On this date 77 years ago ...

     On October 14, 1946, Rozette Lopes Dias -- then with the last name Lazer -- married Louis Van Thyn in war-weary Amsterdam.

    We are still grateful 77 years later.

The wedding photo: 1946

    Who knew on that day -- a Monday and a trip to City Hall for the wedding ceremony -- how long their lives would go, and how far they would travel.

     They'd known each other for little more than a year. And they had been through so much in the previous half-dozen years, some horrific experiences -- certainly not of their choosing.

     They each had lost so much, and they had precious little family remaining.

     So, who knows how deep their love was then. But they knew they needed each other.

      Their stories -- their combined story -- has a beautiful ending, of course: Almost 62 years of marriage, the last 51-plus in two homes they owned.

       And such good fortune: Two children they never expected -- me and my younger sister Elsa --  and from that, five grandchildren. From there, to the present-day nine great-grandchildren (but only a couple born while Louis and Rose still lived).

       Plus, a journey of almost 5,000 miles and two weeks from the wonderful place where they grew up (Hup Holland!) to the country  where Mom always dreamed of living, the result of how well American military personnel treated her and other women Holocaust survivors upon rescue in early 1945.

      And what culture shock -- from a busy center of a million people to a state and city of which they'd never heard (Louisiana? Shreveport?).

    They could not have known, did not know, how accepting, how helpful, those people in Shreveport would be. First, the Jewish community, but soon far beyond that, from all over. 

      It was a perfect fit, certainly moreso than it could have been in, say, the New York City melting pot of millions.           

      In 1 1/2 years, they were home owners. In five years, they became U.S. citizens ... and darned proud of it.

      Parts of their hearts, though, was with the few family members and many friends they left behind in The Netherlands. And also with the friends -- and eventually some family -- in Israel, the Jewish-dominated state created in 1948.

       That included the very couple that had introduced them to each other in the summer of 1945. Those two people were the only married couple housed -- in an attic room -- at the former factory converted into a safe shelter for women Holocaust survivors who had returned to Amsterdam.

     The man knew Dad from boyhood days in Amsterdam. The woman was Mom's best friend at Auschwitz; they had been in elementary school together and had reunited while standing in line after they got out of the cattle-car transport to the concentration camp.

     After they survived the Holocaust, that couple moved to Israel, specifically to Narahija.

      Which brings us to today, to this past week and Hamas' invasion of Israel. 

       Because -- as I've been asked repeatedly this week -- we do have distant connections in Israel.

      That couple's granddaughter is now on active duty with the Israel military.

      A grandson and granddaughter of Mom's favorite first cousin (Maurits) in Amsterdam, and the granddaughter's husband (a tank driver) are reservists called to active duty. 

      Maurits' son married an Israeli girl; they live in Jerusalem. And Maurits' daughter, who lives in Antwerp, Belgium, has four children living in Israel, but -- because they are Belgian citizens -- none are in the service. 

     (Maurits' children are our second cousins, once removed. At least, that's the best we can figure.)

---  

      Can tell you this: Grateful that Mom and Dad are not around to endure this latest invasion of Israel. They would have been extremely concerned.

      Because that's how they were in 1967 (the "Six-Day War" and 1973 (the Yom Kippur War) when Arab military forces invaded Israel.

       Television news then wasn't 24-7 -- Shreveport had only three TV stations and three networks -- but Mom watched (and worried) every report. Dad was working at the pipeyard, but I know he and the people there were paying attention.

       I think about this now because we've had the news on constantly here. 

      Thought about writing about baseball -- how much I've watched this Texas Rangers' season -- or football (LSU, Louisiana Tech and the Dallas Cowboys are always topics of interest in this apartment). 

      Wanted to say how good the Rangers have been and how good it feels for their fans. Same for the Houston Astros and their Yankees-like dynasty of the past seven years.

       But writing about athletics just didn't seem right this week. (Maybe if a certain team had recaptured its glory of so many decades I might be more involved, but that hasn't happened in 14 seasons. So there.)

        No, there is sadness here for all those deaths and injured in Israel, in Gaza. Not only the Jewish people, but the thousands of innocent Palestinians. They, too, are victims of Hamas, and Israel's penchant -- determination -- for revenge.

       No winners in this. None. No end in sight.

       Sad.

       And when I heard on TV someone say that "people died just because they were Jewish," I thought, yes, that's how it was for our grandparents, uncles and aunts, Mom and Dad's first spouses, plus their many uncles, aunts and cousins.

      Even through many good times, Mom and Dad never forgot. Nor do we ever forget, and we shouldn't.

      We want Israel to survive and thrive. But we, too, want the Palestinians to have peace and good times.

      We are for peace, period.

      I know those two people who took those wedding vows -- who committed to each other -- on October 14, 1946, would approve of that.

      They were blessed, and so were we. We wish the same for millions of others.          

          

Louis Van Thyn -- 100 years ago today

   Louis Van Thyn -- Dad -- was born 100 years ago today. He lived 89 years, one month, three weeks, a full life of happy times, much adventure, great tragedy, survival, a wonderful success story. He was most proud of his family, and provided well for them, and he would be so pleased today to see what has become of his two children, five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren (with one more to come soon). He was an in-the-moment person who could -- and would -- talk to anyone; he was a mostly upbeat guy who could tell stories and kept a positive view of the world. We miss him, and we'll always remember.

