Author Archives: mary

The Dutch thought it couldn’t happen there, too

Marcher places flowers at Amsterdam's Auschwitz memorial

Marcher places flowers at Amsterdam’s Auschwitz memorial

The New York Times reports that the Dutch are constructing a memorial wall and Holocaust museum in Amsterdam’s old Jewish Quarter because memory is fading or inaccurate – despite the worldwide readership of The Diary of Anne Frank.  There is so much more to the story than one brilliant child writer’s account, despite her humanitarianism and universal appeal.

Historians have grappled endlessly with the question of how and why one of the most tolerant nations in the world allowed almost three-quarters of its Jewish population to be murdered.  It’s especially ironic since the Netherlands was a refuge for Jewish people since the Spanish Inquisition.

While the answers to “Why?” are many and complex, a primary one is that the Dutch believed it couldn’t happen there, even after the Nazi invasion.  The Jewish people had been assimilated for centuries, in professions from symphony conductors to medicine and art, shopkeeping, peddling, diamond cutting and trading.  The head of the Dutch Supreme Court was Jewish.  It was preposterous to think that people so integral to society at every level could be isolated and shipped off somewhere.  Much less murdered.  No matter what the Germans were doing in their own country, it couldn’t happen in the Netherlands.  Dutch people wouldn’t allow that.

Hiding was the best policy

Nor was it only the Dutch Gentiles who believed this. In doing the research for my historical novel, An Address in Amsterdam, I learned that many Jewish people themselves refused to believe that persecution would turn into isolation, much less deportation and mass murder. At each step – registration, identity cards, restricted travel and business, stars, even deportation – some people continued to rationalize the Nazis’ actions.  Others, like my fictional heroine, resisted.  Only one Jew in seven hid, which turned out to be the best way to survive the war other than pre-emptive escape.  Dutch Jewish citizens felt a misplaced confidence in their country and countrymen – much like the confidence many in the U.S. are feeling now, as we complacently believe that Donald Trump can’t win.  Instead, we hear more and more hate rhetoric aimed at Muslims, refugees, and undocumented workers and their families.  What can we do to provide them with the protection which the Dutch failed to give the Jewish part of their people?

What are we refusing to believe in 2016? 

Donald Trump says we should bar members of one religion, Muslims, from entering our country, targeting them in a way that violates the core American value of religious freedom.  He wants to build a wall to keep out the citizens of a particular nation, again singling out a group of people rather than judging them as individuals.  This is directly contrary to the lessons of the Holocaust.

Fortunately, one of these is that resistance can have some effectiveness, even in the very worst situation – especially when it happens broadly and quickly as a unified action (as in Denmark).  We live in a democracy where we can work to ensure that Trump does not get into office.  Even if Hillary Clinton were a far less progressive candidate than she is, we should still work as hard as we can to elect her – persuading not only the lukewarm voters, but those who, like me, supported Bernie Sanders.  If we believe not just in him as an individual, but in what he stands for, we have no choice but to learn the lessons of history.  Let’s stand beside him and work for Hillary.

One Step Away

You wouldn’t think that an old married woman writer like me would have anything in common with K.J. Morris, a 37 year old security guard and drag king in Orlando. For one thing, I’m alive, and she was murdered. She was 30 years younger, and chose a much more visible lifestyle than mine to put it mildly. I can pass as “normal,” but not K.J. , who had just moved form Hawaii to Orlando to take care of her mother and grandmother. I almost never go to a nightclub, but it was her livelihood and also a joy to her. I abhor physical violence, any bouncer has to engage in it sometimes. We couldn’t be more different, right?

Spider Web, every thread just one step away from the others

And yet an attack on her and the others who were killed that night is an attack on me, and my freedom. In case I’d missed that point, it was only hours before the inevitable happened on Facebook: I learned that K.J. and I have a friend in common. A real friend, not just an electronic one: a brilliant activist writer and writing teacher, Chivas Sandage, with whom I studied at Vermont College of Fine Arts. So I am only one step away from someone who was killed because of what she and I have in common: being outside the heterosexual mainstream.

