Kamp Schoorl

After all these years, it is still horrifying to see, on the faded green and white walls of Kamp Schoorl, the handwritten pleas and names left by the people interned there beginning in 1939.

Built-in 1939 as a Dutch army camp, Kamp Schoorl was the first internment camp in the Netherlands. The center had a unique history. Because I was a nosy person, I took the time to read about it. For about 1,900 Dutch, English, French and Belgian people, Kamp School was the first stop a transfer to another internment camp. More than 1,000 of these prisoners—mainly Jews and political captives—never returned home after their internment. The Germans released French and Belgian prisoners a few months after the camp opened, and the English prisoners were transferred to a German camp in September 1940.

The first group of Jews—425 in number—captured during the pogrom of February 22 and 23, 1941 in Amsterdam, arrived at Kamp Schoorl in an army truck. This group remained at the camp for four days before being transferred to Buchenwald. In June 1941, they were moved again, this time to Mauthausen, another concentration camp. Only two members of this group survived the war.

Although many prisoners of Kamp Schoorl did not survive their imprisonment, life at the camp was not as difficult as it was in other Dutch centers. Prisoners were not forced to do heavy labor, and all had sufficient food.

The camp was not open for long because it was small, and its location between dunes made it difficult to enlarge. When the Germans closed the base, releasing some of its prisoners. However, most of the prisoners were transferred to Kamp Amersfoort. The Nazis took twenty-five women straight to a concentration camp at Ravensbrück.

After Kamp Schoorl, the Wehrmacht and the Organisation Todt used the camp as a base. The camp was later used as a prison for members of the Nazi party and as a camp of young Zionist Leadership.

After all these years, it is still horrifying to see, on the faded green and white walls of Kamp Schoorl, the handwritten pleas, and names left by the people interned there beginning in 1939.

1952

Ingrained Nazi Sentiment Nazi

Ingrained dirt has gotten under the surface of something and is difficult to remove." Papa surprised us with a vacation to Davos, Switzerland, and its trendy ski resort in January. The resort sprawls across several areas—the Parsenn, Pischa, Jakobshorn, Rinerhorn, Madrisa, and Gotschna, linked together by lifts. The Parsenn area is the largest and most famous of the ski sectors, and it has traditionally been a favorite of the British royal family. It is also a traditional favorite of the Cardozo family. As I recall, our Davos hotel was conveniently constructed for skiers. The lifts were in the back of the hotel. From inside the hotel, you could board the ski lift. Or perhaps those lifts were at St. Moritz. We must have stayed there to use the ski lift.

I took my sisters, Renee and Betty, up to 3000 meters, first by train and then cable car. When we reached the slopes, Renee forgot to attach the ski safety strap, which meant that the slithery skiing movement caused her skis to slide down the hill without her—goodbye, skis! Immediately, I told Betty to take Renee back to the cable car. I planned to go straight down the mountain in the hope of finding Renee's skis. Our ordeal began at 8 am, and by 4 pm, I must have broken a downhill speed record. My efforts were hazardous; I followed no designated route and encountered plenty of ice patches and rocks. Later, I returned to the hotel with two broken skis. The ski rental shop did not charge for breakage; customers only had to pay for lost skis. My death-defying efforts managed to save us some money!

Our visit to Davos was exciting for me athletically. My skiing was good, and I won several games. I also attended several swims meets and received trophies in various events.

In addition to my athletic achievements, I also met some fascinating people in Davos. At the Palace Hotel, Dr. Ams Noach, the head doctor of the Dutch sanitorium in Davos, introduced me to Frits Philips, the well-known founder of the Philips Electric Company. Like all of us, Frits Philips was so relieved that the war had finally ended. "Freedom at last," he said, an echo of the words I had heard from my aunt Jansje. The rest was history and can be found in the books of Frits Philips, especially 45 Years with Philips. The Palace Hotel seemed filled with political notables. We also had King Farouk I of Egypt living in the hotel before being kicked out of Egypt.

