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layout: transcript |
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interviewee: sieny kattenberg cohen |
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rg_number: rg-50.030.0054 |
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pdf_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/oh_findingaids/rg-50.030.0054_trs_en.pdf |
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ushmm_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn504552 |
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gender: f |
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birth_date: none |
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birth_year: 1924.0 |
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place_of_birth: amsterdam |
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country: netherlands |
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experience_group: survivor |
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ghetto(s)_encyclopedia: none |
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ghetto: none |
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camp(s)_encyclopedia: none |
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camp: none |
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non_ss_camp: none |
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region: none |
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needs_research: none |
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data_entry: cl |
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accession: none |
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revisit: none |
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tags: transcripts |
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--- |
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--- |
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layout: transcript |
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interviewee: sieny kattenberg cohen |
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rg_number: rg-50.030.0054 |
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pdf_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/oh_findingaids/rg-50.030.0054_trs_en.pdf |
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ushmm_url: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn504552 |
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gender: f |
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birth_date: none |
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birth_year: 1924.0 |
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place_of_birth: amsterdam |
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country: netherlands |
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experience_group: survivor |
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ghetto(s)_encyclopedia: none |
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ghetto: none |
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camp(s)_encyclopedia: none |
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camp: none |
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non_ss_camp: none |
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region: none |
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needs_research: none |
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data_entry: cl |
|
accession: none |
|
revisit: none |
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tags: transcripts |
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--- |
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<body><dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="1">SIENY KATTENBERG COHEN October 12, 1990</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="3">Q: Please tell me your full name.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="5">A: Sieny Cohen.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="7">Q: When and where were you born?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="9">A: I was born in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span> in [not audible on this tape] March 1924.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="11">Q: What can you tell me about your childhood?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="13">A: Uh my childhood was very, very nice...warm, a wonderful family.</sentence><sentence id="14">I had a sister...I still have her, a sister... my parents who don't live anymore.</sentence><sentence id="15">I had a brother, nine and a half years younger than I was at the time.</sentence><sentence id="16">He also isn't there anymore.</sentence><sentence id="17">And we had a large family, and uh I have fond, fond memories of my youth, yah.</sentence><sentence id="18">Wonderful memories.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="25">Q: What do you remember about your <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span> and your family life while growing up?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="27">A: Well, the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span> was <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span>.</sentence><sentence id="28">I remember the <span class="DLF">street</span> in which we lived.</sentence><sentence id="29">At the time it used to be in my imagination later on it used to be a big <span class="DLF">avenue</span> (laughter).</sentence><sentence id="30">Later on when we came back and saw the <span class="DLF">street</span> it was as narrow as can be.</sentence><sentence id="31">I believe two <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cars</span> can pass (laughter) and that's it, but at the time there were not so many <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cars</span>.</sentence><sentence id="32">There were just <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bicycles</span> and it was always crowded and busy.</sentence><sentence id="33">It was a really through-fare, through <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span>, and, uh, in a predom....a predominant <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Jewish neighborhood</span>; uh, so on Shabbat it would be quiet.</sentence><sentence id="34">It was not an <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">orthodox neighborhood</span>.</sentence><sentence id="35">Everything, everybody was mixed really.</sentence><sentence id="36">Uh, on Saturday there wouldn't be much traffic but I remember the huge <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cars</span> from Heinekken's beer and from Van Gend en Loes with the horses that went through.</sentence><sentence id="37">Uh, <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">ice trucks</span> that delivered ice on Monday with big ice picks.</sentence><sentence id="38">It was an old <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">neighborhood</span> with all types of people, working people, uh...poor people, people some a little better off.</sentence><sentence id="39">My parents were very well off.</sentence><sentence id="40">They had a <span class="BUILDING">store</span>, shoes.</sentence><sentence id="41">They were...my father's name was a well-known name in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span>...<span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Kattenberg</span>.</sentence><sentence id="42">There's a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">borough</span>, not named after him (laughter)...maybe after the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">borough</span>, that I don't know; but, uh, he...they were a well-known family, yah, I might say.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="59">Q: What were your friends like?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="61">A: Friends were a little bit...at the time when I grew up, I wasn't allowed, for instance, to play in the <span class="DLF">street</span>.</sentence><sentence id="62">A lot of other children were allowed to play in the <span class="DLF">street</span>, but somehow my parents thought it wasn't right to have their...you know...little girl... had a sister one and a half year older.</sentence><sentence id="63">He says...she says she did play in the <span class="DLF">street</span>, you know...play...what was play at the time?</sentence><sentence id="64">Uh, <span class="DLF">jumping rope</span>, uh, marbles...nothing special but I remember maybe they regarded me too small.</sentence><sentence id="65">It wasn't allowed, and I wanted to become a nurse, so I rather played with dolls anyhow.</sentence><sentence id="66">USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 2</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="73">Q: What was the memory that you remember most from your childhood?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="75">A: Well, I was sixteen when I practically saw my parents for the last time, my <span class="BUILDING">house</span> for the last time.</sentence><sentence id="76">My childhood... loving care...just beautiful.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="79">Q: And what was the Jewish feeling like in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span> when you were growing up?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="81">A: The Jewish feeling?</sentence><sentence id="82">Well, you grew up as a Jew and that was the only thing there was.</sentence><sentence id="83">There was uh...there was no choice.</sentence><sentence id="84">There was no...at least for me, in my family, there was no other thing.</sentence><sentence id="85">Just being Jewish and living according to the Jewish laws.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="91">Q: While you were growing up was there any antisemitism in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="93">A: Not that I know of, but I can remember one childhood experience.</sentence><sentence id="94">I don't know how old I was...maybe I was eight or nine and, uh, maybe I had an argument with a child or the child with me and the child called out, "Lousy Jew!"</sentence><sentence id="95">You know.</sentence><sentence id="96">I didn't even know.</sentence><sentence id="97">I never had heard such a thing, so I said, "Lousy Christian!"</sentence><sentence id="98">I didn't even know (laughter) what it meant, you know.</sentence><sentence id="99">That was just child's, uh...that was the only experience I had.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="107">Q: Could you please tell us the names of your parents, your brothers and sisters and any aunts and uncles, cousins, who lived nearby?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="109">A: Oh, that's quite a lot.</sentence><sentence id="110">My father's name was Jonas Kattenberg.</sentence><sentence id="111">My mother was Berthe Kattenberg-Rueff.</sentence><sentence id="112">She came from <span class="COUNTRY">Switzerland</span>, as well as all her sisters who had married Dutch hus...uh, husbands.</sentence><sentence id="113">And my grandfather, Samuel Kattenberg, lived in our <span class="BUILDING">house</span> on the first <span class="INT_SPACE">floor</span>.</sentence><sentence id="114">We lived on the second and the third, and then there was his daughter across the <span class="DLF">street</span>, Bella Kattenberg, her son...because she was divorced and she took her own name back; and there was another brother of my father's, Saul Kattenberg, with his wife and two children.</sentence><sentence id="115">Uh, then there were in the nei...in the....a little bit further out of the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">neighborhood</span> we had, uh, also relatives...the sisters of my mother who married Dutch people, with their children, one of whom still is alive and another one married a cousin, but they are, uh, seventy-eight and the other one is in their eighties, and we get along still fantastically.</sentence><sentence id="116">It's like...like our...we are like sisters, really.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="125">Q: What was a typical day like for you as a child?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="127">A: Uh, I recall...I don't know why, but I, I recall, uh, when I went to <span class="BUILDING">kindergarten</span> and I always see the same picture, you know: my mother taking me to <span class="BUILDING">kindergarten</span>.</sentence><sentence id="128">That was down, uh, some <span class="DLF">steps</span>.</sentence><sentence id="129">You were delivered to somebody, you know, and you played there until they picked you up; and then we came <span class="BUILDING">home</span> and I got chocolate milk.</sentence><sentence id="130">That I will always remember, you know.</sentence><sentence id="131">I don't know for what reason, but chocolate milk...that was when we (laughter] got <span class="BUILDING">home</span>.</sentence><sentence id="132">A little later I started studying the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">piano</span>.</sentence><sentence id="133">My mother would call at the moment I rang the bell, "It is time to practice!"</sentence><sentence id="134">You know.</sentence><sentence id="135">After a while I hated it (laughter) USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 3 terribly and I gave it up.</sentence><sentence id="136">Later on, I got back.</sentence><sentence id="137">But, uh, as a child...yah...what do you experience as a child?</sentence><sentence id="138">Then later on I went to <span class="BUILDING">elementary school</span>, from eleme...in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">neighborhood</span>... from <span class="BUILDING">elementary school</span> I went to, uh, <span class="BUILDING">junior high</span> which was a little bit further out.</sentence><sentence id="139">You had to take a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bicycle</span>.</sentence><sentence id="140">It was near the <span class="DLF">Vondelpark</span>.</sentence><sentence id="141">No.</sentence><sentence id="142">That was near the <span class="DLF">Mauritskade</span>, on the <span class="DLF">Mauritskade</span>.</sentence><sentence id="143">And, uh, that was...oh, we had a good time there as kids and you felt a little bit freedom because you could ride from <span class="BUILDING">school</span> to <span class="BUILDING">home</span>, to your <span class="BUILDING">house</span> and vice versa, and sure it was a little bit freedom because at <span class="BUILDING">home</span> was <span class="BUILDING">home</span>, and you had to played the game that was, uh, set by the parents, heh?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="161">Q: In the years prior to the Dutch...to the German invasion of <span class="COUNTRY">Holland</span> in 1940, what was the Jewish feeling like in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">town</span> then?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="163">A: I don't remember before.</sentence><sentence id="164">Of course, I remember...I was still very young...uh the time that Hitler came in power, into power.</sentence><sentence id="165">I remember friends of my parents who had experienced already, "33, "34, and fled <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span>...coming to my parents and saying, uh, "Get out of here.</sentence><sentence id="166">Pick up everything.</sentence><sentence id="167">Come along with us.</sentence><sentence id="168">We are going to <span class="COUNTRY">England</span>."</sentence><sentence id="169">But my mother used to say, "Here, <span class="COUNTRY">Holland</span>, is such a wonderful <span class="COUNTRY">country</span>.</sentence><sentence id="170">There's such freedom.</sentence><sentence id="171">Nothing will ever happen here."</sentence><sentence id="172">So when 1940 came, I was in <span class="COUNTRY">Switzerland</span>.</sentence><sentence id="173">I...as I said, my mother came from there.</sentence><sentence id="174">She came from, uh, Saint Louis, the <span class="REGION">Alsace</span>, and had family living...still brothers...in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Basle</span> [<span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Basel</span>, <span class="COUNTRY">Switzerland</span>] and I was going to visit one of them with another two cousins of mine, at the time a little bit older.</sentence><sentence id="175">That was in "39, and I was fifteen, and we went on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> and we stayed there with my aunt and uncle, had a wonderful time, until one night my parents called.</sentence><sentence id="176">That must have been September.</sentence><sentence id="177">At that time...September "39...at that time, uh, the military were mobilized here, mobilization, as they say; and my parents told us to get back the next day, soonest, uh, opportunity...get back to <span class="COUNTRY">Holland</span>.</sentence><sentence id="178">I don't know whether my aunt and uncle told them, "Come here," because that I don't know.</sentence><sentence id="179">I don't recall that.</sentence><sentence id="180">I don't remember that.</sentence><sentence id="181">But I went...we went back.</sentence><sentence id="182">The three of us went back.</sentence><sentence id="183">Well, then later on I survived.</sentence><sentence id="184">The other two didn't.</sentence><sentence id="185">But, uh, people didn't believe it would be so bad and it would...<span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Holland</span> was a stronghold, a democratic stronghold...nothing would happen here.</sentence><sentence id="186">That was the overall opinion of most people.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="211">Q: What happened in 1940, after the Germans invaded <span class="COUNTRY">Holland</span>, to you and your family?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="213">A: That was a total surprise.</sentence><sentence id="214">And, uh, I remember that at first we walked in the <span class="DLF">street</span>.</sentence><sentence id="215">We looked at the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">planes</span>.</sentence><sentence id="216">Nobody actually understood what was happening.</sentence><sentence id="217">The reality came soon enough; and, uh, then fear started slipping in then, and eating at everybody.</sentence><sentence id="218">Uh the fear of the unknown, the fear what would happen and stories that had been told by Germans that had left <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span>, uh, but people still hoped for the best.</sentence><sentence id="219">They were Dutch Jews and they were...nothing would happen to the Dutch Jews and this only could happen in <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span> but never here.</sentence><sentence id="220">That still persisted...that that overall feeling of here we will be OK.</sentence><sentence id="221">And, uh, I remember, uh, a bomb fell in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span> because <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Rotterdam</span> was bombed, and I think one stray bomb fell in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span> and people were sitting in their <span class="INT_SPACE">cellars</span> and their, uh...<span class="INT_SPACE">cellars</span>...there were no <span class="INT_SPACE">cellars</span>.</sentence><sentence id="222">Maybe, yes, some <span class="BUILDING">houses</span> had <span class="INT_SPACE">cellars</span> but they were hiding and trying to get away from <span class="DLF">windows</span> and they didn't want to be seen; and there was fear.</sentence><sentence id="223">I USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 4 remember we all slept together on one <span class="INT_SPACE">floor</span>...my father, my mother, my brother, my sister.