Beyond Anne Frank
Hidden Children and Postwar Families in HollandBy Diane L. Wolf
University of California Press
Copyright © 2007 The Regents of the University of California
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-520-24810-6
Contents
Acknowledgments...............................................................................................ixIntroduction..................................................................................................11. The History and Memory of Hidden Children..................................................................112. Before and During the War: The Netherlands and the Jews....................................................543. After the War: The Jews and the Netherlands................................................................954. "My Mother Screamed and Screamed": Memories of Occupation, War, and Hiding.................................1265. "I Came Home, but I Was Homesick": When Both Parents Returned..............................................1636. "They Were Out of Their Minds": When One Parent Returned...................................................2037. "Who Am I?": Orphans Living with Families..................................................................2288. "There Was Never a Kind Word": Life in Jewish Orphanages...................................................2739. Creating Postwar Lives, Creating Collective Memory: From the Personal to the Political.....................293Conclusion....................................................................................................329Notes.........................................................................................................347Glossary......................................................................................................361References....................................................................................................365Index.........................................................................................................381Photographs follow page 162
Introduction
I don't remember my mother. She was about 28. And one day she went walking in the street in Amsterdam, with my aunt, in 1942. Everybody said to her-and to them-"Don't walk in the street, because it's dangerous for Jewish people to walk in the street." And she said, "Well, then I'll dye my hair red instead of black." So she did! But they were picked up by the Nazis, both of them. And we never saw them again.
Thus began my first interview for this project, with Max L., in Amsterdam. The only child born to a middle-class nonobservant Jewish family in 1936, he has no recollection of his mother, who was deported to a concentration camp when he was 6 years old. (See figure 1.) After that, he was shuffled between various households-his uncle's, his grandparents', some family friends'-and even placed in an orphanage, a setting that frightened him. He remembers all these settings but not his mother; he has clearly repressed all memory of her. Sometime in 1942, when it was no longer safe for Jews to be in Holland, Max's grandfather retrieved him from the orphanage and took him by train to Friesland. At the train station at Leeuwarden, he gave Max to a stranger who was waiting for them. My grandfather said to me, "You have to go with that gentleman, and he'll take care of you." My grandfather popped in the train, and he was gone. And ... then you can feel your heart pounding. "What's going to happen to me?" and ... well, the man, he took me by the hand and, he was talking to me, but I couldn't understand him because he spoke Frisian, not Dutch. When I came into his house, my foster mother, she came toward me, and she hugged me, and she said things like, "Oh, my poor child! You must be cold, because you don't have woolen stockings! Well, I will see to it that you get everything you need and ..." Well, she was very kind.
Max was welcomed into the man's family, which consisted of his very maternal wife and one other foster child; the couple could not have children of their own. (See figure 2.) As Max adapted to village life in Friesland, he learned the language, excelled in school, and grew to love his foster parents, as they did him. Max knew he was different-he was a dark-haired boy among blonds-and he knew his name was not Frisian, since people often commented that Max was a dog's name, not a person's. But he did not know he was Jewish. He played constantly with his friends, and like most village boys, accompanied his family to church on Sundays.
After the war, in 1945, someone began to visit occasionally whom Max described as a dikke vette man (a fat man; dikke and vette both mean "fat") and whom his foster parents referred to as his vader (father). He had no idea who this man was or what the term vader meant. Max himself used Frisian terms-Mem and Heit-to address his foster mother and father, who he believed were his real parents. He did not interact with the man, nor did the man talk with him.
His father paid these visits because he wanted Max back. His foster parents wanted to keep him. A great deal of correspondence flew back and forth, and Max's foster parents bought some time by convincing his father that it was not appropriate for him to take Max until he could provide him with a mother. Consequently, Max's father married a non- Jewish woman whom Max was to call "Tante Jo" (Aunt Jo, pronounced Yo). When they came to visit, Max paid no attention to them. When they tried to take him home with them to Amsterdam, he ran away, screaming and crying. They left without him. In 1948, when Max was 12, his foster father finally took him by train to Amsterdam; they met his father and stepmother at a train station, where Max was turned over. Tante Jo took one look at Max, his homespun country haircut and clothes, and laughed at him, causing immediate humiliation, a feeling that she inflicted on Max for years to come. He went home with them but immediately ran away to Friesland, something he continued to do his first year home. After that, Max stayed with his foster parents every summer during school vacation.
The separation from his "parents" and home in Friesland caused Max considerable stress and trauma-he began to wet his bed and started to lose some hair. He describes himself as being a timid, shy, and nervous child; he could never disagree or say no. Like most hidden children, he had realized that being agreeable was a key strategy in adapting to a foster family. At home in Amsterdam, he was withdrawn and rarely talked, a sharp contrast to his behavior when he lived in rural Friesland. He always thought of Friesland as home, as a refuge from his father and stepmother. It is also likely that the early trauma of losing his mother was replayed during this round of separation from foster parents to whom he was attached. Indeed, that early loss may have intensified his attempt to hold on to the only parents he knew.
When Max first arrived, his father and stepmother made an initial and short-lived attempt to be nice to him. Yet relations quickly soured, first between his father and stepmother and then between Max and both his parents. His father constantly lectured him about his schoolwork, his grades, his bed-wetting, and many other things. His stepmother insisted on being called "Mommy" instead of "Tante Jo" and began to punish him, often with beatings. I had to call her "Mommy" after some months, and by that time, I hated her guts already. She started spanking me and slapping me, whenever I did something...
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