During my summer break, I joined a group called Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) in South Wales, Great Britain, to learn sailing. I attended a sports camp and was excited at the prospect of a life on the ocean waves. The qualified sailing tutors explained the safety gear to us, and after a safety briefing, we were to take it to the water to put the theory into practice. Depending on the weather, our instructors told us that we could experience the excitement of riding through rough waves or the peacefulness of sailing calm waters. However, the open sea got very choppy. The first time I got seasick was an unforgettable experience!

While I was in the FCA, we were all invited to a rabbit hunt. Not knowing what a rabbit hunt was, I was distraught when I learned that the farmer had cut the long grass and that the kids would kill the rabbits with sticks. I immediately told everyone to stop the hunt and reported it to the humane society of Great Britain. The humane society sent me a letter saying they would make sure that rabbit hunts of this type would never happen again. As a result of my efforts, I received the humanitarian award of Great Britain in the province of South Wales.

Later that year, the Korean War broke out, and nobody cared. Or I should say, the Dutch did not care, not in the way we expected. On the eve of another war, my Papa predicted that everyone would want to stock up on extra winter clothing if things got terrible again. So he bought as many winter coats and warm garments as he could get his hands on in preparation for rising demand. The demand never came.

For one thing, while the Dutch military was involved both in Korea and in battles in Indonesia, most civilians had simply had enough of war and didn't want to think about it any longer. For another thing, winter just didn't seem to happen that year. The mild weather carried right through until springtime came again. It was the only time I'd ever seen. Papa's business instincts go wrong.

In 1952, at age fifteen, my family sent me off to school in England. I was enrolled in a school called Pittman College. Learning English was very important to me because it seemed to be the language of the future. I also gained a reasonably good command of French. At night, I took courses at the Technical School of London County. Then, I spent the summer at Inverness, Scotland, learning more about the apparel business with the Harris tweed company.

Early Suspicions about the United States and Its Role in the War

Israel had become a new state, and as I met with the members of various Jewish organizations, I wondered whether I should plan to move to Israel. Discussions about Israel often led to horror stories about the return of the orphans—and fueled my increasing suspicion about the Allies and their Nazi sympathies. Our camp leaders at Bnai Akiva often spoke about Eastern Europe and the orphan situation there. After the war, a thousand orphans had remained in Transnistria until the Soviet armies liberated it. The idea was that these orphans should be sent to Israel.

In preparation for crossing the Dniester, the children were divided into two groups. They took one to the crossing at Mogilev-Ataki, the other to Tiraspol -Tighina. Before the intersection, the children were de-loused, disinfected, and clothed. They took both groups to Iasi, where further plans had to be made.

Many of these children were eventually placed in orphanages in Romania through the [joint efforts of the United States, the Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe, the Women's International Zionist Organization (WIZ)], and the International Red Cross. There, they were provided the basics of food, shelter, and medical assistance while awaiting further developments in the plans to depart Palestine. In some cities, children who had not been in Transnistria but whose parents could not provide for them were absorbed into these orphanages and the orphans from Transnistria.

The Zionist organizations in Romania were intensely involved in organizing the transportation of the children to Palestine. This task was made very difficult by the German threat to sink every vessel bound for Palestine. Attempts to enlist the help of the Red Cross to ensure safe conduct on the Black Sea failed.

Nevertheless, on April 21, 1944, the first steamer with 119 orphans left Constanta for Istanbul. It reached its destination safely, and from Istanbul, the children went on by train to Palestine. Several other steamers arrived safely in Istanbul.

Some of the steamers known to have had Transnistria orphans on board were: Salvador, Mefkure, Izmir, and Transylvania. Some of the steamers reached the shores of Palestine; others were stopped by the British since Palestine was under the British Mandate. A few ships were re-routed to Cyprus, where the immigrants waited for British visas to enter Palestine. Other ships were torpedoed and sunk. In any case, most of their passengers drowned. It is not sure who was responsible for these actions.