Right wing extremists in our time may well be only one step away from a queer person, or a woman who has had an abortion, or someone who believes in gun control.  And it works the other way around, too. People like me are only a step or two away from people who say they hate us. Some of them even want to kill us, and some believe that God is telling them we are wicked. Unfortunately, “radical Islam” is far from alone among the world religions in this respect.

Since we are so close to people on the other side of many divides, we have to be braver. We have to come out more – not just to the people we are comfortable with, but to the others. And we have to stand beside our sisters and brothers who are “queerer” than we are, whether our point of departure is straight or gay or somewhere else. We have to engage with those who oppose us, and show that we care about at least some of the same things as they do. As hard as it may be, we have to find commonalities with them. We are all human. We want to love and be loved. Unless we get beyond divisiveness and finger-pointing, our country may sink to its lowest level ever, and endanger the whole planet.

I often think of the people in the Netherlands under the Nazis and the dilemmas they confronted every day, because those are at the heart of my novel, An Address in Amsterdam. Given how assimilated the Jewish population was, I wonder how many of the Gentile neighbors were only one step away from someone who was in danger of deportation – Jewish, Roma, Sinti, queer, resister, people with disabilities. Only a few of the neighbors were as brave as we have to be now. We still honor them. What will the next generations say of us? They too are only one step away.

Would the Nazis Bomb Amsterdam?

On May 14, 1940, the Germans bombed the historic city of Rotterdam to smithereens, leveling innumerable architectural masterpieces as well as killing more than 800 civilians and depriving more than 80,000 of their homes.  Ironically, the Nazis were in the middle of negotiations with the Dutch when the bombers struck.  The German General Schmidt himself was horrified to hear the planes overhead, reporting shouting that “This is a catastrophe!”  He had let Headquarters know that he was still trying to make a deal with the Dutch, but communications broke down.  At least that’s what the Germans later reported.

One of the many controversial questions about that day is whether the Nazis threatened to bomb Amsterdam and other Dutch cities if the Netherlands did not surrender at once.  Whether or not that threat was made directly, it’s unimaginable that Amsterdam city officials would not have seen Rotterdam as evidence that the Nazis were completely ruthless and would not spare even the most revered structures.  Only four days after the initial invasion, this must have seemed such a blow that there was no difficulty in securing agreement that surrender was the only choice.  For more detailed information about all aspects of the Rotterdam bombing, see here.

Image of bombed city

From the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

 

Getting the Most out of Goodreads:  What I Learned at BEA

A general comment on BEA which I’m inserting in each of these related posts:  Even though it’s a publishers’ conference, it’s a great chance for authors like me to learn about the world we are part of, meet lots of people including reviewers, and listen to the top people in the business of promoting book talk about what they do, and what might help us.  I’m glad I went.  I’m going to do a series of highlights about the workshops I attended so other writers can get the benefit of those sessions too.  Wish you’d been there.Mary in front of BEA sign

Takeaways:

  • Soon Goodreads will be offering Kindle e-book giveaways which they highly recommend and will promote
  • The hope is that winners will write reviews, particularly pre-publication so that you’ll see reviews on the publication date
  •  It’s a powerful form of free social news
  • The publisher chooses the length of the giveaway and the number of copies up to 100 – cost is $119
  • A key factor is delivering the file to Kindle well in advance of pub date
  • Established writers can now write directly to their fan base to help others break out, with a personal e-mail to each person who has rated them highly
  • They are doing genre weeks to promote lots of books in one genre together
  • The Nightingale case study shows several peaks after pre-publication reviews and advertising as well as a feature article in the Goodreads newsletter, and steadily high sales
  • It’s important to engage with your readers.  Specifically:
    o Shelve books so readers see your taste
    o Answer questions through Ask the Author
    o Keep a blog or write status updates to stay in the front of readers’ minds
    o Try for the Goodreads Choice Awards
    o Give away lots of books pre-publication and bring personality to it
    o Consider starting a group, or connect with an existing one by approaching the moderator personally, not the whole group
  • Use advertising, which looks and feels like Goodreads content but is marked as sponsored
  • People need to see the cover 6-12 times before they buy
  • A profile is essential
  • You can pitch the newsletter, which runs its own content, telling us why the audience wants to read this book.

