The Sisters of Auschwitz Read online

  To Lien, people like Lodewijk Visser set a benchmark for resistance; an attitude that will surely get the masses moving against the occupying forces – who might have thought the Dutch would offer them free play but are facing a nasty surprise. Janny, however, is neither counting on the Germans for mercy, nor on the Dutch people for salvation. So when in January 1941, a few months after the mandatory Aryan declaration for civil servants, all Jews in the Netherlands are compelled to register, she does not report. As one of few people among her acquaintances, she refuses to have the black capital J for Jew stamped in her identity card. The only thing she will later regret is that she didn’t urge everyone else around her to do the same. That she didn’t tell Lien, who makes no fuss about this bureaucracy, reports and gets a J stamped in her identity card, just like 160,820 other Jews in the Netherlands. A small administrative action that will prove to be most helpful for the deportation system that soon starts running, facilitated by the efficiency and professionalism the Germans so praise the Dutch for.

  In Amsterdam alone, some 70,000 thousand Jews are registered – 10 per cent of all the inhabitants of the city. At the Zentralstelle für Jüdische Auswanderung, the Central Office for Jewish Emigration on Adama van Scheltemaplein, later in the war, a few simple card-index boxes suffice to keep track of those who have been taken away and those who still need to go. When each train leaves, a copy of the list of passengers is sent to the Zentralstelle, where an accountant then transfers the card corresponding to each passenger’s name from one box to the other. One card per transported man, woman or child until the box with Jews registered in Amsterdam is almost empty and the box with the deported full.

  3

  Strike! Strike! Strike!

  It is a freezing-cold winter, the first since the German invasion, and, led by Anton Mussert, the DNP paramilitary squads known as the ‘blackshirts’ are becoming bolder. The DNP is hitching a ride on the German forces’ wagon; before foreign occupation the party had very little say in the Dutch political landscape. Despite a fanatical campaign presenting Mussert as the saviour from the Bolshevist threat (‘Mussert or Moscow?’), the Dutch Nazis got less than 4 per cent of the votes at the national elections of 1937.

  The boldness of the Dutch Nazis, protected by Hitler’s strong arm, becomes increasingly tangible in daily life. The party organizes targeted provocations in predominantly Jewish neighbourhoods and among the people in the Amsterdam Jewish Quarter, in the city centre, the atmosphere is tense.

  The Germans have issued new directives for the Dutch police, instructing them to better protect Dutch Nazis in confrontations with Jews and rebellious civilians. Furthermore, arresting blackshirts is no longer allowed.

  Janny is often in Amsterdam. She sees the tight faces, hears the whispering in the alleys, feels how the tension in and around the city centre rises. Everyone seems to be in a constant hurry and those without a reason to be out stay in.

  Café owners who have not put up a ‘no Jews allowed’ sign yet are visited by groups of blackshirts – and treated anything but kindly. All the windows of Café Restaurant De Kroon on Rembrandtplein have been smashed and in other cafés the squads destroy every piece of furniture. German soldiers support them as Dutch policemen helplessly stand by.

  ‘This is bound to go wrong, Bob,’ Janny says to her husband at home in The Hague. ‘Ordinary people don’t put up with this, either. There have been fights with Dutch Nazis – one of them even died.’

  She is talking about Hendrik Koot, a committed blackshirt who died in hospital on Tuesday, 11 February after a brutal fight in the Jewish Quarter. Koot is the martyr the Fascists need to take the next step.

  That same night, the Jewish Corner, the heart of the Jewish Quarter, where 25,000 people live, is hermetically sealed. The bridges are raised and barbed-wire fencing is set up to block the entrance, with Grüne Polizei (Green Police), Nazi police officers, standing on guard in front of it.

  A day later the occupying forces demand the formation of a Jewish Council: a central body, acting on behalf of the Jewish, for the Germans to communicate with – quickly turning into a body to use for carrying out their orders.

