Biography Victoria Vickers

Vickers girls of Cinncinati, Victoria (left) and Grace, spoon their soup among 6,000 German internees cared for by allies in Vught concentration camp

Two Sisters from Cincinnati

Nazi Concentration Camp at Vught in the Netherlands
becomes Home of German Internees

Probably the grimmest Nazi concentration camp in the Netherlands was overrun by the Allied armies at Vught, near 's-Hertogenbosch. It had killed an estimated 136,000 Dutch men, women and children, meanwhile employing them in a radio-equipemnt factory inside the prison compound. It had produced some of the most accomplished and casual horror in the Nazi record (see following pages).

When LIFE Photographer George Silk reached Vught, the Allies had released the Dutch survivors and replaced them with German internees. Among these was a very odd pair. They were two old ladies who had been born in the Mount Auburn district of Cincinnati, had gone to Germany for a little visit 63 years ago, had married German husbands and had never returned to America. They are seen above: Victoria Vickers Hammacher, 73, widow of a German manufacturer of decorative tiles; and Grace Vickers Doring, 78, widow of a German portrait painter who had defied the late Kaiser on his art theories. Grace's two sons fought in the German army in World War I. One of her grandsons and Victoria's only son Hans were killed fighting with the German army on the Russian front last winter. When the Allies adavanced on Nijmegen, an American paratrooper dropped into their garden. Presently British officers suggested that they move out of their house on a hill at Wyler, across the German frontier from Nijmegen.

The Vickers girls became internees Nos. 00001989 and 00001990 at Vught. Huddling for warmth in their double bed day and night, they complained thinly of the noise, the drafts and the soup, prayed for their vanished families, remembered their father, Dr. Thomas Vickers, who had been president of Cincinnati University. Their mother, a German, had stayed on in Germany until divorced for desertion. At that time two sons had returned to the U.S.; the two girls had stayed. All they wanted now was for the war to end and let them go "home" - to Germany.

(Source LIFE Magazine 22. January 1945)

Links Victoria Vickers

Internal links
• Census, family bulletin 1923, page 127 (German)
• Census, family bulletin 1927, page 345 (German)


External links
• Report in LIFE Magazine from 22^nd January 1945