Two photos and missing pieces from Belgium

    A trip back in time, and another visit with Dad.

    The name of the camp is Les Mazures. Remember that. It is the key to this story.

    Look at these two photos. That's Dad -- Louis Van Thyn -- at ages 16 (almost 17) and 26 1/2. 

    This is the first time you have seen them. Because when we received them last week, it was the first time we had seen them.

     It is, as you might imagine, a great find for us, a bit emotional. 

     With the photos came two dossiers, forms he had to fill to establish -- and re-establish -- residency in Belgium. 

     The name on those forms is Levi Van Thijn -- his original first name (Louis, or Louie, was a nickname he always was called); he had it legally changed once we were in the United

States. The last name is the Dutch spelling (the y was written ij).

      The first photo: May 1936 when he first arrived in Antwerp, Belgium, having left home in Amsterdam with his parents' permission, and his intention is learning the diamond cutting trade. 

      You can see how young -- innocent? -- he looks, wearing the glasses he wore as a kid (and never again until he was in his mid-50s) ... and, for some reason, glancing sideways.      

     The second photo: November 1945, a sharp-looking, much more seasoned and mature young man, a Holocaust survivor,  a prisoner of the Germans/Nazis for nearly 2 1/2 years, much of that in concentration camps. Also a widower; his first wife, Estella, one of the six million Jews who died. He was unsure if she like him had been sent to Auschwitz.

      He's back in Antwerp, at last, looking for a new life.

---

     In his Holocaust interview, the one we used for much of the Survivors: 62511, 70726 book, Dad talked about where he went after the Nazis "arrested" him (and so many others) in the fall of 1942.

      Page 45 ... First stop: a work camp in Northern France.

      "We spent around three months there. ... It was by the town of Charleville, in the French Ardennes (the dense forest region) by the Belgium border," he told the interviewer.

      Asked for the camp's name, he replied, "I don't think it had a name. ... I want to get there one day and see, but there is nothing there that you can see it was a camp." (He never made that visit.)

---

       Of course the camp had a name. It is my fault that I did not research more, or ask more questions, to fill in the details.

       But we found out the name last week: Les Mazures.   

       The names, Dad's photos and the dossiers were sent to us by Reinier Heinsman, who introduced himself to us last week as a volunteer for the Kazerne Dossin Museum in Belgium, a place I wrote about in 2014, located in Mechelen, a city halfway between Antwerp and Brussels.

      It is on the site of the transition camp where Dad was sent after his stay at Les Mazures and from where he was sent by train to Auschwitz.

      Reinier asked my Kazerne Dossin contact, Dorien Styven, for my e-mail, and so Reinier asked for information on my Dad's lifelong great friend, Joseph "Joopie" Scholte, and his family -- particularly photos of Joopie's older brother, Jonas, and Joopie's 2-year-old daughter Helene. 

      He also told me -- important connection -- that the Scholte boys and Dad had been at the "concentration camp of Les Mazures in northern France."

     To be honest, that was news to me ... until I checked my blog and book (and found that Dad had not recalled the name).

     So I confirmed with Reinier that his facts were correct.

     Yael Reicher, who lives in Belgium and is a good friend of Reinier's, is president of the Memorial of the Concentration Camp of Les Mazures.               

     "She knows a lot about the camp and about all the prisoners," Reinier wrote. "She is very dedicated to preserving the memory of the camp and of all the people who were interned there, including her father." (And mine.)

      Yael, too, confirmed this: "Both Louis and Jonas were indeed interned at the Judenlager [Jewish camp] of Les Mazures."

      Much of the information that Yael sent and is in the dossiers is included in chapter 29 (pages 106-109) of the Survivors book.

https://nvanthyn.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-fate-of-family-in-belgium.html 

      That describes the Les Mazures work camp and its purpose, and we also received from Kazerne Dossin several years ago what information they had on Dad, Joopie and Jonas Scholte, and on Estella.

      Can tell you that Dad, although he did not recall the camp name, is spot-on about the location and the work done there.

       And typically for him, because he for the most part always kept his good nature and positive outlook despite all that happened to him, recalled that the Les Mazures experience wasn't that harsh, not like what was ahead.

---

     Didn't think we had a photo of Jonas until my sister Elsa pointed out that he was in the wedding photo of Joopie and his first wife that we've had for years (and is in the book).

      Indeed, Jonas is up front on the left, and Dad is in the back left. So we sent that photo to the people in Belgium, along with Dad's wedding photo with Estella.

     We told Reinier and Yael -- who were not sure of the connection -- that the Scholtes' mother Leentje was a sister of Dad's mother, our grandmother Sara.

     The dossier also shows a wedding date for Dad and Estella -- September 16, 1941. We knew the month and year, but not the date.

     About the group known as the Association in Memory of the Judenlager of Les Mazures: A Belgian historian, Jean-Emile Andreux, did the research on the camp, published his work and created a memorial with the names of the 288 men deported from Antwerp to Les Mazures.

