The Holocaust museum in Amsterdam (at long last)

      

      On Sunday, the new Netherlands National Holocaust Museum will be dedicated in Amsterdam.

      (On the front of the building the sign says Nationaal Holocaust Museum ... that's the Dutch spelling of national).

       Anyway -- to use a favorite (borrowed) expression: What took them so long?

       It has been 82-plus years since the abuse, degradation and eventual deportation/deaths of Dutch Jews at the Nazi concentration camps began.

       There are several buildings and memorials to honor Holocaust prisoners and victims in Amsterdam; we have visited them on our three trips back to the old country, and we've written about them.

        But never has there been an actual Holocaust museum -- like many around the world, including those in Washington, D.C. and Dallas, for example -- in the Netherlands.

        Until now, thank goodness.

        We thank a friend at Trinity Terrace -- our seniors residency in Fort Worth -- for alerting us to The New York Times story about the museum (see link at the bottom of this blog). It was news to us. 

        If you know and understand our family's Holocaust history, you know that we think it is important.

        And it is important enough in Holland that today the Dutch king, Willem-Alexander, will attend the museum ceremony.

        (He will do so alongside the president of Israel, and with today's fragile Middle East situation, some 200 mosques -- Palestinian supporters -- and even a protesting Jewish organization or two suggested/demanded that Willem-Alexander not attend. His reply: I will be there.)

        Not coincidentally, we -- Beatrice and I -- were in Amsterdam the day (April 30, 2013) that Willem-Alexander became the first king of the Netherlands in more than 100 years.

       That was just a few days after we visited -- or re-visited -- four sites in the Jewish Quarter in Amsterdam: the Hollandsche Schouwburg,  the Joods Historisch Museum, the Portuguese Synagogue, and the Auschwitz memorial. 

    Here is a link to the blog piece I wrote then: https://nvanthyn.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-place-for-memories-and-tears.html

     Plenty of Holocaust history at those places, and we appreciated the sights.

     The new museum will tell -- as an Associated Press story this week noted -- the story "in video footage, photos, scale models and mementos, of Dutch victims of the Holocaust."

      As you also might know, my mother (Rose Van Thyn) spoke and wrote about her and our family's Holocaust experiences for many years. Will some of her material (photos, videos, articles, letters) be included in this Holocaust museum?

     Answer: We have no idea. Certainly no indication of that.

      My sister -- Elsa Van Thyn -- said in a note: "Guess the museum will feature Mama's statements about how the Dutch weren't the best for the Jews." 

      Don't know.

      But what we do know is that -- whether our family, especially those who lost their lives in the World War II years -- is directly acknowledged at the museum or not, the opening of this facility is a great thing.

       We cannot forget our people.

       And we are grateful for those who remember, and -- with this museum -- honor their memory.

---

      Here are links to information about the museum:

       -- Nationaal Holocaustmuseum  Museum/nl\ 

       -- https://www.yahoo.com/news/holocaust-museum-amsterdam-aims-tell-063005778.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

     -- https://apnews.com/article/netherlands-holocaust-museum-antisemitism-4b7f1e725bb014283c57381425001aee

   -- With a New Holocaust Museum, the Netherlands Faces Its Past 

   

Hannie Urbanus: Holland's baseball superstar

   

Spring training, New York Giants, 1952:
Dutch superstar pitcher Hannie Urbanus
and Giants manager Leo Durocher.

     Hannie Urbanus died Friday in The Netherlands at age 93. This is stunning to me because I thought he long ago had left us.

     He was my first baseball hero. 

     In fact, he was the only baseball player I knew of until we came to the United States in early 1956.

     Of course, that name will be foreign to you ... unless you are -- or were -- Dutch, and only then if you were a sports fan, or more specifically a honkbal fan. That's the Dutch word for baseball.

     Hannie Urbanus was the superstar of the sport in our home country, a right-handed pitcher for the OVVO team in Amsterdam. They were the Dutch  Yankees, the perennial 1950s champions.

      He was good enough to warrant a month-long spring-training stay with the 1952 New York Giants, the reigning National League champions. It was more of an exhibition appearance rather than a tryout. When he returned to Holland, he resumed leading his team to championships and as the No. 1 pitcher for the national team.

      Baseball was far from a major sport in The Netherlands in the late 1940s and early 1950s when we lived there. Soccer (voetbal) was the  sport most people cared about, although other sports that were popular included cycling, swimming, speed skating, basketball, track and field, field hockey, and an odd mixed-gender sport called korfbal -- a derivative of basketball, without dribbling --  in which Holland was the world's best. 

      Here is how I learned about Hannie Urbanus and baseball:      

    In 1955 (the year before we left), the Blue Band margarine company in Holland sponsored a series of small publications -- 10 books in all -- titled 40 Sporten en Spelen in Woord en Beeld (40 Sports and Games in Words and Images). 