Sixty years in America: a day, a trip, to remember

       Sixty years ago today -- Jan. 7, 1956 -- we got our first look at the Statue of Liberty. It was a moment to remember, and to treasure.
       We arrived in the United States that day, the boat trip from The Netherlands at its conclusion after 10 mostly seasick days.
       It was Dad and Mom -- in their mid-30s -- and my sister Elsa and me. None of us spoke much English, just a few words Mom had learned from a book -- and I had no clue what the Statue of Liberty meant or represented.
       She welcomed us. She held her torch high.
       I do remember my mother telling us, in our little cabin, that we needed to go upstairs on the deck to see the Statue of Liberty. OK, Mom, whatever.
       On Jan. 7, 2016, I can tell you it was one of the great experiences of a lifetime.
       I have written about this previously, in the first year of my blog (2012), but today I present my mother's version of the trip from Holland and our first week in the United States. 
       She wrote this in January 2006, on the 50th anniversary of our arrival, and read it as part of her speech to a group in Shreveport that honored my parents then. There are details in it that I remember differently, but Miss Rose sometimes didn't let the facts get in her way.
        It's lengthy, but I think it's touching and it's neat, so bear with it ...
 ---
        "We applied for an American visa but the immigration laws were so strict we had to have a relative sponsor, and we didn't. In 1953, this country made a special law for Holocaust survivors called the Non-Quota Law. We could come, but we had to have a work sponsor. The HIAS (Hebrew International Agency for Survivors) found us a family in Shreveport, Louisiana, who were willing to sponsor us. They also had a job for Louis in an oil pipe and supply company. They were responsible for the first five years we were here. The owners were Abe Gilbert and his two sons-in-law, Lazar Murov and Neal Nierman. They were what we call in Yiddish real "menschen," which means exceptionally good people.

The earliest photo I have of us in the United States, spring
1956, in front of the duplex on Jordan Street. That's me, Elsa
and Dad with Janet Vandenberg (Mom took the photo). Janet
and her father, Ed, were the first people of Dutch heritage we
met in Shreveport and they were wonderful friends.

       "We had gone in Amsterdam to the American consulate to learn about Shreveport. We knew that we would live a complete different life, but we were determined to adjust. Our friends in Holland didn't understand why we would go to a place where we didn't know anybody. To us, it was a challenge. The 10 years we had lived in Holland (after World War II) were extremely difficult. It probably would have been easier to give up. But how many people get a second chance on life? And if you are fortunate enough to get that chance, then you must try hard to do the best you know how.
      "... We got a visa to come to this great country. We have never regretted it one second that we came here.
      "Someone asked me the other day if I remember where I was New Year's Eve 50 years ago. Yes, I remember it well.
      "We had booked with the elegant, beautiful ship of the Holland-America line. The date was 28 December 1955. All our friends had passes to come on board with us to say our last goodbyes. We all shed some tears. It was very emotional. I realized that nobody made us leave.
      "We were informed that there would be some great parties on board celebrating New Year's Eve 1956 and lots of entertainment. I had made an evening dress of champagne-colored taffeta for Elsa, our 4-year-old daughter. Our very observant son, Nico, who was 8, wanted to know what the brown paper bags on the railing were for. I told him I hoped we never needed them. Just wishful thinking.
      "We went from Hoek of Holland (a city on the North Sea) to Marseille, France, through the English Channel to Southampton. Up till then, the trip was enjoyable. We had a nice cabin with two bunk beds and a great view of the North Sea. The people we met were interesting and amicable. The food in the dining room was scrumptious. Our children were having a good time, which was very important to us. The sea was calm and nobody was seasick.
     "The trouble started going in to the Atlantic Ocean. The ship went east to west and the waves from north to south. Not a very pleasant feeling.
     "Our 4-year-old daughter, who always got carsick, was doing great. She would go by herself to the dining room and told the steward there that the three of us were seasick. She would bring back apples for us, which were supposed to make you feel better. No such luck. We weren't able to take part in any of the parties.
     "If you ever plan a trip to Europe on a ship, don't go in January. After 10 days of misery, we landed in Hoboken, N.J. I kissed the ground, not only to be glad to be in America, but also to be off the ship. I swore I would never go on a ship again, not even a rowboat.
     "There were several people to welcome us; we had known them from Holland and Belgium. Some of them had come to America before the war or right after the war was over. They were all diamond polishers and offered Louis a job. He didn't accept, and I was delighted. I had enough of snow and ice and temperatures far below freezing. We were invited the next day (Sunday) for dinner by some of our friends. They were living on Long Island.
     "Our friend, Sally, picked us up from where we were staying. The HIAS had brought us there. It was on Lafayette Street (in New York City). The building used to be an old school. It was now a place for immigrants. There were people there who had lived there for years. It was nothing to compare with the Hyatt. Fortunately, we had to be there for a few days.
     "We had a wonderful time with our 'old' friends talking about 'the good (?) old times.' After dinner, Sally dropped us off at the railroad station. We took the train to Great Neck, N.Y., where we had to change to New York City. It was the first time we were on our own. Not knowing exactly where we were, not speaking the language well, with two children to whom it all was different and strange. It was sort of stressful.
      "Back in New York, we took a cab to Lafayette Street. The next day we took the subway to Broadway to see the Rockettes dance. It was maybe the only chance we would get to do that; we probably would never come back to New York. It was fabulous except for the ice cold, freezing, snowing weather.
     "Tuesday, we again took a cab to Penn Station to catch the train to Chicago. There, we had to change platforms and another train. We waited three hours for the train, which would bring us, hopefully, to St. Louis. It was Thursday, 12:30 a.m., when we arrived in St. Louis.
     "We left there with our two tired, sleepy children at 2:45 a.m. At 5:50 a.m., we stopped in Hope, Arkansas, where we had to go to another platform. The station was closed. There was not another train coming until 6:40 a.m. We sat outside on the two suitcases we had, not very comfortable. At 7:30 a.m., Jan. 12, we arrived in Shreveport.
      "The Jewish Federation director was there to welcome us. He was very kind. His name was Maurice Klinger. We were impressed with the car he was driving. It was a 1956 Chevrolet two-toned, grey and pink. In our eyes, it looked like a limousine. In Holland, you wouldn't see cars like that. Everybody drove small cars, like little toy cars.
      "We had an address on our papers for a hotel downtown, the Caddo Hotel. The Jewish Federation had rented a room there for us for two weeks. Mr. Klinger brought us to Jordan Street, to a two-story house. I said to Louis in Dutch, never seen a hotel like this. It turned out to be a duplex; it was nicely furnished. There was some food in the refrigerator, among other things, a chicken. Our first meal in Shreveport was chicken soup, of course.
     "The next morning we found an elementary school in the neighborhood. Louis and I thought the faster Nico would go to school, the faster he would learn English. Afterward, we came to the conclusion it was a big mistake. We should have given him time to acclimate. He had a very difficult time in the beginning. He became good friends with the rabbi's youngest son, who was a tremendous help to him and us.
     "There were no public kindergarten schools, only private, and we couldn't afford that. With the help of Nico, I tried to teach Elsa at home. There was one word she was familiar with: 'cute.' Everything was 'cute," from toys to cars to flowers. Even some food. She heard that word over and over again because that was what people would say to her.
     "Friday night, we went to Shul (Agudath Achim, on Line Avenue). It was about three blocks from where we lived. It was quite an experience. They made us all feel welcome -- something we really needed. Until then, we hadn't met many people.
     "The next day, we walked around the neighborhood to get familiar with our surroundings. On Sunday, we walked all the way to Kings Highway, about an hour from Jordan Street. There we took the city bus to the Mansfield Road where Gilbert Pipe Co. was located. We wanted to see how much time Louis needed to go to work.
     "The next day Louis went from diamond polishing to the oil pipe and supply business. He was hired for six weeks and stayed for 28 years. He learned the business from the bottom to the top. He not only liked the work, he did what was even more important -- he liked the Gilbert family and so did I.
      "... We are blessed in so many ways having come to Shreveport, meeting so many people and making so many good friends. All of them showed us love, care and kindness. We can't thank everybody personally, but we want you all to know how much we love  you and appreciate you."
---
     It is 10 years since she wrote that and gave the speech. She's gone, Dad's gone, and they had more than 50 years in this country. Elsa is in New Jersey, and I'm in Texas. There are now six Van Thyn great-grandchildren.
     And we're grateful.
     The Statue of Liberty stands in that harbor and it might be debatable to some, but not to me: She is a welcome sight still.
     It's 60 years and counting for us. Seems like a lifetime.      

