i want to thank belmont media center for sponsoring a series of talks on the holocaust the one tonight is entitled three diaries and some letters windows on the holocaust in the netherlands all of these talks are really based on diaries and letters of the time because they really tell us what the people were feeling at the time how they were thinking at the time and unlike us they did not know the end of the story so it's a very kind of raw and pure kind of reflection of their own minds thoughts and feelings tonight the diaries in three diaries and some letters includes a man who was a journalist a a young woman with lovers who's kind of an intellectual and adolescent girl a mother with three children and also a young woman who is engaged to a man in israel and we will meet them as we move forward i use the idea windows because even though all of these diaries are very revealing and they're very profound every person who's experienced the holocaust experience the war the tragedy the complexity each person actually so saw it in its own way and they also experienced it in their own way so i think what i always like to say is that there's never any experts on the holocaust the only experts are the people who experienced it and they themselves have only experienced it as individuals and one is a time so let us move forward on windows on the holocaust in the netherlands now the jews in the netherlands had a long history and the netherlands as a country was a refuge and sanctuary from jews for jews going back to fourteen ninety seven at the time of the spanish inquisition and many many so far jews at the time they were given a choice to convert to die or to leave many of them left and some of them went to the netherlands in the in about a century or so later kenaz them jews and refugees from the ukraine and from eastern europe also would travel to the netherlands and they also found refuge there in seven hundred ninety six jews were granted full rights by the french revolutionary forces which at the time had conquered the netherlands and when we reach the modern the twentieth century they were the nineteenth the twentieth century they were a simulated into all sectors of dutch society and one of the unique things about the netherlands at the time is there were no pog roams they were it was not like living in poland or in the ukraine or even in germany and other places they were basically welcomed as dutch citizens at the time of the war when it begins there are approximately about one hundred forty thousand dutch jews and their one point six percent of the population of the netherlands they are a diverse but also a longstanding community consisting of many different sectors from wealthy merchants to poor to poor people who are working in vegetable kind of market places selling vegetables on a daily basis and everything but between in between there's intellectuals there's professors there's diamond merchants and there's also newspaper people reporters writers et so it was a very diverse community now in d c in one thousand nine hundred thirty three what began to occur when adolf hitler came to power in january january thirty first one nine hundred thirty three we're almost coming on to that anniversary there were many german refugees and also refugees from austria and czechoslovakia as those areas are also annexed by germany that began to flee and so there are but proximately about twenty thousand german jews in the netherlands at the time initially they were welcomed but when the numbers became greater and greater they basically became illegal aliens kind of like what we have we have a big debate in our own national politics now about illegal aliens and they themselves the german refugee jewish refugees also were considered aliens at the time they started to build a kind of a refugee camp and it was called westerbork and it will play a critical role in our own in our own story and it's basically built just like you see in this photograph by german alien jews one of the legal german jewish families is really one of the most famous people one of the most famous witnesses of the holocaust and that's and frank who actually stands to you're right the second person in her father is auto her mother is edith and her sister on the on your far on your far left is margot they will immigrate to the netherlands in one nine hundred thirty three and mr frank is a businessman an export trader and she will become known for a very famous diary the diary of a young adolescent girl and is one of the sources of this talk another person is miriam levy and her fiance leo bowles who immigrate to before the war will actually immigrate to palestine at the time and it will later become israel in one nine hundred forty eight and he will actually change his name to menachem when he goes there they are engaged to be married and they're both dutch zionist that means they're young people and they also believed in that is real jews needed to find their own national homeland and so that's what it was the whole idea was to be a zionist they were engaged to be married but miriam did not leave with him she was going to come later but many of their family said to them we're dutch what do we have to do in palestine and that's the course so that's kind of the main understanding of most jews at the time in the netherlands that the whole notion was that we're dutch first we're also jewish but we're dutch and they don't really make a distinction of the two because they felt so much as in a simulator part of the population now she will also become a basis of my talk and she would write these letters and they're called letters never sent amsterdam westerbork and bergen belsen she'll be actually the only survivor of those we see the direst and letter writers tonight and what's interesting about her letters never sent these are actually letters that she wrote to her fiance in palestine when the war started and she wanted to keep the letters so that he would understand what happened but she actually never sent them to him she saved them and they were saved approximately around one nine hundred forty seven where their later would go they would later go to israel so i like the notion letters never sent and it's of a young woman writing ter fiance thinking one day he will see the letters but she was going to try to explain what happened to or another person's who's one of the direst is a young lady named eddie intellectual she wanted to be a writer and as we go through this story she kind of becomes a social worker type person she's a very special person very spiritual but not in the institutional kind of way  she actually would have a lover and this is one of her lover she had several but this was one of the main ones at the time and his name was julie aspire and he will actually die on september fifteenth  and it was actually the day that he was supposed to be deported to westerbork so he actually dies the day supposed to be deported and his own profession was one of those people who would tell your fortune through your hands and that's what you see that's what you see right here another reference for me is a journalist who's married to a non jew and his name is philip mechanic kiss and he will write a diary in camp westerbork and it's called year of fear a jewish prisoner waits for its now the german invasion of the netherlands takes place on may ninth and tenth one nine hundred forty and within two days they're basically conquered on your right is moscow or leningrad but they were it was basically devastated the photo on your left is actually the german army coming into amsterdam and actually the church steeple that you see is actually were rembrandt is buried the dutch government flees to england in exile so the people themselves are basically left to themselves the no government is there they go to britain when the nazis come in they name a chair the head of the of the of the of the of the country is a man named arthur suisse engel art and arthur is actually he was a he was a he was a lawyer and he's actually known before in in holocaust times because in one nine hundred thirty eight when of the nazis and next austria he was the inside man to to do the turn over from the germany to austria and he was actually for a while the head of the government just as the nats nazis were taking over later he would become the second in command in poland and under hans frank and so he would take all of his experience dealing with the jewish community and in dealing with countries moving from his experience in austria and later his experience in poland and now he would impose that template upon the entire country of the netherlands he will be executed after the war for war crimes at nuremberg and this is him at the time also with the netherlands they had a very strong dutch nazi party and this was the head of it a man called  tome and the not the growth of the nazi party kind of went along with the growth of adolf hitler in the power of adolf hitler one thousand nine hundred thirty three it would be very small but as hitler became stronger and stronger in europe the nazi party grew and when it took over many people would join it some people would join it because they believed in it other people joined it big for jobs and other people joined it because they were part of the political power the political party in power and it would give them influence opportunity power fame wealth excedrin so there were different reasons why people join the nazi party no german kind of stranglehold upon not only the country but the jews in particular it