     A monument was dedicated in 2005 on the site where the camp used to be. There is nothing left, except the foundations of the barracks and debris in the surrounding woods.

      Every year there are two commemorations: (1) in July, the national French ceremony for victims of the Shoah (Holocaust); (2) on October 23, the date of the deportation to Auschwitz.

      At the site, there are portraits of all but a dozen of the men deported, Dad included. And now Jonas' photo will be there, too.

     The site itself is a soccer field today. I assure you: Dad would have loved that.

     When and if I redo, or update, the Survivors book -- there are now nine Van Thyn great grandchildren -- it will be good to have information that corrects what was missing before.

     We are always grateful to learn more. Thanks.

   

Facebook messages received ...

     So how's your coronavirus vacation going?
      Would not say that we are bored; we can find enough to do -- reading, studying our computer and/or I-Pads, and watching lots and lots of television "news" -- but we are not as busy as we were before, either.
      How about you?
      Interesting to watch the debate on when and how things -- well, our world -- should open up again. Seems to me that it's become a political divide (isn't everything these days?), and I am not about to delve into that argument. Not here, not on this blog.
      Make up your own mind. And if you go out into public often enough -- mask or no mask, social distancing or not -- good luck. Don't be afraid. Don't be lax, either. 
       We did go, carefully, on a shopping trip to our favorite Costco this morning -- we had items we needed -- and then on a walking trip to the credit-union drive-through across the street from our facility, I happened to see the Blue Angels flyover in Fort Worth that had many of our residents excited to see. 
      Here is the link to those few moments, as posted on Facebook this morning: 
  https://www.facebook.com/TrinityTerraceTX/videos/2914550845259066/?t=5 
       We will keep our distance, and I will keep researching on the Louisiana sports-related project which I have been grinding on lately.
     It is good, though, to see our neighbors and fellow residents here at the compound -- even at a distance and (most often) masked -- and neighbor Dr. John suggested, "I haven't seen any of your blogs lately."
     Told him I was working on a couple, and so here is the first.
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      These are three notes I received by Facebook Messenger last week, reminders of family and published work -- blogs and the book -- done in recent years.
      ● Dr. Larry Joseph Rapp Jr., a two-year Centenary College student from New Orleans and then an LSU-BR graduate, sent this note:
    "Hi Mr. Van Thyn, 
     "You don't know me but I just want to say thank you for compiling your parents' stories. I was fortunate enough to see your mother speak at Centenary College in the early 2000s. She was so memorable that nearly 20 years later I had to find out more.
     "Thanks to Wikipedia, I think I found out about your book. My mother read it first; I just finished it, and I will certainly share it with anyone who will read it. You probably hear this frequently; at least I hope you do. Your parents would be proud of and honored by your work."
      Joseph went on to earn a doctorate in physical therapy from the University of South Alabama and has accepted an offer to work for the Department of Defense at Hurlburt Field AFB (in the Florida Panhandle) as director of physical therapy.
      ● B. Wade Brooks, a Benton resident and school teacher who attended Parkway High in Bossier City and then the University of Central Arkansas and University of Tenneseee, sent a note asking to contact a friend about another matter, and then added: "I saw your mother (Mrs. Rose) speak at Shreve Memorial Library one afternoon. Our kids need to hear those type stories these days." 
     Paid special attention to this surprising message: 
     ● "My name is Joe Sanders. I am the son of Leen Sanders. I just read an article  you wrote about my father and his actions as a prisoner in Auschwitz. Things I was never aware of. I am not much of a reader, but I really enjoyed reading your story about my father. 
     "Thank you so much. Joe Sanders."
---
     These are gratifying, of course, and the Joe Sanders note particularly was/is intriguing. Leen Sanders was the Dutch boxing champion/hero -- my Dad's hero -- who was the subject of a blog piece 6 1/2 years ago as part of the blog series on my father's story and it is Chapter 16 in the book about my parents and our family. 
      So I did contact Joe, we have exchanged messages over the past week, and I am about to follow up with more on the Leen Sanders story -- yeah, the rest of the story -- and Joe's perspective on life with his parents.
     As one of our favorite talk show hosts/analysts says: Watch this space.        

A link to Dad (and the Holocaust) in 1942

     