Resources:

Speakers:
Patrick Brown, head of author marketing at Goodreads
Laura Clark, St. Martin’s Press

The New Digital Audio Landscape: What I Learned at BEA

Mary in front of BEA signA general comment on Book Expo America which I’m inserting in each of these related posts:  Even though it’s a publishers’ conference, it’s a great chance for authors like me to learn about the world we are part of, meet lots of people including reviewers, and listen to the top people in the business of promoting book talk about what they do, and what might help us.  I’m glad I went.  I’m going to do a series of highlights about the workshops I attended so other writers can get the benefit of those sessions too.  Wish you’d been there.

Highlights:

  • Audiobooks are still growing a lot in sales while other forms are falling off
  • Narrators are a very big deal
  • Author interviews at the end of a reading increase appeal
  • Libraries promote multi-access simultaneous use, and are a great way to build a following
  • Learn how to work with promoters to libraries
  • The alternating audio and read experience is growing
  • Advertising helps a lot; much selling is done through social media
  • Go where people are already listening to other spoken word content
  • Promote yourself to relevant podcast producers who want guests:  learn about the show first, and do a 90 second pitch
  • Call the programming director for radio stations and do the 90 second pitch based on their interests.

Resources:

Moderator:  Anne Kostick, Partner, Foxpath.  Panelists listed at https://www.bookexpoamerica.com/en/BEA-Conferences/BEA-Education-Program/Sessions/#

Eating History at the
Jewish Historical Museum

For a respite from the rigors of wandering around the city, the calm of the Jewish Historical Museum café always repays your effort.  You can not only get off your feet, but you can sample to the delights of both standard delicatessen food that you’ll recognize, and some specialties of Jewish Amsterdam which speak of its history.

People sitting in brightly lit café

Jewish Historical Museum Café

My personal favorite is gemberbolus, a sticky bun with lots of ginger syrup (although it does come in other flavors, too). You can find a recipe here as well as the story of how this delicious treat came to be in Amsterdam.  It’s traced, thanks to Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra, back to Spain in two possible ways:  first, it may have been a snack for the occupying Spanish forces when they invaded the Netherlands during the Eighty Years War (1568-1648).  But there seems little question that the bolus came with the Sephardic Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition.

Although the Netherlands was not a paradise for Jewish people — for example, they couldn’t join guilds or become citizens — it offered far more equality and opportunity than any other country at that time.  The community prospered and became essential to Amsterdam’s economy as well as its character.  By 1675, they had erected the magnificent Portuguese Synagogue.  Why, if many were originally Spaniards, did they call it that?  Partly because some  fled to Portugal first before the Inquisition began there, but also because of the bitter history of the Spanish invasion and not wanting to be associated with Catholic Spain.

Even if you can’t taste all that in the gemberbolus, it’s good to remember how often food brings history alive.  Since I was too busy eating my roll to take a picture of it, I’m indebted to the delightful What’s Cooking blog for the delightful photo below:

Delicious roll oozing with ginger syrup

Thanks to timskitchen.blogspot.com

Another Side of Dam Square

Building in Dam Square with SS logo on it

Identified as in public domain: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/536491374335302561/

I’m doing this by eye, but I’m pretty sure that this building is on Dam Square on the Royal Palace side.  The SS sign you see was designed to attract Dutch recruits, particularly after the invasion of Russia, when some were motivated by the idea that they could fight the communists. Nazi imagery like this was commonplace in major public places after the invasion in 1940.