      Here was history, highlights, photos, rules of all these sports. It was great for a kid who was absorbed in it all and loved to read. Soccer was the main emphasis, of course, and there were only two relatively small sections on honkbal/baseball. 

      Still didn't understand the game much because we'd never seen it played, even though home base for Hannie Urbanus and his OVVO team was in Amsterdam.

       To collect the books, and the paste-in photos, I suppose, we had to buy lots and lots of Blue Band margarine. And we did.

       Those books, bound together in a neat folder, came with us to the U.S., and they're right here -- barely holding together; they're fragile  -- on a shelf to my left as I type this.

       And here was Hannie Urbanus' photo from that book (which also is online now). 

      Seeing notice of his death today sent me on a Google search for Hannie Urbanus. Here, from www.knbsb.nl, is the headline on the best story -- really his life's story -- that I found: 

        honkbal icoon, heuvel legende, en hall of famer han urbanus overleden 

        Translated: Baseball icon, hill legend and Hall of Famer Han Urbanus passed away 

---

     Here is the first portion of that story:

IN MEMORIAM ... Han Urbanus ... (1927 - 2021) ... (© Photo: Marco Stoovelaar) Han Urbanus , who played in the Dutch big league in four decades, pitched eleven no-hitters and played for the National Team for 17 years, passed away on Friday (February 5) at the age of 93. With the Netherlands National Baseball Team , Han Urbanus won seven consecutive European titles. Urbanus also participated in Major League spring training with New York Giants, was a member of the Dutch Hall of Fame, and was a living legend and Dutch baseball icon.

     Consider some of his feats: 

     -- Eleven no-hitter, from 1954 through 1961  (take that, Nolan Ryan). That included nine for OVVO and a couple in the rivalry national-team games with neighbor Belgium. Twice (1954, 1956) he pitched two no-hitters in one season.

     -- He was selected the Dutch major league's "Best Pitcher" five times (1953-55, 1957-58), and set a league record for strikeouts (213) in 1955, a record that stood until 1980. He was the league MVP three times (1954-55, 1961).

     -- He also played second base and shortstop at times for OVVO and the national team, and was a solid hitter with home-run power. In 1959, he was the league's Best Hitter with a .348 average.

      -- He played in 64 international games, a record at the time of his retirement. 

      He played in the highest division for four decades (1947-70) and his 24 seasons was a long-standing record.

... On the left a unique playing card with the portrait of Han Urbanus ... ... On the right a caricature made by the famous draftsman ... ... Dik Bruijnesteijn, which was used in newspapers ...

     

---

     In 1952, at age 24, he received a unique invitation -- the first European player to take part in one of America's major-league spring training camps. It was the Giants' camp in Phoenix that included BobbyThomson (whose famous pennant-winning home run was the previous October), Wes Westrum, Alvin Dark, Sal Maglie, Monte Irvin, Hoyt Wilhem, Jim Hearn, Larry Jansen ... and a young Willie Mays.

    The manager was Leo "The Lip" Durocher. Frank Shellenback was the pitching coach.

      From the story:  

 A year earlier, Urbanus had been interviewed by Albert Balink, the publisher and editor of 'The Knickerbocker,'  a Dutch/American magazine for Dutch immigrants in America. It was Balink who arranged the trip to promote and stimulate baseball in Europe. 

      When Urbanus received the invitation in February, he worked as an assistant accountant at an Amsterdam office. His employer immediately gave him the opportunity to travel to America. ... In an interview in Het Parool at the time, Urbanus said: "I just wonder if I will be able to keep up with the level. And if they ask to remain as a professional, I refuse firmly.'' He was described as 'a calm and jovial man of 24 years old.' "

... Han Urbanus receives instructions from ... ... New York Giants Pitching Coach ... ... Frank Shellenback ...

    When Urbanus returned a month later on March 15, he brought back an instructional video and in the weeks and months that followed he traveled across the country to lecture on pitching, what he had learned and what it's like to participate in a professional training camp. All these lectures were organized by clubs or the union in canteens or rented halls that were packed with many baseball enthusiasts. In an article in the Algemeen Dagblad, Urbanus said: “To my great surprise, I have experienced that in America people throw completely differently. Besides, I learned that the pitchers are completely focused on pitching and not hitting themselves. '' Urbanus also wrote many articles about pitching and the correct way to throw a ball in Baseball News.

---

    And then there was the Urbanus tie-in to Texas. 

    His grandson Nick Urbanus, who was a star in the Dutch leagues playing for the Amsterdam Pirates, signed with the Texas Rangers' organization in 2011 and was a middle infielder in the rookie leagues and Class A for four seasons.  But he never hit much here, and returned to play in Holland.