started slowly and this is actually it will lead to the yellow star approximately in about two years two years from now but these stars are actually made in the ghetto and they were made in the ghetto of luggage and they would be transported to the places like the netherlands but they started small small primarily with the orthodox community and they would have bans on ritual later in october they would begin to have what they called area and test stations for all teachers basically if you were a jew you couldn't teach so it started in the schools but then it will move to other places in the civil service and one of the witnesses at the time who will survive also a lawyer and later a judge and he will write a book about his experience in bergen belsen is a man named abe or abraham hirshberg and he would wri each signed his own death warrant though few appreciate at this at the time because the artist station basically said how you saw your ethnicity and so if you put down jew and who your father there was or who your grandmother was that will later be used against you but no one knew it remember their experience in the holocaust not like us their experience the holocaust from on an everyday basis they don't know the end we know the end  also by also in october jewish businesses have to register this is actually an frank's house down here in the blue can barely see it's a little different color this is rim of the church also where rembrandt is buried and if you go there today and you come a little bit it opens at nine o'clock in the morning but if you happen to come around ten o'clock or eleven the line will run from that blue house all the way around the street for people getting in to the and frank museum but basically it is at this moment that auto frank's business is taken over it becomes area nice to know he actually had some friends who were willing dutch non jewish friends who were willing to help him  hide at the time was also willing to help run his business at the time but other people were not so lucky one of the things about auto frank he kind of he kind of could sense where things were going and he prepared for it and he planned for it very carefully this is a a dutch nazi moving company it was owned by a man named alexander pulls and pulls would would come into a neighborhood when ever jewish homes are repossessed he would take their furniture he would take whatever was there and he would become a multimillionaire he would be tried after the war and i think he would be initially he would be  given a sentence for life but it ultimately became a smaller sentence but he was a dutch nazi and whenever jews are being kicked out of their homes the poles truck moving truck would come  up one of the things you have to see and this is not occurring just obviously in the netherlands it's occurring throughout europe but jews are being stripped of everything they're being stripped of their businesses they're being stripped of their jobs they're being stripped of their possessions of their bank accounts of their money and ultimately the vast majority of them will die or be murdered as naked people and so that's the process and wherever you go in the holocaust sometimes it's happening faster than other places but that's the ultimate goal to take everything that the jewish community has and at the same time to ultimately eliminate them and these are just some examples of them this is that westerbork also about a month later the jewish civil servants are dismissed this is in november which included the chief justice of the supreme court who happened to be jewish his name was  himself was later elected as part of the jewish coordinating committee and it was his view that jews should not cooperate with the nazi government that they should use every legal means to resist by demonstrations and to keep pushing on the point that we are dutch citizens we are not just simply jews we are first dutch citizens and everything you do is unconstitutional so that was his goal he would do some some self kind of demonstrations like he wouldn't wear a jewish star when he was asked to wear it neither would his son his son is down there at the bottom his some would be executed for not wearing a yellow star and he himself would die of a heart up no jews in january are required to register in a census and basically a man any jew is a person with one jewish grandparent basically one quarter jewish there were also be about twenty thousand offsprings of mixed marriages what do you do with them what do you do if you know if your wife is non jewish and you're jewish what do you do with that family what do you do with jewish converts throughout the history of the middle ages often times the racism and anti semitism was based on religion with the germans it was based on race so the whole notion is is what do you do with people who haven't been religious leigh jewish for one hundred years but they're still jewish by culture basically they say you can't convert after it's not valid after january one thousand nine hundred forty one and then finally what do you do with those portuguese those sephardic jews that came in fourteen ninety seven in their families that's a whole different world so some of these jewish families had lived there mike almost four hundred plus years so what do you do with those and these are questions that the germans would wrestle with constantly and they actually become a part of our story as we move forward jews are also required to put on their passports a j i believe this is margot frank up on the upper right this particular man is jacob press or he's also one of my sources it's called ashes in the wind the destruction of dutch jewry and he himself was this was jim nauseum a high school teacher and he would survive the holocaust but his whole family would be murdered and this is probably the preeminent historical work translated into english about the netherlands and the holocaust and also one of my major resources now what were non jewish dutch men and women doing and one of the things about holland you see this as you go through they had a long tradition of freedom they have a long tradition of being able to ask questions and to live as as as human beings who have rights who can ask questions who can demonstrate who can protest all these things what happened to that group of people well actually particularly in the universities among young people there was a lot of resistance there was also a lot of resistance among some of the professors like professor rudolph clever who is the dean of the law school school at leiden university and he actually would give public displays lectures telling the students do what they're doing is breaking the dutch constitution that we cannot we cannot separate people by ethnicity by religion by race they are debt citizens first those kind of speeches would get him thrown into prison he would survive the war but he would spend it all in a very unhappy kind of nazi concentration camp one of the things that was also unique and students would also become involved in that one of the things that also became unique was the dutch medical association the only place i've ever read any in any country in europe when they were asked to sign kind of a nazi oil a loyalty oath or they cannot practice medicine the vast majority of dutch doctors would not sign that oath and in theory they cannot practice medicine but the reality is they still need it they still need it doctors but the vet they basically would not sign that test station and then finally you had labor unions dock workers and railroad road strikes that almost took the whole country down but ultimately it gets broken but the point of this at the very beginning there's actually quite a bit of resistance by the dutch community at large but when they begin to throw people in prison when they begin to have their strikes broken it basically dies and it moves to the underground because it can't it can't be public so the only place for it to go is to the underground and it becomes kind of the birth of the dutch resistance movement but it's all there present right at the very beginning if you go to amsterdam today near both the one around february about the same time that that strike was occurring the germans also appointed a jewish council the heads of it was abraham osher and and professor david cohen who was a professor of classical language of greece rome excedrin abraham asher i believe was a diamond merchant the council that was formed was basically built upon the same group that was trying to deal with german refugees before the war so they had they had experience of working together in general they were all very good men you know they were kind of traditional you don't have a lot of radicals in this group they're basically people who have always run the jewish community it was based on the austrian prague model which what was that model that motto is from the nazi perspective you are here to do our work and if you don't follow our demands our commands we will we will perhaps execute you your family and perhaps we'll eliminate the entire jewish community on the other hand they were also supposed to represent the jewish community for jobs housing food support excedrin so they're caught in the middle one on one hand they have a gun to their head by the germans on the other hand they are supposed to be active on support of the jewish community so it's really kind of a hell of a place to be  no matter what you do you either going to get killed for it or or or the jewish community is going to hate you after