Tag Archives: Holocaust

Dutch Railway Offers Reparations for Deportation

Westerbork train track with flowers laid along it on Remembrance Day

Only 77 years (almost to the day) after the first Dutch train hauled people to the extermination and concentration camps, the Dutch Railway has agreed to pay reparations to 500 remaining Jewish, Roma and Sinti survivors and their widows/ers or children. The railway will also seek ways to honor those who didn’t come back and left no one. The Dutch Railway (NS) allowed the Nazis to buy their services unless it compromised their principles (whatever that would have meant), and the unions followed suit. They made about 2.5 million euros in today’s currency.

Reparations are not offered now because of a sudden change of heart – after all, Dutch Railway apologized in 2005, sixty years after the end of the war. Rather, it is thanks to the intervention of Mr Salo Muller, a Holocaust survivor and physical therapist to the Ajax soccer team, who pushed for monetary compensation comparable to that of the French Railway. Rather than pursue legal action, the Dutch Railway established a committee under the leadership of former Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen, himself a Jewish hidden child.

Mayor Job Cohen on bike

Their recommendation has just emerged, and they will be responsible for overseeing the disbursements. “It is not possible to name a reasonable and fitting amount of money that can compensate even a bit of the suffering of those involved,” Cohen said in a statement. Each survivor who was transported will receive 15,000 euros ($17,000) each. Widows and widowers of victims are eligible to receive 7,500 euros ($8,500) and, if they are no longer alive, the surviving children of victims will receive 5,000 euros ($5,685).

What do we know about the role of the trains in the deportation? Between midnight and three a.m., the Dutch Railway ran a special series of trains beginning in July 1942 from Amsterdam’s Centraal Station to a station near the Westerbork Transit Camp. There was special provision for the train employees to be exempt from the curfew. It’s important to remember that initially almost everyone believed that they were headed for labor camps, not their deaths.

Centraal Station Amsterdam

The next train, however, was more sinister: the classic cattle car strewn with filthy straw and occasionally a passenger carriage. Once a week, on Tuesday, the train pulled out of the station (first nearby Hooghalen, then Westerbork itself once a spur had been added) with its load of victims, the number chalked on the side. The process for deciding who would stay and go is barbaric, but not the responsibility of NS. In the first six months (July 1942-January 1943), an astute medical orderly noticed that the car was always the same, and he created an inconspicuous hiding place where messages could be transmitted. Moreover, he kept copies as well as transmitting the originals, and thanks to him we have an account of the conditions on the train. One person wrote “When the door was shut, the smell was unbearable and the air oppressive; when the door was left open, there was a horrible draught. . . [overnight] two had died of cold and misery. They were taken to the luggage section.”

Last Train from Westerbork

The resistance fighter J.H. Scheps asked what the train employees felt when they heard the pleas and cries of their passengers: “Don’t you understand what they are doing to these helpless Jews? Don’t you know how they torture our Jewish comrades? Have you bread and butter patriots never heard the voice of Rachel, she who mourns and will not be comforted for her children – the children you help to carry to their death?” If only one could look back and find resistance to the deportations among the train management or workers.

From July 1942 until September 1944, ninety-eight trains rolled out on time. Of the passengers, not a single one survived on 26 transports, and many others had one person alone. Depending on which numbers you believe, the trains took away between 104,000 and 110,000 people from the Netherlands, and only 5,450 returned.

Westerbork monument representing lives lost

When, after the war, the Enquiry Commission confronted the Dutch Railway Board with its choices, the response was that the question of deportation had been raised, but no one had ever urged them to refuse cooperation. Who could have done that? The Board itself, the workers, the union leadership? I hope that a person who reads this knows of that rare someone who did speak up, and will tell us about it. And I hope someone else who is in a position to stop something they know is wrong will take this story as a warning.

Through the German Invader’s Lens: Their Photos of Holland in 1940

German Soldier and Dutch woman

“Nach Holland: The 1940 Invasion of the Netherlands through German Eyes” at Amsterdam’s Resistance Museum is a completely new take on the unexpected invasion of the Netherlands. Interestingly, ten percent of Germans had a camera in 1939, and many who invaded the Netherlands brought them along. The exhibit shows 150 of their photos, a collage of images that range from the delightfully ironic to the somber.