End of a life, end of this story

Dad. This was taken during his 1996 USC Shoah Foundation
interview. The way he's smiling, the session must've just ended.

(34th in a series, final chapter)
      Near the end of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute interview my father did on Oct. 9, 1996, he is asked if he has a message for humanity.
      "Oh, that we have peace," he answered. "I pray for that. I still pray a little bit. I pray we have peace, and I hope we see it in our lifetime, maar [but] what's happening in Israel, I don't think I will see it in my lifetime. They're fighting for so many years there already, [even] before Israel."
      Peace remains an elusive goal, so Dad (Louis Van Thyn) would be disappointed in the ongoing Middle East turmoil. But despite so many hardships -- the loss of most of his family of origin, the five years of Nazi Germany's rule of where he lived, three years of work/concentration camp misery -- I believe he was grateful for his journey through life.
      He was especially grateful for the opportunities and assistance he found from 1956 -- when we immigrated to the United States from The Netherlands -- to the end.
      "Life for us after the war was real good," he told the interviewer in 1996. "We were blessed with two children; I had a good job, and made a nice living. We love our life."
---
      The end came on Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2008, at about 7:30 in the morning at Willis-Knighton Medical Center South in Shreveport. He had been rushed there the night before after collapsing at home.
      It was a bit of a shock, but not a surprise. His health had declined for several years, especially the last three years after our daughter Rachel got married, and he and my mother traveled to Knoxville, Tenn., for that happy occasion.
     But diabetes had made his life difficult over the past 15 years. The vision in his left eye was all but gone, his (big) heart had weakened, and his kidney functions were very diminished. He was offered  dialysis a year before the end, but -- wisely, we think -- declined.
      He was a month and a half past his 89th birthday.
      For most of his life, especially considering his 2 1/2 years in the concentration/work camps -- some of it in hard labor -- his health was relatively good. He did have a couple of scary blood clots in his legs and three or four very painful episodes with kidney stones. But those were temporary slowdowns.
       He worked until he was 65, and he was still refereeing kids soccer games in his mid-60s, and going to athletic events -- and many other things -- regularly. He (mostly) did what my mother told him to do, puttered around the house and yard, and regularly attended Shriners and Masons functions, and his coffee klatches. When he was 83 and again at 85, he still managed to make trips to Europe.
       Dad loved reading the newspaper daily and books, playing solitaire on the computer (and reading Dutch newspapers), watched a lot of taped television (wrestling, soap operas and soccer games) in his little back room (which was once my bedroom), and working puzzles.
       Near the end, he fell too often -- that was distressing -- but avoided serious injury. But he collapsed at home a couple of times, had to be taken to the hospital after 911 calls, and required too much time as a patient at Willis-Knighton South, where he much preferred to do his regular workouts in the exercise room (more talking than working out, I suspect).
       The final collapse came just four days after our son Jason married Ann in north Fort Worth, a trip my parents couldn't make. Dad had stopped making long driving trips and driving at night for several years, but he was still driving in town some, including taking my mother to her speaking engagements.
       My sister, who had come south for Jason's wedding, was with him when he passed away and had to give us the news by phone. That was tough. We left for Shreveport almost immediately.
       After his death, The Shreveport Times did a nice obit and Jerry Byrd did a wonderful column on "one of my heroes" in the Bossier Press-Tribune.
       Bea and I saw the body, on the day before the funeral -- one of the most difficult five minutes of my life. His lips pursed, his arms battered with large purple bruises from all the IVs, the large number 70726 tattoo on his left forearm more prominent than ever on his very white, thin skin.
       70726. It sticks with you.        
       What also sticks is the great love and respect our family was shown, in so many ways.
        A few hours after we viewed the body, it was prepared in the traditional Jewish manner by the the Chevra Kadisha in Shreveport (from Jewish-funeral-home.com: a sacred society, a group of pious men and women who have taken on the obligation of ritually preparing the deceased).
        The funeral service on that Friday, at the Rose-Neath Marshall Street chapel, was well-attended. Most prominent was the presence of Ruth Nierman and Pauline Murov, daughters of Mr. and Mrs. A.A. Gilbert -- who took my family in as part of theirs and gave Dad a job for 28 years. Most touching was that Neal Nierman, Ruth's husband, came out of the hospital to attend ... in a wheelchair. A month later, he too died.