Mefkure was lost on the night of August 4, 1944. It is assumed to have been torpedoed by a German submarine. All but five passengers perished, including 61 orphans from Transnistria.

By the end of 1944, eleven hundred and five orphans of Transnistria reached Palestine. They were "adopted" by Aliya Hanoar, a youth organization that cared for and helped adapt youth to their new homeland. Other groups of several hundred orphans arrived from Romania at a later date.

I was moved by the story of a Jewish woman named Ester, who was on the Exodus ship. She tells a first-hand historical account.

It's the mid-1940's. You're a young American woman trying to get to the land of Israel to fight to establish the state there. Now, you want to get there, but you can't get a passport from the American government; not to Palestine at least, at that time, because you're the age where you might be able to serve in the Army there and fight in the Haganah for the establishment of the state. So what do you do? That is Ester Friedman's story. Ester is the wife of Aaron Friedman, and she has a stunning story to share with us about how she had to go to the lengths of going to Europe: trading identities with a Holocaust survivor there, shaving her head, making herself look like a Holocaust survivor herself and boarding the famous, or infamous, I should say, Exodus ship that we all learned. And if you watched that movie with Paul Newman, you're going to find out some new facts from Ester Friedman.

I was a young woman who served in World War II as a Navy medic. This role is a little different from today, with additional training, not only nursing but also minor surgery training to take out tonsils or an appendix. That was something we could do on the battlefield or the PT ship if they wouldn't have a doctor available. We were trained to do a little more than a nurse to do emergency work right on the spot.

As a Jewish girl, I was raised as a Zionist, as someone trying to, you know, put little Sadaka coins in the little charity box to buy land in Israel. My mother was my inspiration. My family here in the United States is a very patriotic family devoted to the United States. My mother served in World War I in the submarine corps, but her other love besides the United States was the Jewish people. And she, I would say, indoctrinated me or inspired me. She had one motto. I had another. Her motto was, "don't ask somebody else to do it. If you think they should do it, you do it." The other inspiration I had were books, including the High Holy Daybooks, the Yom Kippur prayer book. The stories of the martyrs, the Jewish martyrs. Another book that inspired me was Hannah Senesh's book Blessed is the Match. Hannah Senesh was a Hungarian girl during World War II. She was parachuted behind the enemy lines into Hungary, and the Nazis caught her. While her mother was begging for her life, they put her to death. The poem that she wrote begins, "Blessed is the match that is consumed in kindling flame."

Another book that meant very much to me is called Beating Sea and Changeless Bar. It's a collection of short stories about a Jewish woman who always was tempted, for love, to leave their people but then resisted it and stayed steadfast to the Jewish people. These three books, including the Yom Kippur martyr stories, really stayed with me forever.

I saw the Star of David for the first time during my time at the Bnei Akiva in schoorl, where I met with many young Jewish people from over the world. I was so lucky to have both parents still with me, while many young people had neither.

I was brought up in Boston, Massachusetts. I had a very, very rich cultural life, and many of the patriarchs of Israel often frequented my home. Chaim Weizmann, Ben Gurion, and also the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice, Brandeis. All these people came to my house in Boston, which was a hot spot of Zionism. I had terrific mentors there.

I was in the Navy WAVES, and most of my time I spent in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. That was the port that they brought people that were wounded from England and France, what they call Queen's surgery; people who had lost limbs, arms, legs, and so forth. I was about 22 when I left for the Navy. I was just itching to get to Palestine to establish the state.

When I was 16, I went to a training farm to go to Israel. It was the beginning of the future Israel Air Force. Five boys were training out at Trenton, New Jersey. The farm was a front so the people wouldn't discover that they were in training. That made a big impression upon me because this is the year 1939, and already the leaders of the Jewish people, especially Ben Gurion, were contemplating that one day there would be a Jewish state and they would need pilots. One of them includes the founder of the Israeli Air Force, Boris Senior, from South Africa. He was one of the first pilots to come and then a Canadian and one from Czechoslovakia. I attended their graduation, which made a great impression upon me. Ms. Roosevelt came.