At first, the tone is a kind of lark for boy scouts. The Germans are smiling, things are going swimmingly, and some of the Dutch populace is seen as welcoming their new neighbors. There are even photos of German and Dutch soldiers together. But a different and mixed picture soon emerges. We see pictures of Dutch POWs forced to bury German casualties, or men cowering in trenches. A stream of civilians fleeing their homes clarifies the stakes.

Civilians fleeing German invaders

It begins to look like a real war. One small bit of comedy is that the Germans handily captured the Rotterdam airport, only to discover that the earth there was too mucky to hold up their heavily laden aircraft, so they ended up landing on the nearby beach.

Arnhem during invasion With foreknowledge, it was poignant to see photos of the children of Arnhem gathered as the Germans arrived, with one soldier smiling broadly. How many of those kids would survive one of the bloodiest battles of the war, “the bridge too far” which left 17,000 troops and an uncounted number of civilians dead?

In some areas, the Dutch retreated quickly, but in others they fought very hard and held their ground. Among the most impressive of these achievements was holding the Afsluitdijk, a 20 mile long dam and causeway which was built to divide the North Sea and the Ijsselmeer – not in our time, but in the 1920s and early 30s. Ironically, the soldiers who had successfully defended it had to hand it over to the Germans at the time of the overall capitulation. It must have been a bitter pill.

Overall, it only took a few days for the armed struggle for the Netherlands to be over, from the first attacks on May 10, 1940, until the capitulation on May 14. A sad fact is that the Germans said they would allow the Dutch up to a certain time to accept or reject an ultimatum. If it was rejected, they would bomb the city of Rotterdam. When the Dutch received the physical document, it was not properly signed, and was sent back. By the time it was returned with a signature, the bombers were on the way – two and a half hours before the ultimatum was supposed to expire. In only 15 minutes, 25,479 houses were reduced to rubble; 78,700 were homeless; and 850 civilians were dead. And yet, after all that, a photo was taken with civilians and Germans together. Soldiers and Dutch civilians in Rotterdam

“Now it begins,” I couldn’t help thinking, as I saw the photograph of the Germans entering Amsterdam. How fortunate that no one alive then could foresee exactly how terrible the next five years would be – worst for the 80% of Jewish people who were rounded up and murdered, and unimaginably hard for everyone else.

Every time I approach the Verzetsmuseum, I am carried back to my early visits there in 2001. A friend used to say, “You went in one door and came out another.” While my obsession with the Holocaust and Resistance here has many sources, a crucial experience was realizing that 1940-45 wasn’t just a steamroller. There were so many small actions both by the Nazis and by their opponents, and there was a dignity in resistance – even at its most “insignificant” – that I had never understood before. I think of the woman who knitted together the fingers in the gloves she was forced to make for the German soldiers. Walking through the Museum on my way to the temporary exhibit of German invaders’ photos that was my goal, I remembered so much. Watching a film with my beloved Eliane Vogel Polsky, who was hidden in plain sight as a teenager, about a family with their happy children the night before deportation. She couldn’t stand it, even though she’d tolerated so much else: “We don’t have to see that.” Hearing the sound of the underground presses and seeing the machines that were put together, then taken apart, which I’ve talked about so many times since to various audiences.

Listening to the recording of a woman responding to a request to hide in her house with a closed door: “We don’t have room,” and its variations. Learning about the 1944-45 Hunger Winter, and my complete shock that Amsterdam lost more than 2,000 people to starvation. As is so often the case here, I felt as though I was walking over my own footsteps since 2001, a kind of archeology of my slowly growing understanding of this place and time, and how it relates all too vividly to our own. Resistance Museum Door

A First Visit Back to Amsterdam’s Dockworker

As soon as I arrived in Amsterdam, I wanted to pay my respects to the Dockworker, the symbolic figure of the February Strike, the only general strike in Western Europe to protest the first roundup of Jewish people. I was sad not to get here a week earlier for the commemoration on February 25, but the flowers laid at that time were still there. As impressive as the big official wreaths are, personally I am always most moved by the little bunches of tulips laid right by his feet. And you wonder who has brought each one, and exactly why – because of a grandparent, someone who knew someone, a friend? Because of the kind of connection I have, which is not genetic or even circumstantial, but something else? I was so glad to go and stand by the Dockworker again. It is a ritual that I must complete every time I’m here, a touchstone. Attending the commemoration the first time gripped me emotionally in a way that has never let me go. I know so much more than I did that day in 2001, and feel so much more sorrow now that I understand more of the extent of the Holocaust here and how it devastated the city. I know that only a small percentage of the 300,000 people who went on strike that day actually engaged in further resistance. But I still honor them for that day. The strikers push and prod me to do the right thing in my own time, and I feel their presence wherever I am, especially at this time of year. If you’d like to know more about the Strike, it’s here.

