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Troubador Publishing Ltd - Martin Melanie

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110 pages

English

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An extraordinary story of one family's torment, betrayal and perseverance in war time Amsterdam.War and Love is a fascinating and detailed memoir of a family's everyday life at a time of war. The simple storytelling reflects a period of history with which everyone is familiar, but is told here with a raw honesty which emphasises the horrors of the events which took place.In May 1940 the family tried and failed to flee from Holland. Some went into hiding, others worked with the Resistance producing false papers, and others were transported to Westerbork transit camp. Sisters Kitty and Liesje, both in the prime of their lives, were compromised by the Nazi laws on intermarriage. War and Love is testimony of their will to survive against the odds. Many of their relatives who arrived at Westerbork were deported to Auschwitz or to Sobibor, where they were murdered.The book also delves into the question of how the Nazis created their Jew/Non-Jew dichotomy. They wanted the question of who should count as a Jew to be clear-cut, and often this was not the case as the twists and turns of this story demonstrate.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Memoir

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	28 mars 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781838599072
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	14 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0450€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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What marks this book out as being a compelling read is the multiple viewpoints and the overwhelming frankness and honesty on the part of the contributors. Every aspect of their lives is covered and it is a comprehensive look at life at an extraordinary time. Yet nothing is sensationalised and nothing seems to have been held back. It is well paced and structured with moments of real tension. It makes a fascinating, riveting and also heart-breaking work.
Nicholas Purves, professional reader

What distinguishes this book from so many personal accounts of the Holocaust is that it is the story of a whole family, not just one person – a family that lost 41 members! The story is all the more powerful and moving because it reveals how these horrific events impacted in different ways on a whole range of people.
Jeffrey Simmons, literary agent

This is packed with fascinating information and is obviously the result of a massive research effort. The extent of Melanie’s oral history work is impressive and the results outstanding. She obviously won the full trust of the people she spoke with, and helped them to recall episodes that must have been painful to live through, and tempting to forget or suppress.
The pictures add a lot, particularly those of identity cards, letters of release from army service and the photos of the people themselves at different stages in their lives. I especially like the way in which the detail provides evidence of the gradual worsening of ordinary Jews’ situation in Holland. For the first year after the Nazi invasion it was still possible for them to lead relatively normal lives, despite the gradual ratcheting up of restrictions, and the sharp increase of persecution after the dockyard workers’ strike. Great details too, such as Tootje not realising that her mother was not Jewish until they had been rounded up and sent for processing in Westerbork. The steady accumulation of detail also creates the texture of everyday life effectively, and the strange combination of planning and luck that led some people to disaster, others to the resistance and survival.
Another wonderful aspect is that it explores the question of how the Nazis tried to decide who should count as a Jew and who should not. They wanted the question to be clear cut but often it was not, and this family is a perfect example of why it was not. Some historians, albeit for very different reasons, have also tried to create a simple Jew/Non-Jew dichotomy, which is dramatically satisfying, but misleading. The grey area occupied by some of the Granaat family members might, in fact, be among the most interesting aspects of the narrative for historians of the Holocaust.
Patrick Allitt, professor of history

Copyright © 2019 Melanie Martin

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 9781838599072

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

Dedicated to my beautiful aunt, Liesje
Acknowledgements
With special thanks to: Kitty Scheffer, Harry Granaat, Tootje Martin, Bob Martin, Fré Granaat, Erik Granaat, Marja Vuijsje, Yolande Schotel, Jeffrey Simmons and Jamie Wolfenden. Also Alice Wickham of New London Writers, without whose support and encouragement this book would not have been published.
Also thanks to: Bob Moore, Sebastian Van Lissum, Jane Stubbs, staff at NIOD Amsterdam, the Amsterdam Archives, Archivists at Westerbork, Joh Porck, Sue Elloy, Liz Thompson, Malcolm Allitt, Patrick Allitt. Finally, Rosie Lowe, Cameron Bonser and all the team at Matador.
Contents
Foreword and Guide to Family Members

Introduction
Before the war in Holland

Chapter 1
The Beginning of the War in Europe

Chapter 2
The Netherlands Invaded

Chapter 3
Trying to Escape “A Day in the life of Ordinary People”