  Lodewijk Visser, frontman of the Jewish Coordination Committee, instantly objects to the Council and the policy of its chairmen, Abraham Asscher and David Cohen. Asscher and Cohen believe they can negotiate, on behalf of the Jewish community, with the Germans and perhaps even exert positive influence, but Visser believes their attitude is too cooperative. He refuses, on behalf of the Jewish Coordination Committee, to communicate with the Germans and only speaks to the Dutch government.

  Later that year the Germans will order the Jewish Coordination Committee to cease its activities and name the Jewish Council as the only national representative of the Jewish Community.

  Following the death of Koot, the Nazi propaganda machine goes full speed ahead. DNP weekly Volk en Vaderland, People and Country, says:

  Juda has thrown off the mask! [. . .] Sergeant Hendrik Evert Koot is killed. Killed? No, trampled down with sadistic delight! Crushed under the ponderous feet of a nomadic people – whose blood is different from ours. This eastern slaughtering method is typically Jewish. [. . .] Let it be said to the criminals that this is the last, the very last time, that one of us was killed by Jews.

  In the following week articles in a similar tone appear in various Dutch newspapers. They mention the many bite wounds Koot apparently had, worse even: that a Jew bit through his throat. Within days, Koot’s death has assumed mythical proportions, and Joseph and Fietje Brilleslijper have to stand by helplessly while the Jewish Quarter is fenced off from the rest of Amsterdam. Everywhere, around their home too, signs are put up saying: Judenviertel/Joodsche Wijk.

  But it is not over yet. On 19 February, there is a fight around ice-cream parlour Koco between Grüne Polizei and a defence squad of regular customers who have, for some time, been protecting the owners, Alfred Kohn and Ernst Cahn, two German–Jewish refugees. On this occasion the Germans are sprayed with a specially prepared bottle of ammonia. Owners and customers are arrested and the incident is reported directly to Heinrich Himmler, leader of the Schutzstaffel, the SS.

  With the first fight on Friday, 9 February following Koot’s death and the gas incident at Koco, the Germans now have enough excuse for launching a large offensive against the Jews – without anticipating much opposition from Dutch citizens. There is only one thing left to do: instruct the Jewish Council to disarm its community. The brand-new chairmen of the Council, diamond dealer Asscher and professor of ancient history Cohen, call on the Jewish population to surrender all arms before Friday, 21 February 1941. ‘If this call is not obeyed, strict government measures will inevitably follow.’

  That weekend the Dutch are introduced to a phenomenon they will soon become familiar with: raids. People are dragged from their homes, men who look Jewish are pulled from their bicycles and women who interfere are violently pushed aside.

  During these first raids, on 22 and 23 February 1941, a total of 427 Jewish men between twenty and thirty-five years old are arrested; a great many around the synagogues on Jonas Daniël Meijerplein in Amsterdam, a small triangle between Waterlooplein and the canal. The Dutch police had not been informed and many non-Jewish civilians, visiting the Sunday market, witness the action. The Jewish men are rounded up, forced to squat on the ground with their hands up or behind their head. Their faces are white as chalk, their pupils dilated. They are guarded by soldiers kicking them into place with their boots, while other soldiers usher new arrivals towards the square, beating them with the butts of their rifles. Trucks pull up, a group is rushed in, the driver accelerates and they are gone. Move over, arms up, shouting, a smack. They are Jewish men in work clothes, men in their Sunday best, one man in a tailcoat. Bystanders are watching, glued to the spot; others run home. When the last truck has left the Jewish Quarter that Sunday night, the silence is deafening.

  Among the men who are arrested are friends of Janny and Lien
. Most of the deported end up in Mauthausen labour camp, a concentration camp in Austria where granite is extracted. Again it is Lodewijk Visser who appeals, more than once, to the secretaries general – the same secretaries general who had turned their backs on him when he was dismissed – to stand up for the fate of the Jewish men who are arrested and transported. Visser has heard that prisoners in the labour camp die en masse as a result of working in the quarry, owing to hunger, disease or torture, and he believes the Dutch government should intervene. But again, no one listens.

