—we uphold the actual reality. There are meticulous records regarding who was held at Dachau. I am quite prepared to assert that this never actually happened."
Biographer Van Aggelen told RTL that, aside from Wilbrink’s own words, he has no direct evidence of the veteran’s accounts. “It is possible that he was stationed outside the camp but worked inside it. Perhaps he embellished the story a bit, but that is no reason to tear Mr. Wilbrink down like this,” he told RTL Nieuws.
Wilbrink’s son, Herman, also told the broadcaster that his father “sometimes makes the truth a bit more interesting by adding a little extra flavor.” At the same time, he has no doubts about his father’s account and stands by him.