The Dutch Courier
is a monthly
publication,
published on behalf
of the Associated
Netherlands
Societies in
Victoria Inc.
Anne van Deursen speech – 9 Nov.2005
Mr. Hans Nieuwland,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen
It is wonderful to see so many people here and I am especially delighted that my friends Rose and Bob Steinhart from Holland are with us this evening. I would like to thank the previous speakers, who have given us such valuable insight into what this evening is all about.
I have been asked to speak about the book ‘The Shoes of a Foundling’. Before I do that however, I would like to share with you a recent conversation I had with some Dutch friends in Brisbane. We were talking about the Holocaust when one of them remarked: “Not all the Dutch helped the Jewish people; we have to be honest about that. So much more should have been done”. ….. Sometimes, the truth hurts!
I would now like to share with you, how this book came to birth. It was first written in Dutch by my late cousin Mink van Rijsdijk under the title ‘De Schoentjes van een Vondeling’, which means ‘The Shoes of a Foundling’. Mink asked me to translate this factual and moving story into English. My aim tonight is, to share with you not so much the contents but the backdrop to this book.
I will have to take you back 10 years, to 5 May 1995. My husband Emile and I were on vacation in Holland. That day, the Dutch people celebrated 50 years of liberation after WW2. Every village, town and city was decorated in the national colours of red, white, blue and orange. There were parades, music, singing and dancing. There was an explosion of joy!
Our little group of 3 was in a more reflective mood that day. With my brother Koos, who lives in Holland, my husband and I traveled to Amsterdam where we had lived during the war. We first went to the Pythagorasstreet, stood in front of our house – nr.47 - and relived our wartime memories.
Dutch people usually have their nameplate next to the doorbell, and so I looked around for old familiar names. We found only one, straight across from our house, a Mrs. Wynnie van der Zijde. I just had to ring the bell!!
An 80 year old lady opened the door and after explaining who we were, she exclaimed: Wat leuk!!! Kom binnen!! (How wonderful, come inside).
Wynnie had moved from England to Amsterdam just before the war and she remembered our parents and their four children very well. One of the many things she told us was that my Mum had taught her to speak Dutch. We had a precious tea party!
Our next port of call was ‘The Historic Museum’. Here an exhibition was held, called ‘Wartime in Amsterdam’. It was a very confronting yet realistic display of wartime memorabilia. They even sounded the sirens.
For those of you who `may read the book, it is interesting to note, that this Historic Museum used to be the Amsterdam Orphanage long before and also during the war. As this Orphanage forms part of the story, our gifted graphic designer, Mr. Izi Marmur, interestingly used this Orphanage as the backdrop for the book cover.
Each of us silently and reflectively picked our way through the exhibits. One of the displays in particular seemed to be of great interest to my brother Koos. It was a section that I had already walked passed without taking too much notice. But Koos waved me back, insisting, “Anne, come and have a look at this”.
There, in a glass display cabinet against the wall was a photograph of a small girl. Next to the photo was a pair of small lace-up boots and a couple of letters and yellowed newspaper clippings. Koos insisted: “Anne, that photo, don’t you recognize it? It has something to do with us! But I had never seen it before. It’s in mum and dad’s photo album” he persisted. It still did not ring a bell. I suggested to him that we read the information in the display case and so we discovered that the name of the little girl in that photo was Rose Drukker, the daughter of Sophia (or Fietje) and Max Drukker.
Roosje, we read, was a little Jewish girl, who had been abandoned on someone’s doorstep as a foundling by her mother in 1942. Koos and I immediately recognized the name Drukker, and we knew without a doubt that Rose would have been the daughter of the Jewish couple who had been our ‘war-time guests’, hiding in our parent’s home.
I was determined to find Rose and with the help of the museum management, we traced her. She was living in Amstelveen, close to Amsterdam with her husband Bob and they had three grown-up children. When we rang them, Bob and Rose wanted to see us as soon as possible and so two remarkable meetings were arranged for that same week.