</sentence><sentence id="224">Uh, we had a girl who did the home-work [the housework], a maid...sleeping-in maid...and we had somebody else who tended the <span class="BUILDING">store</span>, and, uh, she also had a <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> in the <span class="BUILDING">house</span>, so we all were down on the <span class="INT_SPACE">floor</span> and, uh, it was...it was a very fearful something, because you felt the fear from your parents and, uh, yah...it was a very unpleasant, unsettling, fearful time.</sentence><sentence id="225">Of course, the Germans, the uniforms.</sentence><sentence id="226">Now I don't know exactly the date, but shortly after, things seemed to normalize and then the Germans had folders, big huge folders put on the <span class="DLF">walls</span> in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Jewish neighborhoods</span> that, uh, the Dutch Jews, they could sleep at ease.</sentence><sentence id="227">They could be at ease, because they were Dutch Jews and nothing would happen to them.</sentence><sentence id="228">They didn't have to fear the Germans.</sentence><sentence id="229">They would be regarded as the Dutch, and, uh, so they could all go and tend to their own business as usual.</sentence><sentence id="230">Well, a sigh of relief for everybody.</sentence><sentence id="231">I mean, as a child I wasn't so interested in politics; but the overall fear that had taken...yah, that crept under your skin, that did did...it never left you, and...but you became...adjusted.</sentence><sentence id="232">You adjusted to the circumstances and for a while life seemed to go on as usual.</sentence><sentence id="233">Then, after awhile, they played it so smart...so I don't know...I don't have the words for it...they played it in a way that everybody believed what was being told and was being printed and being said....</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="255">Q: Who played it?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="257">A: The Germans.</sentence><sentence id="258">Uh, the Jews were not allowed anymore on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">trams</span>, not in <span class="BUILDING">public buildings</span>.</sentence><sentence id="259">They were kept away from this.</sentence><sentence id="260">They had to stay <span class="BUILDING">home</span> at certain hours.</sentence><sentence id="261">They...then they had...non-Jews were not allowed anymore to stay with Jewish people...Jewish people were not allowed to visit non-Jews...a separation became as a wake, suddenly, between the people who were your friends and people you had lived with all...all those years.</sentence><sentence id="262">And it went from one thing to another and finally people...L, I forget to tell that right after the invasion, a lot of people had tried to escape.</sentence><sentence id="263">For instance, in the first days after 1940, after the May occupation, I know, for instance, my parents also tried to escape.</sentence><sentence id="264">I go back now to a few days after May 10th, uh...because the, the images come up and they don't come in...you know...in order.</sentence><sentence id="265">Flies back and forth there.</sentence><sentence id="266">But, uh, my parents, too, ...they tried to escape with friends.</sentence><sentence id="267">They had to wait because the friends were coming and they...believe it or not they came with valises full of clothes.</sentence><sentence id="268">Because...you know...nobody understood what was going on.</sentence><sentence id="269">They thought they could take a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">taxi</span> and they could drive to the Hook of <span class="COUNTRY">Holland</span>, to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Ljmuiden</span>, and take a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span> and go to <span class="COUNTRY">England</span>.</sentence><sentence id="270">But then by the time my parents and they got a...I don't know, a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cab</span> or a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">car</span> or whatever it was, it was some kind of a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">car</span>.</sentence><sentence id="271">Uh, we all were piled in and we drove but soon the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">car</span> couldn't go any...anywhere.</sentence><sentence id="272">Nobody could get through, and the few people that got away in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Ljmuiden</span>, they were just the lucky ones, if they made it to <span class="COUNTRY">England</span>, and the rest had to go back.</sentence><sentence id="273">So there was a try, there was.... People tried to escape then, but later on they adapted to the rules and, uh, they hoped for the best.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="291">Q: Did you or any of your family members try to leave Europe?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="293">A: At that moment...afterwards, no.</sentence><sentence id="294">No.</sentence><sentence id="295">Only at that moment, at that time when most people tried to escape, but afterwards there was no opportunity, there was no way out because, uh, very soon <span class="DLF">borders</span> were closed and, uh, no...it was very dangerous and a parent didn't want to USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 5 endanger his children.</sentence><sentence id="296">Uh, parents had parents too, older people they didn't want to leave.</sentence><sentence id="297">It was...it is an involved thing to leave.</sentence><sentence id="298">To get up and leave is a terrible thing, because you have to be thinking only of you, your children and maybe if your parents can go, but you cannot take the whole family.</sentence><sentence id="299">It...it breaks you in in two pieces.</sentence><sentence id="300">It's terrible.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="309">Q: What was the feeling like in the community after the Queen fled the <span class="COUNTRY">country</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="311">A: Despair.</sentence><sentence id="312">Hope that the Queen would survive and that the Queen could do something and that the Queen would take care of us all.</sentence><sentence id="313">But it meant...well, it meant..."My gosh, she left!"</sentence><sentence id="314">You know.</sentence><sentence id="315">That was unheard of...terrible!</sentence><sentence id="316">Not that she left, but understood because the Queen was a symbol of uh beauty, honesty.</sentence><sentence id="317">Uh, the Queen was looked upon as a wonderful, wonderful person, the whole family.</sentence><sentence id="318">I think most of the Jews were very royal-minded, at least in my, uh, surrounding, you know, so when she left it was quite a shock.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="327">Q: After the Germans had invaded and the anti-Jewish laws were put into effect, what did the Nazis do to the townspeople?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="329">A: It took awhile before they started, uh, getting at persons, you know.</sentence><sentence id="330">They had laws.</sentence><sentence id="331">You were not allowed to do this.</sentence><sentence id="332">You were not allowed to do that.</sentence><sentence id="333">You were not allowed to buy here, to go to a <span class="BUILDING">store</span>, to have non-Jews, to be with non-Jews.</sentence><sentence id="334">Uh, I don't know at what time...I couldn't pinpoint the date when they said, uh, businesses had to be taken care of by...they called it "Verwaltung" [Translation: "administration" at the time.</sentence><sentence id="335">That was somebody, they set in place of the owner, of the director of the business so the, the director or owner had to get out and they put somebody else in place, and a lot of people... know my father did...he had a big...yah business, import/export shoes and wholesale and he also in <span class="BUILDING">stores</span>...uh, I know my father got in touch with, uh, one of the manufacturers of shoes who had become a close friend through the years and talked with him, a man he could trust, and this man recommended his own bookkeeper.</sentence><sentence id="336">He gave my father his own bookkeeper.</sentence><sentence id="337">At the time they lived in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Deurne</span>, in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">North Brabant</span>.</sentence><sentence id="338">It was quite a distance away, and he actually gave this man out of the goodness of his heart--with the consent of the man, of course, and his family because they had to move to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span>--and he conducted the business from then on, and my father trusted this man implicitly.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="349">Q: Was this man Christian?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="351">A: Yes, he was Christian.</sentence><sentence id="352">Only Christians could do this.</sentence><sentence id="353">No Jews were allowed to uh conduct somebody else's <span class="BUILDING">Jewish business</span>, you know.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="357">Q: So he ran the business for your father?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="359">A: He ran the business for my father.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="361">Q: What was the reaction and the response of the townspeople of <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span> to everything that was happening?</sentence><sentence id="362">USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 6</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="365">A: Fear, because by now it was clear that the intentions were not so good.</sentence><sentence id="366">Uh, I remember "41, the razzia.</sentence><sentence id="367">That was the first one in June "41.</sentence><sentence id="368">Uh, when a cousin of mine--the one I had been with to <span class="COUNTRY">Switzerland</span>--was picked up from the <span class="DLF">street</span> because at that time it seemed that a German had been shot and I think that was the reason, the reason for the razzia.</sentence><sentence id="369">They picked up a number of Jewish young men from the <span class="DLF">streets</span>, and sent them to uh...yah...what was the name of the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">concentration camp?</span>...uh, it comes to my mind later on.... I can, I can say it every day and every minute of the day and of the night, but just now it...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="375">Q: <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Westerbork</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="377">A: No.</sentence><sentence id="378">No.</sentence><sentence id="379">They went right through to...later on we got notice that there he was shot trying to escape.</sentence><sentence id="380">My husband has a certificate of somebody else in his family...that's what they did, you know.</sentence><sentence id="381">They they they took them.</sentence><sentence id="382">They they tortured them.</sentence><sentence id="383">They put them in horrible <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camps</span> and they...then they sent a notification to the parents: uh, "Your son has been shot because he tried to escape."</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="391">Q: Was the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">concentration camp</span> in the <span class="COUNTRY">Netherlands</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="393">A: No.</sentence><sentence id="394">No.</sentence><sentence id="395">No.</sentence><sentence id="396">In <span class="COUNTRY">Poland</span>....I will...later on I will fill in the name.</sentence><sentence id="397">I just cannot, uh, think of it now.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="403">Q: What did the Nazis do to you and your family?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="405">A: Uh...what did they do to...you skip a long while...then we come now to 1943.</sentence><sentence id="406">I, meanwhile, ...1 told you I wanted to become a nurse and as I was too young to become a a...to to get the training for a nurse; as usual then, girls often got the training in children's care.</sentence><sentence id="407">I went to the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>.</sentence><sentence id="408">The <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> was an existing, uh, institution in the Middenlaan [it was called the Plantage Middenlaan] in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span>, and the Directrice was Henrietta Pimentel, and she had been there already since 1926 or "28, something like that...a long time.</sentence><sentence id="409">She was at that time already in her fifties...to me an old lady.</sentence><sentence id="410">But, uh, I was registered there and could start with this course, with other young girls my age.</sentence><sentence id="411">I was, I think, eighteen then.</sentence><sentence id="412">I had finished <span class="BUILDING">high school</span>, and, uh, "43 I became an intern there.</sentence><sentence id="413">At <span class="BUILDING">home</span> was very heavy, very...yah, it was terrible really, because they picked up people from everywhere...in the <span class="DLF">street</span>.</sentence><sentence id="414">They had small razzias, big razzias; because we skipped that time.</sentence><sentence id="415">We went from "41 to "43, and, uh, people had to take, uh, to buy rucksacks, backnaps [NB: backpacks or knapsacks], and put a name in it and and name everything they had to take along.</sentence><sentence id="416">They got lists what they had to take along, because they were going to a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camp</span> to work and to, uh...they had to bring their own clothes, all things well-known by now; so my par...my father bought them and bought, uh, backnaps and he bought, uh, clothes and my mother sewed the tapes and we each had one; and it was already there all the time, as for all Jews, not only for us.</sentence><sentence id="417">And, uh, my mother was very scared.</sentence><sentence id="418">She was so scared.</sentence><sentence id="419">She wasn't fit to do anything.</sentence><sentence id="420">She couldn't anymore.</sentence><sentence id="421">She was just sitting there, and sitting, and I think she was...the fear had taken hold of her and she couldn't do anything but just sit and would fear the bell and would fear the call that her USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 7 children would be called, that her children would be taken away from her; and I...my father was a strong man and he said, "What God will..." He was not...he was orthodox but he was not what you can consider today orthodox orthodox.</sentence><sentence id="422">He was a religious man, and he kept us...he kept telling us, "Whatever happens to you, keep your mind strong.</sentence><sentence id="423">Your body can, uh, uh...withstand a lot...hunger, even a beating, but keep your mind strong because your mind will carry you through and try to believe that there is somebody, that there is a God who will get you through this, and when we get back, and we will all get back...." He was so strong in his con...yeah, later on he was...later on I talked to him.</sentence><sentence id="424">He was not...he knew, but at that time he was so convinced that we would all get through, you know.</sentence><sentence id="425">He was a strong man.</sentence><sentence id="426">A very, very nice man.</sentence><sentence id="427">Loved by everybody, and he even tried for us to escape.</sentence><sentence id="428">Yes, we tried.</sentence><sentence id="429">Maybe in "42 it was.</sentence><sentence id="430">Oh my gosh, how I jump back and forth.</sentence><sentence id="431">Do you mind?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="459">Q: Not at all.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="461">A: In "42, my sister, uh, she had a friend she got engaged to and married later on; and, thank God, they are still alive.</sentence><sentence id="462">Uh, he told her, "Let's get into hiding."</sentence><sentence id="463">So my parents didn't want to because to break up the family, the daughter to get away, you know..."Let's be together."</sentence><sentence id="464">But my sister insisted, "And you better, you better Mom, you go also, go in hiding.</sentence><sentence id="465">Try to find somebody.</sentence><sentence id="466">Get away.</sentence><sentence id="467">Sieny, you too."</sentence><sentence id="468">I wouldn't want to get away from my parents, and she, [Yetty (ph)] went with her...and my parents, after a while they thought it was very wise for her to go, and then they really helped her and assisted her and said, "Yes, do it," you know. "</sentence><sentence id="469">Let's try."</sentence><sentence id="470">So she went into hiding.</sentence><sentence id="471">Uh, she went to an address...the address was Rusland, "<span class="COUNTRY">Russia</span>," near the <span class="BUILDING">K6nigsberg Hall</span> in a <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> next to a <span class="BUILDING">paper factory</span> or something what was there; and, uh, there she stayed and her fiance went every day, went over there.</sentence><sentence id="472">He had a <span class="NPIP">place</span> not too far away from her because at that time you couldn't stay together.</sentence><sentence id="473">That wasn't being done.</sentence><sentence id="474">That wasn't...it was unheard of, so later on they did...they stayed together later on.</sentence><sentence id="475">They had a heck of a horrible time, but later on...so [Yetty (ph)] left.</sentence><sentence id="476">My sister's name is [Yetty (ph)].</sentence><sentence id="477">And I...in "42, the Directrice, Miss Pimentel, she wanted me me...she wanted three girls.</sentence><sentence id="478">Sieny Kattenberg, Betty [Hausmit (ph)]...no, Betty [Oudgekirk (ph)] it was at the time, and [Bonnie Philips (ph)].</sentence><sentence id="479">There were three girls.</sentence><sentence id="480">Because in every class...you have some outstanding people.</sentence><sentence id="481">I wouldn't say because of of intellect, but because they are just their personality or they have something... and she picked us, and she made me head of a department because children started coming in.</sentence><sentence id="482">Meanwhile, people from the razzias were being brought to the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span> and the Germans didn't want the noise of the children and they couldn't, uh...it was a horrible situation there.</sentence><sentence id="483">It was awful.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="507">Q: The "<span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span>" is?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="509">A: The <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span>.</sentence><sentence id="510">You have heard of that?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="513">Q: Could you tell us what the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span> was?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="515">A: The <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span> was the <span class="BUILDING">Hollandse Schouwburg</span>, the <span class="BUILDING">Dutch theater</span>.</sentence><sentence id="516">That was a <span class="BUILDING">theater</span> where opera, operettas were performed; also <span class="BUILDING">theater</span>, and, uh, it was a well-known <span class="BUILDING">theater</span> at USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 8 the time in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span>.