      Throughout his life, Hannie was a constant -- and revered -- presence at any baseball gathering of note in The Netherlands, and also in Europe. He remained visible almost to the end, always the ambassador for the game.

       And always a Dutch hero, including one baseball fan in Fort Worth. Hannie preceded even Mickey Mantle.

The Netherlands vs. the U.S.A.: What in the World?

     So, who am I rooting for?
     This is not exactly how we intended it to be: The Netherlands as soccer World Cup champions, yes. But the intention was the Dutch men's team.
     Holland could rule the soccer world Sunday -- the Dutch women, that is. Who would have imagined that?
     One slight problem: The championship-game opponent -- in Lyon, France -- is the United States of America. Our women's team, the reigning World Cup champions going for two in a row.
     Dang it, what a dilemma in my mind.
     Love both countries, love both teams. 
     So, I am rooting for the winner and will feel for the loser. But both countries, both teams are winners for me. I will always root for both, never pull against either one.
     My No. 1 sports dream is for The Netherlands' men's team -- as I often have said and written -- to win the World Cup championship. That was my first sports love, starting in about 1952 when I was 5 years old ... in Amsterdam.
     Wrote about this in June 2014 as the men's World Cup was about to kick off (my history of Dutch sports fandom):http://nvanthyn.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-oranje-hup-holland-hup.html
         (Short version: The Netherlands men have come heartbreakingly close to winning the World Cup six times -- three championship-game losses (1974, 1978, 2010), twice in overtime, and three other outstanding teams that either made the semifinals or lost to the eventual champions. Painful losses, all.)
        Here it is five years later, and I am writing about women's soccer, and happy to do it.

The U.S. team has had fun celebrating
 its goals, and success.

      The American team has gotten lots of publicity, or notoriety, during this tournament as the prohibitive favorite. A fun team to watch, except for the players' over-the-top goal celebrations. 
     Those irritate many fans. I am among those who think they could have, should have, toned it down. But that's sports today -- the look-at-me, look-what-I-have done, showoff style. We can accept it, or we can let it irritate us and complain.
     Whatever ...
     (Not getting into controversy about the off-the-field back-and-forth with the Tweetmeister. That's showoff territory, too.)    

The Dutch women's team has been on quite a roll.

     Meanwhile, the Dutch women -- who are the reigning European champions -- have kind of sneaked through to the championship game. But that 12-game winning streak in major tournament play is impressive.
      Still, I expect the U.S. team fully expects to win Sunday's game and, to be honest, I expect that, too.
       But even before Holland had scored the winning goal (in extra time) Wednesday in the semifinal against Sweden, an old friend -- yes, Mike Richey, we're old -- asked who I would root for in the title game.
      I was/am Dutch, spent my first 8 1/2 years in Amsterdam, am reminded every day by pictures here in the apartment and any mention of Holland that Mom and Dad's families were Amsterdamers.
      Since 1956, we have lived in the United States; that's 63 years if you're counting. We have been U.S. citizens for 58 years. Proud of it. 
      But proud of Holland, too. It is a beautiful, very progressive country, innovative in so many ways. And one of the world's greatest soccer countries, despite its very small size.
      And I have said and written this often: The world's greatest fans. If it is speedskating -- Dutch skaters have dominated the world the past decade -- or cycling or, well, any sport -- the orange-clad fans are as over-the-top as the U.S. women's soccer team's celebrations.
      Yes, better than LSU fans or Yankees/Red Sox/Cubs fans; pick a team's fans, I'll take the Dutch fans.
      To answer Mike Richey's question of who I am rooting for, as I told him, I cannot choose. It is like choosing between rooting for LSU or Louisiana Tech. More personally, it is like choosing between my children or grandchildren. They are all No. 1.
        To be honest, I have watched little of this women's World Cup. I have monitored the scores on my phone or computer; recorded a few of the games and watched some afterward. Just have other things to do, to keep me busy. Less stress that way, too.
         But I am familiar with many of the U.S. team players and like watching them play. Cannot name one Dutch player right away, but our friend Kip Coons -- a co-worker in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram sports department a decade ago -- pointed out Wednesday that the Dutch head coach, Sarah Wiegman, spent a year playing as a midfielder with the North Carolina Tar Heels' dynasty program. Among her teammates on the 1989 NCAA championship team: superstar Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly and Carla Overbeck -- all then or about to be Team USA stars.
     Looked up Wiegman's background: First Dutch woman to play 100 international games, extensive coaching career. Impressive. 
      Her team's efforts have been impressive, too. Proud, too, of how far women's athletics have come.
       Only wish Dad was still here to see this. He loved athletics -- as many of my readers know -- and he especially loved soccer, or voetbal as we knew it in The Netherlands. He introduced me to the game a darned long time ago.
       (And, just as an aside, Dad was born 100 years ago Saturday.)
       I will be thinking about him Sunday; Mom, too. They would have loved this.
       If you care, if you watch, enjoy the game. May the best team win. They are both winners to me. I will be alternating between Hup, Holland, Hup and U-S-A, U-S-A, U-S-A.  
       