The Cut Out Girl: A Hidden Jewish Child and Her Rescuers

The ineptly titled “The Cut Out Girl: A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found” by Bart van Es is foremost the gripping and complex story of a Jewish girl hidden in plain sight in the bosom of the author’s grandparents’ family. Over her story is laid the equally complicated tale of this host family, and how little the author knows of what happened among them under the Nazi occupation. In the course of the book, the “cut out girl” Lien de Jong and the author Bart form a collaboration and friendship, and we see how the story is pieced together. Their conversations in her Amsterdam apartment interlace his journeys to her hiding places and various archives and experts. The two come to understand, at least to some extent, how the rift between Lien and the people who helped to save her could have happened in the 1980s.

Bart de Es does an admirable job of evoking moments, in a breathless, present tense style that shows how the potatoes are served at the family table, or how a ball rolls into the woods. He tells the reader that he has embellished the fragments Lien provides in their extended conversations, stirring in just enough egg to hold the dough of her memories together, and checking with her for accuracy. Although he left the Netherlands for England when he was only three years old, de Es spent many summers there and has a real feeling for the landscape, which he conveys in detail. However, he learns that it is actually full of hidden secrets which come closer and closer to his own people.

As background to the personal stories, de Es provides compact, well researched (although not footnoted) accounts of key events that will influence the fates of the characters: his speculation about why 75% of Dutch Jews were rounded up and murdered, the bombing of the countryside and the “bridge too far,” how the survivors were treated when they emerged from hiding or the camps, and more. Occasionally, the reader is in the same numbed and disoriented state Lien is experiencing, unsure what age she is, which village we are in, who that character is, and what’s happening in the bigger picture. But de Es usually gets the balance right, painting the background in with just enough strokes to make it visible. His lengthy descriptions of photographs sometimes feel excessive, but he nearly always points out details that all but the most studious reader would miss. Most are reproduced at such a small size that a glass would be needed to see what de Es has noticed.

Like any book on this theme, there are heart-wrenching moments, and they are never overplayed. I will never forget the letter Lien’s mother writes to the family who will hide her daughter. de Es gets it just right when he speaks of the tone of “measured sacrifice” as she expresses the wish that her hidden daughter think of her new family as her parents, and turn to them for comfort in “the moments of sadness that will come to her”. Although Lien’s mother closes with the wish that they will all be reunited one day, she is making other provisions.

Although skimpy in recounting his own emotional reactions – undoubtedly better than overdoing it as most American writers might have done – de Es deserves great credit for recounting Lien’s feelings in a way that seems accurate and honest to her. That shows particular bravery in the case of the sexual abuse she was subjected to, including inappropriate attention from the author’s grandmother. de Es finally is struck by the thunderbolt of connection between her life and his – not only the link with his grandparents who sheltered her, but between his biography and hers. Grappling with a rebellious teenaged daughter, he recognizes Lien’s “free fall” at the same age, and sees his strict grandmother in himself. He also discovers much more, which changes his view of his childhood and perhaps the Dutch identity: “My sense of the one village in the Netherlands that I thought I knew has changed.”

As someone who spent 13 years researching and writing about this place and time to produce An Address in Amsterdam, I empathized with de Es’s poignant question “What could I add?” as he scrutinized the piles of books about World War II. But add he has, at least in the English language. This book gives us an intricate picture of the “before, during and after” for a hidden child and those who both helped and hindered her. “The Cut Out Girl” records the profound damage to all the survivors (hidden, Jewish and others), and is a tribute to resilience and the ability to throw lines of connection across the wounds.

The Echoes of Kristallnacht

Synagogue in flames

Kristallnacht is significant because it was a moment of warning about what was to come. What appeared to be individual violence carried out by thugs was specifically sanctioned and incited by the state. What happened that night of November 9-10, 1938? As always, there was an excuse.