    Look at these two photos -- from 1942 -- and know that they are special to us, and that, finally, we have copies.
     These two people are my father, Louis Van Thyn -- listed as Levie Van Thijn here -- and his first wife, Estella Halverstad. The photos came to us from Belgium, sent to us on Sunday through Facebook.
     Dad, pictured here, was 23; Stella was 21.
     Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, so the timing is perfect because these are Holocaust-related.
     They are on display and part of the large database from the Kazerne Dossin -- the national Holocaust memorial museum of Belgium. 
     (It is like the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., the World Holocaust Remembrance  Museum -- Yad Vashem -- in Jerusalem, Israel, and the Dutch National Holocaust Museum in our original hometown, Amsterdam.)
     The Belgian museum is located in Mechelen -- a city between Antwerp and Brussels, the two largest cities in Belgium -- and that is significant, and symbolic.
      Mechelen is where, mostly in 1942-43, Jewish and Romani (gypsy) "prisoners" of the Nazis were held and then sent on transport trains to the concentration camps. Read on for the numbers.
     We are grateful to our cousin, Heleen (Kopuit)  Borgenicht, and her husband, Jacky, for making the 17-mile (27-kilometer) trip from their residence in Antwerp to the museum and providing us with the photos for our records and this piece.
     As Heleen noted, the museum has four floors -- each floor with 160 columns and 40 rows of photos -- of the (mostly) Jewish "prisoners." Heleen wrote "the walls were covered with photos." 
     So, without having the specific location, she and Jacky had to search and search to locate my father's wall photo. 
     Which they did, and here is Heleen (right) pointing to Dad's photo, and a closeup look (left) at the then young Louis.
     It is, as you might imagine, emotional for us to see him as he looked when he was about to head to Auschwitz.
      All the people in the photos on the wall went to the concentration camps -- and for the great majority went to their deaths.
       The Kazerne Dossin website says 25,274 Jews and 354 Romani (gypsies) were transported from Mechelen and that two-thirds were killed upon arrival at the camps.
      Only 1,395 of those listed survived. That word "overlevende" stamped on Dad's photo means survivor.
      Stella did not survive (the word "disparu" on her photo and so many others means disappeared, or death).

Dad (fourth row down, middle)

      Note on Dad's database page: his date of birth (6-7-1919; here in the U.S., it would be 7-6-1919); his place of birth (Amsterdam); his geslacht/gender (man), his spouse's name (the last name is incorrectly spelled, a z instead of s); his beroep/occupation; his departure date from Mechelen (24-10-1942); transport (XV); transport number (180); the number (70726) the Nazis tattooed on his left forearm; and, finally,  the category overlevende ... the answer is "ja," YES.
       On another database page are listed his "arrest" date (18 Jul 1942); his arrival date at Auschwitz (26 Oct 1942); his father's name (Natan Van Thijn -- it should be Nathan); his mother's name (Sarah Van Beer -- it should be Van Beem).
      Meticulous as the Nazis were, they did mess up some record-keeping ... as well as millions and millions of lives.
     And they must have been proud, otherwise why not destroy all those records when it was obvious the war was coming to an end and they were not going to rule the world? 
---  
     In 1942, Dad was living in Antwerp, with hopes of learning the diamond-cutting trade (thus the "diamondslijper" listing for his occupation). Actually, that did not happen.
     He was already a Dutch Army veteran and, after Nazi occupation of The Netherlands, a released POW.  He had moved to Antwerp from Amsterdam at age 16, living with an aunt and uncle, and doing odd jobs before there was a place for him as a diamond-cutting apprentice.
       After the Nazis released Dad and other Dutch soldiers in late 1940, he went back to Antwerp and eventually married Estella, and they were living with her parents when the Germans/Nazis began their full-scale "arrests" of most Jewish people in western Europe.
     Estella's parents' photos, too, certainly are in the Kazerne Dossin museum.
---

     Heleen also did a database search for her maiden name -- and found photos and information on two women: Trijntje Kopuit and Rosette Rachel Kopuit.
    And, yes, they are part of her family ... and ours. Both were born in Amsterdam.
    Trijntje was a great niece of my mother's grandfather Maurits. Rosette Rachel was a cousin of the brother-sister who were my grandmother and Heleen's grandfather.
     Trijntje, born in 1881 (age 60 when she was deported), is  listed as an employee' de maison -- domestic servant.
     Rosette Rachel, born in 1880 (63 at deportation), is listed as a professor. Neither survived the Holocaust.
     The name Rosette Rachel is significant to us, a link to family names. Rozette (with a z) was my mother's given name (Rose for short). Rachel is our daughter (named for Mom's mom, so our Rachel's great grandmother).
     Mom, as many know, also was a Holocaust survivor. Having been picked up by the Nazis in Amsterdam, like most of her family and Dad's family, her transit camp was in Holland (Westerbork). From there they went on the infamous cattle-car trains for the trip to Auschwitz.   
---
     At Mechelen, the prisoners were held in Belgian Army infantry barracks. A commemorative plaque was first placed there on May 30, 1948, and beginning in 1956, an annual ceremony has been held to commemorate the Holocaust victims who were housed there.
     After the war, the barracks were converted to a school and had other uses before they became dilapidated, and torn down. But several groups pushed for a Holocaust museum to be built, right next to the barracks' area.
     The Mechelen memorial museum first opened November 11, 1995. A few years later there was need for a larger, updated facility, which opened November 26, 2012.
     Officially, it is the Memorial Museum and Documentation Centre on Holocaust and Human Rights.
     Through cousin Heleen, we first heard about the newest museum before it opened, and the Kazerne Dossin -- connecting me to Dad -- sent an invitation to attend the opening. 
     That did not develop, but through correspondence, we learned of the existence of this database and these photos.
     We had no clue of what we might be receiving, no preview, and to be honest, the museum was asking much more of a payment than we were willing to make.
     Heleen also had been unable to attend the museum opening, but promised that some day she would visit the museum and try to find Dad and Estella's photos. 
     She has come through and we have it to tie into today's Remembrance Day.
     It is the 75th anniversary of January 27, 1945, when the Auschwitz camp was liberated by Allied forces. My mother and father -- and my sister Elsa's -- were free (but never free of the memories) and a few months later they would meet in Amsterdam, starting new lives.
     We remember the Holocaust every day. We will never forget.