</sentence><sentence id="517">It was right opposite the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>, so I don't know how come the Germans decided to take this <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span> to bring the Jews to, to gather them and from that point on they went to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Westerbork</span>.</sentence><sentence id="518">I don't know what, whatever the reason was.</sentence><sentence id="519">The only reason being maybe it was still part of the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Jewish neighborhood</span>, not completely but still, so once the parents came in there with the children, the children were taken to the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>, in the beginning by the parents.</sentence><sentence id="520">But the Germans put a stop to that.</sentence><sentence id="521">Very soon, parents were not allowed to leave the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span> anymore.</sentence><sentence id="522">The children had to be taken there by people from the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> who wore an armband and who were marked and who had special permission to do so and the three of us were designated to do so, and, uh, that is where the most horrible time of my life started.</sentence><sentence id="523">Also the most important time of my life, because my life is divided between before then and after then.</sentence><sentence id="524">Now, uh, you ask....</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="535">Q: Was it legal for you to take the children?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="537">A: Yes.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="539">Q: From the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span> to the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="541">A: Yes, yes it was because as I just said I had a band, so we were...that meant we were...the three of us were the only ones, at the time, to take children, pick them up in the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span>, bring them to the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> and later on return them to the parents or not.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="543">Q: Could you tell me about your work in the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="545">A: Work in the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>...that started in.... USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 9 TAPE #2 PAUSE - TECHNICAL CONVERSATION</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="548">Q: Would you tell us about your life in 1941?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="550">A: In 1941, uh...1940...the days dragged on.</sentence><sentence id="551">In 1941, uh, the restrictions became worse.</sentence><sentence id="552">I remember my grandfather passed away at <span class="BUILDING">home</span> and he was buried by <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>.</sentence><sentence id="553">They took him by <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span> because they were not allowed to take out <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cars</span> or anything.</sentence><sentence id="554">It is very vague what I remember.</sentence><sentence id="555">Uh, as a as a girl I wasn't... certainly not allowed to go along to the <span class="DLF">cemetery</span>.</sentence><sentence id="556">Uh, no women did anyhow, but then there were only few men who were allowed to go with the corpse and, uh, I remember the story that they went by <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span> because they were not allowed to take a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">car</span> out.</sentence><sentence id="557">Uh, people were scared.</sentence><sentence id="558">I started working...I finished, uh, <span class="BUILDING">school</span> and got into the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> where I started taking...the, the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>, where I started taking the course, and by the end of that, uh, the situation had changed so much that, uh, the Directrice, Miss Pimentel, thought it necessary to have three girls staying there...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="568">Q: When you said by the end of that, by the end of what?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="570">A: By the end, uh...that was "42...beginning "42.</sentence><sentence id="571">Uh, when the...when I had done the exam, taken the ex...exam and that meant I was now...I had a degree...you can't call it a degree, but children's care.</sentence><sentence id="572">So, uh, as I said, three girls were staying there permanently; but before that, I forget...there was a nasty incident, because my sister was in hiding and my father got in touch with somebody who told him he could take his daughters and bring them over the <span class="DLF">border</span> and would take care that they would come in, uh, with the "Maquis" or under...underground organization and to get them away.</sentence><sentence id="573">That would cost three thousand guilders a child, and my father took care that the money was there, because he had money hidden because they had to give in all the money to Lipmann and Rosenthal," to the <span class="BUILDING">bank</span>.</sentence><sentence id="574">They had to...silver or whatever they had...<span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">radios</span>, <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bicycles</span>, whatever...they had to, uh, deliver at a certain point.</sentence><sentence id="575">That was all German property from now on, but he kept hidden money, some money, and he gave this to this man to take care of us.</sentence><sentence id="576">The man didn't dare to take me because I was raven black, my hair was; so I had to be...[ had to go to a <span class="BUILDING">beauty parlor</span> and have my hair done, and that was done in the evening.</sentence><sentence id="577">And it so happened he took me to an, an NSBer."</sentence><sentence id="578">An NSBer was...was somebody who was on the wrong side of the...of " Lipmann, Rosenthal & Company was an organization used by the Germans for the express purpose of milking the Jews.</sentence><sentence id="579">According to Law No.</sentence><sentence id="580">148/1941, which was passed in December 1941, Jewish financial assets--cash, checks, bank deposit, etc.--were to be transferred to, and managed by Lipmann-Rosenthal.</sentence><sentence id="581">> A member of the Nationaal Socialistische Bewegung (NSB), a Dutch Nazi movement founded in 1931 by Anton Adriaan Mussert.</sentence><sentence id="582">Antisemitic and pro-German, the members of the NSB collaborated closely with the German occupation regime.</sentence><sentence id="583">USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 10 decency, he was a pro-German.</sentence><sentence id="584">Nothing was said.</sentence><sentence id="585">He must have paid him quite a lot of money but when I was sitting in front of the mirror I saw my hair getting from from black to red, from red to yellow-orange.</sentence><sentence id="586">It was...finally it was orange.</sentence><sentence id="587">It was terrible.</sentence><sentence id="588">I was in shock, but it had to be done because the man wouldn't take me otherwise, so, uh, we went the next day and we walked and as we walked on the <span class="DLF">Gelderskade</span> ...from my <span class="BUILDING">house</span>, I lived the <span class="DLF">Nieuwe Hoogstraat</span> ...that is not far away from the <span class="DLF">Dam</span> ...as we walked on the <span class="DLF">Gelderskade</span> toward <span class="BUILDING">Centraal Station</span>, a man came over and and he saw my sister and my...we were both was together and he said, "Don't go further.</sentence><sentence id="589">Don't go further, because they are trying to trick you; because over there is an "<span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">overvalle wagen</span>" [a type of <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">emergency police vehicle</span>], a big <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">German truck</span>, and the man who your parents probably gave money to, he is in cahoots with them."</sentence><sentence id="590">So we ran like crazy and I don't remember anything of my sister, anything, anything at all, but I remember I came <span class="BUILDING">home</span>.</sentence><sentence id="591">I rang the bell and I fell in my father's arms and he cried so terribly.</sentence><sentence id="592">You...you know, that broke my heart because to see your father cry...so there I was again the next day back to the beauty par...to another <span class="BUILDING">beauty parlor</span>, had my hair done black, then back...went to the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> and, uh, maybe I wasn't ready with the course yet.</sentence><sentence id="593">Maybe I hadn't taken my exam at the time.</sentence><sentence id="594">But by the end of "41 I stayed in the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> because that is when the the Directrice asked us three, which I told already, to come there.</sentence><sentence id="595">Another incident while I was there, so I didn't sleep at <span class="BUILDING">home</span> anymore...my little brother who was then at the time eight and a half...he came to the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> and he walked through the <span class="DLF">barriers</span> because there were <span class="DLF">bridges</span> in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span>.</sentence><sentence id="596"><span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span> is a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">city</span> with <span class="DLF">canals</span>.</sentence><sentence id="597">As most people know is <span class="DLF">bridges</span>, and the Germans had a habit of raising the <span class="DLF">bridges</span>, certainly when there was a razzia, and closing them off at eight o'clock because nobody was allowed after eight to be in the <span class="DLF">streets</span>, so this little guy, when he...when he could, he tried to...being a young little boy, he wanted to show that he would get through and all of us, we would be scared to death and I scolded him, you know. "</sentence><sentence id="598">Don't do it!"</sentence><sentence id="599">And, "Why did you do it?"</sentence><sentence id="600">And, "Don't you know what you are doing to Dad and Mom?"</sentence><sentence id="601">And, you know.</sentence><sentence id="602">And then afterwards, shortly afterwards, he was taken.</sentence><sentence id="603">I often...oh, I often told myself, you know, why had I scolded him?</sentence><sentence id="604">Why I...why did I do that?</sentence><sentence id="605">Why?</sentence><sentence id="606">You know...memories.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="648">Q: When was he taken?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="650">A: He was taken May 26th, 1943--with my parents.</sentence><sentence id="651">In "40...after "42, times were horrible.</sentence><sentence id="652">Times were very intensive, and as I said I was in the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> and then the, uh, razzias started taking people from the <span class="DLF">streets</span>, bringing in people from hiding.</sentence><sentence id="653">Everybody went to the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span> as we said before, and that is when the ordeal started with the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> and the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span> where there were three transports during the week.</sentence><sentence id="654">Now I don't recall exactly what evening.</sentence><sentence id="655">There was one Friday night.</sentence><sentence id="656">There was probably one Monday night, Tuesday or Wednesday...I don't recall the evenings.</sentence><sentence id="657">That meant that the children who were given to the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> to taken care...to be taken care of, to be loved by everyone, they went on transport, transport...those...during those nights, and that was terrible, the way it went.</sentence><sentence id="658">You see, the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> was meant for children of parents who worked during the day.</sentence><sentence id="659">They used to come there at eight o'clock, seven-thirty, between seven-thirty and eight o'clock in the morning.</sentence><sentence id="660">The parents delivered them, mother usually, and then they got clean clothes and they got breakfast and we played with them.</sentence><sentence id="661">In the afternoon they got a meal.</sentence><sentence id="662">They rested.</sentence><sentence id="663">They were USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 11 there till five, five-thirty I believe.</sentence><sentence id="664">When the mother was through with work, she came and picked up the child.</sentence><sentence id="665">Now an influx of new children came there, that were taken away from their parents.</sentence><sentence id="666">The <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> was changed then.</sentence><sentence id="667">It used to have...imagine a <span class="BUILDING">building</span>...you enter...there's a big <span class="INT_SPACE">hall</span>.</sentence><sentence id="668">Where you enter is a big <span class="DLF">door</span>.</sentence><sentence id="669">Next <span class="DLF">door</span>, next to that big <span class="DLF">door</span> is a smaller <span class="DLF">door</span> with a smaller <span class="INT_SPACE">hallway</span>.</sentence><sentence id="670">That is the place where the children were given to us in the morning by the parents when they went off to work.</sentence><sentence id="671">The big <span class="DLF">doors</span>, they were usually not even opened.</sentence><sentence id="672">Every...the whole <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">traffic</span> went through there.</sentence><sentence id="673">Now let's get back to the big <span class="DLF">door</span>.</sentence><sentence id="674">On the right hand side when you come in, there's a <span class="DLF">door</span>.</sentence><sentence id="675">That's where the Directrice, Miss Pimentel lived.</sentence><sentence id="676">The following <span class="DLF">door</span> on that <span class="INT_SPACE">hall</span> to the right is a <span class="INT_SPACE">dining room</span> for the personnel.</sentence><sentence id="677">On the left hand side, there was a small <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> where the babies used to be.</sentence><sentence id="678">Mothers had babies too, and the babies came there too during the day, so from any time after birth till they were about a year old, they were in that <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span>, in the wicker baskets, in the little <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">beds</span>, and they were very well taken care of.</sentence><sentence id="679">Next to that <span class="INT_SPACE">baby room</span>, on the left-hand side, was a huge <span class="INT_SPACE">kitchen</span>.</sentence><sentence id="680">In my mind, huge then, you know.</sentence><sentence id="681">Uh, then when you go a little bit through the <span class="INT_SPACE">hall</span>, there was a large <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> but that was where the diapers were washed, because we didn't only take care of the children.</sentence><sentence id="682">We also had to wash their clothes, at least their, the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">diapers</span> and the the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">underwear</span>, etc.</sentence><sentence id="683">It was a heck of a smell always (laughter), it was terrible.</sentence><sentence id="684">And we didn't look forward to have, to have "corvee," as it was called.</sentence><sentence id="685">There was a big <span class="DLF">staircase</span> going upstairs, with a <span class="INT_SPACE">balcony</span>.</sentence><sentence id="686">There was to the left, if 1 remember correctly, a <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span>, a right <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> and the <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> to the <span class="DLF">street</span> must have been up front, a huge big <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span>.</sentence><sentence id="687">Uh, at the original time it was used for...we had baby little, little, yah, <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cots</span> standing there, because the kids would sleep during the day.</sentence><sentence id="688">But now it was converted to a real <span class="BUILDING">dormitory</span>.</sentence><sentence id="689"><span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">Cots</span>, little <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">beds</span>, everything that could hold a child would stand there.</sentence><sentence id="690">The big huge <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> in the up front, was then used for the age from about the time they were born "til four or five, and the bigger children would be in another <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span>.</sentence><sentence id="691">I had, uh, charge of children from zero till four or five years old.</sentence><sentence id="692">I was in charge of them.</sentence><sentence id="693">The <span class="INT_SPACE">baby room</span> was moved upstairs because the <span class="INT_SPACE">baby room</span> now became an <span class="INT_SPACE">office</span> where Mr. Stiskind, who was working in the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span>, who was in charge of all the registration of all people who came in there, so he had a <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> in the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span>; and the Directrice converted [NB: conversed] with him--secretly always--in that <span class="INT_SPACE">baby room</span>.</sentence><sentence id="694">Am I clear?</sentence><sentence id="695">Yah?</sentence><sentence id="696">Uh, by "42, not too many children came in but we knew we could count on many more because there were transports but not as regular yet as it would be by the end of "42, middle of "42, "43.</sentence><sentence id="697">Then really the whole Jewish population was taken away, and they needed every...every centimeter of <span class="INT_SPACE">space</span> they had to put up the children and to put up the people there.</sentence><sentence id="698">So, they came.</sentence><sentence id="699">Uh, let me start a day during occupation, during razzias.</sentence><sentence id="700">They came by <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">tram</span> from the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">city</span>.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="752">Q: Who came by <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">tram</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="754">A: The...the Jewish people that were picked up in razzias.</sentence><sentence id="755">The <span class="DLF">bridges</span> were going up.</sentence><sentence id="756">The Germans came in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">district</span>.</sentence><sentence id="757">They combed every <span class="BUILDING">house</span>.