If it is Olympics speed skating, color it Orange

      Not as much of an Olympics fan as I once was, and not that interested in the Winter Olympics ... except for speed skating.
      That's right. It is the Dutch in me. The Dutch love speed skating, and they are excellent at it.
      For the past two decades, they have dominated long-track (outdoor) speed skating.
      Give you the facts: At the last Winter Olympics, in Sochi, Russia, 2014, The Netherlands won 23 of the possible 36 medals in the sport -- men and women combined. Eight gold, seven silver, eight bronze. Domination.
      That included four 1-2-3 finishes, only Dutch people standing on the medal podiums and the Dutch flag being raised on the flag poles, and the Wilhelmus -- oldest national anthem in the world -- being played.
      Loved it. Mom and Dad would have loved it. My Dutch friends -- especially those in that small but marvelous and beautiful country -- loved it.
      Could it happen again? Not likely, but the Dutch team is still deep and talented.

Kees Broekman (photo from a 1955
sports book in Holland; I still have it.)

      And it all began with Kees Broekman in 1952. My first sports hero, the first athlete from Holland -- I was 4 1/2 there then -- to win a Winter Olympics medal.
      He's still a hero there. More on this below. 
--- 
      I will watch parts of the Opening Ceremony tonight on NBC-TV -- recording it -- because I like the Olympic pomp.
      Especially like when the Olympic flag is marched in, solemnly, and when the Olympic torch arrives at the main stadium and is fired up. Beautiful sight, always.
      But as for the Winter Games themselves, when is the speed skating?
      Answer: It begins Saturday, and there will be one event each of the first seven days. 
      Good thing is, don't have to watch it all. We can be selective. Because South Korea is so many hours ahead of us, the competition starts at about 5 a.m. here. Not about to get up and start watching. 
      I will wait for the results to be posted. If the news is good (if the Dutch or the Americans do well), I will watch the event that evening on NBC. 
      If not, that's fine, too. Outdoor speed skating, honestly, is not terribly exciting. Two competitors only at a time, and the clock is their main opponent. The grass is growing, paint is drying, watched water doesn't boil , your computer hourglass is spinning (cliches' for b-o-r-i-n-g).
      But it's not boring if you are rooting for the winners. So I watched a lot of speed skating in 2014. Hoping for more of the same.
      (Short-track speed skating -- which is like roller derby -- can be more exciting. It's faster, there is bodily contact at almost every turn, and it doesn't take nearly as long as long-track. But, dang it, it is a contrived sport.)
---
      For me, the widespread Winter Olympics menu is down to speed skating and ice hockey.
      And even hockey now has its limitations. It was very interesting to watch the U.S. and Canadian teams, and other world powers, matched when they all had National Hockey League players on their rosters. But no more; the NHL pulled out after 2014.
      So the U.S. team is down to mostly collegiate players. They will compete hard, and we'll root them on. 
      What we remember, of course, is that it was a team of U.S. college players who gave us the "Miracle on Ice" in 1980 (Lake Placid) -- the upset of the mighty not-so-invincible Soviet Union team I consider the No. 1 U.S. sports moment of my lifetime.  
      Some of the old standbys that I watched in the early TV days of the Winter Olympics, beginning in 1960 (Squaw Valley, Calif.) -- Alpine skiing, bobsledding, luge and ski jumping -- are in my past. 
       You can have snowboarding, skeleton, freestyle skiing (moguls? The only mogul I know is Taylor Moore), biathlon, Nordic combined, and -- oh, Canada, it's a curling iron.
       Figure skating gets so much attention -- millions of TV viewers -- and used to watch. But it's like gymnastics (and, heaven forbid, the ugly side of it); those sports are so tainted by the judges' national leanings, the beauty of the events does not outweigh the slanted scoring. I'm out.
---
      It has been six years -- Summer Games in London, 2012 -- since I wrote about the Olympics, and my love for them. http://nvanthyn.blogspot.com/2012/07/can-you-hear-olympic-theme-song.html
       Now I think that, like so much of American sports, the Olympics are too much -- money, attention, oversaturation, more television hours than anyone can handle. 
        And arguably, too much politics and too much nationalism. 
       I contradict that by saying that I root for the red, white and blue -- the Americans in every sport (yeah, America first!). Except for speed skating and -- Winter Olympics aside, when it applies -- soccer.
       In those sports, my No. 1 country is also red-white-and-blue (the Dutch flag, horizontally from top to bottom) with orange -- the national color, thank you, the royal House of Orange -- as the main uniform color.                
        America has had some speed skating legends -- Eric Heiden (five golds in one Olympics), Bonnie Blair, Dan Jansen (when he stayed on his feet), and, in short-track, Apolo Anton Ohno (who also ballroom danced championship-style on TV). The still-active Shani Davis is our biggest name now.
        The Netherlands' superstar in the sport was Ard Schenk (three gold medals in 1972). But he followed the legacy of my man Kees Broekman.