Thousands of Polish Jews had been expelled from Germany, and an enraged Jewish teenager shot a German diplomat as a result. The diplomat died about the same time as a big Nazi celebration, and Goebbels used the occasion to call for a rampage – but not officially. “The Führer has decided that … demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the Party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered.” This was both a call and a license to vandalize Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues. The word was passed down from party officials and the Security Police to their local outlets. Although the Nazis later tried to maintain the fiction that these events happened locally, it’s clear that they were orchestrated from Berlin.

The numbers tell one part of the story of the night of November 9-10: 91 people dead, 267 synagogues desecrated or destroyed, some of them burning through the night in full view of fire departments which were ordered to watch unless nearby buildings were threatened. More than 7500 Jewish businesses were destroyed and looted. But that’s only part of the story.

Kristallnacht was the moment when the German state first arrested people only because they were Jewish. They took 30,000 Jewish men, mostly young and vigorous per the orders from above, shipped them off to work and concentration camps. (The men below were marched through the streets and forced to watch as a synagogue burned.) Some died of the camp conditions, but many were released when they agreed to immigrate.

Men arrested during Kristallnacht

That’s where Kristallnacht and my own life’s work intersect. Kristallnacht sounded a warning that German Jews could not ignore. The Netherlands had been neutral in World War I, and there was a longstanding, well integrated Jewish community there. After Kristallnacht, it’s not surprising that more than 40,000 German Jews applied for a visa to enter the Netherlands, but only 7,000 got one, and even they were put in camps. In desperation, 2,000 more refugees snuck in, and at least the Dutch didn’t send them back, although they did incarcerate them. Is this an echo of the situation of refugees who try to enter the U.S. today? We’ll come back to that point.

Unfortunately, most of the German Jews who made it into the Netherlands were rounded up and murdered. Volumes have been written about how and why the Holocaust could have happened in as open and tolerant a society as the Netherlands. One factor was surely the superior systems the Dutch developed to identify who lived where, in an orderly population register which made it easy to check whether an identity card was genuine or not. It also greatly facilitated roundups by showing where the Jewish people were living. The Holocaust was also facilitated by the fact that the Dutch were and are traditionally a law-abiding people who basically trusted their government. There was no tradition of resistance there, as there was in countries like Belgium, France and Italy. Many other factors have been explored in response to the question, “How could the Holocaust happen in the Netherlands – and to such a devastating degree?”

Whatever scholars may differ about, the collusion of ordinary people was an absolutely key factor. Many minded their own business and tried to keep life going on as normally as they could, activities which would have been benign in a different time, but in this time made them colluders with the Nazis.

women in front of store with smashed windows Kristallnacht

Looking at the situation instead from the Dutch Jewish point of view, it seems strange that most of them simply did not believe that they would lose their homes, their businesses and professions, their freedom of movement and ultimately their lives. We cannot underestimate how safe they felt. Let’s hear from Dr. Jacob Presser on this point. Dr. Presser was a Jewish historian who himself survived the war by hiding, and he spent 12 years researching and writing the classic volume Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry. Here’s how he depicts the mood of his Jewish countrymen at the beginning of 1942:

“Many pinned their hopes on the likelihood of Germany eventually losing the war, and consoled themselves with the knowledge that, however bad their position, it could have been much worse. Moreover, few Jews believed that the Germans would carry their policy to the limit. True, there had been raids and hundreds had died, but, thank God, most Dutch Jews had been allowed to remain in their old homes. True also, the Germans had sounded the ugly word of ’emigration,’ but had they not prefixed the comforting adjective ‘voluntary’ – and was the measure not directed at foreign rather than Dutch Jews?” That gives us a sense of why only about one Jewish person in seven hid.

woman emerging from underground hiding place

We’ve all heard of the Dutch resistance and revered it. Having studied it for 13 years as I researched and wrote An Address in Amsterdam, I honor what those people did, in fear of their lives – especially those who had the double jeopardy of being Jewish. That’s why I chose to write about a young Jewish woman who joins the resistance. But as much as we honor those resisters, we can never forget how few they were. Yes, historians say 24-25,000, and I think we can double that safely if we include people who only helped occasionally. But even so, we aren’t up to ONE PERCENT in a country of 8.7 million.