Rose and Louis -- in the New York Daily News

     The article below was published Tuesday (June 26) on the op-ed page of the New York Daily News, and it is centered on my parents, particularly Mom.
     It is about the Holocaust -- and today's world, today's America. It is about the President's rhetoric and policies, OK.
     I suggest you put your political beliefs aside as you read this. Perhaps you cannot do that, but it is about Rose and Louis, so give it a try.
     This is written by Brandon Friedman, co-founder and chief executive officer of The McPherson Square, a public relations firm based in Washington, D.C.
      Here is why Friedman is aware of my parents: He was born and raised in Shreveport, he graduated from LSU-Shreveport and he has a master's degree from University of Texas.
       What many of my readers might not approve of: He served in the Obama Administration. What they will approve of: He served -- with some distinction -- in the U.S. Army, a rifle platoon leader in Afghanistan and Iraq.
        (I was alerted to the article by Lisa Nicoletti, professor of art history and visual studies at Centenary College, guiding force of the Holocaust studies there, and -- with husband Steve -- great friend to my parents. We thank her -- again.)
      The article:
---
     What 'Never Again' Holocaust educators would say now about civility and fascism

     By Brandon Friedman
     As a kid, I was surrounded by people who went on and on about “Never Again.”

     Holocaust survivor and educator Rose Van Thyn was one of those. She spoke to classes often, and what I remember about each time she visited my school over the years was the conviction in her voice — as if she really believed it could happen here.

     Rose was sincere. She had been through a lot. Like the others, she had a number tattooed on her arm. She was a survivor of Auschwitz.

     Still, I took her warnings with a grain of salt. I think all the kids did. No one really believed her. Because that had happened a long time ago. It was Europe. And this is America.

     Nevertheless, Rose spent her entire adult life in north Louisiana warning anyone who would listen. She never stopped. Then her husband Louis, also a Holocaust survivor, died in 2008. She died two years later.

     I didn’t hear about their deaths. Life had gone on. I had grown up and I was busy. I found out when I googled it this week.

     And then something occurred to me: Like the Van Thyns, many of the most famous Holocaust educators and Nazi hunters have died in recent years.

     Simon Wiesenthal, the most famous Nazi hunter, died in 2005. Elliot Welles, who the New York Times called an “indefatigable Nazi hunter,” died in 2006. Tuviah Friedman, who helped track down Adolf Eichmann, died in 2011. Elie Wiesel, the author of “Night,” died in 2016.

     I bring this up because we’re in the midst of a national discussion about “civility” in the face of authoritarianism. And in all this talk about civility in America’s political discourse, it occurred to me that the passing of Rose’s generation has left us extraordinarily vulnerable. In fact, I don’t think today’s resurgent fascism — and the dark enthusiasm that animates it across America — is coincidence.

     Rose was a tiny woman, but she was unrelenting. She was not violent, but she was also not willing to negotiate with a racist ideology. She knew that going along just to get along made things worse — not better.

     Her fellow survivors were the same. They knew that calls for civility in the face of oppression had been used as a weapon against them. And they knew what we took for granted.

     They knew that Nazis weren’t an aberration. They were regular people. Your friend. Your neighbor. Your uncle who forwards racist memes.           They knew that Nazis are what happens when hate goes unchecked by polite people who fear confrontation.

     They also taught us is that dictatorships and genocide don’t happen all at once. They don’t start with extermination camps. They start when vulnerable classes of people are blamed for society’s problems. They start with state propaganda.

     They start with the encouragement of violence at political rallies. They start when elected leaders call the press the “enemy of the people.” And they start when people don’t push back forcefully and publicly — early and often.

     As with any cancer, the time to stop creeping fascism is not after the arrests and the killings begin. By then, it’s too late. The time to stop fascism is when the President calls some Nazis “very fine people.” That’s the time, before it metastasizes and spreads further.

     President Trump has called for his followers to “knock the crap out of” political opponents. He threatened this week to suspend due process for immigrants. He said immigrants “infest” America — a literal use of Nazi terminology. Meanwhile, the government he runs is holding children hostage in cages until their Mexican and Central American parents agree to deportation.

     I don’t think I fully understood the urgency of Rose Van Thyn’s warnings when I was younger. But now that I’m older, I understand power. I know that human nature doesn’t change. Most importantly, I know that when a leader flouts the rule of law and begins “othering” minorities, the time for civility is over.