the war they will survive the two the two co chairs ricco presidents and they will actually be brought up to trial by the jewish community and by the legal system in the netherlands but awhile to mentally get tossed out but that's the kind of rancor that was taking place within the jewish community because some people would think they were tossing them down the river that they that their cooperation became a little bit too much like collaboration and this is actually a quote from that the the the lawyer and judge that was in bergen belsen who survived and this is what he would write the jewish councils are nothing more than burial societies as such they fulfilled their task to perfection they made one mistake they imagine that an undertaker could come to a compromise with death they also were involved in in the sense in the building of the census who would know more about the jewish community than the jews themselves and that was also one of the purposes from the german perspective is you can help with the den of fi where the jews are where they live how many people are in the family eccentric cetera and one of the people who actually was part of that process she was a secretary within for the jewish council was that young woman who was engaged to the man who went to palestine and that's miriam levy ball and she's with this gentleman and both of them had worked on the german refugee german jewish refugee problem so they had a long history of working together and for doing good but one of the important things she will her letters will reflect what was happening on the inside of the council so she has a particular very specific vantage point sisi in what's happening at kind of the at the at the the management level within the council itself she both spoken read fluently three languages dutch english and german and she became a secretary another person who worked in another one of my sources is this young woman hilda for a donor sl or and this is her husband garrett for a donor and she also would work for the jewish council and she is the mother of three children they were the mother of a mother and father of three children when they got caught up in this they made a decision remember people were supposed to register they decided as a husband and wife not to register their children and because of that their children would later be hidden and they will actually survive these folks will all survive the mother herself will die she was a very unique person and i think one of the things you'll see from this this is their hols in hilversum i'm not sure if i'm pronouncing that right but it's kind of a suburb of amsterdam and their house was taken over by german officers and this kind of tells you about her character so after they took over the home you can see it well but there's a little batch of loops right there as you know the netherlands is known for two loops so after the germans took it over she came one morning and she picked all the tulips out put them in her arms in broad daylight and just walked out she said i planted those loops more or less that was her statement not so much in words but in actions i planted the tulips i'll be damned if i'm going to give them to you so that kind of it describes the kind of person that she was she was very stubborn there was probably some issues going on with their marriage maybe the husband had an adulterous affair at one point some of this stuff comes out in the letters but the point is no matter what was happening in your life the holocaust came upon you like  like a giant weight she would write a book called signs of life and it would be published approximately forty years later by her by her children and these letters were also hidden at the time and they would be  regenerated after the war and she is writing as a mother this is actually a poem from a granddaughter in one nine hundred eighty eight about her grandmother but kind of looking for the grand their grandchild is looking like from her mother's eyes and this is an excerpt from the poem the last pearl by susan cohen looking at me with mother's eyes you're right i dare is me to climb l p s and swim channels your other dares me to write i try to read your life in eyes that watch me that watch me water plants sit at my desk lie in bed reading sleeping making love these eyes stare at me in my mirror be commemorated about forty some years later the good jewish council also did good work this is them were running workshops to help people be employed there's a theory was if we can keep people employed perhaps they won't be deported so they really at one point there was over sixteen thousand people working for the jewish council and the jobs were actively sought after they also ran schools because ed a certain point it was illegal to be  a jewish young young person and be in the regular public schools there were also some germans who helped and this is one this is a man's name han head of the racial classification unit for the netherlands he was not a nazi but he was a good german lawyer and he and his dutch lawyers and and genealogist and office clerks would save about three thousand jews and remember those definitions of what a jew should be he would lack she look at him and say are there any loopholes in that in that particular definition that we can help people exclaim from and that's what they did they looked for loopholes and sometimes of loopholes weren't there they would go to run record forgery like for instance they would go to churches and they would forge baptismal records stating that maybe maybe them maybe one of the grandparents was jewish but after the forgery there were no jewish grandparents so they would actually do that now some of the young dutch they were primarily young dutch people don't young dutch students and others they said we should be doing more we should be doing this in mosques where we can free hundreds of people and came by are all always made the perspective we have to be very careful we have to approach each case almost like it's so like it's a law case in court of law because not only are they looking over our shoulders the s trying to catch as but if we did if if they catch us doing anything wrong all the people that we saved will ultimately also be killed so he said we can only save one at a time but many people will try to go under these exemptions and you read about in these various diaries all of these people would be named righteous people by the holocaust museum in jerusalem came by are somewhat controversial because a lot of people thought he shouldn't be that but  hundred eighty s he himself was listed as one of the righteous people who were non jewish to risk their lives to save jews initially the first you execute it was a man named ernest  i think he was in an ice cream store he ran an ice cream store and at this time dutch nazis began to go through jewish sections of the city of amsterdam and beat people up they came into his ice cream store and he threw acid on the person and that would get him executed at the same time other p other jewish youth they're trying to defend themselves by these dutch nazi basically bullies and as that begins to occur the germans themselves clamp down on everybody they arrest about four hundred jewish men this is kind of a pose photograph because they made him look like one guy with a little hatchet etc but basically they arrested four hundred jewish men off the street this is what you also see over here as sixteen sixteen to forty and again this was the whole notion of collective responsibility some of these young jewish men were not even involved in the fight itself they were just walking down the street but they were the point was if you do anything against us we are going to destroy hundreds of you if not thousands and these jewish men both in february of one nine hundred forty one and another group in june also around four hundred people would be the first deportation from the netherlands and it would basically be all of these young men they would be sent to book involved initially which is a concentration camp in germany if you it's hard to see that for some of you but they have an en on their prison garb and the end stands for the netherlands of the first group that went there was only one survivor every everyone else was sent to mauthausen concentration camp where they would basically b it was a corey right at the border of austria and germany and they would basically be worked to death and they would be taunted they called them dutch parachutist because they would go on top of the quarry and maybe they would be machine gunned down or they were be forced to jump off the cliffs and many times the dutch german these dutch jews would bond bind would grab themselves together and they would commit suicide as a group the only one that was not sent would later be called an experimental rabbit that's what they called people that experimented on so the germans would actually do medical experiments on that person and i he survived but he survived as a person who had been experimented on for medical purposes the jewish quarter begins to be sealed at the same time building fence around it so they're going to basically go district by district and there's jewish restrictions in movement housing and in curfews jews are barred from public places they have transportation restrictions one of the first early ones that comes is jews cannot use bicycles to take a bicycle away from a dutch citizen i almost like taking away their heart ok and basically they can no longer use bicycles they also began to put up