No one can review this history without a sense of apprehension. Yet there are so many differences between our situation now, and that in Germany or the Netherlands under the Nazis.

We live in a constitutional democracy
Our press is still speaking up to some extent
Violence against persecuted groups is still sporadic and occasional, and
We do have elections so we can correct the course.

And yet – who among us has not wondered

Are we sliding down the slope from civilization to barbarism? Because it is a slope, not a single moment of choice.
Is the American Jewish community not, like those in Germany and the Netherlands, deeply integrated into society at large? Yet the fact of assimilation did not protect them.

Kristallnacht broken windows

If we look back to the times that began with Kristallnacht for inspiration as well as horror, what can we find to guide us now? Kristallnacht was a time when many people woke up and realized that the Nazis were in earnest, that their hatred had turned to broken bones and windows, desecrated synagogues and 30,000 Jewish prisoners. Some of those people who woke up resisted, by fleeing or becoming active against the Nazis or both.

Can we make this anniversary of Kristallnacht our own moment of awakening?

When we hear code words for white nationalism and supremacy become acceptable in public discourse, can we speak up against them?

When we hear of hate crimes – whether they are in Charlottesville or Sacramento or Omaha – whether they are against peaceful protestors or African American men or someone who looked Muslim — can we respond with empathy and unity, as we did for Pittsburgh.

low candles lit

Can we say that whatever acts of hatred the U.S. government itself is committing must be stopped – and by us? To take a single example, think of children who are refugees and immigrants like my impoverished ancestors and perhaps yours. They are being stolen from their parents, just as they were at the gates of other camps. Can we claim those children, imprisoned in “tent cities,” that barbarous euphemism? Can we fight for them as strenuously as we would for our own children? Are they ours? If our tax dollars are paying for them to be kidnapped and imprisoned, are they not ours?

Let’s change gears and focus for a moment on the people who stayed home for Kristallnacht. They may have been quieter anti-Semites, or they may have been friendly to the Jewish people and disgusted by the violence in the streets. But they didn’t stop it. This is the story in the Netherlands, as well.

I wish I could offer you more words of comfort today. But all I can bring you is what your people have always done – to continue your hard work in the service of other persecuted people and yourselves. Work that everyone is morally and ethically required to do, whether or not we ever see the results. We are in a time when that spirit is more needed than ever.

Let’s not allow the 80^th anniversary of Kristallnacht and the murders in Pittsburgh to terrify and dishearten us. May they instead awaken us to be even more active on behalf of justice, and what used to be called “the human family.” As I need not remind you, “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”

Untitled, by Barbara Chen

This talk was part of the Shabbat service at the Israel Congregation of Manchester, Vermont, on Friday, November 9, 2018. Many thanks to them for inviting me.

Amsterdam’s Silent March

A few words preceded the Silent March, following exquisite music by the Mirando Orchestra, the descendants of a Roma group which began playing before the war. (Today, I learned from a friend that they survived because they were given jobs in the circus, and the Germans liked to attend it). Several personal testimonies followed, but they were brief in the cold wind off the Amstel River.

Everyone needed to get moving. The trams had been stopped all along the route, which was scheduled to last an hour and required brisk walking to ensure that the March reached Dam Square in time for the ceremony there.

A woman and man on horseback led the crowd, followed by drums who kept up a somber, repetitive beat. A mass of school children of all colors followed, each carrying a white tulip. At the very beginning, there was a little chatter among the adults (not the kids!) but it soon fell away. The drum, the shuffling feet, the occasional nearby vehicle were the only sounds. First we marched to the Jewish Historical Museum, once four lively synagogues which have now been combined. Turning right onto what is now a big thoroughfare, we saw the remains of the Jonas Daniel Meijerplein where the hefty Dockworker statue stands. He is the symbolic figure of the February Strike, the only such event in western Europe to protest the first roundup of Jewish people – a roundup that took place right there. Beyond him stands the immense Portuguese Synagogue, thankfully still in use, and not an electric light in the whole establishment, only candles.
We crossed the bridge and turned right. Eerily, the warning sounds that the bridge was about to be lifted bleeted loudly. This is the same bridge the Nazis raised to isolate the Jonas Daniel Meijerplein for the first roundup. Walking along the Nieuwe Keizersgracht, a small residential canal, we saw the markers at our feet which show the name and age of each person who used to live in the house opposite us. All had been rounded up and murdered. Every few feet, someone quietly read the names.

