Introduction

My name is Julie Meadows. I am the founder of the Makor Jewish Community Library’s Write Your Story project. I suppose you could also say that I am the orchestrator of this function, which is to commemorate the infamous pogrom against Jews known as Kristallnacht and also to launch a very special book. Our hosts are the Consulate of the Netherlands, the Makor Library, the Holocaust Museum and the Jewish Museum of Australia. Under one roof we have two diverse cultural and religious communities, the Dutch and the Jewish as well as many other interested people. I welcome you all. A time of much fear and divisiveness is once again upon us, and it is so good to build bridges of goodwill and understanding whenever we can.

Tonight, we speak of profound matters– those of how we choose to live our lives and what we may be responsible for. Primo Levi talks about the drowned and the saved. Tonight, we will honour those who did not drown and their saviors. We will  talk about those who did nothing when their fellow citizens were marked for destruction –and we might pause to ask ourselves what we might have done in similar circumstances and perhaps understand why they chose to put their lives and the lives of their families first.

We will talk about those who willingly collaborated with the enemy to bring certain death to their neigbours. How can we possibly forgive or even understand them?

And we will also do honour to those who saved, those who risked their own lives and the lives of their loved ones, because they believed that to do nothing was unthinkable, something that would compromise all that they believed in. Our speakers will bring up these matters and speak of their own experiences or involvement.

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Introduction

Speech van Anne van
Deursen

Speech Roosje Steenhart

Julie Meadows