Dad and his first great grandchild Josie, fall, 2007

       Ron Nierman, Neal and Ruth's son, was one of the pallbearers and an eloquent eulogist. Adam Wellen, my sister's oldest child then two days short of 26, gave a nice talk. Rabbi Foster Kowaler did a wonderful job conducting the service and summarizing Dad's life and his place in the community. Least eloquent speaker was me. I thought I could do it without notes, so I stumbled and rambled. But at least it was genuine.
       Ron Nierman and Bill Braunig, the two Gilbert family members then running the business and both close to my Dad, were pallbearers, as were the grandsons -- Jason, Adam and Josh (Wellen) -- and Rachel's husband, Russell Smith.
       Someone else at the funeral: 10-month-old Josephine "Josie" Smith, my parents' first great-grandchild. A few months earlier, Opa Louis -- in this case Great Opa Louis -- got to hold the baby Josie.
       Now there are four great-grandchildren ... and one to come any day. There will be more.
       The burial was at the old Greenwood Cemetery on Stoner Avenue; Dad was delighted to have purchased a plot there through the Masons. In fact, the Masons' burial rites were an aside to the Jewish ceremony; this was a cause of concern for the rabbis and my mother, until Mom checked out the details. I insisted it be included because I knew that's what Dad wanted.
       He is buried in the Masons section, but only about 100 yards from the Jewish section -- about 100 yards from the Gilbert family plots and the great Janice Cahn, who did so much for our family and was one of my mother's guardian angels in Shreveport.
         I still see the mourners shoveling the dirt into my dad's grave after the plain white casket was lowered, especially my kids -- Jay in a black suit and sunglasses to hide the tears, Rachel in a black dress, sobbing. Elsa's boys stayed after the ceremony and did most of the shoveling.
         He is buried a long way from Amsterdam and Antwerp, and especially from his family's ashes at places such as Auschwitz and Sobibor.
         Dad is at peace, with a gravestone he'd like. We go by occasionally just to say hello, and remember.     
---
         As the Shoah Foundation interview wound down, Dad talked about the other Holocaust survivors in Shreveport and the immediate area, and the interviewer asked whether our parents talked to Elsa and me about the Holocaust.
        "Yes, m'am; yes, m'am," Dad answered. "They know exactly what happened. First, my son didn't want to listen, but lately -- the last 5-10 years -- he started asking me some questions. My daughter, from when she was young, listened.
      "We told them they didn't have any grandparents or uncles or aunts; they knew that. And our grandchildren the same way already, we talk to the grandchildren. ..."
     Yes, we always knew. But when we were kids, we didn't talk all that much about it with our friends or in school. It didn't matter; we were just trying to settle in and live our lives. It was long before our mother became a regular public speaker/educator on the Holocaust and a celebrity of sorts in Shreveport-Bossier and North Louisiana.
      Dad's story was more varied and perhaps more interesting than my mother's. But, as I've written before and said often, he didn't speak English well enough to speak long to an audience or class.
Which is one reason this was a motivation to put his story in print. And maybe it was cathartic for me. Honestly, there were lots of times when I did not treat him with respect; in fact, I was downright ugly (I'll spare you the details).
      Oh, how I regret that now. I regretted it then.
      Because he deserved that respect, what he had been through, what he had seen. He was not a disciplinarian -- he was just too good a guy, too gentle, to be harsh to his first-born, his only son. He was my biggest fan; he bragged on me far more than I deserved, or liked.
      His love of sports, in particular, was so great that he passed it on; it was a natural for me. It gave me an avenue ... and a career. His love of family and of friends and of good times was his greatest trait.
      He was generous, especially with us (his family), but also with various charitable causes. Sometimes his contributions were greater -- especially for Jewish-related campaigns -- but he almost always gave to the organizations that sent mailouts (St. Jude Children's Hospital, Easter Seals, Shriners' Hospital for Children in Shreveport, Disabled American Veterans are just a few examples). It might not be much, but it was something he liked doing.
      Plus, he was an active Shriner and Mason, working in the kitchen or helping set up for activities and helping with the cleanup.
      Yes, he had a sense of entitlement, maybe about some benefits he felt he deserved or a sleight he perceived. Can't say I always agreed with him, but my view is that was understandable he could feel that.
      Did he hold a grudge about the camps? Well, he never warmed to the "new" Germany or to any countries or groups that took violent actions. Again, understandable.
      "I pray we have peace," he said, and that was a genuine wish.
      Everywhere he went, people took to him. They could sense his spirit, his benevolence, his appreciation for life and for the twists his journey had taken. He certainly could not have imagined the road from Amsterdam and The Netherlands to a place called Shreveport in the United States of America.
      So, telling his story, writing about his family and his life and his travails in World War II, in the unimaginable concentration/work camps amid the Nazis' cruelty, is something I owed him.
I think, I hope, he would have been proud. I was proud of him.
      For 63 years after Mechelen and Jawischowitz and Janina and especially Auschwitz-Birkenau, Louis Van Thyn was a survivor. His world view was a positive one -- he could always look on the bright side -- and the life he lived was a beautiful example for his fellow man.
       So his story ended, but not really. Because the family goes on, and he would like that.

