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ABSTRACT
A higher percentage of Dutch Jews were exterminated in death camps during World War II than from any Western European country except Germany. Although scholars address myriad aspects of this vexing history, silences remain regarding how certain Dutch groups managed to survive. For example, Dutch historiographies devote fewer than a dozen pages to the 100 surviving members of Amsterdam’s Diamond Group, which included over 1000 individuals in 1940. This study of 19 testimonies recorded by the VHA in the 1990s reveals a deeply textured narrative of their wartime experiences and considers how the idea of choice figures as memorial and survival strategy.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Lewis Kirshner, Clayre Benzadon, Edo Groot, Dienke Hondius, Lawrence Langer, Laura Levitt, Murray Schwartz, Dylan Stevens, Dan Stone, Wendy Walters, and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful contributions to this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Conflict of Interest
The authors have no conflict of interest concerning this publication.
Notes on contributors
Dawn Skorczewski is Professor of English at Brandeis University, and author of An Accident of Hope: The Therapy Tapes of Anne Sexton (Routledge 2012) and Teaching One Moment at a Time: Disruption and Repair in the Classroom (U Mass Press, 2005). Her recent articles on trauma and testimony include ‘;You want me to sing?': Holocaust Testimonies in the Intersubjective Field (Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust, June 2018). She co-edited Pursuing Happiness (Macmillan 2019). With Bettine Siertsema, she is completing a study of Amsterdam's Diamond Group (Verbum 2019).
Bettine Siertsema is Assistent Professor of History at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her most recent book, Eerste Nederlandse getuigenissen 1945–1946 (Verbum 2017), addresses the earliest Dutch testimonies of the Holocaust. Uit de Diepten (Skandalon 2007) focuses on Dutch diaries and memoirs of the concentration camps. Her many articles in English analyze the work of Etty Hillesum, Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones, and female perpetrators in testimony and fiction. She co-edited See under: Shoah. Imagining the Holocaust with David Grossman (Brill 2014).
Notes
1 Compare this figure to 25% in France and 40% in Belgium. Blom, “The Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands,” 333–351.
2 Griffioen and Zeller, “The Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, France and Belgium, 1940–1945,” 55–91. Braber, This Cannot Happen Here: Integration and Jewish Resistance in the Netherlands 1940-1945. Moore, Victims and Survivors: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands 1940-1945. Presser, Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of the Dutch Jews.
3 See de Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, 736–745; Moore, Victims and Survivors: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands 1940-1945, 141–142, and Presser, Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry, 371–374.
4 See as an example Romijn, “The War–1945,” 296–335.
5 Tryszynska and McCann, Luba. The Angel of Bergen-Belsen.
6 Lehmann, Faith at the Brink: An Autobiogaphy of the Formative Years Including the Epochal Holocaust Period & Historical Perspectives. Polak and Polak. Steal a Pencil for Me: Love Letters F from Camp Bergen-Belsen and Westerbork; Tryszynska and McCann, Luba. The Angel of Bergen-Belsen; Verolme, The Children’s House of Belsen.
7 Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Bernstein, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish Question, 10–25.
8 Langer, “The Dilemma of Choice in the Deathcamps,” 57.
9 To explore relationships between acts of choice and/or resistance, consider Braber, This Cannot Happen Here: Integration and Jewish Resistance in the Netherlands 1940 – 1945.
10 See Shandler, Holocaust Memory in the Digital Age: Survivors’ Stories and New Media Practices; Pinchevski, “The Audiovisual Unconscious: Media and Trauma in the Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies,” 142–166. Shenker. Reframing Holocaust Testimony; Stier, Committed to Memory: Cultural Mediations of the Holocaust.
11 Hillman, “Not Living but Going.”
12 Consult the USC Shoah Foundation website for more information about interviewer guidelines: https://sfi.usc.edu/vha/collecting
13 Lipschitz and van Praag, De Amsterdamse diamantbeurs. See also Coenen Snyder, “As Long as it Sparkles: The Diamond Industry in Nineteenth Century Amsterdam.”