We talked like long lost friends and although Roosje found it difficult to speak about her sad past, that first night with us, the floodgates opened and Roosje shared her life story.
She told us that the people, who had found her on their doorstep, had not been able to keep her. They had sent her to the Amsterdam Orphanage, and because she carried no identification papers, they gave her a new birth date and a new name: Irma van Schinkel. This way Rose was made into somebody she was not. She was no longer Jewish!
When the orphanage ran out of food, they organized a foster home for Roosje in Friesland, in the northern part of Holland, where there was still enough to eat. Over the next few years, Roosje was placed in three different foster homes, with dire consequences.
Roosje also had a sister, Carla, who was 4 years older. The underground movement had found a hiding place in Limburg for her, in the southern part of Holland.
Three years later, after the liberation and with the assistance of the Police and the Orphanage, Roosje’s mother Sophia, found her two little girls, and she brought them back to Amsterdam.
Roosje however, had great trouble believing that this lady called Sofia, who had come to collect her from Friesland, was her real mother. She had a ‘Heit’ and ‘Mem’ (Friesian for mum and dad) and she was finally happy in Friesland! And here was this strange woman, taking her away from it all, and she was calling her Rose instead of Irma! This was a very traumatic time for her.
The uncertainty whether Sophia was her real mother lasted for years, until they found an old photograph in the house of her late father Max, of Sophia holding Roosje.
As my brothers still had old 8mm moving films that my father had taken when Roosje’s parents were our ‘guests in hiding’, we could also prove that they lived in the Pythagorasstraat. The fact that Roosje’s photo was in my parents’ album was a further proof.
I feel that the most important thing I was able to share with Roosje, was my memory of the many tears her mother had shed whilst she was living with us
in Amsterdam. I told Rose, that in my mind I could vividly picture her mother Sophia sitting in our green velvet lounge chair. My Mum would sit next to her – on the armrest - with her arm draped consolingly around her.
I told Rose that as a child I knew – I must have overheard - that Sophia’s tears were about a little girl! This revelation was a healing experience for Roosje. We could hardly speak. She said to me later: ”when you told me that, l knew I was not just a ‘throw away’ after all”
Roosje’s memory of her background was still full of holes. I was eager to bring as much clarity as possible to the puzzle of her life! I wanted to answer as many of her questions as possible. Sophia had avoided talking to her daughters about her past. She never told Rose e.g. about her and Max’s hiding years with the Verhave family in Amsterdam.
Whenever Rose would ask Sophia who that lady was in the photograph on their sideboard, her mother would only answer: “oh, that was a very dear friend of mine, she died”. It was of course my mum.
It was then, that I rang my cousin Mink van Rijsdijk. As Mink was 10 years older than I, I was hoping that she would know in more detail what had happened to this Jewish family who were hidden in my parents’ home. Mink and my mum had always been very close .Mink was a well known Dutch author and newspaper columnist. When I told Mink the story of our meeting with Rose and Bob, she was deeply touched. I remember her saying: “Anne, what you are telling me, gives me goose bumps”.
Being aware of the sensitivity of the situation, Mink wondered if I would carefully ask Rose if she was willing to talk with her. She was very keen to keep in contact with Roosje after Emile and I would return to Australia.
Mink too, knew what pain was! She had lost her only brother, who was sent to the Neuengamme concentration camp and never came back. He had been an active member of the Underground movement. Their whole underground group was betrayed. My Mum’s brother, Arend Smit, was the head of that group. He too was sent to Neuengamme, and died at the age of 32, a few weeks after the war at the Army Hospital in Lutwigsplats. His wife came to surge for him but was two days late. She took the body home to Holland, where he was buried with military honors.