A return to Auschwitz

The Dutch delegation at the dedication of the international memorial at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp site,
January, 1952: That's my Dad on the left; his close friend, Jacques Furth (third from the right). (photo www.auschwitz.nl)

(33rd in a series)
      One element of Louis Van Thyn's story that fascinated me was that in January 1952, he returned to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp -- some 8 1/2 years after he arrived there as one of the thousands of prisoners.
      Don't know how Dad could do that, but he did. I know I never want to see that place. I know people who have made the visit there and have seen that place of horrors. Not me. No, thank you.

From www.auschwitz.nl: On behalf of the
 Dutch delegation, Bets Roos and Louis van
 Thijn fill an urn with ashes from one of the
 lime pits in the extermination camp.
Photo NAC

    But there was a good purpose for his return: the establishment of an international monument.
Representatives from the many countries affected by the Holocaust came to Auschwitz as part of the monument committee.
      Dad was part of the Dutch delegation. So were his first sister-in-law, Eva Furth, and her husband, Jacques Furth -- both Dad's close friends. In fact, Dad played a significant role.
      From the Dutch web site www.auschwitz.nl: "As part of the ceremony, each delegation --  including the Dutch representatives -- filled an urn with ashes. This ash is the only tangible reminder of the millions of people murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau."
      Dad was one of the two people from The Netherlands to fill the urn (see photo).
      The urn was brought back to Amsterdam and became part of the Auschwitz memorial there. Designed by Dutch artist/writer Jan Wolkers, it is a display of broken mirrors, in which the skies are reflected, day and night.
        In 1993, the memorial was moved from its original location and dedicated in Wertheim Park, just down the street from the Schouwburg, the converted theater which the Germans used as the gathering point for deportation for their Jewish prisoners in Holland.
         We've seen the memorial twice, in 1991 and -- with my wife Bea -- on our trip to The Netherlands a year ago. The message: Broken mirrors, broken lives.
         Each Jan. 27 -- the date of the death camp's liberation -- there is an Auschwitz remembrance service at the Amsterdam memorial.
---
      There is a back story to this, my sister Elsa reminded me. When our parents applied to immigrate to America, Dad did not disclose the trip on the form. "I think he was told not to, by the people from the organization [the Dutch Auschwitz committee] who sponsored the trip," Elsa said.
      It was suspected by some Dutch government officials that the committee -- of which our aunt, Eva, was a founder and leader -- was a front for Communist Party activities. As I have noted before in this series, Eva -- "Tante Eef," in Dutch -- was a card-carrying Communist. Yes, she was.
      Can't explain it, people. Neither could my mother and father, who had many a philosophical argument with her, especially after we came to the United States.
      Back to the story, from Elsa: "Apparently, the U.S. government knew about [the trip], since Poland was a Communist country, and Daddy was questioned. He was, of course, cleared from Communist activity and allowed to immigrate."
       Thank goodness for that.
         (Next: End of a life, end of this story)

For Dad, friendship to the end

(32nd in a series)
      One unforgettable remembrance of my Dad, he was a great friend.
      When Louis Van Thyn considered you his friend, you knew it. Two friendships that tied him to Europe after we came to the United States were enduring and endearing.
       Few people were as close to my Dad as Joseph "Joopie" Scholte, his first cousin who lived for decades in Cagnes-sur-Mer, the largest suburb of Nice, heart of the glamorous and beautiful French Riviera, and Jacques Furth, the husband of Dad's sister-in-law of his first marriage.

Joopie Scholte and his wife Judith married in
 1939; that's my Dad in the back on the left.