     What does that mean? In my view, political analyst Josh Berthume said it best yesterday: “Racists, misogynists, homophobes, bigots, fascists, and every single one of their enablers should feel the sting of shame and ridicule. When their behavior is not challenged, it is encouraged.”

     That’s a sentiment every Nazi hunter would get behind, and I share it. We must shun these people back into the shadows. It’s the only way to ensure that what Rose experienced does, in fact, never happen again.
Friedman has spent 17 years in politics and government, including time as an Army infantry officer in Iraq and Afghanistan.

---
Bio links:
http://www.mcphersonsquaregroup.com/brandon-friedman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Friedman
  

Here is my red line ...

     

Marching in Charlottesville (nbcnews.com photo)

My mother spent 25 years talking publicly -- and privately -- about the Holocaust, and warning how anti-Semitism and bigotry is still out there and can rise again.
       And here we are.
       Thinking of my mother and father, who were Holocaust survivors and who lost practically their entire families at the hands, guns and gas chambers of the Nazis ...
       Miss them, but glad they are not here for these times and this President.
       I have written about my parents' lives and about their Holocaust experiences, and about some of their friends ... because it is part of my history, my family's history.
       I cannot, and will not, be silent on Charlottesville and the aftermath. The President's at-first weak and then defiant response is unacceptable.
       You don't agree, you can "unfriend" on Facebook or "unfollow" me, or tell me to you want off my e-mail list. Fine. I don't care.
       I have waited to express that, even with criticism from old (and not-so-old) friends after my two political-type posts last year. One of those posts was a defense of the media, and my view that "fake news" references are propaganda from a candidate/President who relies almost daily on targeting someone or some entity.
       But if you can find a defense for this, for his "many sides" BS, for any kind of "out" for the white supremacy, Nazi-KKK-alt right creeps -- and I could use much more colorful descriptions, I don't need you. 
       That goes for anyone, friends from 60 years ago, whatever. This is my parting shot.
       Don't want to get too deep into politics and social issues because it hisses off so many people. I understand the difference between conservative viewpoints and liberal ones, and most of you know where I lean. But I don't lean as much as some of my friends and family.
       But this issue, the current uprising of these Nazis and KKK hoodlums, and their "leaders" whose faces and voices we see and hear too much, the torches burning in the night, the violence erupting (and the prospect of much more), no thanks.
       Just as so many of you were critical of the previous President and the losing Presidential candidate, this President can be criticized every minute of every day. I don't have time or space, except to say I trust the media people we watch a helluva lot more. They are articulate -- and he's not.
       They are articulate -- and he's not. (Just repeating, as he does with almost every sentence he likes.)
       That statement he read Saturday was a joke. Obviously someone wrote for him, as they write almost everything for him these days -- and when he goes off-script, that's when he begins hammering anyone he thinks he needs to hammer (including his Cabinet members and his Republican "friends" in Congress).
       Guarantee you he's never said the word "egregious" before in his life.
       He read that statement Saturday, and the one Tuesday, without any real meaning, without conviction, without empathy. But with plenty of fire and fury when admonishing the media and interrupting -- "excuse me, excuse me ... I'm not finished."
       His rudeness, just as in the debates and the campaign, is overwhelming. His supporters love it; he's "being tough." That is a bunch of bull. His indecency is well-publicized, and it matters not to so many. 
       I much prefer a President who shows class -- whether you agree with him or not -- and can empathize and sympathize. This hate- and fear-mongering bully has none.
       I had a friend tell me several weeks ago, "Anyone who criticizes the President is a bad person."
       Unbelievable. Yes, the office of the President should be respected. But the person in the office should earn that respect. So many refused to give that to the last President.
       You could disagree with his policies and the tone of the country, again I understand. But he was -- my opinion -- not abusive. Nor were Presidents Reagan, Bush and Bush.
       As for the statues honoring the South's Civil War heroes, I don't have a strong opinion. They honor a history, but if they are offensive to African-Americans -- whose  ancestors were the slaves of so many, including our Presidents and the South's war heroes -- you should understand. 
       Same for the Confederate flag.
       Same for KKK hoods and torches.  
       Same for us, the Nazi flag and Nazi gear and Nazi propaganda, and -- heaven forbid -- Nazi statues. Same for KKK hoods and torches.  
       Much of the past should be the past, not the present.
       So, as I posted on Facebook, here are links to re-posts by a couple of journalist friends I respect. 
       From Bob Mann, former Shreveport Journal writer political analyst/teacher in Baton Rouge, on the synagogue in Charlottesville:     
https://www.facebook.com/nvanthyn/posts/1549580738433195?notif_t=like&notif_id=1502896258022518
       From Evan Grant -- Jewish, a late 1980s Shreveport Times sportswriter en route to covering the Texas Rangers for The Dallas Morning News:
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/15/dallas-holocaust-survivors-past-suddenly-become-painfully-present
       So there you have it. We are always aware of the Nazi/KKK/alt-right/white supremacists history and the Nazi/KKK/alt-right/white supremacists ways. My mother knew, and she spoke.
       During the Presidential campaign, Mr. Trump was slow to disavow David Duke's "endorsement" and -- again -- finally did disavow, after prodding, without much conviction. He's hired alt-right, Nazi sympathizers for his White House staff.
       It was predictable, to me, during the Presidential campaign and the white supremacists' obvious delight with this candidacy -- and again now, with their gleeful response to his Tuesday outburst and blame on the "alt-left," that their protests and violence was not far away. I'm surprised it took six months.
       They now have been emboldened and empowered, and what about those neo-Nazis in Europe seeing this?
       We don't accept the "many sides" drivel, we do not accept the "we want to take our country back" crap, we do not accept so much of what this President stands for and, even more, what he says.
       This is beyond politics. It's bigotry and hatred. You don't like what I'm saying, good-bye.       