signs like this is a jewish area this is also down the street is the rembrandt museum today but it wasn't just occurring in amsterdam it was occurring at every place across the country they were also restricted on when they could shop where they could shop what they could shop for they would set up special hours so all the other dutch people and germans who were soldiers and others they could come from let's say eight o'clock until three o'clock i don't know if that's the exact hours and then the jews would be able to come for one hour but all the good stuff was bought they could no longer negotiate they basically got the leftovers  any street that was jewish they renamed it a german street and that's one of the another aspects about all genocides the holocaust as well as others is the conkers don't just want to eliminate people they also want to eliminate their memory and it's in fact what we're doing tonight is to recall their memory and by remembering them we are actually encounter in encounter just position from from what the german what the nazis wanted jews are barred from dutch schools and universities and what you see here is a sign and it basically says you know in this area eddie hyllus some was writing her diary in c the second or third floor of that building it's difficult to see this but here is the little plaque right down there her window overlooks the same area where you have the rights museum the van gogh museum today as well as other museums so she had a really a beautiful view from her window and this is her writing from that window light reflecting on what is occurring in the city of amsterdam and to her life into the lives of people she loves and knows and she would publish these journals and i actually took these photographs from the jewish historical museum in amsterdam and those were the originals are today jews are also barred from trade unions for journalist actors musicians you basically couldn't have a job anymore philip mechanic is at the time is fired from his newspaper job and he will write short articles under a pen name which didn't maybe sound jewish pierre genesis in january of one nine hundred forty two everything begins to rapidly escalate so jews are removed from the provinces and here's amsterdam down here and there's westerbork up there and now think about it if you can't really read this at the bottom but it says main jewish communities the netherlands in  forty one so every place you see like a dot that was a main jewish community and there see in bold face type indicates places of jewish settlement in the seventeenth century so you're talking about people who had lived there for several centuries three three centuries approximately and are all at once they are going to be sent an initially to amsterdam so initially when that when the nazis first came the jewish council in amsterdam was only the head of amsterdam but what has happened is they're now appointed to be the jewish council for the entire country so they begin to deport jews out of their local communities into amsterdam of course you have no housing at this point where you go in you have no food you have no possessions or you go to westerbork at the same time they begin to make slave labor camps also throughout the country at the time the jewish council is asked by the germans to fulfill quotas for labor the jewish council tries to resist saying we don't want to choose who we're sending out to slave labor and the germans more or less say you have no choice you either do it or horrible things are going to happen to you your families and to the entire jewish community so the jewish council is ordered to fill quotas and to provide names for workers who do you pick they basically said initially we should pick single men because they don't have families it's more complicated if you start breaking up families then it becomes a bigger problem for us too so initially it was men but then who do you choose and you recognize going out to these labor camps may not be very helpful initially jewish doctors could exempt you say in all you have a bad heart or all you have diabetes whatever you have but initially they began to realize that they were actually sometimes falsifying the medical reports so that power was taken from that way from the jewish doctors and it was then done by either dutch doctors  who were supporting the nazis or by the german doctors themselves who were nazis so basically but in up until that time there was sabotage going on internally this was also time there were a lot of marriages taking place because if you're only going to deport for labor single people why not get married so you rabbis another jew would say what can you marry for if you're not in love and of course they ruled that you could if it's going to save your life so all this stuff was kind of going on but the point is someone has to choose and the germans wanted the jews to choose for themselves they didn't want to choose and the jewish community ultimately the council decided that we will take on that task but the danger is if you begin to choose people for deportation what can come next and the next was it then moves to selections for death and not just simply the portions for deportations for labor one of the people who was selected was this young man probably about twenty some years old his name was philip's liar he was so write letters and he's this the second man to your left he ultimately will go to several concert several labor camps he will write letters back and forth to his parents as time went on he would exclaim he would go into hiding in amsterdam be betrayed are caught on the street and he would later be  deported to westerbork and would die in sore bore which is in far eastern poland the yellow stars are mandated on may one thousand nine hundred two they will actually move back from eastern europe and it will come to western europe the first jewish stars are mandated in poland as early as november of nineteen thirty nine and so it will actually move back now what is the response to the jewish community at this at the time some honor some would say they were ashamed of it because they felt humiliated someone make it a fashion statement other people wouldn't wear it at all like i told you the supreme court justice and sun he chose not to wear a jewish star and he himself would be executed but the point is stars in the street are as numerous as buttercups in may now eddie eddie hyllus hyllus some is also writing at this time and this is kind of her reflection what do you do when your world is starting to fall apart how do you cope with it and this is what she writes may tenth one thousand nine hundred two the tear girls ever greater and tear increases from day to day i draw a prayer around me like a dark protective wall withdraw and sided as one might into a convent cell so she's saying i'm going to move inside and i'm going to live in my own thoughts my own spirit and i'm going to try to close out that horrible world that's happening from the outside the actual deportations other than those young men who went previously would begin in july  two it would begin to capture the entire jewish community and here we look at our people who are the sources of our our diaries and letters eddie hill a symbol go in july thirty thirty eight thirty one in  go back into amsterdam and then on the evening of yom kippur war september twenty ninth one thousand nine hundred through three all the jewish council is is dissolved and they begin to deport the entire jewish council and she is one of them at the time she sick and she gets sent back to western bar miriam bowl is early july one nine hundred forty three she was also part of the jewish council and the ata for auto frank family the last of all is october sixth one thousand nine hundred four so that's kind of the process but they're all headed towards westerbork eddie hillis some run the same time period we are being hunted to death all through europe because and this is to understand the full kind of consequences of the holocaust and it wasn't just happen in holland it was happening all across europe it was a planned extermination of six million plus jews nischelle if they wanted to do eleven million they also include a great britain ireland and other places where if they conquered them they were going to murder the jews there poland's misfortune was it was in the cent of europe so you could actually have all the trains from all the different sections go there auschwitz is right in the center of that hall but it was both a labor camp and an extermination camp the ones you see in yellow purposes but death but job nick was a little different is a little bit like auschwitz had both a purpose for work and labor but ultimately the labor would be subsumed by the extermination  here's the jewish options one is you can try to work with the council and this was what some of our writers did and just hope for the best and remember no one knows the end of the story so you're just trying to survive you can convert some try to do that but it's only valid beef before january one thousand nine hundred forty one you can try to excuse but you need the help of the dutch righteous when the germans initially took over the netherlands about two hundred or three hundred some of them will make their way to great britain in boats others at the time before france's attack will make their way down to france ultimately portugal and spain and they will make it but is once france was conquered once the the german conquered both france belgium the hollands denmark except era those