I was now in the Navy and itching to go to Palestine to fight in the Haganah. I wanted to get a passport and visa to go there and was denied that. Every time I would apply, my passport came back approved for everywhere in the world except for Palestine. But every time I used it, they deleted one country, and finally, I was left only with France. They marked it in red, not suitable for Palestine. At the bottom of the passport, anyone who serves in the Armed Forces of a foreign country loses their citizenship and can be put in prison. I knew this could happen to me. I knew these were the consequences if I was to go to Palestine and fight in the Haganah to establish the new state, but it was worth it. I believe that if it's worth living for, it's worth fighting to die. I don't want this to confuse the suicide bombers; we weren't attacking innocent civilians. But I believed in fighting to the death if you needed.

My parents did know my plans. I was living at home after the Navy for a short time. My parents were aware of the possibility of losing my American citizenship, but I was not discouraged. My mother was a modern Zionist who became an attorney before women were allowed to practice. She was a very progressive woman. She was before her time. So for me to do something like that was not outstanding for her. My father, who had been an immigrant to the United States, was trepidatious about it because of his own experience. At the age of eight, he arrived all alone from Russia after the Pogroms, so he was afraid for me. I remember asking him for some money to have with me on the trip, and he said that if I were going to Haganah under their auspices, I wouldn't need any money. I wouldn't need anything. They would take care of me. Later on, I realized the wisdom of what he said; it was better to have no money rather than having it stolen. He said they would take of you. And they did.

Well, it was under their auspice the entire time, but I have to say that I couldn't mention this, that I was on the Exodus until about a year ago. Like Ilan Ramon, he couldn't know that he was one of the pilots who bombed the nuclear base factory in Iraq. He was not allowed to say that. However, when he died tragically, all of a sudden, it came out that he was the leading pilot of that expedition.

That was during the time of the British Mandate. Israel later established good ties with England, and many things happened that they would rather not have known with specific details of what they did, how they did it, and why. They did want to know about someone else traveling on the Exodus. The only way they would expose the truth was by somebody living outside of the displaced person camp being on the boat; if there was somebody else who later on could say, yes, that was true. That happened. You know, there was a whole movement of denial of these things.

After the Holocaust, many Jews had no homes to go back. Non-Jewish residents took them over, and the Jews had no place to go. They tried to get into Israel. They were typically caught by the British and placed in displaced person camps, as they called them until they determined where they could get a visa to go to a different country. That is where they were sent by ship, although the Exodus ship never landed. It never landed in Israel or Palestine. It was still Palestine at that time. I would say that, when I was younger, I resented the Hollywood movie very much with Paul Newman because they showed them arriving at Haifa Port. Everybody singing and dancing, indicating they did, in fact, land. That was the Hollywood version.

The ship was not allowed to land. It was boarded by the British, and there was fighting, which ended in the death of one American. Only one member of the crew knew that I was there. He has since died, so I have no living witness that was aboard that ship. He was the only one that was allowed to know that I was there. And, I must say, that I became like a displaced person. It was interesting to give away all your clothing the first thing when you see how the women were without undergarments, wearing rags, and so forth. So your first impulse is to give away everything, and then you have nothing.

How did I get aboard the ship? I was in Boston. I got out of the Army. I was going to school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I couldn't get a passport, so I decided that I will do it another way if I can't get to Palestine legally. What should be known is that there was a movement called Land and Labor for Palestine, which the Jewish Agency and the Haganah drew. Under that, you did not know where they came from or how they came. We just got instructions that they needed people, volunteers who had skills from World War II. They desperately required people who were pilots. They desperately needed people who knew how to handle guns and the latest equipment possible. They needed these people. In Pittsburgh, I had sent maybe about four or five young men before me who served on the various ships with the Israelis and shared the work. There were many ships. The Exodus is only known because of Leon Uris' book, but many other ships also did. At the time, my future husband, we were like passing in the night all the time. He was on one ship going one way, and I was on a boat going the other. We were both trying to get to Israel.