The March turned to cross the bridge which lay between us and the broad Amstel River. The clomping of the horses’ feet and the drums sounded louder, and those still reading the plaques could see the crowd advance over the bridge. We passed near the Carré Theater where numberless Jewish people performed, and crossed The Skinny Bridge, looking back up the River to the plaza where we had begun. It was once a medieval Jewish neighborhood, torn down over great protest to build the City Hall/Opera House.

Through the narrow streets we kept marching. People stood on their balconies for a few minutes to acknowledge us, but few stayed out. It was too cold. The flags were all at half mast.

At Utrechtestraat, I left the March so that I could participate in our old neighborhood’s commemoration, a much smaller and more modest affair than the one at the Dam. It was hard to leave, but I knew that, wherever I am, in whatever country, I will always be walking in their footsteps.

Remembering Jewish Neighbors in Amsterdam

In one small area in east Amsterdam, less than 20 square blocks, more than 2800 Jewish people were rounded up and murdered. For the last five years, their present-day neighbors and others have gathered all day long for a ritual to remember them. The central square, the Kastanjeplein, is full of tall chestnut trees with towering blossoms, each in the form of a tree. From each flutter long strips of crushed paper representing the untold stories of the dead.

Volunteers guide people through the ritual’s steps, beginning with the gift of time which encompasses present, past and future, and divesting of everyday time. One’s intention is assessed and written down: I chose “paying attention,” rather than remembering or restoring or other options. Next, from a pile of wooden drawers full of notebooks and photographs, I found a specific Jewish individual to memorialize: Josua Samuel de Vries, who lived in the Beukenweg 22. (Later, I looked him up in the Digital Monument to the Jews of the Netherlands and discovered that the family owned a cigar shop there, according to the police records from 1940.)

Even in late afternoon, dozens of people were participating. They were of every age – the youngest perhaps 5 years old, the oldest in her eighties – and of every race. A woman in a bright pink hijab stood out. An Afro-Caribbean man pushing a stroller stopped to ask what was going on, and soon he too was drawn into the process.

I was directed to pick up a wooden slat to make a marker for Mr. de Vries, and chose fabric to cover it from a trunk. Having done this before in 2015 (you can read my more complete account here), I selected a striped fabric so I could follow the lines to make a more regular design After it was stapled on by a helper, I used stencils to mark out his name, seated at a picnic table.

Soon we were chatting with the woman sitting opposite, who wanted to know why two Americans were doing this, and before long the story of An Address in Amsterdam came tumbling out. Everyone around us was working diligently, some with real artistic talent, others more utilitarian in their approach as I was. Because I knew nothing about Mr. de Vries then, I simply added a flower beside his name.

When we had made our markers, we followed the railroad track which was chalked on the curb surrounding the square. Significant places were marked along the way, showing the number of kilometers distant from the spot where we were standing. Reaching Muiderpoort Station only 700 meters away was chilling, not to mention Auschwitz. Along the way were laminated copies of letters Jewish people threw from the deportation trains. “Don’t worry.” “Send lower underwear.” “The wholefamily is here together.” At the end, I spent a few moments meditating about Mr. de Vries.

With the help of a volunteer, I found his address on the map of the neighborhood which was laid out in the center of the square. His whole family was already there.

While laying the marker in place, you choose your own words to say something like “I am bringing you home to be with your family.” You ring a bell which you’ve chosen either by color or by note. Around you are the sounds of the other bells, the sight of others bending over, standing back and looking at the appalling patchwork of the dead. They have the dignity of being marked and remembered, but the fact that they were all from these few streets and all were deliberately slaughtered is inescapable. The long chains of crushed paper, their stories, swayed in the cold wind.

Each year’s markers are added to the prior years. Even though this ritual has been done for five years, less than half the people who died have markers.

We were offered a hot cup of tea in porcelain cups, and documented our experience. An old fashioned accordion file held more photos and documents to read. Every detail, even that file folder, was from the time when these people were all alive, when the cigar store was thriving, when the streets were crowded with them and all their kin.

We were brought back to ordinary time by returning the cards which we’d received at the beginning, handing them through an empty clock face. But the hand which took them gave something, too: a card for “time for poetry,” and another with “time for beauty.”