routes became more and more difficult and the only way you could really xscape there were a few you need it the help of a dutch network of resistance and of kind of like an underground railroad you could hide but you would need the help of the dutch who were not jewish some people would hide for money other people were would hide would be hidden because people were good christians or or just good ethical people and they felt that the that's what they should do so there were different reasons and different situations some people would move from family to family to family because it wasn't safe to be in one place you can try to pass and that would be philip mechanic kiss but he will fail or finally you commit suicide and westerbork the suicide average was four per week now and frank begins to write her diary about two weeks two weeks before the deportations occur on june fourteenth one thousand nine hundred forty two and on july fifth two weeks later the sixteen year old margot frank not the whole family just margot frank the older sister is summoned for deportation the frank family at that point in the i think in the middle of the night or near in very early morning they basically go into hiding to the secret an x on july sixth and they will later be joined by four other people and they will live in that an x for twenty five months protected and fed and cared for by their dutch friends and colleagues she will write her diary should talk about the window she'll talk about her first kiss on the stairways and she will begin that diary that is known throughout the world and this is just an example of that diary any hyllus some will write also around july sixth and this is what she writes girls of sixteen are be taken are being taken to labor camps we older ones will have to take them under our wing when it is the turn of us dutch girls there's a there's a presumption there and initially the ones that were first reported where the german jewish girls that were in that were in the netherlands and that's also a typical kind of german nazi approach they also did in france initially the ones that would be sent out would be the eastern jews and not the french jews and it was a way to divide the community and it was also a way that they would systematically separate one part of the community from the other but you see this here when it is the turn of us dutch girls from all sides destruction creeps up on us and soon the ring will be closed and no one will be able to come to our aid the same day her younger brother meesha is also called up her younger brother is a child prodigy on the piano and he will actually be given options that other people aren't given this is an exemption stamp for work and at this particular time period if you're working for the council in july and for about the next year to almost approximately two years if you can get an exemption you and your family perhaps can be safe from deportation so there's trade in these exemptions there's a lot of political pull going on if you have a relatively high up in the council you are probably one of the lucky ones if you don't have friends in high places you are less likely to get these kind of stamps unless you have some special skills people like doctors people like perhaps chefs people who are gifted in certain ways they would also be likely to have these exemptions but if you're the ordinary john or jill or sarah abraham and you don't have here's her perspective i don't think i would feel happy if i was exempted from what so many others have to suffer so this also shows you part of her character she said i want to if the whole communities going to suffer i want to be part of that community i don't want to be separated as a special person so that kind of tells you her mentality and her spiritual values now you also have one of the strongest responses to the holocaust and to the killing  deportation of jews in europe by the catholic church and they're led by this archbishop johan to stay young of you track and he will order priests who refuse sacraments to dutch nazis so you actually have some dutch policeman who will quit their jobs and sometimes dutch coal miners would quit their jobs rather then not be able to get the sacrament of these would be risking their lives some would actually be tossed in jail others of course wouldn't do that they say my job is more important in the sacraments people made their own decisions the dutch bishops issue a decree it's called a pastoral letter openly condemning nazi d portion of jews as well as dutch workers the same time period they began to deport non jewish dutch workers also to work in labor camps and factories in germany these are the five bishops they issued a pastoral letter on july twentieth and six days later all catholic converts are arrested and are deported and that's arthur seuss in weren't they had he makes that decision he said if you're going to resist us that way any person who converted to catholicism is not going to be deported and it's possible that one of the factors in the vatican's pretty profound silence during the holocaust was this dutch experience because they recognize if we publicly speak out it is going to lead to the murder of many people and it's better for us to remain silent and try to work in the underground and some parts of the catholic church would work in the underground others would just be silent so there's it's kind of it's not always a good thing or a bad thing sometimes it's in the middle but it was pretty much based on individual choice and individual pastors one of the people who is actually a catholic convert was a person called sister edith stein stein is not typically a catholic name tends to be a jewish name and she was a young  intellectual and profile and philosophy teacher and as a young woman either here or there she converts and becomes a carmelite nun carmelite nun for those that don't know they are the ones who are they are later deported as as to of nine hundred eighty seven to auschwitz on august seventh they will be gassed on august ninth and they would be canonized this one sister edith stein would be canonized by by john paul the second in october of one thousand nine hundred eighty eight eddie hyllus some is in westerbork and she actually sees this happening and she writes about it and she just it's a much longer quote but she says there was a remarkable day when the jewish catholics arrived nuns and priests were in the yellow star on their habits and frank is looking out her window this is actually one i took at the end frank museum and the kind of superimpose on kind of mail or what it was like for her to look out her window and this is what should right countless friends and acquaintances have gone to a horrible fate in the evenings when it is dark i often see rows of good innocent people accompanied by crying children walking on and on bullied and knocked and knocked about no one is spared old people babies expectant mothers the sick each and all join in the march of death so even those in hiding were aware of what was going on and the question we have to rise what's it like to watch that how does it change you  frank was watching from her window in a hidden kind of house or factory what about the dutch the non dutch jews who were watching at the same time how does it change the way you act in society how does it change the way you look at yourself how does it change the way you look at in this case the jewish community others other groups would be totally deported in mosques this is the door in jewish psychiatric hospital and on january twenty hundred three brutally they deport one thousand one hundred patients they don't even get to westerbork they are massacred is somewhat unclear where they're massacred but there's no survivors out of one thousand one hundred patients and that actually at this event is is actually one of the the leaders from the hague of the german nazis is actually organizing and watching this event take place miriam levy ball is working in the jewish council and this is what she writes never forget the night i was working on the call up list co leading it with cards of course we kept coming across the names of friends colleagues and sometimes even relatives at that point we ought chucked it in and one of us went to tell the professor that we wouldn't do this insane and barbarous work and the professor said if we fail to do this terrible things will happen then i said on the verge of tears but professor surely people would have wanted you to refuse this order the professor responded miss levy that is not for you to judge so what's it like if you were working there and your colleague your friend or your relative was on the deportation list what would you do she will write betrayal lurks everywhere in virtually every street has a member of the dutch nazi party bent on informing jews so even if you tried to excuse it people were looking for you if you've ever been to amsterdam you have the canals on one side houses that are very tightly together and there's a room for about one car a group of bicycles and walkers and if you happen to be a walker and we're writing on the bicycles you better watch out as i learn because i never quite got it but the point is it's a very kind of kind of cost a phobic space people are living in very close quarters what happens if your neighbor knows you're jewish they probably did someone report you others won't report she was so everyone was making their own moral choices this is a nazi party gathering this is what they were confronting in limburg and this is the