But they sent me to that particular ship because they wanted someone who could later say yes. That is true and not just a made-up story. I was on a studentship going to France from the United States. I had no idea what was going to happen. I could only go to France, so the ship docked at La Habra. When I got off the boat, a 16-year-old girl with a bit of mini skirt and another young man in tight jeans were waiting. Somehow I knew it was them, and they knew it was me. It happened instinctively. I knew who I was supposed to meet. I came down the gangplank and the little girl, a teenager, put out her hand. I knew what she wanted, and I gave her my passport. I didn't see her again for several years. I traveled with her to Germany. Every mark on my body was electrocuted and taken off as soon as I got there. They shaved my hair, and I became Hava Sakowski. I got my passport back several years later. Truman gave amnesty to all people who volunteered in Israel's war of Independence. So when he granted amnesty, I got back my passport.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhNPgQ7GDu4

I was not a very widely known person, but I had to remove my identification marks. My Navy papers say mole on the left cheek, but I was no longer Ester. I was Hava Sakowski. Hava Sakowski didn't have those marks. I never met the woman who I took my identity. I wish I could find her. They did that in the dark in just a little farmhouse. There were doctors there, and they took it all off with a needle; they shaved the hair, and there I was thrown in as Hava Sakowski. So it was straightforward. I did not know what Hava suffered or if she came from Auschwitz. I do not remember them putting a number on my body to show that I was a Holocaust survivor. I don't recall that. So much was happening so fast. I mean, it was enough to have the hair taken off, and then I was in Germany at 22 years old. I was now bald, and I had only one dress left after I had given away another. It was sort of like a midriff halter dress.

The Exodus ship, en route to Palestine, was sent back by the British to Hamburg, and there we were beaten and hosed until we left, got off. We boarded another ship at the risk of being abused or drowning, or arrested. I didn't know what my future would be. I want to stress the greatness, foresight, and imagination that those in the Haganah and those referred to Ben Gurion had in planning this. I did try again to go to Palestine a second time with the same 500 people from the original 4500 people on the Exodus. I went on a ship called the Pan York. We rode three days and three nights together out of Germany and into Marsae [typist's spelling], standing on an open truck until we got there. And then we boarded the ship called the Pan York. Later on, it was renamed the Independence, and it is also one of the five ships you will see on a plaque in the Smithsonian Institute. Now, that trip, if possible, was more horrendous than the one that we made during the British Mandate because the United Nations then was waiting at Haifa Harbor, and we were not supposed to be on that ship either. And because of what happened next, I met my husband, who saved my life.

I'm a little fuzzy on dates, but I remember when we tried to get into Haifa. It was July 17, 1947. We were finally taken back to Germany and beaten off the ship on September 8, 1947. It was not so long. That whole trial was just about ten weeks. There were four camps that They took us to set up outside of Munich. I knew very, very little Yiddish because Yiddish was, you know, the international language. But even when I went to Israel and met Aaron, my husband, somehow I learned to communicate. With human beings, you can share; it isn't always the same language. The Pan York was a real Tower of Babel because we had people from Romania, from Morocco. I mean a whole different kind of crew and passengers than we had on the Exodus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3BXsolgmFM

On the Exodus were people were from the displaced person camp. But when we went on the Pan York, people ran away from Romania, Hungary, all those countries where they no longer had any reason for living. They also were stateless. When I was taken back to the camp, they asked for my name and registration. I registered as Hava Sakowski. Years later, I wanted to have proof that I had been on that ship. I went looking for it in Jerusalem in a dusty old building, and sure enough, I found the files they kept, and yes, I found my ship and my name. I was able to go with it to the minister of immigration and declare myself. That was how I could later get back to the states to visit my parents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tVShEVnVZw

The United States played an oddly ambivalent role in the rescue of the orphans—acting as rescuer and benefactor on the one hand but refusing to disparage the Nazi plan on the other openly. During my years at the International Boarding School, I read about the horror stories in America.