This is what was taken from them forever. In their memory, we mustn’t waste it.

Remembrance Day is May 4 every year in the Netherlands. Words will never be enough to honor the suffering of those who died in the war – particularly the Jewish and other people who were rounded up and murdered. This year, I followed four different pathways which go beyond words on a single day, and I’ll write about each of them.

From Dachau to Durham, North Carolina

Sharon Halperin and Mike Roig Sculpture Dachau Memorial

In my home town of Durham, North Carolina, I was led to a Holocaust memorial unlike any I’ve ever seen before. It’s the only place in the U.S. to memorialize ashes from Dachau which are proven human remains. The ashes came into the right hands: Sharon Halperin’s, the daughter of two Holocaust survivors who became the “guiding angel” of this memorial project. The ashes were donated by the family of Mr. Joseph Corsbie, a GI in Germany in May 1945.

Sent on an errand to Dachau, he encountered a liberated Jewish prisoner who handed him the ashes from a crematorium, enjoining him never to forget what he had seen. Although Mr. Corsbie did not speak of the incident for decades, he began to discuss it with his family as he neared death. They felt that the ashes should be returned to the Jewish community to be treated with the respect the victims were denied in life.

Once the ashes were analyzed and proved to be those of human beings, Sharon and her family commissioned a sculpture and signage to mark the site. Yesterday, the generous Jane Gabin of the Beth El Synagogue took me to see the resulting memorial, where we met Sharon. Rather than use the expected barbed wire or smokestacks or other conventional imagery of the Holocaust, sculptor Mike Roig chose to depict a moving flame of polished steel. It stands on a low bridge which says in Hebrew and English: “Remember. Do not stand idly by.”

Approaching the memorial, one feels a sense of uplift, as of flames rising to the sky, still surging from the ashes below – but also a sense of something growing, emerging, and transcending. The sculpture is taller than a person, but not so monumental that we can’t feel part of it. The geometric shape twirls in even a slight breeze, and suddenly I began to recognize my reflection in it – first blurry and indistinct, then sharper as I moved closer. I was literally in the picture: both in the flames, and in the resurgence of life. Stones at the base waited to be placed in memory. Much like the Tomb of the Unknowns, this place is an honored grave for so many who never had one except in our memories.

Dedicating the Memorial

At the dedication in 2015, sculptor Mike Roig’s eloquent words speak of his intentions:

“The “eternal flame” in this sculpture will surely never extinguish. It moves according to the currents of air like those interred here were moved and shaped by the flow of history, and like we are by the ever-evolving now.

“In its surface you will see a reflection of us all as we stand before it. It is necessarily indistinct and impressionistic, and our reflected forms waver and distort as it moves, and that reflects a truth that in trying to see ourselves in that history most of us cannot know with clarity how that history would have drawn us in, or how we would have responded. There are those [survivors] here who can because they were there, but the rest of us we can only to strive to conceive of a vision of ourselves where we would have responded with courage and dignity, empathy and compassion, resistance and defiance.”

May it be so. Deep thanks to Sharon and her family for creating this sacred space, to Jane for taking me there, and to the Beth El Synagogue for welcoming me. Sculpture with stones below it

The February Strike, Resisting Then & Now

Almost everyone knows the story of Anne Frank, but far fewer are aware of the February Strike, the only general strike in Western Europe to protest the first roundup of Jewish people. Seventy-six years ago this week, an incredible 300,000 Dutch citizens poured into the streets of Amsterdam. Many remained there even after the Germans deployed the SS and the police. The Strike is commemorated every year with a few eloquent words and thousands of flowers at the foot of the Dockworker, the symbolic statue of the Strike. He stands right where the first roundup of 425 Jewish men took place. Because of my long stays in Amsterdam researching the Holocaust and resistance, I always write my friends on this date to remind them of the Strike anniversary.

This year, my gesture of remembrance feels different. The inspiring aspects of the story are still there: masses of largely non-Jewish people responded with outrage to the roundup of their fellow citizens. Organized by the communists, the Strike began at the docks and spread to the trams. Soon, all kinds of people were marching and singing. The Germans were astonished: they never expected their Aryan brothers to stand up for the Jews. Even when the Nazis threatened municipal workers with firing, many stayed on the streets. In Dutch fashion, the strikers did obey a newly imposed curfew, but were back the next day.