  In the meantime, the Germans are so annoyed with Visser that they threaten to send him to a concentration camp if he doesn’t keep quiet. They need not have worried. In early 1942, Lodewijk Visser dies of a brain haemorrhage. None of his former colleagues on the Supreme Court are present at his funeral.

  The entire group of men deported from the Netherlands during the weekend of 22 and 23 February 1941 dies within a few months – with the exception of two ‘lucky ones’, who are sent on to Buchenwald concentration camp and survive.

  Ernst Cahn of the Koco ice-cream parlour is shot by a firing squad in the dunes near The Hague in March, which makes him the first civilian in the Second World War to be killed this way. His partner, Alfred Kohn, does not return from Auschwitz.

  Then something extraordinary happens. One day after the raids, late at night, the banned Communist Party distributes leaflets through the entire city. In black typewritten letters and with many exclamation marks there’s an elaborate call, on just one sheet of paper, for strike and solidarity with the Jews:

  Organize the protest strike in all companies!!!

  Fight against terror as one!!!

  Demand immediate release of the arrested Jews!!!

  (. . .)

  Keep Jewish children away from Nazi violence, take them into your families!!!

  BE AWARE OF THE ENORMOUS POWER OF YOUR UNITED ACTION!!!

  This is many times greater than the German military occupation!

  STRIKE!!! STRIKE!!! STRIKE!!!

  A few hours before, in the early evening of 24 February, some hundred members of the Communist Party, mostly civil servants, gathered for an open-air meeting on Noordermarkt near Amsterdam Centraal Station, at the top of the Prinsengracht. They turned up on the square from all directions, braving the cold in thick coats, hats pulled over their ears. A cloud of people’s breath mingled with cigarette smoke floats above the men at the foot of the church as the initiators give a glowing speech.

  An earlier strike, when Dutch metalworkers were sent to Germany, had been called off, but the CPN leaders expect a broader base for action after the recent chain of anti-Semitic violence. Everyone here at Noordermarkt, the party leaders emphasize, must not only obey the call to action themselves, but also encourage others to participate, in a collective protest against the German treatment and deportation of the Amsterdam Jews – their Amsterdam Jews.

  The fury about what happened on Jonas Daniël Meijerplein – the severe ill treatment of the Jewish men – has stirred something up and many people that night are in favour of organizing a massive protest. At the end of the meeting piles of leaflets are handed out. People disperse and return to their own part of town to further spread the word.

  The following morning the February strike breaks out: a large-scale, organized and open protest against the persecution of the Jews. A crucial first act is the strike of the Amsterdam tram drivers; people waiting at the stops wonder why trams don’t show and are unable to get to work. It has a domino effect; the news quickly spreads through the city.

  For many the start of the strike is nerve-wracking, an unnatural act of disobedience – but in each company it only takes one person to set the process in motion. A boy at the hat factory extinguishes the large stove with a bucket of water; without steam to make hats, the entire production comes to a standstill and workers leave the building en masse. A young seamstress has prepared her plan with her husband; in the sewing studio on the first floor she waits by the window for him to signal from the street below that the strike has begun. She then turns nervously to the room full of women, clears her throat, and calls on them to put down their work and strike against the occupying forces and their criminal treatment of Jews. To her surprise, all the other seamstresses rise and follow her outside.

  Once the first workers, without permission, leave their place and appear on the street, their coats on and their hats pulled over their ears, the floodgates are open. Everywhere in the city people gather outside in the wintry cold; men and women, clerks and road workers. At first they are hesitant and huddled together, but as more houses and factories empty and their numbers increase, they stand up straight with their shoulders back, awaiting an inevitable reaction.

  The Germans are completely taken by surprise by the resistance and on the second day the strike spreads to other parts of the country: the north, Utrecht and, cautiously, also The Hague. The sense of solidarity is overwhelming. The tension, prevailing everywhere after recent violent events, makes way for hope and bravery.