the dutch nazi party or part of it walking through the streets of amsterdam now the dutch nazi party in this is it was it was the community itself was was almost divided between the radical nazis some of the resistors and kind of the people in the middle but not every group went along with the nazis and this man was the head of the dutch resistance yohannes post in a village kind of moving towards the border of germany little close to kind of close to westerbork and it was called newland and this is another man who had actually traveled to the united states and actually advocated on behalf of blacks and the injustice of blacks in the united states in the earlier one nine hundred thirty s they began a process to hide jews in this town that the dutch reformed church and the school and whenever a jewish person came into their town they begin the process of hiding them your hottest post would ultimately be captured and executed by the by the nazis but arnold himself would survive and after the war this entire town small village is honored by the holocaust museum of jerusalem and i think this is really important and this is what it writes it's called a certificate of honor it inhabitants of newlyn holland holland who helped save persecuted dutch jews from deportation and death during the nazi occupation out of a deep respect for human and moral values the people of newlyn acted according to the dictates of their conscience risked their very lives to hide jews in their homes and out of sincere love for their fellow man they looked after the needs of the sheltered until the storm  thus they fulfilled the moral stricture thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself and the traditional jewish saying whoever preserves one life it is as is as though he had preserved the entire world the deeds of the people the new will and will be forever inscribed in the end of the history of the jewish people and serves as a model for humanity as a whole pretty impressive the major deportation si in amsterdam was holland dish sjoberg which is also called the dutch theater and this is where they would round up the people in amsterdam and this would become the deportation place out of amsterdam and like any place there would be a rival in registration this would be there the dutch courtyard sometimes people could stay for a few days sometimes people try to exclaim from it sometimes people were there and then they got an exemption and could leave sometimes they would be there for months sometimes they might be there just for a few hours and here are some examples of that merriam levy it is a it's a dismal sight all those poor children bound for deportation walking around in small clusters see and it makes you sick there was also a kindergarten in a crash some of the families were perhaps already deported what do you do with the children two people who helped save children were some of the jewish righteous and they set up a smuggling system for the kindergartners and for young children one was walter susskind and the other one was henriette commit tell i'm not sure what happens to henry yet he ultimately will deep be deported to to region stop kind of in czechoslovakia and will later be deported to auschwitz he was somewhat of a controversial man at the time and i like showing him with this child because many in the jewish community thought he was working too much with the germans he was kind of like a jewish schindler he would be like a pain for peter to save paul so he was wheeling and dealing with that with the german powers but at the same time when they weren't looking he was smuggling children out of the theater and he would be helped by a dutch righteous mostly students these two men were were man and wife he himself would be captured by the nazis and executed she would continue to hide children and all of these were young man even though it shows him as an older man he was young at the time and these were all students in the universities who risked their lives to save jews they will all be woman and i think her child they couldn't find that person there was great anxiety great tension the dutch nazi leaves but he walks around the block and comes back one of them and at that point he finds the jewish people that they were hiding she said i didn't know what to do she grabbed a gun and shot him and then she he would be buried by a friendly dutch policeman and also by a friendly dutch undertaker and no one knew ever what happened to this man until after the war and a certain point she confesses the crime or the action and she said it's always on my mind but i had no choice it was either him or it was going to he was going to take the two people that i was hiding so those are the kind of decisions that people were making at the time just young people they were decisions of life and death and of great courage this is where they would leave the theater they could leave in a tram way sometimes on in a tram a subway i guess would be an outside tram kind of like the green line or they could leave in trucks but this is how close it is this is a photo i took when i was in amsterdam about a year ago so there is the dutch theater which is now a museum a state museum of the netherlands and this is how close it is so you walk out the door and that tram was waiting for you or the trucks are waiting for you they would go towards a station called m murder port not quite sure what that means but i don't think it means murder in dutch and they could go there as walking they could be sent by trucks they could sent by trams and here's some examples of  that and again you could only carry so much with you you basically could carry what you had and you see people with baby carriages and other things andy hiller sim would write in the history of westerbork surely the saddest chapter will be the one that deals with the old and the question is you know if you were disabled if what your choices were a lot of it depended on your own circumstances by the end of summer nine hundred forty three most dutch and german jews except those with special exemptions or in hiding had already been deported either to westerbork or out of the country it was called to the east no one quite knew what the east meant but they knew it was bad one person i like to remember because he started my first holocaust talks he was a german jew name eric solomon he was in hiding this is a photograph that he took of marlene dietrich in the united states he also took the first secret photograph of the supreme u s supreme court in session to photograph of the franklin delano roosevelt shaking the hand of match smelling the nazi of the german heavyweight champion at the time of the world he took politicians excedrin he was one of the most prominent photographers in in in germany at the time when things began to get bad people told me should stay in the united states he decided to go to he said i'll go to the netherlands i'm a european what could happen to the netherlands when the germans coming goes into hiding and he will ultimately be betrayed and he would be deported to auschwitz and i like to remember him just because he is one of the ones that started all of these talks for me this is where they all went initially it's called a trance it can it's kind of like let's say you're going to alewife station or you're going to quincy braintree and it's kind of like park street you're not it's on the way to someplace else and in westerbork it was on the way to either auschwitz or the other the other extermination camps in poland germany and other places this is what it looked like in a scaled map there's about one hundred seventy barracks filling about three hundred people each about one hundred seven thousand jews would pass through the camp and the ones in charge of remember at the going back to the very beginning it was the german jews who initially built it for themselves and it's the german jews who are in charge of the jewish part of the camp not the dutch jews because they were there first so that's going to create a little division when all the dutch jews come in and the ones in charge are the german jews and the german jews are going to say to the dutch jews you know when we were here you put us in these refugee camps and we remember that and now you're with us and we're to treat you the way we want you to treat them with the way we're going to treat you the way now you understand the way we were treated so there's kind of tension within that community these are just people going to westerbork this is kind of an interesting photo because at a certain point jews can have bicycles so this one this person clearly has one philip mechanic yes well riving westerbork he was arrested on one of those trams for not wearing a jews a jewish star someone betrays him and he rides through westerbork through another camp which was for political prisoners and it's called camp emma's forte and he had the status of a prisoner and he was grie likely he was beaten because embers for it was an s s camp and it was primarily a torture chamber this is what he'll write in his diary i feel as if i'm an official reporter giving an account of  together in a psych long and field the whole ship slowly sinking we try to reach the harbor but the harbor seems far away but any hill assume would beat mechanic us in westerbork and this is what sh right each day mechanic this with whom i go for walks along the narrow barren strip of earth between the ditch and the barbed wire read to me what he has written you develop friendships here that are enough for several lives at