        Those two men enriched Dad's life -- and ours. Dad outlived them both by at least four years -- Joopie died in 2002, Jacques in 2004 -- and he was loyal to them, and they to him, to the end.
         Like Dad, both were Holocaust survivors who spent time in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and lost their first wives. Unlike Dad, Joopie and Jacques had to survive the infamous "Death Marches" -- the Nazis forcing them to walk for days and days, miles and miles, near the end of World War II.
          As with all Holocaust survivors, they had their own compelling stories, with practically their entire families wiped out. Joopie not only lost his wife Judith -- Dad had been part of their wedding party in 1939 (note the photo) -- but also a 2-year-old daughter, Helene. Jacques lost his wife "Fietje," but their son Dave, 2 when the Nazis sent his father to the camps, was hidden away with a foster family in Limburg, as far south in The Netherlands as possible, and reunited with Jacques after the war.
          And while Dad was an apprentice to become a diamond cutter, Joopie and Jacques were in that business pre- and post-war ... and made comfortable livings.
          It was with Joopie's family -- father, mother (my father's aunt, his mother's sister) and older brother -- that Dad came to live in Antwerp, Belgium, when he left Amsterdam in 1936 at age 17.  But after the Holocaust, only Joopie returned from that family.
          So you can imagine the joy Dad and Joopie -- only survivors of their immediate family -- must have felt when they found each other back in Antwerp in the summer of 1945. They had been through Auschwitz together; it's no wonder that they remained close for all the years thereafter.
          It was a really special bond, as you will see.
---
          A note here: My father and mother built many strong relationships. There were dozens of people in Shreveport-Bossier and North Louisiana to whom they were close, who were dear friends. And they always remained friends and in contact with couples from Holland who like them had lived through World War II.
          Some were Holocaust survivors: Several who lost spouses and/or children in the gas chambers and then remarried fellow survivors; a few who were married before the war and each survived the camps; and a few in which the man went to the camps and the woman was hidden away.
          I knew some of these people from my early days in Amsterdam.
          As close as my Dad was to Joopie Scholte, another survivor with whom he went way back was Coenraad "Coen" Rood, a kid who lived around the corner from Dad's family in Amsterdam and was best friends with Dad's older brother, Hyman. They were in a youth workers' group (AJC) together.
           Coen, his wife Bep and daughter Marleen -- at my parents' urging -- immigrated from Amsterdam to Shreveport (and joined us in Sunset Acres) in 1960. He eventually settled in White Oak, Texas, with his own tailor shop in Longview, and he was quite the character.
           He, too, remained close to my folks and I wrote a blog piece about him just after his death http://nvanthyn.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-dutch-connection-part-ii.html.
---          
          Just as Dad found my mother, both Joopie and Jacques remarried after the war. Joopie married a French woman named Francoise and they made their way from Antwerp to the posh Nice area, where my father visited them several times on trips to Europe.
           Dad did not know Jacques Furth before the war, but when Jacques married Eva Halverstad, whose younger sister Estella was my father's first wife --  after the war and settled in Amsterdam, they became my parents' closest friends. And Dave, seven years older than me, was often my babysitter, probably more than he wanted to be.
            The few trips my parents made back to The Netherlands, they stayed with Jacques and Eva -- "Tante Eef" to us. After she died in the mid-1980s and my mother refused to go back to the old country (except for her first cousin's funeral in 1992), it was Jacques who made Dad feel at home during several visits.
            Joopie and Francois never had children. As it turned out, that was important for us.
            Because after Francois died in the mid-1990s, Joopie told my father that if Dad wanted to, he was going to make him the sole executor of his estate. Dad was his closest relative.

Dad and Joopie: This was a late 1990s photo in the
Nice, France, area, perhaps their last visit.

             In the files my parents kept a 2001 letter from Joopie in which he outlines the details of the estate for Dad. It is written in Dutch and I can translate some of it, but not all (the handwriting is difficult to interpret). He lists his assets and the contents of a safe deposit box, and explains that the French government will take about 60 percent of the package.
              In the letter, Joopie says he hasn't been doing well physically, that he just returned from a trip to Antwerp and Amsterdam, and says that's probably his last visit to both places. But he also is hopeful of making a trip to the United States.
              That didn't happen. He died June 27, 2002, and Dad then began the process of dealing with the estate.
              Long story short: It was a big hassle.
              The translation was difficult. The French laws of succession were a maze. The French government was difficult. The taxes kept piling up. French attorneys were vague.
              It took some 2 1/2 years, and dozens of letters and phone calls by Dad and his Shreveport attorney, contacts with the French consulate in New Orleans and a visit there, translation of written material in French by an LSU-Shreveport French professor ... and finally a visit to Cagnes-sur-Mer by Dad. By this time, he was 83 years old. He didn't speak French. It was no easy trip.
               In the end, the French government did get its fair share -- ha! -- and so, we think, did the French attorneys handling business on that end. But what we gained, what Joopie left us, was worth it to Dad and to our family.
              Joopie always treated Dad, my mother, me and my sister as if we were family -- he was "Oome Joopie" to us -- and extended that to Elsa's family and my wife and kids. He was a generous, kind man.
              And so was Jacques. For me, one of the great highlights -- there were a lot -- of my first trip back to The Netherlands in 1991 (after 36 years) was seeing him again and having him as our host and often as our driver.
              Sadly, while Dad was still working on settling Joopie's estate, we lost Jacques in 2004.
              Dad -- also a generous and kind man -- had lost a lot of people, much of his early family, in his lifetime, but losing Joopie and then Jacques two years apart was hard to take.
              I look now at the pictures of Dad with those two men late in their lives, and it's a reminder that those were very special bonds. He loved them, and they loved him.
              (Next: Going back to Auschwitz)

     

Taking a job, and a tram ride, in Amsterdam

(31st in a series)
      I remember the uniform, especially the hat, and the whistle, and the coin dispenser. My Dad's tram conductor/driver uniform in Amsterdam.
      Dad (Louis Van Thyn) would remind me that when I was a pre-schooler in the late 1940s/early 1950s, I would play with that hat and the whistle and the coin dispenser, and I'd want to go with him when it was time to go to work.

Family portrait, late 1947, Amsterdam -- my father in his
 streetcar conductor's uniform.