</sentence><sentence id="758">They first with the big, uh, things...with the how do you call them?</sentence><sentence id="759">I forgot...where you...where you can call through [megaphones].</sentence><sentence id="760">I forgot the name for that thing.</sentence><sentence id="761">Not in Dutch nor English I know.</sentence><sentence id="762">Uh, they screamed in the <span class="DLF">streets</span> for people have to come down and old people, young people, men, women, children...everybody had to get down in the <span class="DLF">streets</span>.</sentence><sentence id="763">There would be big <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">trucks</span>, huge USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 12 <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">trucks</span> to pick them up.</sentence><sentence id="764">They were beaten into the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">trucks</span>...<span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">trucks</span>.</sentence><sentence id="765">Uh, I saw that... have seen personally that they threw older...an older neighbor of mine, all the way down from the <span class="DLF">staircase</span> because he didn't want to come down, and, uh, that was only once.</sentence><sentence id="766">Then once I was in the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>, I wasn't in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">city</span> anymore.</sentence><sentence id="767">I was there.</sentence><sentence id="768">Maybe lucky, I don't know, because the day my parents were taken away from their <span class="BUILDING">home</span> with my brother and the whole family- -May 26th, 1943--I was not <span class="BUILDING">home</span>.</sentence><sentence id="769">I was in the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>.</sentence><sentence id="770">I was there day and night. (</sentence><sentence id="771">Cough) So, uh, the children, the parents, they came in the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">tram</span>, were pushed out of the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">trams</span>.</sentence><sentence id="772">They were standing in front and then in the <span class="INT_SPACE">hall</span> of the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span> and they were registered by people there from the Joodse Raad.</sentence><sentence id="773">The Germans were there standing guard and they were Just seeing to it that everything went correctly, that they were registered correctly by name, by number.</sentence><sentence id="774">So what they tried to do there, they tried not to register children.</sentence><sentence id="775">They tried if possible, if they could, they tried, uh, a family with four children...uh, mama, papa, child.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="799">Q: This is the Jewish Council, or the Joodse Raad?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="801">A: Yeah.</sentence><sentence id="802">They would try, if possible.</sentence><sentence id="803">And that was mainly the intent of Mr. Walter Stisskind, with some other people too, because nobody worked alone, nor in the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> nor in the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span> nor in the <span class="INT_SPACE">underground</span>.</sentence><sentence id="804">It was all a combined effort.</sentence><sentence id="805">At...in the beginning, nobody knew what he was doing, just, uh, trying to save, uh, relative, an acquaintance, somebody.</sentence><sentence id="806">But very soon it became a joint effort to try to save as many as you could in the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span>.</sentence><sentence id="807">So, as I said before, the people in the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span>, they were crowded.</sentence><sentence id="808">Imagine...I don't know how big the <span class="BUILDING">theater</span> was...maybe two hundred people at the time...that would have been a big <span class="BUILDING">theater</span> I suppose at the time.</sentence><sentence id="809">Many hundreds were sent in there.</sentence><sentence id="810">No <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">beds</span>.</sentence><sentence id="811">No nothing.</sentence><sentence id="812">They were just sitting on very uncomfortable <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">chairs</span>.</sentence><sentence id="813">Uh, there must have been two, maybe three, maybe one...I don't know...toilets.</sentence><sentence id="814">How was that, uh, sixty, seventy years ago when they built the <span class="BUILDING">theater</span>?</sentence><sentence id="815">Maybe there was one <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">toilet</span>, so you can imagine what went on there.</sentence><sentence id="816">And, uh, so the Germans decided, "All the children, out" And that's where the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> came in.</sentence><sentence id="817">We...after awhile, we--the three girls--got orders from our Directrice who was always in touch with this Mr. Stisskind.</sentence><sentence id="818">She sent us to get the children from there and bring them to the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>.</sentence><sentence id="819">Now we all had...the three of us were all in charge of a group, so we all had a number of girls working with us, and something I regret for the rest of my life is--and my husband knows because he became involved there, too--uh, I had a book with every name of every child, when it came in, who the parents were, when it was born, and when it left.</sentence><sentence id="820">On the last day of the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>, we left--that's another story--and I couldn't take it with me because that was too dangerous.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="841">Q: How did you avoid this entire time being deported yourself?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="843">A: Uh, there was no question of avoiding.</sentence><sentence id="844">Since we were.... the Directrice was supposed to be there...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="847">Q: Was she Jewish?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="849">A: She was Jewish.</sentence><sentence id="850">She was necessary there.</sentence><sentence id="851">The three of us were necessary there.</sentence><sentence id="852">The other USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 13 girls that worked there were necessary there.</sentence><sentence id="853">However, I have here with me a picture of the Directrice with the, as was called, the "Onderdirectrice" [assistant director], the director.</sentence><sentence id="854">She was a non-Jewish woman.</sentence><sentence id="855">She had to leave the <span class="REGION">premises</span> I believe already in the beginning of 1941 because she was non-Jewish.</sentence><sentence id="856">So we were all Jewish there, and the Germans would say, "We have...we need some" ...through the Joodse Raad, I suppose..."We need so many people there, and this person, this person, this person...they are necessary because you can't leave those children alone," so there was no doubt for me that I would stay on.</sentence><sentence id="857">So was the Directrice.</sentence><sentence id="858">So were the others.</sentence><sentence id="859">Now we discussed once in a while, what if something, ...heh?But we dismissed it from our minds.</sentence><sentence id="860">We were busy.</sentence><sentence id="861">We were young.</sentence><sentence id="862">We didn't think the worst.</sentence><sentence id="863">We...it it ..now I can honestly say that the big tragedy didn't even penetrate at the time because the people went out to the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camps</span> to work.</sentence><sentence id="864">Who could imagine what was intended for them.</sentence><sentence id="865">Who could imagine?</sentence><sentence id="866">Nobody.</sentence><sentence id="867">So, uh, we just hoped that everybody would come back.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="888">Q: Now this entire time, what did you know of your family, your parents and...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="890">A: My parents were....</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="892">Q: Your sister and brother?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="894">A: My, my sister was in hiding.</sentence><sentence id="895">I didn't know anything about her.</sentence><sentence id="896">My parents were taken away on the 26th of May with my brother...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="900">Q: In 194....3?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="902">A: Three...and I saw them because I saw them in the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">tram</span> as they...as they drove...they were not even in the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span>.</sentence><sentence id="903">They went directly to the <span class="DLF">Poldeweg</span> or where ever <span class="BUILDING">station</span>...whatever <span class="BUILDING">station</span>.</sentence><sentence id="904">They were going straight to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Westerbork</span>.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="909">Q: How did you find out that they had been taken?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="911">A: Because, uh, we found out the same day because other people were brought in and I don't know where the choice was made...this one goes through and that one doesn't go through and this one goes in the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span>.</sentence><sentence id="912">My parents never made it to the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span>.</sentence><sentence id="913">They went through, and uh...yeah that was known so fast because that is such an operation.</sentence><sentence id="914">All the <span class="DLF">bridges</span> go up.</sentence><sentence id="915">Nobody comes through.</sentence><sentence id="916">Not a gentile, not a Jew, nothing, nobody.</sentence><sentence id="917">So that was known, I think, the same half hour that it started, and messages someway always slip through, come through, and in the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span> they must have known, because they must have been told by the Germans that they could expect many children, many people, many everything.</sentence><sentence id="918">You asked me something I really, uh, never thought of, but we knew what we kew.</sentence><sentence id="919">We knew it.</sentence><sentence id="920">My luck, call it luck...was that I wasn't <span class="BUILDING">home</span>.</sentence><sentence id="921">If I would have been <span class="BUILDING">home</span>, I would have had the same fate as all the others.</sentence><sentence id="922">But, uh, the children came, kept on coming and by that time there were some organizations going without my knowledge.</sentence><sentence id="923">I mean the underground, the, the, uh, the VN that operated in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Brabant</span> and there was an organization in USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 14 <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Utrecht</span> and there was an organization in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span>, but unknown to us, because we occupied ourselves only with the children...get them ready, get them from the parents, keep them quiet, play with them, dress them, get them ready for transport, because three times at nig...during the week, the transport would leave at ten o'clock at night.</sentence><sentence id="924">That meant that we knew in the morning already that kids would have to be delivered to the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span>.</sentence><sentence id="925">Now which kids?</sentence><sentence id="926">Most of them.</sentence><sentence id="927">Sometimes it was a lucky one, the one who was not registered.</sentence><sentence id="928">There were very few of them.</sentence><sentence id="929">Those children were hidden within the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> and my husband can tell his story better than I do, but he stayed with the children that were hidden upstairs in the <span class="INT_SPACE">attic</span>.</sentence><sentence id="930">That those were mostly bigger boys because how could you do it with very young ones, you know, so they must have been so in the age from eight or twelve, thirteen, fourteen...1 don't know exactly anymore.</sentence><sentence id="931">They were taken out.</sentence><sentence id="932">They were either on a walk or, uh, over the <span class="DLF">hedge</span>...over the edge from...over the...over the...yeah...over the <span class="DLF">gate</span> in the back.</sentence><sentence id="933">I have never seen it.</sentence><sentence id="934">I haven't even ever known it, because everybody did their own bit secretly.</sentence><sentence id="935">Nobody told anybody.</sentence><sentence id="936">Nobody...you didn't tell your best friend, whatever, because it was just too dangerous.</sentence><sentence id="937">Not too dangerous...you didn't realize it was dangerous for you, but it was dangerous for the children.</sentence><sentence id="938">If you would say, "This kid is not registered," then it goes out, then that couldn't be told; and I don't even think anybody knew that that child wasn't registered.</sentence><sentence id="939">That was something absolutely between something absolutely between Mr. Stiskind in the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span> and the Directrice in the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>.</sentence><sentence id="940">Uh, to take the children to transport was terrible.</sentence><sentence id="941">They were all little.</sentence><sentence id="942">As if they felt, you had to wake them up at nine o'clock to have them ready by ten, and, uh, to get them dressed as if...and as if they felt it.</sentence><sentence id="943">I don't remember anybody cried, ever.</sentence><sentence id="944">As...there was such a terrible atmosphere, such fear of not knowing what is going to happen.</sentence><sentence id="945">Nobody knew they were going to be killed.</sentence><sentence id="946">You, you, you knew...you didn't know whether they stayed with the parents, maybe in a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">work camp</span>, maybe...there were <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">work camps</span>, even in <span class="COUNTRY">Holland</span> you didn't know about.</sentence><sentence id="947">Uh, there were <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">work camps</span>...they called "<span class="POPULATED_PLACE">work camps</span>" later, when you heard the word "<span class="POPULATED_PLACE">concentration camps</span>."</sentence><sentence id="948">We didn't know, and that is the tragedy of it all because the people didn't know.</sentence><sentence id="949">Maybe...maybe the Dutch population would have done more if they would have known, but they were scared.</sentence><sentence id="950">They were not helpful.</sentence><sentence id="951">They, uh...there were some...I would say maybe five percent...I don't know.</sentence><sentence id="952">According to my knowledge, what I saw in my <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">neighborhood</span>, in my...of the people that were saved through others, maybe...maybe a very, very small percentage of the people did something.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="995">Q: Did you know what was going to happen to the children after they were transported?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="997">A: No.</sentence><sentence id="998">That's what I just explained.</sentence><sentence id="999">How could you know?</sentence><sentence id="1000">How?</sentence><sentence id="1001">How could you know?</sentence><sentence id="1002">They went to...with their parents to to work <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">camps</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1003">Now a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">work camp</span>, that was something not pleasant but you had to work there, maybe in a <span class="BUILDING">factory</span>, maybe make I don't know what; but the children went with the parents.</sentence><sentence id="1004">Now we were told, the three of us were told an org..., underground organizations were set up.</sentence><sentence id="1005">An underground organization, people--individual people--they they would contact people...not that I knew it at the time but they would contact people in, say, <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Friesland</span>, <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Limburg</span>, in the <span class="COUNTRY">country</span>; and they would ask, ask people, "Would you have <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> for a little Jewish girl or a little Jewish boy?"</sentence><sentence id="1006">This one would be able to have one if it would have blue eyes and blond hair.</sentence><sentence id="1007">The other one needed a four-year-old with USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 15 dark hair and blond eyes...uh, uh, blond hair and dark eyes, so it would fit in the family.</sentence><sentence id="1008">Those messages came through, through the <span class="INT_SPACE">underground</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1009">Even so, it sounds incredible.</sentence><sentence id="1010">Finally through Stiskind who was, of course, completely underground-minded with all he did with the Joodse Raad.</sentence><sentence id="1011">He got the message back to the Directrice; so when we had children that fitted that image, that child would be kept away.</sentence><sentence id="1012">That child...but you couldn't keep a child away from the parents without the parents giving consent to give it away, so the three of us, we were sent to the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span> with the message to the parents as follows.</sentence><sentence id="1013">In your own words: "Look, we don't know what is going to happen.</sentence><sentence id="1014">We don't know where you are going to be, under what circumstances you will have to live with your children.</sentence><sentence id="1015">Would you mind if we tried to find a family, a foster family, for your child, which will keep it until you come back?"</sentence><sentence id="1016">You can imagine the questions would follow.</sentence><sentence id="1017">The mother: "For how long?" "</sentence><sentence id="1018">How long?</sentence><sentence id="1019">Nobody can tell you." "</sentence><sentence id="1020">Where?" "</sentence><sentence id="1021">I...I don't know.</sentence><sentence id="1022">Sorry, I don't know." "</sentence><sentence id="1023">To whom are you going to give it?" "</sentence><sentence id="1024">Yah, to somebody who will take care of your child."</sentence><sentence id="1025">So you speak in, in, in kind of a veil...in kind of... How would you call it?</sentence><sentence id="1026">Uh, in, in a language that people don't understand, the people cannot trust it.</sentence><sentence id="1027">They trust me probably, so few gave up their children.</sentence><sentence id="1028">Too few, because of...you want to keep your child with you.</sentence><sentence id="1029">If I would have the choice today, I would say, "I keep it.</sentence><sentence id="1030">I keep my child with me;" because those we are talking about...children from from year old to five years old, six years old.