14 Knoop, De Joodsche Raad. Het drama van Abraham Asscher en David Cohen. Also Lindwer and Houwink ten Cate, Het fatale dilemma: De Joodsche Raad voor Amsterdam 1941–1943.
15 Griffioen, “Abridged Version of Paper Presented at the 10th Contact Day Jewish Studies in the Low Countries.”
16 Michman, “The Controversy Surrounding the Jewish Council of Amsterdam: from its Inception to the Present Day,” 821–843.
17 For a more detailed discussion of the Sperre system, see de Jong, “Jews and Non-Jews in Nazi-Occupied Holland.”
18 Moore, Victims and Survivors: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands 1940-1945, (6–8; 26–28; 38). Presser, Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry, 372.
19 See van der Leeuw, “Die Aktion Bozenhardt & Co,” 257–277.
20 Presser, 373, Moore, 142, De Jong VI, 297–298, and Herzberg, Kroniek der Jodenvervolging, 1940-1945.
21 Historian Jacques Presser claims that the Germans sent the Vught diamond workers to Auschwitz by “accident” because they were meant to join the rest of the diamond group in Bergen-Belsen (Ashes in the Wind, 372).
22 Langer, Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory, 224.
23 Romijn, “The War–1945.”
24 Interview with Lawrence Langer.
25 Cohen de Jong, Interview 18087. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation.
26 Treves Guttman-Rooselaar, Interview 28137. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation. Dutch.
27 Kogel-Batavier, Interview 01345. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation.
28 Kleerekoper, Interview 06177. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation. Dutch.
29 Rabbie Raynor, Interview 07506. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation.
30 Fertig, Interview 02296. Tape 3. 11:16-11:30 Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation.
31 Witjas, Interview 6148. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation. Dutch.
32 Cohensius, Interview 03976. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation. Dutch.
33 Lewijt, Interview 16037. Tape 3.Visual History Archive, USC. Dutch.
34 Lehmann, Interview 5358. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation.
35 Lisser-Elion, Interview 18720. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation. Dutch.
36 Polak, Interview 01090 Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation.
37 Polak, Interview 01091. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation.
38 Michman, “The Controversy Surrounding the Jewish Council of Amsterdam: from its Inception to the Present Day,”43.
39 Diamand, Interview 16058. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation. Dutch.
40 Diamand, Interview 16058. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation. Dutch.
41 For two years, Ina and Jack wrote letters to each other in the two camps. The Polaks’ story is recorded in Jaap and Ina Soep Polak’s Steal a Pencil for Me: Love letters from Camp Bergen-Belsen and Westerbork.
42 Wolf-Soep, Interview 03542. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation.
43 Cohen-Rodriguez, Interview 27600. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation.
44 Kleerekoper, Interview 17968. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation. He was in the December 4 transport to Sachsenhausen. He had a one year old child with him in Bergen-Belsen, one of two who died in Luba’s care. Dutch.
45 Verolme generously offered her father Max Werkendam’s testimony which reports on the survivors of Sachsenhausen.
46 Maandag, Interview 4563. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation.
47 Rabbie Raynor, Cissie’s son, who was a child of 12 at the time, remembers meetings of the diamond workers, where some decision was made. Cohen Rodriguez also directly blames Asscher: “he sold out the diamond group to save his own life and his family’s life.” Kleerekoper who lost his father and older brother in that transport, remembers a secret meeting in October 1944 which Asscher and Soep were summoned to attend. Some of the survivors do not mention this meeting at all, and it also does not appear in any of the histories.
48 Amsterdam’s Diamond Group: The War Years Forthcoming: Verbum.
49 Who’d like to share a tub with Hitler? Dante’s Inferno is no holiday brochure (Essential Arts, 2003). An anthology in English 36 Poems (Essential Arts, 2003). Diamand also made When Memory Comes, a film about Saul Friedländer’ (2012).
50 Stone, “A Victim-centred Historiography of the Holocaust?”