Before our return to Australia, we made arrangements for Roosje and Mink to meet. They immediately clicked! In even more detail this time, Roosje entrusted her life story to Mink, who put pen to paper. Mink later asked me if I was willing to translate this story into English, then sent me chapter by chapter from Holland, as the book was being written.
While translating, I re-lived my own war-time childhood. As I mentioned, my mother and her brothers where in the underground and they organized hiding places for Jewish people. Besides Sophia and Max Drukker, our permanent guests, we were also a half-way house for others, who needed shelter for a few days, until a permanent hiding place was found. Our home was also a distribution centre to provide food for those in hiding. It was sent to us by Arend Smit’s group and it was usually delivered in secret after curfew. Their underground group also falsified ID’s and printed fake ration-cards. Mamma hid these under our carpet. One day I noticed her sewing up our carpet in the hallway and she said: “You have not seen anything”.
It was one of mamma’s tasks to bring Jewish babies by train to pre-arranged families in the East of Holland. It was safer there than in big cities like Amsterdam. Unfortunately, it was too risky for the Jewish people to keep their babies while they were in hiding, as they might cry. Our home was raided four times while Sophia and Max were staying with us, but they quickly hid in the ceiling and were never found.
In the last year of the war, mamma suddenly became very ill with tuberculosis. She was taken to hospital, but there were no medicines available and they couldn’t save her. She died, a young mother of four, at the age of only 35.
Mamma’s last beautiful letter, which we have kept, was written to Sophia. They had become close friends. They had similar sensitive natures and shared their love for classical music, poetry and literature. They even laughed a lot. Mamma asked her in that last letter: “Sophia, will you pray for me, you know how to do it”.
Dutch people usually mail a bereavement card to family and friends when someone dies. The words written on mum’s card were: “Her life was serving and loving others”.
I vividly remember my father’s deep sorrow when mamma died and he was left with 4 young children and our two Jewish house guests. Our whole family was dispersed, because my father too was sick and he was unable to care for us. Sophia and Max had to find shelter elsewhere There was no time to grieve.
Unfortunately, my father too found it difficult to talk about the past
There are many holocaust stories, but little has been written about the tremendous struggle of the Jewish people after the war, when they came out of hiding or back from the camps. For them it was not “hurray, liberation”, when so many of their loved ones did not come home, and they had no one or nowhere to go to. Their houses were confiscated, their belongings were plundered. They did not share that ‘explosion of joy!’
They slowly became aware of the enormity of the sorrow for those who did not survive. Of the 140.000 Jews that lived in Holland before the war, more than 110.000 did not return. The sorrow for lost ones would last a lifetime.
I would like to read to you now a brief glimpse of Sophia’s life as it was in those first difficult days in Amsterdam, when she longed to find a new direction for her small family. Her daughters had changed so much!
Remember, Roosje came back from the Northern part of Holland, which is pre-dominantly Protestant and Carla, her sister, from the Catholic south, while Sophia longs to bring them back into the Jewish fold. At that stage, her husband Max is about to leave her: (Page31, from ‘One evening…’)
Many years later, the grown-up foundling Rose, raised her own three children in the Jewish faith. She even prepared her grandchildren Sharon and Ruben a few years ago for their respective Bat mitzvah and Bar mitzvah.
It is so good to have them with us here tonight.
I would like to express my special thanks to two people. First of all, my daughter Nicole Fitzgerald, who has given me so much of her time, talent, love and support in translating this book, and who has come all the way from Brisbane to be here tonight. And second, Julie Meadows, who not only is a very gifted editor, but also a wonderful host to Roosje, Bob and myself.
With much love, I have dedicated this translation of The Shoes of a Foundling to two great mothers, who have given me such admirable examples of courage, religious respect and understanding – Sophia, Roosje’s mother and Aly, my own dear mother.
The Talmud says: “He, who saves one life, saves the entire world”
Tonight I salute all those brave men and women – known or unknown – who have done just that. May their courage be an example to us and give us hope for the future.
Thank you