Siert Bruins could have been recruited by this office on the Dam.  He is a Dutch-born SS volunteer who was accused in 2013 of murdering Aldert Klaas Dijkema, a Dutch resistance fighter, as a reprisal.  However, the judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence.  Earlier, Bruins was convicted in absentia by a Dutch court for several other murders after the war, but he had already fled to Germany and taken German citizenship.  Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal found him living under a false name in a German village, and he was convicted there of two other murders and imprisoned for 5 years.

As I researched my novel, I learned that reprisal killings were all too common.  When the Resistance took some strong action, the Nazis often killed someone, or in some cases, a whole group of randomly assorted people.  No wonder my heroine is afraid for her life.

Window Cleaning on the Entrepotdok

A cherry picker beside an historic building with a person cleaning windows

Entrepotdok, Amsterdam

No, the person in the cherry picker isn’t fixing something, just cleaning the grime off the windows. Like many other cleaning rituals, this is an obsession in Amsterdam. You can also still occasionally see a fellow with a long ladder balanced on a wagon, but the more modern equipment is commoner now. In addition to the national fetish with sanitation, letting the maximum light in is important more than halfway to the North Pole. This building is part of the Entrepotdok redevelopment which was an early example of the conversion of historically important buildings (in this case a warehouse) into social, i.e. public, housing.

Although I’ve been to Amsterdam’s airport dozens of times, I’ve never failed to see windows being washed, whether outside or inside, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are people who do nothing else.  Even the internal windows are gleaming, and the glass you can’t see through reflects as perfectly as any mirror.  Although I think of myself as a good housekeeper, the Dutch are so much better.  Our apartment rent has nearly always included a weekly or bi-weekly cleaning to be sure standards were kept up.

In my upcoming novel An Address in Amsterdam, cleaning is an important part of everyday life.  After the family’s Gentile housekeeper is no longer allowed to work for a Jewish household, my heroine Rachel and her mother do all the work themselves, which was unusual for the middle class at that time.

An Honduras Assassination and Resistance Today

Demonstration at US State Department, taken by Slowking

Demonstration at US State Department, taken by Slowking

What’s the link between Honduras today and Amsterdam under the Nazis? When I read about the assassination of Berta Cáceres, the eminent indigenous environmental activist, I knew I couldn’t ignore it – especially after 13 years studying the Holocaust and resistance in the Netherlands. I’ve learned something about the dangers of silence, how it gives evil-doers permission to carry out everything from bullying to mass murder. All they need is for the rest of us to avert our eyes. Apart from that understanding, I’ve also been inspired by learning about those who didn’t wait to be asked, but who volunteered to work against the Nazis, often in peril of their lives.

Berta Cáceres was one of those people. As the formidable and charismatic organizer of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, she’d spent a decade organizing the resistance to the Agua Zarca dam. It threatens the sacred river of the Lenca people, disrupting both their livelihood and their religion.

Someone made a calculation about Berta Cáceres. Yes, she’d received international recognition for her work, the coveted Goldman Prize. Yes, the Inter-American Human Rights Council had pressured President Hernandez to provide police protection. Yes, she was in the public eye not just throughout the region, but worldwide.  But someone knew he could get away with assassinating her, and that someone else would pay him handsomely for it. He was right. According to Global Watch, more than 100 Honduras environmental activists and resistance workers have been murdered since 2002. Berta Cáceres is silent now.

What about us?

Only a few days before the assassination on March 2, Honduran President Hernandez was in Washington, purring around to gather continued U.S. support for his supposed improvement in mitigating the violence in his country. Now he’s calling for speedy justice for the assassins, but many don’t believe he means it, and time may well prove them right.

As long as the U.S. – and that means me and all other U.S. taxpayers – supports Honduras, we have leverage. If the President and Congress hear from us, they’ll know we care about Berta Cáceres and the rights of indigenous people to their water and their land. And they can put pressure where it will do the most good. We can also support global human rights organizations which bring these situations to light around the world.  Global Witness is a fine example.

Berta Cáceres did her work so well that many are ready to take her place. We just need to stand beside them.