      For a little more than nine years, late 1946  to late 1955, Dad's job was to guide people on the tram (streetcar) or to drive them. And he always felt blessed to have had the job. Just as he was  later in the United States, where he worked for one company for 29 years, he was content.
      Because when he and my mother returned from living in Antwerp, Belgium, before they married in October 1946, he needed to find a job. It hadn't worked out in Belgium; Mom had never lived anywhere outside of Amsterdam -- you don't call three years of being a Nazi work camp/concentration camp prisoner living -- and Dad had no idea of what to do, how to start their lives again.
      He knew he couldn't work inside; learning diamond cutting was no longer for him. He had to be outside; he had to be among people. He loved to talk; anyone who knew him fairly well in Shreveport-Bossier and the United States (and even those who didn't know him well) could sense that.
      One possibility, I suppose, would have been a job with the company in his old neighborhood, the one his mother and several family members had worked for in the late 1920s and 1930s -- De Vries van Buuren. According to the IAmsterdam web site: The 100-year-old firm, in the heart of the Jewish quarter, was a major textile wholesaler; it produced ready-made garments, such as the ones sewn by Dad's mother. By 1927, it was located in a complex of buildings near the Rembrandt House.
      It had a mainly Jewish staff in the pre-war days, and it was closed on Saturdays and Jewish holidays. But the war years wiped out much of the staff. By 1954, the company moved and it closed in 1983.
      And probably the company brought bad memories for Dad on his return to Amsterdam.
      So being a conductor on a tram route turned out just right. But it took a little good fortune. As a Holocaust survivor, maybe he was due that.
---
       "I was glad to get a job in Amsterdam," he said in his 1996 USC Shoah Foundation interview. "There was an ad in the paper in Amsterdam [looking] for some [tram] conductors, and you had to be 1 meter 70, and I was 1 meter 69. I know that.
      "And I come to that [company] office from [in] the city, and I stand on my toes, with my heels a little bit up. It worked. They put down 1 meter 70. [Then] I had to take a second examination somewhere else and I did the same thing (stood on his toes), and they saw that.
      "And [the man] says I cannot take you, you are 1 centimeter too short. I say, 'I need a job. I was so many years in the camps, I need to work, I got to make a living [his voice raising]. There's nothing else that I know.' And he let me go [through]."
      The job -- and the uniform -- was his. It was the start he needed, and soon enough, he and my mother received a big surprise. Late in 1946 or early 1947, unexpectedly they found out they would be parents. I was due in mid-August; I arrived in mid-June, a tiny baby bound for an incubator and not ready to come home until nearly two months later.
      In my first 8 1/2 years, in Amsterdam, we rode the tram often. We did not have a car; few people in The Netherlands did. My parents each had bikes, and I remember some long trips on the back of those bikes -- me riding behind Dad, my younger sister Elsa riding behind Mom. Other long trips we took by train.
      I remember going into downtown Amsterdam one evening near Christmas time; I remember all the lights -- red, green, yellow -- and how festive it looked. I remember going there another day for the arrival of St. Nicholas, riding his white horse in the parade, surrounded by his Zwarte Piet helpers.
      I remember another day -- this stuck in my mind -- that we were supposed to meet Dad and ride the tram he was driving (think he would've charged us?). But instead of stopping, the tram flew past us and Dad never even looked at us. The story was he had a medical emergency on board; he was rushing toward the nearest hospital.
      For a young boy, it felt like Dad had abandoned us. I don't know if Elsa remembers it, maybe she was too young. 
      I've gone back to The Netherlands three times since we came to the U.S.; the first two times with Dad. One of the great pleasures of those trips was to ride the trams again, and to watch Dad's great delight in doing so. I remember that a couple of times he would sit right behind the driver and talk to him about the days -- 35, 50 years before -- when he was the driver.

Jan and Lena DeVries -- my mother's
aunt and her second husband; they
lived two houses to our right.

      He still could remember the routes for each of the lines that he drove. And I can tell that line No. 17 from Centraal Station on the edge of downtown runs to our old neighborhood and a five-block walk to our old house at 131 Jan Hanzenstraat in the Old West part of Amsterdam.
---
      "We lived in Amsterdam in a house what still is there," Dad said in 1996. (It was still true when Bea and I took the tram to the neighborhood and the walk to the house a year ago.)
      "But it was a two-story house; you don't have too many two-story houses there," Dad added. "An uncle from Rose had a house and he married her aunt, and that house came empty, and you could not find a house [in that post-World War II era). That was a big, big shortage of houses in Holland. But he let us use that house. We moved from Antwerp to Amsterdam, and we got that house."
      The uncle was Philip Kopuit -- my grandmother's brother. He had died while in hiding with his wife and son (my mother's cousin) in South Holland during the war. His widow was my mother's aunt, Helena -- Tante Lena, as we called her. She remarried after the war, a tall, bald man with a wooden leg -- Jan DeVries (Oome Jan for us). They lived two houses to our right.
      "A two-story house," Dad repeated in the interview. "There was no bathroom; no bath -- you had to go to a bathhouse. Two rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs. ... We find out when we left that the house had not a wall on the side. Next to the wall, it was just bricks. It was cold all the time in that house and the wallpaper was on the back side of the man's house next door. So old; that house was about 200 years old.
      "But we lived happy over there."
       I take his word for that. I do remember the house; it was tiny; it was crowded. It had a backyard, no bigger than the room I'm sitting in as I type this. And, yes, the house was cold. I can see the coal stacked up, ready to put into the furnace.
      (And on each of my trips back, I have gone to that old street, to that old house, to the beautiful big canal just down the way, to my first school three blocks away. I know the way there.)
      My mother hated that cold -- and in Holland, it was often cold. I don't know if she lived happy there. I know that by 1955, she was ready to leave -- not only that house; she was ready to leave the country.

---
      "I start as a conductor in Amsterdam and then later on I become a streetcar driver," Dad said of his job. "And a month before I left Holland, I decided I would try for bus driver. That was all one company, and that would've been a promotion. But I quit [to go to the United States]."
       What he did not know until more than a decade later was that he could have had a better position.
       "One of my superiors was a sea captain before he took a job as an inspector with the city," Dad said. "I was real close with that man; he was [a member] in the same union. When I in 1968 was back in Holland, he said, 'Louis, I go tell you a secret now. When you was ready to quit the streetcar company, you was ready for promotion to be an inspector.
       'But I was in America before the war,' " the man added. " 'I know what America was. I was not ready to stop you. I could've [tried] to keep you over here and told you you were ready for a promotion, but I not want to stop you.' "

       I'm sure that my Dad thanked him for that. I'm also sure that I'm grateful to that man. Because on Dec. 28, 1955, we took the boat to America. The streetcar uniform became only a memory.
       (Next: Dad, his first cousin and the estate)
 