once so and it's run by jewish doctors and the head of it was a german jewish doctor named dr fritz spanier and he will actually help mechanic is move out of that prison or status to other statuses they be friends him ah this is the registration room at westerbork it was used for many things this is eddie phyllis i'm talking about the claim batter of the typewriters with people coming in she would see her own family come in and this is her experience of it the jam packed freight train drew into the camp this morning the cars were shut tight but there were a few small openings through one of these i suddenly spotted mother's hat and father's glasses and peaky face now i shall have to share the same torture with them registration hours and hours of waiting more registration in hours of waiting quarantine and to the large barracks were all hell has let loose now interesting i mention her her brother was a concert pianist because he was such a specially gifted person the germans wanted to separate them from the community perhaps to trade them when things got bad to other countries and he was offered the chance to go to barn a field castle so special jews with special talents would be given the option to go there he said he would only go there if his family went with him and they said no at that same registration room there was an orchestra that they would have concerts they would have cabarets burlesque kind of acts and this is what mechanic this would say about it the review was a mixture of antiquated sketches and mild ridicule of the conditions prevailing at the camp not a single harsh word a faultless performance put over very professionally with a jewish star on their chest like music beside an open grave and he would say the facade is all that matters this is the commander of the camp he was known to be very comfortable with jews  he was also known to be very gentlemanly he had lived in this house this was this was his living room and like many germans who were involved in these things he had a nice wife he had a dog a fit asphalt path like a famous star making his entrance during a grand finale the near legendary figure is said to be quite charming and so well disposed to jews a voice behind me says once upon a time we had a comma down who used to kick people off to poland this one sees them off with a smile my wife says something always to me she said it's not what people say that what's not it's not what people say in their beautiful words that matters it's their actions that matter so here you have a person who's very generous and very charming but he's still doing the horrible actions if you go to westerbork today a comma downs house has been put behind to preserve it and to commemorate what occurred there in the gentleman that was there so if you go there today you'll see the house totally encased with glass one of the main aspects like all these camps was overcrowding and she will compare it to the last bit of flotsam after a ship has sunk everyone is just struggling to survive to stay alive of all the shortages in westerbork the the shortage in space is surely the worse people would be living in all of these beds this is just one of the barracks rooms and she would say however every bunk and every wooden table seems to really radiate its own atmosphere so  one this is actually a bunk a room of more elite people because you don't have you don't have you don't have the bunks like this where you there's no privacy there's nothing but each bunk could be different things it could be a philosophical conversation people could be playing cards people could be depressed person could be farting but everything is going on in this thing and each bed will have its own its own kind of character you can find every attitude every classism conflict and current of society and the area still remains only a half the killam kilometer square in these areas people's family would be split up now that  we're fortunate remember they didn't put their kids on the registration thing so they literally each one was separately put out to different dutch dutch arms and they would survive the war in hiding the husband was actually also with the jewish council and he was a supplier to the camps so he would actually come and see his wife bringing food and other things and they could they could communicate she would be joined by her brother in the camp this would be her husband's parents on the right as well as by her own parents so the father was out her husband was out the children were out but she's with the in laws in she was given for opportunities to excavate and she refused because she said if i excuse me the ones that will be suffer will be all of your relatives and other people so she chose not to she said let's try to ride out the storm this is them there would be religious ceremonies in one of these barracks and this is the lighting candles at hanukkah and probably occurred in december of one thousand nine hundred forty three though their registration room was also used as an s s party place so the room was constantly changing depending on what was going on there were a lot of youth and they tried to keep care of them but it was surreal this is a pampered nine month year old baby a little girl lies in the maternity ward here something very sweet blue eyed and beautiful she arrived here a few months ago with a criminal record because if you were in hiding you were automatically a criminal even if you're a nine month old baby there were world calls every day they could last five minutes where they could last all morning or all day depended on the whim of the people in charge this is the camp hierarchy from the commandant and staff to the dutch police guards to the german jewish leadership to jewish police exempted groups etc and they always talked about the need for vitamin c and the need for vitamin c was a code name for connections so everyone is trying to move on this hierarchy because if you move the right place you perhaps can save your life and the life of your family and this is miriam bolded just kind of shows you the extent of it i was given a note that i was entitled to have my hair washed once a month it's a kinda asking the secretary general for permission to wash your hair it's impossible to give you an idea of the relations here they are so idiotic that someone who has always lived a normal life can't possibly comprehend them there were various types of exemptions blue exemptions green exemption the kell my own list the special people list and everything is everyone is trying to get on the right exemption list and you're not sure because the list can change every day or every week e u may get on one exemption and then they change it for the next you're just trying to save your life and everything's costing you something you don't get the exemption list unless you have paul unless you have vitamin c unless you have connections and one of the people who was lucky and this is a is a letter for certain people that are going to be sent to palestine and marry him ball will actually be sent with about seventy nine other people belsen they would be traded for german prisoners of war with the british and she would actually go to palestine and be married before the end of the war and again as i mentioned to you she never she initially came to her husband to show him the letters she didn't have those letters yet the letters came two years later though she did take some from bergen belsen and no one wanted to read her letters because at the time in israel people were ashamed of the holocaust and so survivors who came they said something must be wrong with them if they survived or why didn't they fight harder so her letters basically remain buried for about forty years and then ultimately they are uncovered she would have three children  would die in the six day war as an heir heir airplane pilot her daughter would be killed on the golan heights in the yom kippur war and her other daughter would also die of a disease later she would work for the dutch embassy for about thirty years in jerusalem or tel aviv i'm not quite sure where philip mechanic yes would say a list tell wherever is a collection of jews who will one day be deported and every hill is some kind of talks about the surreal quality of it the sky is full of birds the purple lupine stand up so regally and peacefully two little women have sat down on the box for a chat the sun is shining on my face and right before our eyes mass murder the whole thing is simply beyond comprehension the biggest fear was the tuesday deportations so here's how it worked its would say we can exterminate this many people this week then it would go to berlin berlin at various parts throughout europe they say we need a thousand they would they would send a telegram berlin to the hague they say you can send a thousand people today then a telegram would go from the hague to westerbork and every tuesday approximately a thousand people would be deported now what happens on monday night you're given you're given a piece of paper and you're on the list people if you're not on the list you breathe a sigh of release and you leave you breathe a sigh of relief and you basically are exhausted for about several days and then start thinking why i made it i made it i made it and then a sunday comes around you start worrying about the next exemption list that's what happened every tuesday and here's the transport heard i have to go all such a pity isn't it that everything you have learned in life goes for nothing and how hard it is to die oh and the worst of all