  But not for long.

  Already on the first day of the strike, the gathering on Noordermarkt is roughly broken up by Green Police and people feel their fear return.

  On the second day a large police force is mobilized, as are the SS, the German blackshirts, older brothers of the Dutch Nazi squads. A state of emergency is declared and the strikers’ resistance broken with brute force.

  In The Hague, Lien and Janny follow everything, excited at first but soon concerned. Police cars are racing, sirens wailing, and people are told through speakers to stay indoors and immediately resume their work. It is obvious: the Fascists are panicking. A strike like this has not occurred in any of the occupied territories before.

  In Amsterdam, alleys fill up with battalions, hastily turned out to drive the civilians back inside. While work shoes crowded the streets on the first day of the strike, they are thick with police boots the next. At least nine people are killed, dozens seriously injured, and hundreds of men are arrested. The participating cities are fined by the Germans – Amsterdam alone must pay 15 million guilders – and Mayor Willem de Vlugt is replaced by a pro-German: Edward Voûte. And, finally, the recently installed Jewish Council has to urge all employees to resume their work.

  When Janny and Lien learn about the bloody end of the strike from their communist friends, they disagree on the effect of recent developments. For the first time since the raids, Lien is confident about their chances again; the two-day strike in Amsterdam has shown that you can resist even the worst terror. But Janny, as always, will not have any of this; she predicts the actions will backfire for the Jews. ‘The Jewish Council is now trying to calm the Jews down,’ she tells her sister, ‘and that is exactly what the Krauts like to see.’

  Immediately after the war, a commemoration of the strikes is organized and on the first occasion, in 1946, Queen Wilhelmina announces that, inspired by the February strikes, the motto ‘Valiant, Resolute, Merciful’ will be added to the coat of arms of Amsterdam. Despite, or perhaps thanks to, the non-recurrent nature of this organized protest against the persecution of the Jews, the legitimate credit for starting it will be disputed for decades to follow. The leading part of the CPN is either denied or kept quiet; in the first years after the war, the myth is peddled that people spontaneously took to the streets, infuriated by Nazi policy. During the Cold War, party members were, for many years, excluded from the official commemoration of the strike.

  To this day, the connection between the CPN and the famous action is not widely known. A symbol of justice has, strangely enough, itself become a symbol of injustice.

  On Jonas Daniël Meijerplein in Amsterdam, the place where the victims of the first raid were lined up and squatted in the cold for hours, a sculpture commemorates the strike: De Dokwerker, the dockworker – a heavy, indomitable man with rolled-up sleeves, his chin up but his hands helplessly empty.

  4

  Children of the War

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p; As the February strike takes place, Janny is literally on top of the enemy. The flat on Bazarlaan is above the printer where a Dutch Nazi magazine is made and as fast as the fascist propaganda rolls off the press downstairs, she and Bob stencil illegal resistance papers on a monstrously large machine one floor up. Like an accomplished printer, Janny copies her first underground newspaper, Het Signaal, The Signal – a nod to the Wehrmacht propaganda magazine Signal appearing fortnightly in twenty languages with a circulation of 2.5 million copies. Janny is not quite there yet, but she bravely prints on, Robbie sleeping by her side.

  To expand her activities, Janny rents a space about half a mile away in The Hague, where she sets up a proper underground press. Fear and mutual distrust are growing day by day: after the February strike, all intermediaries and contacts with Amsterdam were arrested, and more and more often, Janny has to deal with perfect strangers. It makes her nervous. Every eye contact, note without a sender, meeting on the corner of a street to exchange information – she never knows who she’s facing. Are they moles, naive adventurers who can put her at risk? Or people like her who have devoted themselves to the good cause after very careful consideration? With each new face suspiciously peering up from beneath a hat, she wonders if that person can be trusted. Thankfully, both parties receive code words to quickly make clear what purpose their encounter has.