A Holocaust survivor ... in the photo with Dad

       Please look at the photo on the right ... because there is more to the story than I previously published. It is part of my father's Holocaust story, and someone else's story .
     This is four concentration-camp survivors from The Netherlands who, in early 1945, somehow were in Odessa (then Russia) on the Black Sea, waiting for a ship to take them to Marseille, France, (on the way home) and posing for this photo in Russian Army uniforms and caps they had been given.
     That's Dad -- Louis Van Thyn -- at age 25, on the upper right.
     The young man sitting in front of him (bottom right), the youngest in the group at 20, is Jack Frankenhuis. And I now have much of his story.
     A month ago, Jan. 28, I received this comment on my blog site from "Jacq" in response to the July 7, 2014, blog piece that included this photo. That blog was entitled "A tour of Eastern Europe ... a boat ride west."
     It also is Chapter 26 of the book on my parents -- Survivors: 62511, 70726 -- and the photo is on Page 96.
     Here is the note from "Jacq":
     "Beste Nico, Dear Nico.
     "I am the daughter of Jack Frankenhuis, you mentioned in your article. The story is exactly as my father always told me. Thanks for sharing it!!!"
     It is remarkable -- and interesting -- for me to receive this kind of feedback, and so I wanted to pursue this story.
      Fortunately, through Facebook, I was able to locate Jacqueline Frankenhuis, a 64-year-old mother of three who lives in Baarn, The Netherlands, a small town 35 miles (22 kilometers) southeast of Amsterdam.