The silver medalist, Kees Broekman (left), could only
look up to gold winner Hjalmar Andersen in 1952. 

         Kees competed in four Olympics, first at age 20 in 1948 and last at Squaw Valley in '60. Twice (1956-'60) he was The Netherlands' flagbearer for the Winter Games. By then, he actually had moved to live in Norway.
         He really never got close to winning Olympic gold, though. His misfortune was his peak came when Hjalmar Andersen of Norway was the best in the world, a three-time gold medalist in 1952 (that guy was not popular in my house). Kees finished 11 seconds behind in the 5,000, 25 seconds back in the 10,000. Not close.
          And when he finally did win a major championship, the all-around title in the 1953 European Championships, it coincided with the Jan. 31-Feb. 1 night of the massive North Sea flood of the greater part of southern Holland.
          Broekman's skating career carried over into coaching. He was tutoring skaters in Berlin, where he moved, when he died at age 65 in November 1992.
          But some of us never forgot him, and there is a street named for him in Amsterdam. Nice. 
          And he is the first reason why people whose blood sometimes bleeds Dutch orange were blessed with the speedskating gene.       
          Skate on. 
  

Jannie's Holocaust story: fortunate, painful ... and powerful

      "Jannie" van de Kar's story in the Holocaust is one of the most dramatic, most painful and most fortunate.

My  mother's great friend, Jannie van de Kar

    All Holocaust survivors were fortunate to escape the misery and the torture. But Jannie -- my mother's best friend in the Holocaust years -- had a remarkable experience.
    To have been pregnant for months in the concentration camp, to have had a guardian angel help keep that hidden from the Nazis, and to have delivered the child, and lived through all that ...
    The baby, a girl, had no chance -- and that pain never subsided for Jannie for the rest of her life. And she lived a full life, 92 years, the last 64 in Israel.
     Her given name was Marianna, but everyone called her Jannie. She and Mom somehow survived that hell on earth -- and to the end, they never forgot those days or each other.
     Unlike my mother, Jannie did not speak or write publicly on her life and specifically of the time as a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz and the "Death March" that followed.
    But in 1994-95, she diligently typed those thoughts, for her family and the world -- and future generations -- to see and study. Her daughter Kitty now has given us permission to share them.

    Her story -- 13 computer pages on the copy I received -- is dated January 18, 1995, from Nahariya, Israel, where she and Abraham ("Appie") van de Kar eventually settled after moving from Amsterdam in 1949.
     They are the couple responsible for my parents meeting in Amsterdam in late summer 1945, a few months after they all had returned from Auschwitz and other camps.

     I have written about this previously, in Survivors: 62511, 70726 -- the book on my parents and my family -- and in a blog post two years ago: http://nvanthyn.blogspot.com/2015/04/for-van-de-kars-tragedy-and-triumph.html

     This particular blog piece will recount the ordeal of the pregnancy in her first few months at Auschwitz.
     It will not include other gruesome parts of Jannie's story -- the transportation to the "holding" camps and to Auschwitz, the medical experiments in which the Nazis tried to sterilize the women in Auschwitz's Block 10. I covered those in writing about Mom.
     And for another blog piece, I am saving the segment on the "Death March" because it contains a not-previously-publicized revelation about my mother. Rose Van Thyn did not tell you everything, or could not deal with it. 

     We received Jannie's memoirs as translated from Dutch to English by Joke Sterringa, Kitty's friend in Amsterdam who previously sent me some clarifications and corrections on several topics in my book. Much appreciated then, and now.
     Here is the introduction to Jannie's story:

      "Today it is 50 years ago that we left on foot in the cold and snow from Auschwitz. We were to be given bread on the road. We Dutch women wanted to do it well and had sewn extra bread bags for it. Our experiment block was the last to leave.
      "There was no more bread. There were women who had raided it. Filled with despair, we went on our way. That is when our sufferings really began. Auschwitz was indescribable, but it was a roof over your head. ..."
---
     Marianna van de Kar-Barend, daughter of David Barend and Naatje Gerritse, was born in North Amsterdam on April 12, 1921 (five months ahead of Mom). She had three older brothers and her father was head conductor for the Dutch Railways.