In touch with my great-grandparents

      (Sixth in a series)
      My grandfather's father, Levi Van Thijn, was a devout Orthodox Jew. He lived by the laws of the religion.
      When, in the last decade of his life, he lived in a Jewish home for older people and it was the weekend or a Jewish holiday, and he wanted to join his family in their old neighborhood, he walked a significant distance. Because Orthodox Jews don't use public transportation, cars or (as then) bicycles on those occasions.
      He was there because gatherings for his extended Van Thijn family in Amsterdam in the 1930s were a big deal. That's how my Dad described it in his USC Shoah Foundation interview as a Holocaust survivor.
      My Dad, also named Levi Van Thijn at birth, was not devout and was not Orthodox.  I wouldn't say he was religious; I would say he was faithful to his heritage. 
      I don't think he knew many of the prayers by heart, whether in Hebrew, or Dutch or English (or his mixture of the two). He knew phrases and he knew the traditions, and he enjoyed the connections with the Jewish community -- in Amsterdam and in Shreveport -- and he liked the participation.
      He was once president of the men's club at his synagogue in Shreveport, and he was involved in many of the activities. He did handy work around Agudath Achim, which was -- if he had preferred -- within easy walking distance from the house.
       My parents didn't follow the kosher dietary laws and they were not regular attendees at Sabbath services, but they didn't miss going to worship on the High Holidays. 
       However, don't mistake this. My mother and father were extremely proud of being Jewish.
       They knew the price that so many had paid as Jews -- for centuries, of course, and specifically during World War II. They knew the price their family had paid, that they had paid.
       They were among the Holocaust survivors -- consider them "lucky," if you will, because they did -- and they knew the horror of losing almost entire families.
        My Dad, and my Mom, perhaps felt they didn't need to be told what it meant to be a Jew; they didn't feel the need to be preached to or to have it defined for him. His grandfather and his parents had set the definition in his mind. 
        "I believe in God," he said late in his Shoah Foundation interview, "but I cannot sit and hear sermons. I cannot sit inside a room and listen to speeches at the organizations where I'm a member. I don't -- how do I say this? -- I don't feel good that I have to listen all the time."
---
      But his devout grandfather and those family gatherings were some of Dad's fondest memories of his boyhood.
      Near the start of his 1996 interview, Dad was asked about his hometown.
      "Amsterdam is a big town now," he said. "It was big in that time, too. Amsterdam was a nice town to live in, especially for the Jewish people. We were living in a Jewish neighborhood. It wasn't necessary, but my parents wanted that, they wanted to live in a Jewish neighborhood."
        Unlike my sister Elsa and me, my Dad grew up surrounded by family. His father and mother each had six siblings; many of them living in that neighborhood. The nearby clothing company for which his mother worked also employed three of his uncles (one of his mother's brothers and two of her sisters' husbands).

     Jewish holidays particularly were times for family.

     "With Pesach (Passover), we went to seder, with my grandfather," Dad recalled. "My father had all those brothers and sisters, and they were all there. Here (the United States) you'd get a hot meal. There, we'd eat matzos for the meal. I remember that real well.

       "We'd have it at one of my aunt's house, and there'd be children and grandchildren, and it'd be about 40 together. Only matzos and something on the matzos, like cheese or eggs or brown sugar.

      "One year, my mother was a member of a group, and for Pesach, she got 100 eggs. She gave a nickel a week -- someone would come and pick it up at home; there was a special man, he made a living at that. He went through the whole neighborhood every day and picked up some money from the people."
---

      Dad's grandfather had been a widower for years, and at one time lived with one of his kids. Dad remembered him living in the Jewish retirement home.
      In the early 1940s, when Dad was in the Dutch army, "I remember that I go visit him with a cousin, both of us in military clothes. And he was so proud."
      Our genealogy shows that Levi Van Thyn died Nov. 20, 1942, at age 82. It was a merciful death.
      "It was a couple of weeks before he would've been deported to Auschwitz," my Dad noted. Two weeks later, that whole house was deported to Auschwitz or somewhere. It was a Jewish hospital, and in the back was the old-age home."
---
     My Dad's paternal grandmother, Levi's wife, died when Dad was young.
     "I remember the funeral, that's the only thing I remember," he said in his interview. "We had to stay on the side because we were Cohens [according to the Jewish Funeral Guide, a Cohen is a descendant of Aaron the High Priest and may not come in contact with any dead body or within a certain distance of a Jewish corpse or grave]. You couldn’t go to the cemetery. They had a special building for us.”

     He never knew his mother's father, who died young, but he knew her mother, Eva.

Eva Aandagt-Van Beem

     "I knew her real well because she stayed with us for a while," Dad said. Six of Eva's children, Sara and her siblings, lived in Amsterdam, but Eva wound up living with the one child in Antwerp.

     "But she came often to Amsterdam," Dad said. "She had a cousin of my mother who was working for the railroad, and she had a free pass and she'd pick her up in Antwerp and took her to Amsterdam all the time."
      When Eva died in the late 1930s, Dad noted, "I took her place in Antwerp" when he went to apprentice for diamond cutting.
---
     In 1991, when I returned to Holland for the first time in 36 years, one day my Dad took me to a cemetery near Diemen, where we were staying with Dad's closest friend in Holland. It was within walking distance.
      After he searched for a while, Dad found his grandfather's grave -- against a back fence on the right side of a good-sized old Jewish cemetery. He was quite satisfied to remember the location.
      It was a memorable moment for me, a reconnection of sorts.
      There are no graves for all the family we lost in the Holocaust. But the memories -- fleeting as they are -- live on. Those people, many of them devoutly Jewish, are not forgotten. There's still family carrying on.
      Next: Growing up in Jewish Amsterdam