Jacqueline Frankenhuis

     Jacqueline was a film editor for the Dutch public broadcasting service in Hilversum, not far from Baarn. Hilversum is where television and radio networks have been based in Holland dating to before and when we lived there in the late 1940s/early 1950s.
     It was the oldest of her two daughters -- both live in Berlin -- who found my blog and the photo when she did a Google search for Jack's name on the Internet. Jacqueline also has a son who lives in Tel Aviv.
     Since she posted her note, and I answered, we have  exchanged Facebook and e-mail messages, talked on Skype for more than a half hour (ah, the wonders of today's technology), and she has provided details, thoughts and photos on her father's life.
     So read on for his story, and know that I share Jacqueline's sentiment. "It is very exciting for me," she wrote.
---
     At the outset, it is my feeling that Jack Frankenhuis -- as
with all Holocaust survivors -- was fortunate in several ways, blessed to live a couple of decades after this photo.   
     He was not as fortunate as my father, though, in this  regard: Jack died in 1969, and he was only 44. Consider that my Dad lived until a month past his 89th birthday.
     Like Dad, Jack had deep pain from the Holocaust years and the loss of most of their families in the Nazi gas chambers. Unlike Dad, Jack's pain was more visible.
     I have written and often said that my father outwardly handled the camp memories, and his life, in about as good a manner as one could -- and that my mother's experiences left her more haunted than many people realized. Jacqueline describes her father's post-war life as busy, often restless  and tormented.
     For most of his final two decades, Jack Frankenhuis was a physical therapist.
     "My father worked and lived very hard," Jacqueline wrote. "Worked 10-12 hours a day. Ate well, and smoked and drank a lot. He was making up for lost time. This lifestyle was not healthy, and he died of a sudden heart attack in May 1969.
     "I have thought a lot about his life, and decided that [his early death] it was good in the end because his psychological problems were getting more and more manifest."
     Jacqueline said her father's death could be linked to what has been described as "concentration camp syndrome," which in recent years has been linked to the more commonly known term -- PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). (I referenced a study of this previously in speaking and writing about children of Holocaust survivors.) 
     "So [doctors] could not have helped him anymore," Jacqueline concluded.
---
     Jack was born Sept. 8, 1924, in Amsterdam, the only child of Jacob Frankenhuis and Jenny/Schoontje Trompetter (it was his mother's second marriage).
     When the Nazis, the German Army marched into Amsterdam and the Netherlands and took over in May 1940, Jack was in school. His uncle, a physical therapist at a Jewish hospital in Amsterdam, helped him find a job at that hospital, cleaning and doing odd jobs.
     After the Nazis began restricting rights and imposing curfews and access for Jewish residents, the "arrests" and transports to holding camps -- such as Westerbork in east Holland -- and then the concentration camps and/or gas chambers increased greatly in 1942-43.
     And here was one piece of Jack's good fortune. His parents were deported in May 1943, but he had -- through the help of the hospital and some friends -- a "Schperr," a paper which said he was needed for work and exempt from being taken. The Nazis, not exactly benevolent, agreed ... but only for so long.
     When he finally went to Auschwitz, it was late in 1944. Another break: It meant he only had a few months there until liberation in January 1945.
     One more "break" came when he arrived on the cattle-car train at Auschwitz-Birkenau. On the ramp where the prisoners -- Jewish and others -- were waiting, two Jewish men from Amsterdam, Siegfried van den Bergh and Gerard Levy (they were brother-in-laws), decided they might be safer if they picked out what Jacqueline described as one of the Amsterdam "tough (or cheeky) boys" as a mate in a threesome. 
     Jack was a stranger to them, but he fit the "tough" look. He was sturdy looking and, at 19, had been an amateur boxing.
     One of the men was a doctor, the other an attorney, and the Nazis decided that they -- and Jack -- could be useful workers, thus saving them from the gas chambers. (Dad, too, was fit, having been in the Dutch Army, so he also was placed in a work detail -- mostly in the mines.)   
     One of the brothers-in-law worked in the sick bay at Auschwitz (and had access to medications), the other did administrative work. Jack, says Jacqueline, was sent to a forced labor camp at IG Farben, a large chemical plant the Germans had built on the eastern edge of the town of Oświęcim -- the southern Poland site of Auschwitz. (The Germans razed the houses and cleared the land for several miles around the concentration camp.)
     Jack, his daughter believes from years-ago discussions, also worked for a while in stone quarries.
     They survived. As allied forces closed in from both sides, Sieg and Gerard went on one of the Nazi-enforced "Death Marches" headed west and wound up in a hospital in the town of Szestochowa. Their story is in a book written by Sieg, the older of the two: Kroonprins van Mandelstein.
     (After Jack's death in 1969, Sieg became Jacqueline's legal guardian; she was 16 at the time.)
     Jack's liberation was out of Auschwitz. It must have been about the same time Dad and 26 other men left behind in a hospital were free to walk out of the nearby mining sub-camp, Janina.
     Somewhere on the road -- we are not clear exactly where, and we will never know for sure -- Jack and Dad met.
     It is unlikely that they knew each in Amsterdam before the Nazi occupation and the war because Dad was five years older and had moved to Antwerp, Belgium, while Jack was still in grade school.
     It is likely they met on the road in southern Poland, or in the town of Katowice, where the Russians had told them there was help -- perhaps the Red Cross -- awaiting them. From there, they went to Krakow, en route to Odessa.
     We have a hint about their connection, though, in Dad's story when he mentions that one of their group was a boxer, and he put on boxing exhibitions in the Polish towns to collect money (to buy food). That had to be Jack.
     "I suppose they knew each other well enough to have this photo taken," Jacqueline points out.
---
    As with Dad, when Jack returned to Amsterdam -- early summer 1945 -- he found ... emptiness.
    "There was nothing and nobody left," Jacqueline related to me. "He lived with Gerard Levy for a while and did some odd jobs" (such as working at a wine-bottling plant).
     Eventually, "out of desperation" Jacqueline suggests, he joined the Dutch Army. "Where he was dismissed after he shot a German prisoner, who he had to guard one night. He had asked not to have to do this ..."
     But he soon found his future: a job and his wife.
     He didn't have much schooling, but following his uncle's career path, he managed to get into physical therapy school and in 1950 earned a working certificate.
     "He always said he got a different secondary education [in the concentration camp]," said Jacqueline, and I'm sure Dad would have identified with that.