     When Jannie was 9, her mother died.
      "She had diabetes," Jannie wrote. "Why she died, I have never heard. Nowadays one can grow old with it. But later I was glad that she at least had a grave in Amsterdam, and had not been gassed, like my father and my brothers.
        "My mother was always a cheerful, beautiful woman who liked to laugh, just like me."

       The Great Depression soon followed in The Netherlands, and Jannie was sent to live with an aunt, her mother's sister, and three cousins. Her father paid board and lodging for her and her youngest brother, who went to live with grandparents.
      She was loved and cared for -- by that family, her father (who worked long hours but spent weekends with her) and her brothers. Still, it was a lonely life, and she missed her mother's nurturing and laughter.
      She loved reading -- all her life -- and as a good student wanted to go to high school, but her father refused to send her, explaining, "I have enrolled her at the school for domestic science. I don’t have a wife, and she must learn everything a woman must know."

My parents' friend, Jannie
and Appie van de Kar

      At that school, Jannie met Rozette Lopes-Dias (Mom) and "I learned sewing, knitting, home economics, cooking, pattern design, and other things. And what I could not do at home, I did there: I laughed a lot. I graduated from that school, even though I disliked going there. I was angry with the whole world. Why was it just me who was not allowed to study?"
       She went to work in the military clothing industry and her social life was limited to evenings at a sports club, where at age 16, she met Abraham van de Kar. But seeing boys, even allowing them to walk her home, was not allowed.
      Appie asked, she resisted, but he persisted, came to call on her at home -- not allowed -- and she answered, frightened.
      "I asked why he had rung [the door bell]," she wrote. "He said, 'I am a decent boy and mean well toward you.' He was a handsome boy, and he sang all kinds of songs by Bing Crosby for me. I was I n love, but did not show it. That's how things were."
      Her father heard of their walks together and intervened, telling her, "I want to see that boy here at home. That week Appie visited us at home, and everything was alright." Mr. Barend "was patient with Abram, and immediately loved him.
        "... It was winter and we walked in the snow and did not feel the cold. Appie visited us every evening, everyone loved him."
        Appie was in the Dutch military, serving in Venlo (close to the German border). He had been home on leave because his father, who had shoe repair shops in Amsterdam, was ill with stomach problems.
       When Appie returned to Venlo (he was a nursing orderly in the army), Jannie -- who could travel by train for free because of her father's job -- began visiting him.
        When the Nazis' occupation of The Netherlands began in May 1940, the Dutch army personnel immediately became prisoners of war.
         "Someone had told my [future] mother-in-law that he knew for certain that Appie had been blown up with the bridge," Jannie wrote. "I said: 'I don’t believe it, I am sure he is still alive.' I was always good at feeling things, and so it was this time."
          After three months, Appie came back to Amsterdam and became engaged on his birthday in August.
         "In the evening there was the blackout, but every evening after work [at the shoe shop] he came to me first," Jannie wrote. "He was my first love. And for me there never was anyone else."
      When her two oldest brothers were sent to a "work camp" at the end of 1941, Jannie and Appie -- trying to save up for their wedding in the 18 months since they became engaged -- pushed up their plans and were married at the Amsterdam town hall on March 25, 1942, and on March 29 in the synagogue.
      Jannie's family had little Jewish education -- she said she did not even know about the high holy days -- but Appie's mother "had her own God, she was kosher."
       Appie received his call-up for the work camp the day after their town-hall wedding.
       "My wedding was no feast for me," Jannie wrote. "My mother-in-law had really done her best, but I cried all day. I felt Appie would not come home anymore."
        Jewish men were being picked up everywhere by the Nazis and sent to work camps. In May, she learned she could go visit him ... if she brought children's shoes for the children of the camp commander.
     Done, and still with her railway pass, she traveled for free on the train -- although Jews were disallowed from doing so. She purposely left her identity card and required (yellow) Star of David decal at home.
      Back in Amsterdam, the Nazis were taking over Jewish homes. She returned to live with her father, but soon her youngest brother was "arrested" and sent to Auschwitz. When she went to a bath house -- no bathroom in their house -- she was forced to show her ID, which had "J" for Jew.
        The horror was beginning. A long standing wait in a museum, a walk across Amsterdam with a large group of Jews, imprisonment in the cellar of a school for three days ... and then a release: "I have never run through Amsterdam as I did that day."
     That day, too, Appie and her brothers were sent to Westerbork, the Dutch holding camp before transport to the concentration camps.
      On September 4, the Nazis "came for my father. I tried to protest that he was a retired civil servant." But off he went.