In April 1943, after the Allied governments confirmed the mass murder of the European Jews, Morgenthau became deeply involved in the rescue issue. The U.S. State Department obstructed and delayed a license to send supplies to Jewish children in Transnistria and funds to support hidden Jewish children and escape Spain.

The United States also took part in the supreme failure that was the Bermuda Conference of 1943. The Bermuda Conference was an international meeting between the United Kingdom and the United States. The conference focused on Jewish refugees who had been freed by the Allies and discussed the fate of those refugees still in Nazi-occupied Europe. Ultimately, the point of consensus at the conference was that the Nazis needed to be defeated.

In a New York Times advertisement, the Committee for a Jewish Army, an American Zionist group, criticized the United States' role at the Bermuda Conference and said that the United States had failed in its earlier promises to the Jewish community. "Senator Harry S. Truman withdrew his membership from the committee over what was perceived as an insult to members of the United States Senate." However, as president, Truman later supported Israel, allowing it to be recognized as a state.

On January 13, 1944, Morgenthau and his staffers at the Treasury Department presented Roosevelt with an 18-page indictment of the Roosevelt Administration's failure to help the Jews of Europe. Entitled "Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of Jews," the Treasury report was inspired by the failure of the Bermuda Conference [and] protests from Jewish leaders… [Morgenthau met] with Revisionist Zionist Peter Bergson. He urged him to create an organization to rescue the Jews of Europe. Aware of growing political pressure for action on the refugee issue, Morgenthau urged Roosevelt to create a rescue agency. Roosevelt issued an executive order on January 22, 1944, that established the War Refugee Board (WRB).

During this same year, 1944, Morgenthau devised a plan for the occupation of Germany. The fate of this plan, I felt, also revealed the ambivalent attitude of the Allies toward the Nazis.

The Morgenthau Plan advocated harsh measures to ensure that Germany could not go to war again. Germany was partitioned into two states, its industry internationalized or annexed by neighboring countries, and its heavy industry dismantled. Although Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill signed a modified version of the plan in September 1944 at the Second Quebec Conference, the victorious Allies never fully implemented it. U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull and U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson firmly opposed the policy, as British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. Moreover, in the first postwar years, the Truman administration's concern about the developing "Cold War" and the need to strengthen the western zones of occupied Germany reinforced opposition to implementing the Morgenthau Plan.

Although the United States played a nebulous role in the rescue of the Jews and the post-war treatment of Germany, some European Jews still felt that the United States was the home of Jews. They even referred to Israel as "Little America" because of its similarities to the United States. Jews comprise less than three percent of the American population, but they have generally had a proportionally large representation in American government, business, academia, and entertainment. There has also been a greater acceptance of Jews in the United States than in any other country. Despite their support of the United States, the Jewish community was also supportive of establishing the state of Israel. However, Papa was disheartened by the differences of opinion about the creation of Israel among the Jewish community.

Ingrained Nazi Sentiment

Once I had completed my Bar Mitzvah, I attended the International Boarding School (IB) in the Netherlands. The IB is an accepted entrance qualification for top universities worldwide (like Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and the Sorbonne). This school offered internationally recognized diploma courses and included both a day school and an international boarding school. The IB welcomed all types of students, including children with learning difficulties. Classes were small. The 135 students received individual supervision from 25 teachers, allowing students to attend the programs that suited them best. The school was, therefore, able to guarantee that each student would pass.

Papa wanted me to take a course in textile engineering at a university in London, England, once I graduated from the IB. I never completed the path he wanted me to take, but I learned a valuable lesson about entrenched Nazi sentiment when researching the European textile industry.