is having to leave holland a woman who had to feed her four month old child i keep calling oh god oh god but does he really exist another mother can you hide my child for me another mother they take the sick children away and you never get get them back another mother i would like to swim in my tears surely god will be able to understand my doubts in a world like this won't and mechanic this would say i have grown softer here everyone has become the same for me they are all blades of glass of grass bending to the storm if i survive this time i shall emerge a more mature and deeper person and if i die then i should die a more mature and deeper one everyone dealt with it do it differently some gave up their faith some had no faith some became more conscious of their own humanity other people became vicious other people would call and try to save themselves and save their families and were willing to sell anything to get that exemption and this is a life lesson from eddie hill a sum which sooner or later all of us have to experience this is something people refuse to admit to themselves at a given point you can no longer do but you can only be and accept and although that is something i learned a long time ago i also know that one can only accept for oneself and not for others and that's what is so desperately difficult for me here and she talks about her experience of scene the family separating for the last time and she talks about get gema curd the commandant walking down before the deportation with military steps he walks along the goods way again budgie now with people he is inspecting his troops the sick infant in arms young mothers and shaven headed and shaven headed men a few more ailing people are being brought up on stretchers he makes an impatient gesture they're taking too long about it through small openings at the top we can see heads and hands hands that will wave to us then he makes a brief gesture like royalty in an operetta the train gives a piercing whistle and a thousand and twenty jews leave assume and this is from our last letter a postcard the departure came without warning and son special orders from the egg we left the camp singing father and mother hundred three and this is the family before the war and this is the last post card that was actually tossed out of the train at the german border and it was found by farmers and it was postmarked september hundred forty three i just read an excerpt of that this is mechanic yes i at last i too have more than one guarantee of exemption a complicated situation it is as if we are all sitting together at a gaming table and i've put our money on different numbers and are waiting to see which number will come up we hope it will not be our own with the exemption of the baptised the barna fellers the members the thousands list all exemption stamps belonging to hospital patients have become invalid unfitness for deportation does not exist anymore at the time hilda was actually in the hospital she had jaundice or some other type of disease and she is uganda remember she was given many opportunities to leave she herself with her in laws with her mother and father in law would be deported on foot feb eleventh her brother was deported about a month earlier and this is one of her last excerpts i try not to reflect that it is absolutely futile and i cannot envision any plans for the future at all at the moment i just float at least for the time being and this is her last letter written on february seventh one thousand nine hundred forty four to her father who is in a different barracks and this is what she writes to david slew serbia beric sixty four defogger my worst fears have been realized and i have been called up for transport do what you can i have little hope stay healthy and strong send me a note back as soon as possible if you find out anything a thousand kisses hilda the only one that will survive i think her brother got to the united states early in the war but her parents would also survive because he was actually the theater director of the amsterdam central theater and was considered a special person they were sent to to reason stop and the mother and father died but their son and hilda would be executed in its and this is a mechanic it's actually talking about the transport that she was sent out on and he said of all the transports that have left here perhaps this was the most beastly and this is people leaving on trains they could leave on passenger trains or cattle trains it differed with the tuesday and these are people waving to each other as they left and this is mechanic is though although those who are not traveling are officially forbidden to leave their huts into after the train is departed many try to get as close to the train as possible to wave the last farewell to their relatives and friends the jewish police chase them back again and again but lose the game from all the roads between the huts the people come crowding into view like jack in the boxes and lined up shoulder to shoulder and again you see he keeps talking to people about waving their hands the train slips away like a ghost it glides past like the book of living pitchers we have seen own for merely or faces for the last time we have heard from them for the last time this is one of his last excerpts the lines of demarcation between honesty and dishonesty are getting blurred life here shows how easily a respected person citizen male or female a very pillar of society order and private property can saw it slide down the slippery slope into a world which lives on theft october who would be deported to auschwitz and he and the entire group were executed three days later now all in all this is going on the frank family is still in hiding and she's writing her diary and she w they will be joined by fritz pfeiffer augusten herman van pills and peter van pillows on the lower right who will be the the young adolescent boy that she gives her first kiss to and this is the frank family and i'm just going to read two of her quotes because this is what it was like to live in these places then at eleven fifteen p m annoyed a noise below up above you could hear the whole family breathing for the rest no one moved a muscle footsteps on the stairs then a rattling commotion in the enix is this really the beginning of the long awaited liberation will this year nine hundred forty four bring us victory we don't know yet but where there is hope there is life when need to be brave to endure the many fears and hardships and the suffering yet to come at this juncture everyone knew that germany was going to lose the war the question is would you survive long enough the family would be arrested be trade on for on friday august with auguste van pails would be deported to bergen belsen and the only survivor of all of that group would be the father auto frank this is just actually did the deportation list out of the netherlands of the frank family in their names  on that this is where margot and frank they would die in bergen belsen proximately about a month or two months before they were liberated by the british troops they died of typhus this is the auto frank and the dutch righteous who saved him and one of them i believe it's the woman on the lower left meat these are meat godel's i'm not quite sure how to pronounce that she went into the enix and discovered the diaries and from those diaries it would probably become the first witness of the holocaust becoming famous worldwide being translated probably in every language in the world a famous play a famous broadway  play a movie except for excedrin and would become the first real probably diary that introduced people to the holocaust and this is actually and frank in the warsaw jewish cemetery so even in the jewish cemetery there remembering her in warsaw poland and she was actually a long ways from warsaw in conclusion about one hundred seven thousand jews were transported from the netherlands one hundred two thousand would be murdered and five thousand survived twenty five thousand jews would go into hiding about eight thousand would be betrayed and would not survive the netherlands had the highest percentage of jews murdered in western europe the netherlands after poland has the highest number of people honored by yob the sham as the righteous of the nations three quotes from three of our direst this is philip mechanic yes in this respect the society we live in is definitely rotten man is good for nothing and frank in spite of everything i still believe that people are really good at heart and it has been brought home forcibly to me how here here how every atom of hatred adds to the world added to the world makes an even more inhospitable place if you go to westerbork today these bricks representing one of the hundred and seven thousand that were deported from there you will see photographs of some of the victims and you also see radio telescopes and the quotes that we just read really bring to the core because they ask the ultimate question what do we choose to be as human beings in some ways the holocaust is about the past but it's also about the choices we make in the present how we treat people how we welcome people how we defend people it's also about the future because if we ever meet aliens from another planet how are they going to see this are they going to see is through the vision of the holocaust or are they going to see us  compassion and the good actions that we also carry with us as part is the humanity thank you very much if you have any questions i would be glad to take them any questions