</sentence><sentence id="1031">So the few people that gave up their children...there were not so many I would say.</sentence><sentence id="1032">Those children we kept in the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> when the other children went on <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">transport</span>, but we came to the <span class="DLF">door</span>...Family A has four children.</sentence><sentence id="1033">The Family B has three children.</sentence><sentence id="1034">Everybody was accounted...had to be accounted for, so now came the family who had given up a child to go in hiding.</sentence><sentence id="1035">We didn't use the word underground with those people because that word didn't exist.</sentence><sentence id="1036"><span class="BUILDING">Hiding</span> didn't exist.</sentence><sentence id="1037">No, they would be foster children to someone.</sentence><sentence id="1038">So at night when we came to be counted for, what we did...we took instead of the children, of instead of that particular child that they had consented to go in hiding, we we had a little blanket, blanket with a little piece of rag in there or a doll or whatever looked like a, a child.</sentence><sentence id="1039">If the child would be bigger, a little bit bigger, we would really have something big there, you know.</sentence><sentence id="1040">It was scary.</sentence><sentence id="1041">It was really scary.</sentence><sentence id="1042">But you didn't think.</sentence><sentence id="1043">It was just in the way of work.</sentence><sentence id="1044">You did it uh and you hoped only that the parents wouldn't allow anybody to look at the child.</sentence><sentence id="1045">You know?</sentence><sentence id="1046">Oh, God forbid!</sentence><sentence id="1047">I still, I still get the creeps when I think of it; that the German would say, "Let me see the child."</sentence><sentence id="1048">Which never happened.</sentence><sentence id="1049">LONG PAUSE - TECHNICAL CONVERSATION</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1103">Q: We're in 1943.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1105">A: We're in 1943.</sentence><sentence id="1106">Uh, there are several razzias.</sentence><sentence id="1107">There are many razzias, small ones.</sentence><sentence id="1108">People are being picked up.</sentence><sentence id="1109">Uh, uh, I skipped the February razzia in 1942, but, uh, that was a different story...political, where the Dutch really went out; and they... there were strikes, railway, <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">trams</span>, etc.,</sentence><sentence id="1110">public transportation.</sentence><sentence id="1111">But in "43, in, on the 26th of May, there was this tremendous big razzia where they took everybody out of the <span class="BUILDING">houses</span>, closed off the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">city</span>; and (coughs) at that time they picked up as many as as three thousand people at a time, and that was the reason I recall now that my parents did not enter the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span>, that they had USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 16 because at that time they didn't separate anybody.</sentence><sentence id="1112">They didn't bring anybody down there.</sentence><sentence id="1113">They went straight to the...to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Westerbork</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1114">Now in June 1943 there was another razzia; and, well, this time...I think it was the 20th of June, uh, another razzia took place where they took a tremendous big amount of people, whereby my husband's family who had moved...who had lived originally in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Rotterdam</span>...they were obliged to mo...to move to the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">ghetto</span> as Jews, to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span>, and now um in June the 20th, June the 20th, they were picked up in a razzia and taken by <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">train</span> straight to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Westerbork</span> and from there on.</sentence><sentence id="1115">That was first my family...now Harry's family.</sentence><sentence id="1116">Uh, at this time the Directrice, liked Harry, liked me; because Harry was...when he came to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span>, got also a job, uh--but he will tell his story himself--and, uh, she decided we should get married before anything should happen.</sentence><sentence id="1117">Uh...we got married on June the 28th, 1943, in the morning at twelve o'clock; whereby Harry came to the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> and called out to me, "Sieny, uh, give over to somebody else.</sentence><sentence id="1118">Take care that you are ready by twelve because we are getting married."</sentence><sentence id="1119">And at that time we got married in a <span class="BUILDING">house</span> which was supposed to be the Joodse Gemeente, the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Jewish community</span>, but it didn't exist anymore and it was just a formality, and, uh, there came a few people from <span class="BUILDING">City Hall</span> in long...in a long coats and I had just gotten a clean uniform from somebody, a nurse's uniform because, uh, you know, after all getting married is not such a...you don't get married in a dirty uniform.</sentence><sentence id="1120">So that took care of our marriage.</sentence><sentence id="1121">The Directrice was witness.</sentence><sentence id="1122">When we came back to the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>, she had cookies and then some chocolates which she had kept for a special occasion, you know, and this was it.</sentence><sentence id="1123">Shortly afterwards...it must have been July, Harry moved in the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> then, too.</sentence><sentence id="1124">We all had little <span class="INT_SPACE">rooms</span> in the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>, the three girls and uh, now uh, I don't know the date anymore but it must have been the beginning of July, there was another razzia.</sentence><sentence id="1125">I couldn't tell you the date anymore exactly...by which the whole <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> was involved.</sentence><sentence id="1126">They took all the children, all the personnel help including the Directrice and me, and, uh, we all went on transport; so we all went to what was called then the <span class="DLF">Poldeweg</span> -- which was I suppose a railroad plaats, placement, placement, where the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">trains</span> turned around, etc.</sentence><sentence id="1127">etc.--from where all the razzias, people that were taken in the razzias, went to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Westerbork</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1128">We were lying there during the night and, uh, the hos...<span class="BUILDING">hospitals</span> were empty.</sentence><sentence id="1129">Then all the <span class="BUILDING">people's homes</span>, whoever was a Jew was brought there.</sentence><sentence id="1130">And, uh, suddenly they called out, "Mrs. Cohen from <span class="BUILDING">Das Kinderhaus</span>!"</sentence><sentence id="1131">So, we had with us Virrie Cohen.</sentence><sentence id="1132">She was the daughter of Professor Cohen, the head of the Jewish Council, Joodse Raad; and she went, uh, to where she was called, but it wasn't her, she - they wanted.</sentence><sentence id="1133">They wanted me. "</sentence><sentence id="1134">Das freche Weib."</sentence><sentence id="1135">Now they had...one of the Germans--Von Klingebiel--who was a guard at the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span>, he called me "Das freche Weib" [meaning "the impudent or cheeky woman" in German] because I dared to stand up to the Germans at the time.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1167">Q: That translates to...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1169">A: That translates to a whole <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span> where children are asleep, a <span class="BUILDING">dormitory</span>, and suddenly twenty Germans come in with their boots stamping and screaming and shouting; and there am I, and I call out, "Get out of here!</sentence><sentence id="1170">How dare you to come in here!</sentence><sentence id="1171">How dare you to disturb children that are asleep!</sentence><sentence id="1172">I don't want to see you.</sentence><sentence id="1173">Get out!"</sentence><sentence id="1174">And with that they left.</sentence><sentence id="1175">Unbelievable as it sounds.</sentence><sentence id="1176">Incredible, but it happened.</sentence><sentence id="1177">And from that time on, to the Germans I was "Das freche Weib."</sentence><sentence id="1178">They called me... they called me that.</sentence><sentence id="1179">One day I was called to the...because USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 17 once in a while you gave up your...you gave up your <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bed</span> because one of the other girls had family in the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span>, and they wanted to see them for the last time.</sentence><sentence id="1180">For the time being they didn't know, but for the last time, their family or their friends, so we exchanged the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">beds</span> and she went, you know.</sentence><sentence id="1181">So one day I was called and I was said, "You go on <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">transport</span>," and I said, "Why?"</sentence><sentence id="1182">And L...and they said, "Because you have a nerve giving your <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bed</span> to somebody else.</sentence><sentence id="1183">You are supposed to come here and you gave it.... You go on <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">transport</span>."</sentence><sentence id="1184">So I said, "So send me.</sentence><sentence id="1185">Big deal.</sentence><sentence id="1186">My parents are there.</sentence><sentence id="1187">You took my parents.</sentence><sentence id="1188">I go to my <span class="BUILDING">parents</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1189">Take me.</sentence><sentence id="1190">I go."</sentence><sentence id="1191">Whereupon he gave me back my <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bed</span> and told me to get out.</sentence><sentence id="1192">I don't want to use the word, but to get out fast, go back to the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1193">So that's my story about "Das freche Weib"; and when I was at the <span class="DLF">Poldeweg</span> we didn't, between three thousand people, and they called off my name, then Virrie Cohen went because after all she was the daughter of Professor Cohen, and then they needed me.</sentence><sentence id="1194">They put me in a in a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">truck</span> with all Germans around me.</sentence><sentence id="1195">I think I was stiff with fear.</sentence><sentence id="1196">I, I think I couldn't move a finger.</sentence><sentence id="1197">And they drove off, changed <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">trucks</span>, put me in another <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">truck</span>, and dropped me in front of the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> in the middle of the night, not a single person in the <span class="DLF">street</span>, anybody, nobody; and I came back to the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>, and Mr. Siiskind and all the others were standing, not outside the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span> but in the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span> within the glass, without...within the <span class="DLF">wall</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1198">When they saw me, they couldn't believe their eyes.</sentence><sentence id="1199">And the Germans gave them order, "From now on she is in charge here in the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>."</sentence><sentence id="1200">But then I was nineteen, and the daughter of Professor Cohen came back the next day and she was something like twenty-five, twenty-six and she was a registered nurse; so it was the logical thing that she would be in charge and she became in charge.</sentence><sentence id="1201">So we stayed in the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> then "til the end.</sentence><sentence id="1202">I think it was the 29th of September...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1237">Q: 1943?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1239">A: 1943...when the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> was emptied.</sentence><sentence id="1240">If the date is not hundred percent correct...the 29th...was the end of September.</sentence><sentence id="1241">And, uh, at that time, that morning, Harry came over and said, "Sieny, get dressed.</sentence><sentence id="1242">Get out of here.</sentence><sentence id="1243">We are leaving."</sentence><sentence id="1244">And I said, "I cannot leave.</sentence><sentence id="1245">How can I leave?</sentence><sentence id="1246">We still have children here."</sentence><sentence id="1247">Not many...there were not many, anymore.</sentence><sentence id="1248">He said, "You have to, because I heard and I feel it is over."</sentence><sentence id="1249">So we discussed it with a few other girls and they said, "You have to go."</sentence><sentence id="1250">Also Virrie said, "Go."</sentence><sentence id="1251">So we went, and as we went across the <span class="DLF">street</span> past the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span>, the Germans stopped us and Harry had a false identity card because we all had passports with a J on it, but he had gotten from the underground organization there in the same <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span>, he had gotten false identification cards for him and for me.</sentence><sentence id="1252">And as we walked there and we were stopped and the German said, "Show me your papers."</sentence><sentence id="1253">I dropped dead almost because I thought he gave the wrong papers, but he gave the right papers without the J, so he said go on.</sentence><sentence id="1254">And we walked, and we walked all the way to the <span class="DLF">Amsterkade</span>, which is in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span>, the southern part of <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1255">We didn't talk.</sentence><sentence id="1256">We didn't...we didn't dare to sigh.</sentence><sentence id="1257">We didn't...we wanted to keep as silent as...and we walked over there and when we came near that corner, I will never forget...it is a round <span class="BUILDING">building</span> on that corner...we stood there and we took off our stars which had been fastened...we had loosened already before...and we took out, off the stars and we went quickly upstairs to the woman who had an address for us to go into hiding.</sentence><sentence id="1258">We came up there and shortly afterwards came a man, "Uncle Hannis."</sentence><sentence id="1259">And this is really the story...the USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 18 end of my story from the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1260">I couldn't take a... couldn't bring along the book with all the names, with all the children, because that would have endangered everybody uh to show them the children, those children have gone on transport and those children are in hiding, so [had to leave it there, not realizing that it wouldn't be there after we came back because we didn't know.</sentence><sentence id="1261">After I came back there was no <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> anymore.</sentence><sentence id="1262">So, uh, that was the end of the most important time in my life for ever and ever to be; and then comes the hiding story which is a story unbelievable, too...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1287">Q: Before we go into that, Sieny, when you were at the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>, about how many children were saved?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1289">A: Well, I always...I always... PAUSE - TECHNICAL CONVERSATION - TAPE CHANGE USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 19 TAPE #3</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1292">Q: About how many children were saved from the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1294">A: Uh, you ask me a question which is very difficult to answer.</sentence><sentence id="1295">I know I have seen in in in different articles the amount of thousand children.</sentence><sentence id="1296">The number of thousand children, to me, seems almost not possible.</sentence><sentence id="1297">I have always thought from the start when we talked about it while we were in hiding, that the number of children saved from the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>, actually from the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>, would have been around three hundred, because it was so difficult; but then I don't know what else played without my knowing.</sentence><sentence id="1298">Uh, to me it always seemed a reasonable number, three hundred.</sentence><sentence id="1299">I've talked about it with some other people too, who thought so....But, yah...1, I don't dare to say thousand is impossible.</sentence><sentence id="1300">A thousand maybe would be possible if you calculate the children that were picked up in the <span class="DLF">streets</span> and were not taken to the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>, but were were taken immediately to to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Westerbork</span> or wherever; but a thousand children...it seems an awful lot to me.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1309">Q: You had mentioned something before about going...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="1311">TECHNICAL DISRUPTION</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1313">Q: You had mentioned before, before you went into hiding, that your husband had given false papers to a German on the <span class="DLF">street</span>, but if you were wearing a yellow star, how is it you were able to pass?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1315">A: Yah...no.</sentence><sentence id="1316">Sorry.</sentence><sentence id="1317">Of course he gave them the correct passport with the J, but I I was scared to death that he would pull out the, the uh...yah...how would you call it...the imitation passport without the J, which to me was as | am telling the story, that was the good one, you know, so my mind skipped and I made from the imitation the good one, while at that time the correct one was the one with the J on it.</sentence><sentence id="1318">So I was scared that he had given the one without the J on it.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1323">Q: But the Germans still let you pass?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1325">A: Yeah.</sentence><sentence id="1326">When he saw that the passport had a J on it, for Jew, he let us go.</sentence><sentence id="1327">He said, "What are you doing here?"</sentence><sentence id="1328">And Harry said, "Oh, we are just...we belong...we...we're going back to the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1329">We were just going for a little stroll.