A manufacturing representative, Mr. Harry Lam, suggested that he would introduce me to C & A, a textile giant and one of Europe's largest and most organized companies. I did not know much about the company, so on my next visit to Amsterdam, I sought information about it through the offices of the Kamer van Koophandel, the Chambers of Commerce in the Netherlands. The company website describes C&A as follows:

C&A is a paradox. It operates major retail clothing stores throughout Europe, but the company itself, controlled by the Brenninkmeijer family, has long been a highly secretive, privately owned corporation. Little has been published on the organization, and it is hard to get information on its operations beyond publicity for its fashions.

[In the 1930s,] C&As most successful field of operations, Germany, was coming under the control of the strongly nationalist and anti-Semitic Nazi regime. The Dutch Catholic family had to come to terms with this new German government. C&A's Dutch background put its German expansion plans at risk. Nazi laws required the firm to get government permission to open new branches. Some Nazis were also suspicious of the firm's [Catholic] connections.

[To court Nazi acceptance, t]he firm emphasized its pre-Nazi, anti-Jewish hiring policies and the family's distant German origins. In a 1937 application to open a store in Leipzig, the board asked Hermann Göring, the author of the state economic plan. It successfully argued that [C&A] had struggled against Jewish-owned businesses and had prohibited the employment of Jews in the past, writing that the family had "penetrated the power held by the Jewish textile industry."

As the tide of the war began to turn, the Brenninkmeijers started to return to the Netherlands. By the end of the war, [German C&A stores] remained relatively unscathed by bombing and fighting. In liberated Holland, however, the company faced government scrutiny when the Dutch government insisted on inspecting the company's financial records from during the war. At that time, Brenninkmeijers changed the company's status from a limited company to a wholly private concern. They hardly knew essential members of the Brenninkmeijer family on the corporate governing board outside Europe's financial circles. When They quoted C&As management in the press, their statements tended to remain limited to company sales policies.

Secrecy insulated the company from change and from criticism of other policies that appeared anachronistic. The company's paternalism and preference for hiring Catholics attracted particular criticism from the media. Recruits were required to be devout Catholics and attend mass. They devoted the rest of the week to work training and study for compulsory examinations. If managers became engaged, they were required to give the company details about the betrothed's parents and religion. Non-Catholic affianced partners were expected to convert or agree to a Catholic ceremony and Catholic religious education for the couple's children by the Catholic Church’s teachings. The company's governing board and top management positions remained dominated by members of the Brenninkmeijer family and those related to them through marriage.

England, August 1952

Because of my grim discoveries about C&A, I did even try to get an interview at the company. I knew that They already doomed my prospects of working at C&A because I was Jewish. Instead, I followed my Papa's suggestion and went to study textile engineering on London's Charing Cross Road. I left for Scotland from England, where I studied with the James Pringle Weavers of Inverness, known for their cashmere and wide selection of tartans. Tartan is a pattern consisting of crisscrossed horizontal and vertical bands in multiple colors. Tartans originated in woven wool and are particularly associated with Scotland. Scottish kilts usually have tartan patterns. (In North America, "tartan" is called "plaid," but in Scotland, a "plaid" is a blanket or a tartan cloth that hangs over the shoulder.)

I still remember arriving at the factory in Scotland. I met a middle-aged gentleman with a cap and dirty sweater by a terrible-smelling fabric-dyeing tub. I said, "Do you know where Mr. James Pringle is?" He said, "I'm James Pringle." I was shocked. He then introduced me to his family. His beautiful daughter drove me in her Bentley to the Morris family of Inverness, with whom I would be lodging for the next few months.

I was also able to study harris tweed with the Morris family. This luxury cloth has been handwoven by the residents of the Isles of Harris for generations. The original name of the fabric was "tweel," the Scots word for "twill," the cloth is woven in a twilled rather than a plain pattern. A traditional story has the current name coming about almost by chance. In about 1830, a London merchant received an order for some tweels. He could not read the handwriting on the order and thought it was a trading name based on the River Tweed, which runs through the textile areas of Scotland. He referred to the cloth as "tweed." After that, the material of this type was sold as "Tweed," and the name has persisted.