       A week later, after going out for material for her sewing work, she returned home to see the Germans emptying the house of furniture. She protested, but -- thanks to a neighbor sticking up for her -- was allowed to keep a bed and her sewing machine.
     Soon she went to live with a friend and her children. But they, too, soon were taken away -- and so was she, transported to Westerbork.
      Upon arrival, "the first person I saw was my father. In that brief period, he had already become old and thin." She looked for Appie, but could not find him ... until a long wait with her father in front of the shoe workshop.
     "My father had looked for him in his barracks and left a message that I had arrived and where we were waiting for him," Jannie wrote. "At long last he came, and of course, I was very happy to see him."
       But later she heard that Appie had been unfaithful -- "with a girlfriend and did not know I had arrived. My trust in him was badly shaken. ... There men went to bed with women when it was offered.
      "All my life I could only go to bed with one man out of love. In spite of everything I have only loved Appie, never longed for another man. We had our difficult periods, and that began in Westerbork. The war poisoned the whole world. For a lot of people there were no longer any norms, they took what they could get. Only strong characters remained themselves.
      "I always had to think of my father’s words when I got engaged. He said: Whatever you do, take care never to make me ashamed of you. And I always remembered that."
---
      Appie was on a "safe" list in Westerbork because he worked in the shoe workshop. So Jannie was safe, too, and so was her father because of his son Maurits' railway connection.

       Jannie was put on a transport list [to the concentration camps] six times, but spared each time, with Appie's help. She worked in the camp kitchen, then outside pulling weeds in the bitter cold, then inside as a cleaner in the barracks.
     Although men and women lived in separate barracks, they did eat together and she could go on walks with Appie, and he "always knew a place where we could do what should really have been normal for married people. So I got pregnant. It was May 1943, and my father had gone on transport."
       She had wanted to go with her father, but he urged her to stay near Appie as long as she could.
       "I was very unhappy because I was pregnant, and got no help at all," she wrote. "No doctor was willing to help me. They all insisted that I was a healthy young woman, and if I was sent to Auschwitz, I would not be the first one to go there in my condition."
        On September 14, that is what happened -- she was part of the packed-with-people cattle car, arriving in Auschwitz three days later.
        "From that moment on, we were no longer human beings, but beasts ..." 
---
         And as they were being separated after leaving the train, Rose -- our Rose -- grabbed her hand and became her best friend.
       After the undressing, the shaving of all hair, the washing with a dirty rag with gasoline, and then the number tattooed on her left arm (Jannie was 62506, five numbers before my mother), and their arrival at Block 10, they were put in quarantine.
    And then the greatest fear ...
    "Someone kept coming into our dormitory, asking if there were any pregnant women," Jannie wrote. "I kept my mouth shut, I did not know what they wanted.
     "We were with 200 Dutch women in a dormitory. I asked someone who had been there for some time already, why they kept asking that. She told me that they could not use such women for experiments, and they were sent away to be gassed. I kept my mouth shut, I was five months pregnant. I was plump, that’s how the Germans registered me. Ordnung muss sein. [Order must be.]
     "I could not sleep anymore. All the time I thought they were coming to get me. Outside SS guards were [pacing], you could hear it inside. I always thought they were standing next to my bed.
     "They began the [medical] experiments immediately. First they took women from their beds at random for operations. Everyone began to scream and shout. Then they started alphabetically. When I was called, I said to the doctor -- his name was Samuels; he was a prisoner too, a famous Jewish gynecologist from Germany -- that I was pregnant, and asked him not to operate on me.
     "I asked him if he could help me. He first examined me and then said: You are already too far [along] for an abortion. But I no longer wanted one. I thought that the war could be over any day now, and then I would have my child. He told me there wasn’t a chance of that.
      "He wanted permission to do a premature birth. I lived in great suspense. Apart from myself, only Rootje [Rose] and Hilde, my friends, knew about my situation. After a week, the doctor called for me and told me it was all right, he had the permission. He told me I just had to wait a bit longer, my number would be called, and then I would have to hurry to the operating room.
     "Suddenly, we heard he had been hanged. We did not know why yet, later it was said that he had done special operations so the women would still be able to have children. He should have sterilized us.
    "There were no longer any operations. But in the meantime another doctor had come, a woman, her name was Alina Brevda. So I told her of my situation, she became my guardian angel. She always called me 'my child.'
    "By then it was November and I had a big stomach. We had a blockalteste [block leader] who was a bitch, she hit us whenever she had the chance. She never touched me. When we had to stand downstairs for roll call outside in the cold, she would say to me: "Du schwangere Holländerin, du brauchst nicht Appel stehen" ["You pregnant Dutch woman, you do not need to stand at attention."] In all my misery I was always lucky.

    "So one day my number was called and I had to go to the operating room. There Alina Brevda did some surgery under anaesthetic, and when I came to, she said: 'You are not to sit down quietly anymore. I had to climb up and down beds and go up and down the stairs for the child to descend.