</sentence><sentence id="1330">We just walk around here and we go back." "</sentence><sentence id="1331">OK," he said; but of course we never came back.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1339">Q: So now it's late 1943 and you've gone into hiding.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1341">A: Hiding just starts as we enter the <span class="BUILDING">house</span> of one Mrs. de Swaan,* who was aa fantastic woman > Truus de Swaan was a woman in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span> who collaborated with Boogard family to help find <span class="BUILDING">homes</span> in the <span class="COUNTRY">country</span> for Jewish children.</sentence><sentence id="1342">USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 20 who saved many many children; and, uh, as we came to her <span class="INT_SPACE">apartment</span>, we had sent there some clothes in a valise and we heard immediately the valise was stolen because there was broken into our <span class="BUILDING">house</span>, so we were without clothes.</sentence><sentence id="1343">Uh, a few hours later came the man to pick me up, one of us up, to take to, uh, to somebody's <span class="BUILDING">house</span> where we would...where I would be for the time being until Harry could join me, and then he would take us to our <span class="BUILDING">house</span> where we would stay, so, uh, there was no time for clothes, for anything.</sentence><sentence id="1344">I went with this man and he took me to a family.</sentence><sentence id="1345">They had...they had nine children of their own and had just lost a child and wanted to take a Jewish child that just fit in the range of their children with the same color eyes and the same color hair at the age in between their children.</sentence><sentence id="1346">That was a wonderful family.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1354">Q: And where was this?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1356">A: That was in (cough)...yah...the family name was [Ablossedam (ph)], and they lived in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Lisse</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1357">No, Harry?</sentence><sentence id="1358">I think so.</sentence><sentence id="1359">I believe that.</sentence><sentence id="1360">Yeah. [</sentence><sentence id="1361"><span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Wiewerdam</span> (ph)] was their name.</sentence><sentence id="1362">So I stayed there one day, and at night Harry came with the same man who had taken me there and now the man picked up Harry later because it was too dangerous to take up...to pick up two people at the same time.</sentence><sentence id="1363">So he said, "I'm going to take you to your address where you will stay for the time being until the occupation is over."</sentence><sentence id="1364">So he took us, and we--it was by <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bicycle</span>, I believe--and we drove through part of the <span class="COUNTRY">country</span>--uh <span class="DLF">pasture</span>, water, beautiful <span class="DLF">pasture</span>, beautiful <span class="COUNTRY">country</span>, what you don't see...everything you don't see in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span>--and we felt...oh, we could breathe.</sentence><sentence id="1365">As if a brick fell from our heart and our shoulders.</sentence><sentence id="1366">We were free.</sentence><sentence id="1367">We stopped for a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1368">Imagine a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>...half of the...half on the on the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">ground</span>...a little bit over the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">water</span>...a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">home boat</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1369">A <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">houseboat</span>, it is called...a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">houseboat</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1370">This man held goats.</sentence><sentence id="1371">Oh, what a smell!</sentence><sentence id="1372">It was...the smell was was horrendous, but we didn't mind it.</sentence><sentence id="1373">It felt...we felt, we were free.</sentence><sentence id="1374">As we entered that <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>, the man said...the owner from the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>, said to "Uncle Hannis," the man who took us there, "What do you do?</sentence><sentence id="1375">To bring me Jews again?</sentence><sentence id="1376">I just had a raid.</sentence><sentence id="1377">You... cannot take them."</sentence><sentence id="1378">Oh my gosh.</sentence><sentence id="1379">There was...there was the brick again, you know.</sentence><sentence id="1380">We felt terrible. "</sentence><sentence id="1381">Uncle Hannis" said, "But you have to take them, even if it is only for tonight because I cannot take them back.</sentence><sentence id="1382">It is too dangerous."</sentence><sentence id="1383">We came in the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1384">There's a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>...the <span class="INT_SPACE">cabin</span> where where where he has his, uh, steering equipment and behind there a big <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span>, big flowers, gladiolas on both sides, <span class="DLF">windows</span> on the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1385">As he explained to us the flowers were there to protect the people either from the side of the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span> or the side of the <span class="REGION">land</span> to look into the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>, because there were no <span class="DLF">curtains</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1386">So, uh, he said "Now, make yourself at <span class="BUILDING">home</span> here.</sentence><sentence id="1387">Here is a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bed</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1388">I'll give you...I'll bring you some <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">sheets</span> and uh there is no danger here, but be careful.</sentence><sentence id="1389">I have a little dog and if the dog barks, there's danger.</sentence><sentence id="1390">Then quickly open this <span class="DLF">window</span> on the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">water</span>...on the water-side and jumped into the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">water</span>, in the <span class="DLF">canal</span>."</sentence><sentence id="1391">So we were stiff with cold and fear again, and we put our clothes close behind us and we lie down on this <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bed</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1392">Who dares to undress, you know?</sentence><sentence id="1393">And behold, the little dog started to bark, and we jump out of the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">water</span>, out of the <span class="DLF">window</span>, in the <span class="DLF">canal</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1394">Don't ask me, "Now, how or or what or how did you come back?"</sentence><sentence id="1395">I don't know.</sentence><sentence id="1396">I don't even remember.</sentence><sentence id="1397">I remember that afterwards he went around with a...with a...with a flashlight and he said, "Tis nothing.</sentence><sentence id="1398">Everything is OK.</sentence><sentence id="1399">He must have smelled a rat or something.</sentence><sentence id="1400">Come back."</sentence><sentence id="1401">So I don't know how we got back, but, I don't know.</sentence><sentence id="1402">Next morning...next morning: USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 21 "Uh, are you dry?" "</sentence><sentence id="1403">Yes, we are dry."</sentence><sentence id="1404">He said, "I'm getting water."</sentence><sentence id="1405">Now, this is the story.</sentence><sentence id="1406">It shouldn't be told because it is a horrible, terrible (laughter), dirty story; but listen...those people lived still in the <span class="COUNTRY">country</span> without gas, without electricity, without water, so what did they do?</sentence><sentence id="1407">They had a big pot.</sentence><sentence id="1408">They call it here in <span class="COUNTRY">Holland</span> a kroes [a pot used for drinking] pot, blue Delft pot or something.</sentence><sentence id="1409">During the night this pot was used for all of us, to do you know what.</sentence><sentence id="1410">In the morning we took this pot, held it over the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>, did like this in the <span class="DLF">canal</span>, emptied it out, took his little <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">rowboat</span>, went with this pot across the <span class="DLF">canal</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1411">There was a pump on the other side of the <span class="DLF">canal</span>, and he pumped water and that was our drinking water and our that we had to cook with and to do with, and we cooked with the water out of the <span class="DLF">canal</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1412">Well, it couldn't have been worse if you'd just come out of civilization, you know?</sentence><sentence id="1413">Those people never washed themselves, uh...selves and they were used to this kind of life.</sentence><sentence id="1414">But we were not, so not only did we have to look out of the <span class="DLF">windows</span> that nobody was coming...it became a danger to stay there; so in the evening we had to take that little <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">rowboat</span> and row to a little isle in the <span class="DLF">canal</span> where somebody had hidden some kind of a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">yacht</span>, <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">yacht</span>...what you called then a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">yacht</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1415">A little <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">speedboat</span> or God knows what it was...a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1416">So we sat...we went in that little <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">canoe</span>, _ it wasn't, and we hurried with paddles, went to the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">island</span>, and we heard plump, plump, plump, plump...and we thought, "My God...the Germans, you know...they are after us," because it was dark.</sentence><sentence id="1417">We had to go there in dark.</sentence><sentence id="1418">Nobody was allowed to see us.</sentence><sentence id="1419">So when we came within the shelter of the of the... What is it?</sentence><sentence id="1420">Loods where the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span> was lying...some kind of a small <span class="BUILDING">warehouse</span> or something...we settled...we had taken a blanket...we settled in the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">boat</span> and then the rats came, all over, because what we had heard were rats.</sentence><sentence id="1421">Well, there we stayed every night, and in the morning early we would be...we went back.</sentence><sentence id="1422">At five o'clock in the morning we went back.</sentence><sentence id="1423">It was now October, November...beginning of October I think.</sentence><sentence id="1424">No...we were not so long there.</sentence><sentence id="1425">We were not...we were about two, three weeks there.</sentence><sentence id="1426">Uh one day somebody visited us from the underground-- because people had applied with the underground through, through...I don't know but through people, because they needed tickets to get food, extra food from the underground-- so a man came and said, "So," he said, "Nice to see you.</sentence><sentence id="1427">You are staying here?"</sentence><sentence id="1428">And Harry told them that I had gotten thinner in a few weeks, so many...shed so many kilos, and food wasn't there and it was so terribly scary and so dirty. "</sentence><sentence id="1429">Couldn't you please get us another <span class="NPIP">place</span> to hide?"</sentence><sentence id="1430">So he said, "I'll try...and do my best," he said--but he shouldn't have told, because it was really dangerous what he did--he said, "In my <span class="BUILDING">house</span>," he said, "we have a number of Jews hiding; were under an older man, an old man;" and Harry said, "Who, who?What's his name?"</sentence><sentence id="1431">He said, "Uncle Hank."</sentence><sentence id="1432">Yah, "Uncle Hank."</sentence><sentence id="1433">That was absurd.</sentence><sentence id="1434">It was a name just taken from from anywhere. "</sentence><sentence id="1435">Mr. Smith."</sentence><sentence id="1436">So Harry went into his pocket and picked out a photo from his father and showed it to the man and said, "Would it be this man?"</sentence><sentence id="1437">And he said, "Yes.</sentence><sentence id="1438">That's him."</sentence><sentence id="1439">And Harry said, "That's my father!"</sentence><sentence id="1440">He said, "Let me see what I can do," and he left.</sentence><sentence id="1441">The next evening he came back and he said, "I have it all arranged.</sentence><sentence id="1442">The moment I stepped in the <span class="BUILDING">house</span>, I said to my mother, "I've been there and there and I met the children of "Oom Hank" and they are in need...they need another <span class="NPIP">place</span> as soon as possible.</sentence><sentence id="1443">Can they come here?"</sentence><sentence id="1444">And the mother said, "If they are the children of "Uncle Hank," there's no question about it; they come here."</sentence><sentence id="1445">So he and the brother came to pick us up during the night, one evening, and they had three <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bikes</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1446">One for Harry, and I went in the back of one of the men, and we drove through the polder.</sentence><sentence id="1447">If you take the Haarlemmerweg, through the USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 22 Haarlemmermeer polder, and we drove and we drove and we drove.</sentence><sentence id="1448">And finally we got to the little <span class="BUILDING">house</span>, and came in there and there were...at the time there were seven people hiding, Jewish children and the families, and they were all sitting at a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">table</span> with cups and saucers and we saw as we came in...<span class="NPIP">heaven</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1449">Free.</sentence><sentence id="1450">So they had already seven people.</sentence><sentence id="1451">We were eight and nine.</sentence><sentence id="1452">Then there came another woman with a baby just born who was...she had lain in the, in, in the grain to hide herself, so she was picked up and brought there too, and so we were with ten people, ten Jewish people there, a little baby and a son of theirs who was hiding from the <span class="DLF">Arbeitseinsatz</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1453">He didn't want to work in <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1454">They had a <span class="INT_SPACE">room</span>...imagine you come in the <span class="BUILDING">house</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1455">You have a <span class="DLF">door</span>...you stand in the <span class="INT_SPACE">kitchen</span> and you can see this <span class="NPIP">place</span> where I sit and that <span class="INT_SPACE">kitchen</span> wasn't much bigger, about this and this behind me, and that's what they called the <span class="INT_SPACE">kitchen</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1456">There was a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cupboard</span> and there was an old <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">sink</span>, and that was the <span class="INT_SPACE">kitchen</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1457">Later on when we took out the bread, the bread had holes in it because the mice walked right through it, but it was delicious.</sentence><sentence id="1458">Uh, we couldn't get up in the morning and wash ourselves because those were city manners.</sentence><sentence id="1459">They didn't like that.</sentence><sentence id="1460">That was unnecessary to get all the fat from your skin...that wasn't necessary.</sentence><sentence id="1461">But they were beautiful, wonderful people.</sentence><sentence id="1462">We have kept a relation with them.</sentence><sentence id="1463">As a matter of fact we just came back from <span class="COUNTRY">Canada</span>, from the son.</sentence><sentence id="1464">They visit us.</sentence><sentence id="1465">Their life and our lives were from that time on just brother, sisters, father, mother.</sentence><sentence id="1466">Fantastic.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1579">Q: How long did you stay there?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1581">A: We stayed there for one and a half year, but...we couldn't stay there, as it was, because pretty soon we got raids from the Germans, from the Dutch pol...police; uh, so we had to do something.</sentence><sentence id="1582">Harry...now the man of the <span class="BUILDING">house</span>, the owner, he was a farm hand.</sentence><sentence id="1583">They made a few guilders a day.</sentence><sentence id="1584">They were very poor people.</sentence><sentence id="1585">They had seven children.</sentence><sentence id="1586">Their <span class="BUILDING">house</span> was...the <span class="INT_SPACE">kitchen</span>, a small <span class="INT_SPACE">living room</span>, an upstairs, an <span class="INT_SPACE">attic</span>, and that was all.</sentence><sentence id="1587">So Harry said, "Uncle Sam," what could we do?</sentence><sentence id="1588">Where could we go?"</sentence><sentence id="1589">And "Uncle Sam" said, "I was in the <span class="INT_SPACE">cellar</span>."</sentence><sentence id="1590">There was no <span class="INT_SPACE">cellar</span>, but there was a <span class="INT_SPACE">potato cellar</span> that runs under the <span class="INT_SPACE">living room</span> and that is to keep the potatoes from freezing in the winter.</sentence><sentence id="1591">On top of there there were a few <span class="INT_SPACE">closets</span> in which there were the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">beds</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1592"><span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">Bedsprei</span> [<span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">cupboard bed</span>], as they call it here.</sentence><sentence id="1593">And he said, "I went in the <span class="INT_SPACE">potato cellar</span> and on the right-hand side from the <span class="DLF">wall</span>, I saw that there's maybe eighty...fifty centimeters wide, that <span class="INT_SPACE">cellar</span>."</sentence><sentence id="1594">He said, "In the <span class="DLF">wall</span> is a crack.</sentence><sentence id="1595">That might be the finger of God, that I have to make a <span class="DLF">door</span> in that right hand <span class="DLF">wall</span>; that if 1 have to hide somebody, they can go through that <span class="DLF">door</span> in the <span class="DLF">wall</span> underneath the <span class="INT_SPACE">living room</span>."</sentence><sentence id="1596">And that's what happened.