There were many Jews in Scotland when I was there. After World War II, refugees to Scotland increased the size of the Scottish Jewish community. Estimates reveal that the Scottish Jewish population reached 80,000 in the mid-1900s. At its highest, the number of Jewish people in the United Kingdom was about 500,000. "Organized British anti-Semitism arose in the British Union of Fascists, which met with limited success in Scotland. Five thousand Jews now live in Scotland, and most are in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dundee. Scotland's Jewish population continues to be predominantly urban ."

On my return from Scotland, I had two infected toes, and the nails had to be surgically removed at the general acute hospital on Charing Cross Road. Because I was underage, I needed permission from a parent to have the surgery. However, I talked the hospital officials into doing the surgery without parental consent. Later that evening, my mother called and asked if I was all right at my boarding house. She had a feeling that I had gotten sick—mother's instinct.

My mother also told me that she had a friend whose family lived in London and would pick me up if I called them. When I called them the next day, a man appeared in a Jaguar. He was named Blitz. He was the owner of Lyons and Marble Arch Chocolate, and his office was in Hyde Park. He took me to his in-laws' house, where I met Ruth Blitz, who had lost her husband in the war and married David Blitz. Each parent had a daughter—Sonya and Ana. Sonya was married to the chocolate man, and Ana was my age. The Blitz family offered me dinner, and Ana took me on a sightseeing trip to Golders Green, which had an impressive array of restaurants and shops.

Golders Green continues to be a thriving commercial area. There are restaurants with cuisines worldwide, from Kosher food to Indian, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Italian eateries with over a dozen coffee bars and several niche food stores, including two Japanese, two Iranian, one Korean, and one Malaysian. The area is well known for late-night bagels, but it has relatively few pubs. It has long been a well-known and popular venue where many great musicians have played, including bands featuring Eric Clapton, Paul Butterfield's Blues Band, Lee Dorsey, Doris Troy, and many others. Golders Green also has a bus station. Travelers must watch the time at the various London transportation stations because all stations close at midnight.

On the weekends, I liked to stroll around Hyde Park, one of the largest parks in central London and one of the Royal Parks of London. Hyde Park is famous for its Speakers Corner. Because Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens are right next to each other, they seem to form one park. However, the two parks are open at different times. Kensington Gardens closes at dusk, but Hyde Park remains available from 5 am until midnight throughout the year.

While I was at school in London, I part-time job with a textile distributor, the distributor's headquarters looked more like a pharmacy than a fabric place, with its thousands of rolls of fabric neatly stored in bales and all draped in white covers. My associates and I were all issued long white coats and special scissors with zigzag edges. My job was to cut fabric swatches from the bales, glue them onto cards and send each card to the following department.

When I finished my schooling in London, I had trouble leaving the country. On the day I was to go, I learned that they had canceled all of the flights out of the London airport because of fog. After three days of waiting for a flight, I decided to take the Harwich Ferry to Hook in Holland, a trip of 12 hours in the rough North Sea. I had no reservation for the ferry, so I found several life rafts in a lifeboat and made this my sleeping cabin for the next 12 hours. I had informed my parents, by telegram, of my plans and my arrival time. I was never so happy to see them again.

Back in the Netherlands, we were very concerned about being swallowed up by the gulag, the network of some 40,000 forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. Though exact numbers are not known, these camps were reputed to have held millions of people during and after Joseph Stalin's regime. Harsh conditions, including overwork and starvation, led to the deaths of an estimated 30 million people over this time.

Unsettling Discoveries about the United States

At this time, Papa had gone to the United States to see what kind of business opportunities existed there. Because of the general American acceptance of Jews, he felt that America was a good country. My father spent two weeks in New York with the only relatives he had left there.