Here’s the catch: the February Strike was only a great moment. Just 20% of Amsterdam’s Jewish people survived the war – even though many had been there for centuries, and were fully assimilated into Dutch society, or so they thought. Some survivors look back at the Strike as the one time they felt fully supported. But the German reaction was so severe with the police and the SS that it warned the general population never to try anything like the Strike again. A handful of people began underground activities to resist the Nazis anyway, like the woman pictured in the Resistance Museum below, or the fictional heroine of An Address in Amsterdam. However, with hindsight we see how tiny that group was compared to those who minded their own business, or who actively collaborated.

Despite the differences between our times and Amsterdam in 1941, the parallels are disheartening. Refugees and minorities (religious and otherwise) are being targeted for both state-sponsored persecution and for individual bullying and worse. Permission is in the air, justified because “they” are a threat to “us.” The press is under attack as an enemy of the people. Obvious lies spurt daily from the White House. The most obvious parallel between 1941 and now is the quandary of people who disagree with the government: do we keep our heads down and thus collude? Do we collaborate and profit as we can? Or do we resist – and what exactly does that mean?

Like the February strikers, many gathered strength from Women’s Marches around the country – from the sheer numbers, the witty pink hats, the creative signs and the cheerful determination. Now, fortunately, we are in a very different position than the 1941 strikers. No one has invaded our country. The Marches were peaceful, and no one is in jail or deported as a result. Only 22% of eligible voters elected our current President. A plurality went for Clinton. Mid-term elections are coming up in only two years. If the people who let Trump be elected the first time work to get out the vote, we can get the balance of power between Congress and the President working again.

In the meantime, we can organize locally for causes we believe in. Those who are able can donate to organizations fighting the Administration in the courts and elsewhere. We can take to the streets at the right moments, to bolster our spirits and remind ourselves how numerous and persistent we are. Perhaps most importantly, we can meet hatred with peace, beginning with our own speech and actions. As tempting as it is to demonize people with whom we disagree profoundly, it is the path of Hitler, of Stalin, of slave owners and tyrants since time immemorial.

We can gum up the works, calling and writing and making outrageous art and being visible. We can spread factual facts through social and other media. We can align ourselves with vulnerable people, asking how we can walk beside them. Most of all, we have to keep our spirits up. Some of us have given decades of our lives to certain causes, and it’s depressing to see them undermined or worse. The erosion of the most fundamental American values and political practices is disheartening at best. But our years of struggle taught us how to fight, and we haven’t forgotten.

This year, the February Strike reminds us that it’s always possible to be just as brave as the strikers were. We can resist for more than a moment. To return to the story everyone knows, Anne Frank has the last word: “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” Now it’s our turn.

Collaboration, Even on a Protest March

Hundreds of people showed up Tuesday night in our small “city” of Burlington, Vermont to support the rights of refugees and immigrants. Because of our open-mindedness, Burlington has been a refugee resettlement area for years, so we have a lot at stake as a community – not just the refugees themselves, but the businesses they buy from and where they are employed, and the citizens of a city made so much more culturally diverse than it would be otherwise.
March on Church St.

The crowd was mostly young and red hot, with some headscarves and brilliant African fabrics scattered through the crowd. After listening to the speakers as we shivered in the chill, we finally got to march toward the top of our historic Church Street, then back to City Hall. The pace was brisk and the chants surged from one end of the blocks-long march to the other.

A tall, harsh-voiced teenager shrieked “S—w Donald Trump!” and the crowd joined right in. I recoiled – not because I am less angry than they are, but because I’ve studied the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam too long. Hatred gets us nowhere – or, rather, it sets us on a dangerous path that we have seen before. As soon as we begin to denigrate other people and see them as less than human, there’s no limit to the evil we feel entitled to do to them.

I knew the chant was wrong, but I did what too many people did during the Holocaust: I kept silent. I made excuses: I’m too old, they’d never listen to me. In other words, I collaborated with what I knew was wrong.

On the edge of the crowd, a lanky man in his forties spoke up, not shouting but speaking loudly enough to be heard. “We shouldn’t chant that,” he said. “It’s an awful thing to say.”

The teenager asked, “What do you want us to say instead?”

A moment later, we were all shouting “Love trumps hate.” The man who spoke up made a difference. Next time, I want it to be me.

“We could have saved her.”