</sentence><sentence id="1597">Harry and and his sons, they started digging out all the dirt from under the <span class="BUILDING">house</span>, the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">earth</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1598">They could only do that during the night because nobody was allowed to know that we were there, and they put straw in there.</sentence><sentence id="1599">They brought straw in.</sentence><sentence id="1600">So you...you go in the <span class="INT_SPACE">cellar</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1601">You crawl to the back.</sentence><sentence id="1602">Then there is a <span class="DLF">door</span>, not on the right, not in the <span class="INT_SPACE">floor</span>, but on the right hand side in the <span class="DLF">wall</span>, higher so you have to step over it, and then you come under the planks from <span class="INT_SPACE">floor</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1603">Now they couldn't dig more than seventy-five centimeters because there was the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">water</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1604">It was in the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">Haarlemmermeer polder</span>; so when they hit the <span class="ENV_FEATURES">water</span>, they put back a little bit more earth, dirt. "</sentence><sentence id="1605">Uncle Sam" had straw, bundles of straw being put down, and that was our <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">living quarter</span> for one and a half year; and the only air, light we had--that was...that were those little things from the foundation.</sentence><sentence id="1606">In each <span class="BUILDING">house</span> you have USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 23 little opening on the bottom so the <span class="DLF">air</span> can circulate under the <span class="INT_SPACE">floor</span>, and that was where we stayed.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1633">Q: "Uncle Sam" was also "Uncle Hank"?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1635">A: No. "</sentence><sentence id="1636">Uncle Sam" was Sam, the man of the <span class="BUILDING">house</span>. "</sentence><sentence id="1637">Uncle Hank" was Harry's father, who was also in hiding there, already taken there by the underground before we came.</sentence><sentence id="1638">His name was Solly Cohen, but they called him "Uncle Hank" because just the word "Solly"...if it would slip.</sentence><sentence id="1639">Nobody in that whole <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">neighborhood</span> was called "Solly."</sentence><sentence id="1640">That was a Jewish name.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1647">Q: So you met with your husband's father when you were there?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1649">A: We had met before.</sentence><sentence id="1650">He was...he was in the <span class="BUILDING">hospital</span> in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1651">As a matter of fact, uh when he went into hiding, that was the night they took all the patients out of the <span class="BUILDING">hospital</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1652">He was operated on.</sentence><sentence id="1653">He had an operation and he walked off the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">operation table</span>, walked out of the <span class="BUILDING">hospital</span> some way, somehow, came <span class="NPIP">outside</span>, asked somebody to help him to get there and there and there, and there they helped him to get to the address where he wanted to go, people he could trust.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1659">Q: After a year and a half of staying at this <span class="NPIP">place</span>, what happened then?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1661">A: We couldn't walk because we had lain down all the time.</sentence><sentence id="1662">We couldn't sit, because seventy- five centimeters is not high enough.</sentence><sentence id="1663">Our food was brought through a <span class="DLF">door</span> in the <span class="INT_SPACE">floor</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1664">They had an invalid daughter and whenever there was a raid she would sit on that <span class="DLF">door</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1665">However, the Germans found that <span class="DLF">door</span> and went into that <span class="DLF">door</span> but looked on the <span class="INT_SPACE">floor</span> with their flashlights to find an opening to a <span class="NPIP">hiding place</span>.... USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 24 TAPE #4</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1671">Q: What happened when the Germans came?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1673">A: Uh, what happened to the...the Germans came.</sentence><sentence id="1674">There were seven raids.</sentence><sentence id="1675">There were incredible raids.</sentence><sentence id="1676">There were raids that they closed off the whole <span class="REGION">area</span>, the whole <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">district</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1677">Why?</sentence><sentence id="1678">Because, uh, there was another...there was a farmer, not far away--Boogard*--a very well-known name here, because of what he did during the war.</sentence><sentence id="1679">He had sixty Jews and those sixty were hidden in the...in the <span class="DLF">fields</span> and, uh, the Germans found out.</sentence><sentence id="1680">They rolled up the whole thing.</sentence><sentence id="1681">They took everybody, and our...the family where we were hiding, they had told the underground...they knew what was going on everywhere...to be safeguarded from raids they had told, "Look, we have no Jews anymore.</sentence><sentence id="1682">They left.</sentence><sentence id="1683">We don't know where they are, where they went.</sentence><sentence id="1684">We have no Jews anymore."</sentence><sentence id="1685">So pretty soon it was known all over the <span class="NPIP">place</span> that [Brver (ph)] doesn't have Jews anymore.</sentence><sentence id="1686">When they made this big raid and they beat the Jews--they beat one man so badly, telling him, "Where are Jews?!</sentence><sentence id="1687">You have to tell us!</sentence><sentence id="1688">You have to tell us!"</sentence><sentence id="1689">His mind ran quickly and he said, "The [Bryers (ph)], they have Jews;" because he knew that they had gone there, they had left there.</sentence><sentence id="1690">They would have told him there were no Jews, so he felt it safe, rather than mention another name, gave the name of people who did not have Jews anymore, you know.</sentence><sentence id="1691">So they came over there with <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">trucks</span> and with raids and with guns and with everything and they they they searched the whole <span class="BUILDING">house</span> and they screamed.</sentence><sentence id="1692">We were lying there.</sentence><sentence id="1693">We heard every word of it, and Harry's father at the time was in his sixties, lying there too; and a little boy seven year old lying against his shoulder, who later on told him, ""Uncle"..."Uncle Hank," I heard your heart go rick-a-tick-a- tick-a-tick," you know.</sentence><sentence id="1694">So, uh, the oldest son, the one we just visited in <span class="COUNTRY">Canada</span> now, they took...they hit him and they said, "There are Jews here in the <span class="BUILDING">house</span>, and you tell us where they are!"</sentence><sentence id="1695">And the mother stood up and she said, "We have no Jews in the <span class="BUILDING">house</span>;" and the father said so; and the son said, "You can take me.</sentence><sentence id="1696">You can kill me.</sentence><sentence id="1697">We have no Jews in the <span class="BUILDING">house</span>." "</sentence><sentence id="1698">Come along!"</sentence><sentence id="1699">he said, and they were doing as if they were going to kill him.</sentence><sentence id="1700">They didn't kill him.</sentence><sentence id="1701">They left.</sentence><sentence id="1702">And we were all lying down.</sentence><sentence id="1703">Unbelievable, where those people got the power... Fantastic!</sentence><sentence id="1704">Fantastic.</sentence><sentence id="1705">So that was one of the raids.</sentence><sentence id="1706">There were more.</sentence><sentence id="1707">There were seven in total, the Dutch police included.</sentence><sentence id="1708">They... they...they did their share, and, uh, but we made it.</sentence><sentence id="1709">We made it.</sentence><sentence id="1710">Now, I mean, to tell you the whole story, it would take hours to give you an account of what happened in that little <span class="BUILDING">house</span> and who got sick and who didn't and how did they keep people from knowing that, uh, we were lying there; and we were not...we couldn't cough.</sentence><sentence id="1711">We couldn't sneeze.</sentence><sentence id="1712">We couldn't talk because if people would be in the <span class="BUILDING">house</span>, they would hear us.</sentence><sentence id="1713">There was only a plank, uh, keeping us away from everybody else, and, uh, but we came through and on the 4th of May, when the war was over, and they said, "You can come out now.</sentence><sentence id="1714">It is all over.</sentence><sentence id="1715">We heard it on the radio...," we came up.</sentence><sentence id="1716">We couldn't come up, many of us; because the doctor had to come and take water out of our knees because we couldn't walk.</sentence><sentence id="1717">We had, uh, to be down there for a year and a half.</sentence><sentence id="1718">You will " Boogard was a farming family who lived just south of <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span> and known for helping Jews, especially children, find <span class="BUILDING">homes</span> during the war.</sentence><sentence id="1719">USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 25 ask, "How did you go to the <span class="INT_SPACE">bathroom</span>?"</sentence><sentence id="1720">Well, they put down a coffee can or a cookies can or anything they put down and anybody would go and we would hold it up and they would pick it up but they would give it back again, and that's how we went to the <span class="INT_SPACE">bathroom</span>, and that is how we were fed too.</sentence><sentence id="1721">Bread...bread... bread.</sentence><sentence id="1722">Downstairs.</sentence><sentence id="1723">So, uh, we always tried to keep up the morale because then this one was down and that was down...there were children.</sentence><sentence id="1724">The youngest was seven.</sentence><sentence id="1725">He had to be kept busy.</sentence><sentence id="1726">Uh one form of entertainment was counting fleas in the blanket in the morning.</sentence><sentence id="1727">It...really, you laugh, but it really was..."How many have you?</sentence><sentence id="1728">How many have you?"</sentence><sentence id="1729">Because reading we didn't do.</sentence><sentence id="1730">We couldn't.</sentence><sentence id="1731">The...they were very, uh, Christian, most beautiful people; but the only thing that was being read in the <span class="BUILDING">house</span> that was the Bible.</sentence><sentence id="1732">And for the rest of us, absolutely nothing to keep you busy; so my husband, he knows the Bible by heart, the old as well as the new...and, uh, for the rest of us...ugh!</sentence><sentence id="1733">I don't know how we passed the time.</sentence><sentence id="1734">I don't know.</sentence><sentence id="1735">I really don't know anymore.</sentence><sentence id="1736">I couldn't tell.</sentence><sentence id="1737">And uh the interesting story also is that the two people, husband and wife, in their fifties, they had different views--but both very religious.</sentence><sentence id="1738">The man said, "I do it because in the Bible it says God gives the order to save people whether it be anybody."</sentence><sentence id="1739">He said, "I would have saved the German who'd come...would he have come to my <span class="BUILDING">house</span> for shelter, or a pilot, or a Jew...I give shelter."</sentence><sentence id="1740">And "Tante Anne" ["Aunt Anne], her name--a marvelous woman--said, "I did it because I am sure I will go to <span class="NPIP">heaven</span>."</sentence><sentence id="1741">That was their story.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1812">Q: So you were never found?</sentence><sentence id="1813">You were liberated then on the 4th of May?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1816">A: When we were liberated we came upstairs.</sentence><sentence id="1817">We went in the <span class="DLF">street</span>; uh, finally you know, after the doctor came and we made it.</sentence><sentence id="1818">We came out, and Harry's father, he couldn't take it anymore.</sentence><sentence id="1819">He had run off the day before.</sentence><sentence id="1820">Danger...danger... danger...but he couldn't.</sentence><sentence id="1821">He just couldn't anymore; and we came up, all of us, with the family.</sentence><sentence id="1822">And then we heard they were shooting, and the Germans are still coming and they were shooting left and right; and Harry and I said, "If it kills us, let them kill us, but we never go down again there.</sentence><sentence id="1823">We have breathed <span class="DLF">air</span> and we can't go down again there anymore."</sentence><sentence id="1824">But it wasn't necessary.</sentence><sentence id="1825">The Germans didn't come that far, and the next day, uh, we went to <span class="BUILDING">church</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1826">That was the biggest thing we could do for "Uncle Sam" and "Aunt Anne"--Annie is her name--and their children.</sentence><sentence id="1827">We all went to <span class="BUILDING">church</span> and that was their biggest, biggest, biggest thing; because now all the neighbors, everybody could see: "Look what the [Brvers (ph)] had.</sentence><sentence id="1828">Look what they did.</sentence><sentence id="1829">How fantastic!</sentence><sentence id="1830">They had ten Jews.</sentence><sentence id="1831">They hid ten Jews and they all came through!"</sentence><sentence id="1832">Because what...whatever <span class="NPIP">place</span> you mentioned, mostly the Jews were taken.</sentence><sentence id="1833">They were....you know, they were taken off until...and with them, they saved ten lives.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1852">Q: What was your physical condition like, going to <span class="BUILDING">church</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1854">A: Our...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1856">Q: Wasn't it hard to move?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1858">A: Our physical condition...it was...we walked over there. (</sentence><sentence id="1859">laughter) It was tremendous.</sentence><sentence id="1860">It USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 26 was...I don't know how many kilometers.</sentence><sentence id="1861">It wasn't too far to go to <span class="BUILDING">church</span>, but to us it was like we had walked from here to, to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Paris</span>, you know?</sentence><sentence id="1862">We came back (imitating a panting sound)...haa...haa...haa.</sentence><sentence id="1863">We were dead, but it was also such a satisfaction and because of the happiness.</sentence><sentence id="1864">You were free...now you had to go and look for your parents, for your family, for a <span class="BUILDING">house</span>, so somebody had, uh, a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bicycle</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1865">He had gotten some money from a farmer to come and visit us once in a while.</sentence><sentence id="1866">We went all through the years, and he came over right away with the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bicycle</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1867">It was a <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bicycle</span> without tires, you know.</sentence><sentence id="1868">There were no <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">tires</span> anymore, so it was a hard <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bicycle</span>, a big one...and he came over with that <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bicycle</span> and he said, "Harry and Sieny, I've come to pick you up.</sentence><sentence id="1869">You come with me to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span>."</sentence><sentence id="1870">So we sat and talked to Anne and "Uncle Sam" and everybody and said goodbye for the time being, and we went with him to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span>, and there was shooting on the <span class="DLF">Dam</span> and we were there at the <span class="DLF">dam</span> when the shooting occurred, and we just could hid in a <span class="BUILDING">store</span>--called at that time <span class="BUILDING">Peek & Kloppenberg</span> [a <span class="BUILDING">Dutch department store</span>] on the corner of Dam next to the <span class="BUILDING">palace</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1871">That was a horrible experience, too.</sentence><sentence id="1872">You...everytime you think you are free and then boom...you are not free, you know?</sentence><sentence id="1873">And then we saw the most horrible scenes.</sentence><sentence id="1874">We saw...later on we saw people being shaved and that gave us the creeps.</sentence><sentence id="1875">It gave us...oh it was so terrible to see that...what you can do to other people.</sentence><sentence id="1876">Those people...that were women that had collaborated with the Germans ...</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1896">Q: People being shaved in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span>?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1898">A: Being shaved...their hair, being shaved in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span> in the <span class="DLF">streets</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1899">It was like a like a...a Koninginnedag [the Queen's birthday]...on Queen's Day there is a...everybody is out in the <span class="DLF">street</span> celebrating, flags, and this was part of the celebration... shaving their heads and and uh, uh...yah... terrible, you know.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1902">Q: Who shaved whose heads?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1904">A: The Dutch people shaved...the girls who had collaborated with the Germans, had gone with them, had gone out with them, had worn beautiful clothing during the war while the others had nothing; so they were...in every <span class="DLF">street</span> you could see a scene where somebody were...was being shaved.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1906">Q: But in other words it was one of these Dutch collaborators who was being shaved?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1908">A: Yah.</sentence><sentence id="1909">The girls...mostly girls.</sentence><sentence id="1910">Uh, that is how you got the short hair style after the war, because before that grew in, that took a long time, and they made a whole new style out of it, and, uh, we couldn't see it.</sentence><sentence id="1911">It hurt us so much because to...from verneder [the humiliation] to, to another human being...I, I cannot recall the word for verneder in English right now.