     "The waters had already broken, so at once I was walking with labor pains. I was racked with pain, but I gritted my teeth, for I was afraid that if I would make the tiniest sound, I would be gassed.
      "The sixth day I couldn’t endure it any longer, and I went downstairs to the sickroom, where I asked Alina Brevda to give me an injection so I could die. I could not go on anymore. She said: I’ll give you two injections, so that the child will come sooner. I was given a bed in the ward, and that night, 15 November, my first daughter was born. Of course, I never saw her. They said she had been born alive, but in the seventh month. Probably they have killed her immediately, like all children.
      "The next morning an SS officer was standing in front of my bed, and asked my name, where I was from and who was my husband, and if I knew where he was. I felt as if I was sinking into the earth with bed and all, I thought this is the end. He turned on his heel and left.

     "Suddenly all the nurses came and embraced me, and told me I was saved, for I was the first woman not to be gassed after a childbirth. The next day Alina Brevda came to the ward very early and said I had to leave it, for there was an outbreak of diphtheria which was contagious, and she did not want me to catch it. I was transferred to another ward where there were only Greek girls whose ovaries had been given radiation treatment, so that those girls were completely burnt, shrivelled, unhappy for the rest of their lives.
      " ... After the delivery, which understandably was very difficult, and when I was with those Greek girls, was the only time in all the days I was in the camps that I cried. My first child, that I could not have kept, alone without any love around me. A mother of one of the Greek girls came to comfort me, without our being able to understand each other.

    "When at last I came back to my own dormitory, my friends were overjoyed. From then on I was a guinea pig just like the others. ..."

---
       In April 1944, Jannie -- still in Block 10 -- received a letter from Appie through a prisoner who had to visit a dentist on the men's side in Auschwitz.
       "He wrote that he would do everything to stay alive, and if I were still alive not to lose courage, so that if we survived  we could start again, for he loved only me. He wrote the names of all the men with him who were no longer alive. They were all of them my friends’ husbands.
      "Of course, I was very happy to have heard from him, but sad for all those husbands of my friends. I was able to give a letter in return, in which I wrote that he would always be my only love, and told him our daughter was no longer alive, and that I didn’t know if I would ever be able to give him another child because of the experiments. But I would do my utmost, in spite of everything, to hold out.
    "So I knew Appie was still alive and to the last I always felt he was still alive."
      There was much more to come, of course; they heard about the Allies' Normandy invasion (on June 6, Jannie's father's birthday), and the "Death March" was arguably a greater test for the survivors than the camps themselves.
     Jannie and Appie each went through those -- and survived.
      "I never forgot when someone had been good to me," Jannie wrote. "There [in the camps] you got to know the real person. There were decent people and bad people. Your true character came out there. Someone who was decent would remain human there as well. But in your life you also need luck. I learned a lot from a great many women. I was still very naive. A person is what life makes him."

A still-young couple with Loek (probably early 1949)

     Making her way back to The Netherlands and then finding Appie again were long, torturous adventures. But reunited and through good times and bad, they were fortunate.
       They were able to have two more children together -- Loek (Luke, in English) born a couple of months before me in 1947, and Kitty, born a few months after my sister Elsa in 1951.
    Jannie and Rose were similarly fortunate; Jannie and Appie emigrated to Israel in 1949 ("I never wanted to, but all my life I always did what Appie wanted," Jannie said); we moved to the United States at the end of 1955.
    The van de Kars made it together through 51 years of marriage -- "the last years were the best," Jannie wrote, although Appie's heart was failing. Despite his ills, his death while hospitalized at about 3 a.. m. on October 6, 1993, was unexpected and sudden.
    "Now I am alone, I miss him very much" is what she wrote near the end of her memoirs.
     And Loek, who came to the U.S. to study, died of cancer in 2004 at age 57. He lived in the Chicago area and was a respected research scientist in the medical field and a professor.
---

An Israeli family in Dutch garb -- Loek, Jannie,
Appie and little Kitty

     Telling portions of Jannie's story, said her daughter Kitty, "is exactly what she would have wanted. It was very important for her that people will know every detail, including the loss of the baby.
    "She used to cry on the date it was done and Loek told me once why she is crying; as a child I never saw her cry so I asked him what happened. He was 4 1/2 years older and always asked her many questions, especially about Auschwitz.
     "I used to hate these conversations they had since I never wanted to hear about it. It was painful for a child that such horrible things happened to the mother, but he was persistent and (until he was a teenager and busy with his own life) never stopped asking as long as we had lunch together."
---
     The photo below is of Jannie on her 91st birthday -- "the last nice one she had," said Kitty. "The next year, when she turned 92, "she felt it was the end and indeed 2 1/2 weeks later she passed away (cancer)."
      Some 70 years earlier, she had been cursed and blessed at the same time.