The wedding photo, 1952

     Then Jack met Cornelia Van Scheijen, and they married in February 1952. She was not Jewish, but the baby girl they had late that year has always kept the faith. (At one time, in fact, she married a rabbi, and before our Skype talk Saturday -- 4 p.m. Dutch time, 9 a.m. in Fort Worth -- Jacqueline had been to Amsterdam to attend synagogue.) 
     He bought a physical therapy practice outside of Amsterdam, in the small town of Zaltbommel (in a small country, there are lots of small towns.)
       "I was born there and grew up as a single child in a well-to-do family," Jacqueline said. "But I did not have aunts, uncles or grandparents, like the other children."
     There was sentiment to name her Jenny or Schoontje, after her grandmother, but Jack insisted. "This child is being named after me," he said. "We are making a new start."
     The daughter and father had an admirable relationship, she said. There was much she loved about Jack, and much she noticed early on.
     "By the time I was maybe 4, I could see that he was restless," she said. "He could not be alone. He had problems sleeping. The job of my mother was to keep visitors here or find places for us to go visit."
     Who knows how the camps, the war experience, affected him, or if that was just part of his personality? I have often thought how different my mother and father might have been without the Holocaust years.
     He was driven work-wise.
     "He would get up at 6 a.m. and go visit patients at their homes, and then at 8.30 a.m. he would see patients at the room where he had his practice," Jacqueline recalled. "Then when he came home, he needed to be entertained. He could not sit still. It was a survival mode. Some nights, at 9 p.m., he say to someone, let's get in the car, 'We're going to Amsterdam.' "
     He was a chain smoker -- "even in the [Odessa] photo, I noticed he's smoking," said Jacqueline, and the same in a portrait photo she sent me -- and he enjoyed his alcohol.
     "He was a party animal," his daughter said.
     And this: "He was very temperamental," she added. "He was very social, though. He could not see any injustice; he had real trouble with people who were aggressive. If he saw people mistreating people, he would get upset, and when he got angry, he could be violent."
     Jacqueline recalled an instance on a vacation trip to France when they saw some "monocycle artists performing tricks in the streets, hoping to earn money from spectators. When a group of young thugs began to attack the artists, there was a fight. Within minutes the whole terrace was in shambles. The police came, and luckily he was not arrested."
     But there was a competent, compassionate side to her father, Jacqueline said.
     He was very warm, a good physical therapist," she offered. "He was good with his hands; he had a good diagnostic view. He was cheerful. He could see what was wrong with his patients."
     The years, though, took their toll. "Because of his lifestyle," Jacqueline said, "he had a mild heart attack. Today you would be catherized and be back on the road in a short time. But then [late 1960s], the doctors told him it would be best if he rested for six weeks."
     That wasn't Jack's way. He got angry, and suffered a fatal heart attack that same afternoon.
      "I know it sounds very cruel, but it was maybe for the best," his daughter says now, thinking of the mental stress he had endured.
      Cornelia survived him for 36 years until her death in 2005.
       I asked Jacqueline if she knew the number the Nazis had tattooed on her father's left arm. She wasn't sure -- "I have it here somewhere," she said, -- but she remembered first noticing it as a little girl.
      "That was the phone number of your grandmother," she remembers being told, a common answer to survivors' children. I had heard it; my mother's number, in fact, was the phone number -- when it was still five digits in the late 1950s -- for Kappen's Restaurant at the Shreveport airport.
      And it reminds us of when our Jason, at about age 5, asked his mother, "Why does Oma have her phone number on her arm?"
---
      The Russian Army uniform photo was taken, according to the information we have, just before the ship -- the Monoway (out of Australia) -- left out of Odessa on May 25, 1945.
     "I have had a copy of this photo since I was young," Jacqueline said. And her mother, she said, sent it to the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam for an exhibition about repatriation (prisoners returning to their home country).
     Dad also had that photo, and a newspaper clipping about it. He had, as I noted in the blog and the book, the clipping laminated on a plaque that is with us now.
     Looking at that, at the top of the description, it says "Picture 26," an indication that it likely was part of the exhibition for which Cornelia Frankenhuis provided the photo.
     Another clue is that Jack is the subject of the first couple of paragraphs.
      One note, one discovery: The description lists Jack's age as 21 and Dad's as 26, but by my reckoning that should have been 20 and 25.   
      Three of the men -- including Dad and Jack -- are wearing caps adorned with a pin of the symbolic red Soviet sickle and hammer.
      "My mother had that pin for years and years," said Jacqueline.
      She also tells a story her father related to her. When the men reached the harbor in Odessa, they had not been deloused (lice were such a problem in the camps and afterward). "That's not a pleasant process," Jacqueline noted, but after they did it once and then received money and had a pile of clothes available, "my father said to the others, 'Never mind, I'll go again.' And he did."
      (I can imagine Louie Van Thyn also making a second trip through.)
      She also confirmed, and slightly corrected, a story Dad related about one survivor who hid a girlfriend in a big back and smuggled her on board for the trip west. Jack Frankenhuis said the woman was a Romanian, not a Russian as Dad had said. But, yes, "I had heard that story," said Jacqueline.
 ---
      During our talk, Jacqueline showed me a ring on a chain. It belonged to Jack's mother; "it's my grandmother's wedding ring," said Jacqueline.
      Before his parents were picked up by the Nazis, they gave the ring to Jack, and he kept it hidden for the next couple of years. When he returned after the war, after the camps, after the long journey and the Odessa adventure, he dug it out.
      As Jacqueline pointed out, he had a date inscribed inside the ring: 20 Mei (May), 1943 -- the day the Nazis took his parents.
      Records -- of course the Nazis diligently kept these records -- show that only eight days later Jacob and Jenny died in the gas chambers at Sobibor, Poland.
      Two weeks later, at the same place of horrors, my grandmother Sara -- Dad's mother -- and my uncle Johnny -- Dad's 10-year-old brother -- met the same fate.
      Jack, his daughter said, "always wore [the ring]" on the chain around his neck. "And I wear it now, every day," said Jacqueline. "It is very important to me." 
      It is the link to her history, to her father. To the young man in the long-ago Russian Army uniform photo sitting in front of my father.