</sentence><sentence id="1912">That goes against your strength, against your...no matter what they did, you know?</sentence><sentence id="1913">Give them a trial but not this...not not...so anyhow we went <span class="BUILDING">home</span>, at least was...what was <span class="BUILDING">home</span> once, because there were other people now.</sentence><sentence id="1914">We couldn't enter the <span class="BUILDING">house</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1915">We were not allowed to go in.</sentence><sentence id="1916">We couldn't get back the property.</sentence><sentence id="1917">Now I talk about much later.</sentence><sentence id="1918">We had to fight.</sentence><sentence id="1919">We had to take a lawyer.</sentence><sentence id="1920">We didn't get it back until much much later.</sentence><sentence id="1921">Uh, friends took us in.</sentence><sentence id="1922">USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 27 Clothes we didn't have.</sentence><sentence id="1923">Somebody gave us three hundred guilders...the same man in <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Deurne</span>, from <span class="BUILDING">shoe factory</span>, gave us three hundred guilders to buy, uh, second, third, fourth-hand <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">bed</span> to sleep on.</sentence><sentence id="1924">The time after the war was so terrible...hunger.</sentence><sentence id="1925">We didn't have food.</sentence><sentence id="1926">We had to stand in <span class="DLF">line</span> to get food because somebody was nice enough to give us...because we were not registered.</sentence><sentence id="1927">We were...we were...we were people--where did we come from?</sentence><sentence id="1928">He gave us some money my father had given to him.</sentence><sentence id="1929">We went to the <span class="BUILDING">bank</span> later on with that money.</sentence><sentence id="1930">The <span class="BUILDING">bank</span> said, "Where did you get that money?"</sentence><sentence id="1931">We went...we got an interrogation, and, uh, these, uh, biljets [bank notes], they are not valid anymore.</sentence><sentence id="1932">So sorry.</sentence><sentence id="1933">Oh...the time after the war...it was terrible.</sentence><sentence id="1934">Was it not for our friends, we wouldn't have got through that time.</sentence><sentence id="1935">We wouldn't have got through it.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1964">Q: You have some pictures here?</sentence><sentence id="1965">You want to?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1968">A: Yah.</sentence><sentence id="1969">I have....</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="1972">Q: Do you want to show them?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="1974">A: To give you an example, a cousin came back from a <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">concentration camp</span> with her little boy.</sentence><sentence id="1975">Her husband didn't come back.</sentence><sentence id="1976">Her family didn't come back.</sentence><sentence id="1977">She came to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amstelveen</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1978">The government gave her ten guilders for her and her little boy and said, "OK, you are free now.</sentence><sentence id="1979">Go on your way.</sentence><sentence id="1980">Goodbye."</sentence><sentence id="1981">She come from <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">concentration camp</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1982">She got ten guilders.</sentence><sentence id="1983">She had to find her way to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1984">She had to find, to beg in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">neighborhood</span>.</sentence><sentence id="1985">Please, would anybody take her up?</sentence><sentence id="1986">That was the reception there was because there was no understanding.</sentence><sentence id="1987">Of course nobody knew how...what had happened maybe, but that was the welcome back...after the war.</sentence><sentence id="1988">You had to fight your way from beginning to end, to get shelter, to get clothing, to get anything, everything.</sentence><sentence id="1989">It was terrible...yah.</sentence><sentence id="1990">And we stayed here because, Harry's father was here and he spoke Dutch and he didn't want to leave and he was broken.</sentence><sentence id="1991">Otherwise, we would have said goodbye and we would have left.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2010">Q: When did you find out what had happened to your family?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2012">A: That we found out already while we were in hiding because Harry understood English, spoke English; and they had hidden a radio within a shelf of hay...in hayshelf, and that was dangerous to do, but, uh, they did it anyhow.</sentence><sentence id="2013">But if they keep ten people, they, they, they would certainly keep a radio to keep posted, so Harry heard over the English radio what went on in the <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">concentration camps</span> in <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2014">The whole world knew--at that time already, in "43.</sentence><sentence id="2015">And they didn't do anything.</sentence><sentence id="2016">If they just would have bombed the little <span class="DLF">train track</span> from <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Westerbork</span> or to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Westerbork</span>...I don't care...from <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Amsterdam</span> to <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Westerbork</span> or from <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Westerbork</span> to the <span class="DLF">border</span>...I don't care.</sentence><sentence id="2017">They should have thrown a bomb there.</sentence><sentence id="2018">Nothing happened, because I, I still feel it...I couldn't care.</sentence><sentence id="2019">I say, I dare to say it, because the Jews were not important to the rest of the world.</sentence><sentence id="2020">I'm bitter over that.</sentence><sentence id="2021">I'm terribly bitter over it, because I believe it...so many, so many lives could have been saved.</sentence><sentence id="2022">So many lives could have been...if somebody would have thrown a bomb.</sentence><sentence id="2023">If somebody...you know...the English, the Americans...the Dutch.</sentence><sentence id="2024">It's so easy to say, "Yes.</sentence><sentence id="2025">Yes sir."</sentence><sentence id="2026">Well, that's our story, really, in USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 28 short.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2042">Q: <span class="POPULATED_PLACE">Sieny</span>, is there anything else you'd like to add?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2044">A: We live with this every day.</sentence><sentence id="2045">If you put two Jews together, here in <span class="COUNTRY">Holland</span>, who went through it, and they start with a birthday party, they end mourning, because this is with us every day.</sentence><sentence id="2046">And our second generation, our children, they got their guilt too, and I'm not talking only about our children.</sentence><sentence id="2047">I'm talking about the children from the people who went through it, because it is...there are no words to describe it, and our future is completely...future...we try to be happy.</sentence><sentence id="2048">We try...we live and there are good things happening, thank God, but this is the overall most important thing that happened in our lives.</sentence><sentence id="2049">We can't forget.</sentence><sentence id="2050">We try to forget; we cannot.</sentence><sentence id="2051">And that's the sad thing, because you live with it always.</sentence><sentence id="2052">People have no idea what it means to live without family, without parents, without brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents.</sentence><sentence id="2053">The generation right after us have nobody.</sentence><sentence id="2054">They have the parents and further nobody.</sentence><sentence id="2055">Nobody.</sentence><sentence id="2056">If the parents die, over.</sentence><sentence id="2057">No...it's horrible.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2072">Q: What happened to your sister?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2074">A: My sister has two chi...two sons.</sentence><sentence id="2075">She got married after the war, with this same man I told you about.</sentence><sentence id="2076">One lives in <span class="COUNTRY">Israel</span>--does his duty every three months--he goes in the army and has five little daughters.</sentence><sentence id="2077">And another son they have, also married.</sentence><sentence id="2078">Yah.</sentence><sentence id="2079">Something to be very thankful for.</sentence><sentence id="2080">Our children have no children.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2088">Q: You had mentioned a trip to <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span>.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2090">A: Yah.</sentence><sentence id="2091">I went to <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span> on a business trip because I worked for French company, and I had to go to the, to the fair.</sentence><sentence id="2092">And I made myself a commitment; and I told myself I will go under one circumstance [condition], and that is: "Sieny, if you tell every German you meet, what they did in the past, what <span class="COUNTRY">country</span> they were under Hitler, and what they will do it, what they will do with it in the future."</sentence><sentence id="2093">And I did.</sentence><sentence id="2094">I did.</sentence><sentence id="2095">I took my chance and there is not one single German I spoke to for the business or I told them the whole story.</sentence><sentence id="2096">I asked them, "Please sit down.</sentence><sentence id="2097">I have to tell you something.</sentence><sentence id="2098">And I want you to listen to me."</sentence><sentence id="2099">And they did; so at least that's my only satisfaction for having had to go <span class="COUNTRY">Germany</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2100">I wouldn't set a step over the <span class="DLF">border</span>, ever, for vacation.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2112">Q: What year was this that you had gone?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2114">A: In'83.</sentence><sentence id="2115">1983.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2118">Q: Anything else you'd like to add?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2120">A: Let's hope there will be a world of peace.</sentence><sentence id="2121">Let's hope this will never happen again.</sentence><sentence id="2122">And that is the reason I told this story, because | realize there are so few left that I saw that this is a USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 29 necessity to do this for posterity.</sentence><sentence id="2123">People should know.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2128">Q: Thank you.</sentence><sentence id="2129">Could you tell me about some of the pictures in there?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2132">A: (Shows an album).</sentence><sentence id="2133">Uh, this is the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>, the <span class="BUILDING">building</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2134">This is the Directrice, she is a wonderful woman.</sentence><sentence id="2135">And what I did not tell yet on the next page you see this child.</sentence><sentence id="2136">He was a foundling and that gave her the idea to save the Jewish children, because if he was a foundling and nobody knew.... TECHNICAL CONVERSATION</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2143">Q: You have some photos you wanted to show us?</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2145">A: Yah.</sentence><sentence id="2146">I have...I have them in here. (</sentence><sentence id="2147">Showing photographs) [(1)] This <span class="BUILDING">building</span> is the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> as it used to be.</sentence><sentence id="2148">It doesn't exist anymore as it is now. [(</sentence><sentence id="2149">2)] This is Directrice Pimentel, and she is the (clearing throat)...she was the Directrice always there. [(</sentence><sentence id="2150">3)] Here are some pictures of the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> with the former onder, subdirectrice, and [(4)] that's me with a child, children, children with some names.</sentence><sentence id="2151">I still have them because they were on the back of the picture, and [(5)] this is the Directrice again, Miss Pimentel, with a boy that was laid there, that was put as a foundling on the steps of the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>, not exactly at the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> but it was someplace else.</sentence><sentence id="2152">It was found and it was taken there, and she took it in as a foundling, and...</sentence></p><p><sentence id="2153">TECHNICAL CONVERSATION</sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2154">A: (Showing photographs) So this is the Directrice.</sentence><sentence id="2155">She used to be the Directrice since 1926 or "28, something like that; and, uh, here are some pictures of her and her sub, subdirectrice, the manager; and these are some pictures of the children.</sentence><sentence id="2156">That's myself as a child.</sentence><sentence id="2157">Here I still have some names of children that were deported, because they were on the, on the back of the picture...February 1942.</sentence><sentence id="2158">These two.</sentence><sentence id="2159">This is the Directrice with a child that was brought to the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> that was a foundling, and that was really the first foundling there was and she (pointing to the photograph of the directrice and the child) was...she fell in love with the child.</sentence><sentence id="2160">It was an adorable baby and she regarded it as her child and she was the one who took care of it.</sentence><sentence id="2161">She...it was her child.</sentence><sentence id="2162">She took care of it.</sentence><sentence id="2163">Nobody else.</sentence><sentence id="2164">Here he grew up.</sentence><sentence id="2165">Here he was a little bit bigger, and, uh, he got a lot of toys.</sentence><sentence id="2166">But there was a German also...one of the Germans who was taking away everybody else, brought toys to this child, but in the end he took him too and put him on transport.</sentence><sentence id="2167">Can you understand that?</sentence><sentence id="2168">And these are pictures taken in the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> but these are not children from during the Holocaust but some of them might have come there anyhow.</sentence><sentence id="2169">And this is the certificate which allows me to go to the...across the <span class="DLF">street</span> to the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span>, etc.,</sentence><sentence id="2170">etc.,</sentence><sentence id="2171">etc.,</sentence><sentence id="2172">because I needed that.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class="Question"><p><sentence id="2192">Q: Thank you.</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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<dialogue class=""><p><sentence id="2194">TECHNICAL CONVERSATION USHMM Achives RG-50.030*0054 30</sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2195">A: (Showing photographs) [(1)] This is the original <span class="BUILDING">building</span>, the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>, as it used to be.</sentence><sentence id="2196">It doesn't exist anymore. [(</sentence><sentence id="2197">2)] Uh, this here is the Directrice.</sentence><sentence id="2198">She was the Directrice there from something like 1926 or 1928.</sentence><sentence id="2199">She was in charge of the whole operation, because it used to be a <span class="BUILDING">home</span> for children whose parents worked. [(</sentence><sentence id="2200">3)] Uh, this is...these are a few pictures from the Directrice and her and her...the woman who was just under her who took care of everything, who was not allowed to work there anymore because she was not Jewish.</sentence><sentence id="2201">She has to...she had to leave in 1941.</sentence></p><p><sentence id="2202">TECHNICAL CONVERSATION (IN DUTCH)</sentence></p></dialogue><dialogue class="Answer"><p><sentence id="2203">A: (Showing photographs) [(3)] This is the director with her sub who wasn't allowed to work there anymore after 1941 because she was not Jewish. [(</sentence><sentence id="2204">4)] Then here, very unclear, is a Jewish girl who came in her <span class="NPIP">place</span>, [Ver Boaz (ph)].</sentence><sentence id="2205">She was also gassed.</sentence><sentence id="2206">She didn't come back. [(</sentence><sentence id="2207">5)] That's me with one of...with this baby and there is another baby.</sentence><sentence id="2208">You...you can see how small they were when they came there. [(</sentence><sentence id="2209">6)] Here are six children with name because the name happened to be on the back of the picture.</sentence><sentence id="2210">That is how I kept it. [(</sentence><sentence id="2211">7)] These too. [(</sentence><sentence id="2212">8)] And this is...these are pictures of a foundling...this...uh this baby was a foundling and taken to the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> and uh actually this was the first foundling that was taken there; and the Directrice was very fond of the boy, and she called him Remy because there is a book called "Remy"...that is...that goes...this is over a little boy who was alone in the world and he also is alone in the world and she found him.</sentence><sentence id="2213">And she took care of him. [(</sentence><sentence id="2214">9)] Here he grows up.</sentence><sentence id="2215">He is a little bit older here. [(</sentence><sentence id="2216">10)] Here he plays.</sentence><sentence id="2217">He got a little...he got a lot of toys from everybody.</sentence><sentence id="2218">He was the little favorite and there was also a German uh who picked up the children, threw them in the <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">trucks</span> and didn't care for anybody and this child he brought... TECHNICAL CONVERSATION (IN DUTCH) ..and this little boy, he brought even toys.</sentence><sentence id="2219">And, uh, after his time was up, according to the Germans, he put him on <span class="SPATIAL_OBJ">transport</span> too.</sentence><sentence id="2220">I've heard he came back.</sentence><sentence id="2221">I've heard he didn't come back.</sentence><sentence id="2222">I don't know what happened to the little boy. [(</sentence><sentence id="2223">11)] And here are pictures of how it used to be in the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2224">Uh, little boys, little girls, eating together, playing together.</sentence><sentence id="2225">Here are some of the people that worked there. [(</sentence><sentence id="2226">12)] And this is a certificate which says that I was allowed to work there during the war, which permitted me to go to the...back and forth from the <span class="BUILDING">Creche</span> to the <span class="BUILDING">Schouwburg</span>.</sentence><sentence id="2227">TECHNICAL CONVERSATION (IN DUTCH) (Closeups of photographs)</sentence></p></dialogue> |
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