Chapter 4
Harry’s Army Discharge

Chapter 5
Restrictions

Chapter 6
Early Resistance

Chapter 7
Willem’s Resistance Work

Chapter 8
Tootje in Hiding

Chapter 9
The Arrests

Chapter 10
Arrival at Westerbork

Chapter 11
Tootje at Westerbork

Chapter 12
Willem’s Arrest and Escape

Chapter 13
Trying to Free the Family

Chapter 14
Kitty in Westerbork

Chapter 15
Willem’s Deportation

Chapter 16
Kitty’s Release

Chapter 17
Harry and Fré’s Resistance Work

Chapter 18
Liesje’s Abduction

Chapter 19
Nico’s Arrest

Chapter 20
Liesje and Nico in Westerbork

Chapter 21
The Later Stages of the War

Chapter 22
Liesje’s Deportation

Chapter 23
Auschwitz-Birkenau

Chapter 24
The Hunger Winter

Chapter 25
Kratzau

Chapter 26
Liberation

Chapter 27
After the War

Appendices
List of Sources
Foreword and Guide to Family Members
During my teenage years I was fascinated by my parents’ stories from the war. At university, part of my course led me to study the Arab-Israeli conflict and I became increasingly interested in what had happened to the Jews in the Second World War. In 1980 I wrote an essay, “Account for the strength of anti-Zionism in the contemporary Arab world”, and began to realise the complexity of the region’s history and the impact of the Holocaust. I read many books on the subject including, of course, The Diary of Anne Frank . Asking my mother more about what happened, I realised that my own family history from the war in Holland was just as interesting as anything that I had read. I decided to try to capture as much of it as I could. I bought a small tape recorder and asked my mother and her sister, Kitty, if they would tell me their stories. In April 1997 I began to record what they said and so the fascinating story began to unfold.
I understood from my mother that no other members of the family wanted to talk about what happened. But I persevered. I sent a copy of the story to my uncle Harry. At first he refused – he had not spoken about the war to anyone except the very few close friends who had shared the experience with him. Suddenly the following year he changed his mind and invited me and my mother to visit him and his wife, Fré (pronounced “fray”), in Baarn, Holland. So, in January 1998, we went with my recorder and listened to him for two days while he told his story.
For my aunt Liesje (pronounced “Leesha”) the memories were too awful and she tried to shut that period away so that it would not ruin her life or affect her fun-loving and caring personality. She was sometimes called “stupid Lizzie”, but I reasoned she must not have been stupid to have survived the war. Over the years I have pieced together her story, from the snippets that she and her siblings have told me about what happened and from the accounts of other survivors who shared similar experiences.
Through the story of one family, my book brings to life the impact of the German occupation to ordinary Dutch people who just happened to be Jewish.
The inputs from Kitty, Harry and my mother are taken, with minimum editing, directly from my conversations with them. These narratives have a different style to help distinguish them from the rest of the book. I hope readers will identify their different voices and recognise their individual style and personalities. The sections under the headings “Liesje” and “Willem” are written largely by me and in the third person (these have the same font as the introductory section, author’s narrative and appendices).
The research I have undertaken included reading a number of respected history books, survivor testimonies and visits to the National Institute of War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD) in Amsterdam and to Westerbork camp. This research has served to verify the accounts of my family and has provided interesting background about what was happening at the time. So as to not distract from the storytelling, the key historical events and factors which contributed to the plight of the Dutch Jews can be found in the Appendices and are indicated by endnote markers.
The number of Jews living in pre-war Netherlands was 140,000, comprising 118,000 Dutch Jews and 22,000 Germans and other nationalities. In 1941, the population of Amsterdam was 800,000, of whom 75,000 were Jews. From the Netherlands as a whole, just over 107,000 Jews were deported to concentration and extermination camps in the east and of these only 5,000 survived. Compared to its neighbours the mortality rate was disproportionately high.
“How such a disaster could have taken place in a country with such supposedly liberal values and one where people saw themselves as essentially resistant to the German occupation, continues to occupy historians, sociologists and political commentators.” Bob Moore.
“Wh