The Beginning (part 1)

Papa came home early on Wednesday, the last day of 1941, bearing wine, cigars, party masks, and a couple of those empty fruit crates I liked to use as sleds in the snow. My Mama was busy in the kitchen, making special oliebollen (doughnut balls) and apple turnovers.

We waited until dark on New Year's Eve, and then at about five o'clock, we set out on foot for the New Year's party at Aunt Jansje's place. Papa and Mama were carrying the fruit crates loaded with goodies. Papa was constantly looking around. He was watching out for NSB-ers. The NSB, or NationaalSocialistische Beweging, was the Dutch Nazi Party. In their zeal, the younger NSB-ers would start trouble with Jews in the street just to make a name for themselves. They were so brainwashed by their elders, so proud to be "Aryan," that some of them would love to be part of our extermination. There was a real danger from the NSB and its sympathizers in Holland.

The anti-Semitic feeling was quite familiar among the Dutch at the time. The mass of anti-Jewish propaganda was overwhelming. And if you were a Jew in Holland, you could count on no help from the police. Most of the police were puppets of the Nazis. They would ride around proudly on their motorcycles and sidecars or black bicycles with gun holsters on the frames—but never would they interfere with the NSB.

So, although I was too young to understand it, our merely being on the street that night put us in peril. If our family were to be accosted by a violent NSB youth gang, we'd be entirely on our own. If you lived in the western or southern parts of the city, you were not hit as severely as in the old Jewish section. Fortunately, it was usually possible to guess you knew that was related to the NSB, and so far, our immediate neighbors didn't seem interested in sympathizing with the Nazis. But these were strange days, and strange things could happen.

It hadn't been so bad in the early years of the occupation. The Nazis were very careful to pass their anti-Jewish regulations one by one, little by little—so that most Jews were inclined to think, well, I survived the last insult, I guess I can deal with this one, too. But within the coming year, 1942, the Dutch Jews were dismissed from every remaining sphere of social and economic life, left with no income and little possible help from their relatives. Then, at last, we would be cordially invited to the railway station to experience the final insult.

But on the evening of December 31, 1941, I didn't know that yet. I was still two weeks away from my fifth birthday. We walked with a quick step in the winter night. Flip and Jansje, my Aunt and uncle, lived in a lovely apartment in the Zuider Amstellaan (known today as Rooseveltlaan), and this was just a few blocks from where we lived—but for me, it proved quite a trek. My leather shoes with leather soles kept me warm, but soon I ended up riding on Papa's shoulders. Papa was a strong man.

We all walked to the apartment of my Aunt and uncle, Flip and Jansje Gompers, for their spectacular party. When we arrived at our destination, little Maxje was already cold and tired. Aunt Jansje opened the door to her flat and beckoned us into the warmth and light. This room was gigantic! I don't think I'd ever seen such a splendid apartment. This one-room alone seemed to be forty feet long, and it had two long tables set out for our celebration. In Holland, New Year's Eve is called "Old Year's Eve," or Ouderjaars Avond. To this day, I can remember that party—the smells, the tastes, the faces, the songs, as if it were all still happening. I guess there's a good reason for that.

And so there were many people! Many of my relatives were there, all in one place, from the Gompers and the Noach families. I saw my uncles Alphons and Ams Noach, their mother Caroline Noach, her brother Louis Napol, their daughter Nellie, Jansje's sister Aunt Juliette, and Uncle Ab. And finally, Uncle Flip— my uncle Philip Gompers—who always pinched my cheeks and was friends of Jansje and Flip.

Pretty soon, the party was in full swing. And as the night burned on, even more people showed up. Oh, boy, did it stink of cigar smoke! The Noach were good singers; somebody played the violin; somebody else played the accordion. Carolina played the piano. Mama was in a beautiful mood that night. It was as if she had no idea what the future would bring. "Boys," she said, "tonight we are not going to mourn; let's forget all our problems tonight."

Mama took over the piano. She always had a way to make someone's heart feel good. She would look at a sad person, call out their name, and say something—spontaneously make up a rhyme—to pull them out of their sadness. Tonight, Mama's piano-playing had such a swinging rhythm that some people couldn't help but start dancing. They danced in a circle, holding each other by the shoulders. Music always creates that feeling of welcome—Shalom! — the feeling that there will soon be peace around the world. And if this small, musical crowd couldn't solve all the world's woes, in the meantime, they could at least raise a smile. Still, even at my age, I could see a sort of misery there, in all their fond faces, hidden just under the surface.

My Papa was not entirely so outgoing in these situations—he left that up to Mama. He was the kind of fellow who would measure someone's character by shaking hands. And as I say, he was a strong man. My uncles would shake his hand and wince, "Not so hard!" Some people were afraid to shake his hand— but then, just being around him gave them a kind of safe feeling.

Mama loved Amsterdam - she was a real Amsterdammer. Papa was more of a country lover and an athlete. He never could sit for long. But when the musicians played Yiddish songs, you could see tears in Papa's eyes—mainly when they played the song "Yiddish Mama." Papa was crazy about his mother—and so was I. Oma Betje was one of my favorite people in the world. All the grown-ups were busy setting out the wine, the kroketten (Dutch egg rolls), the honey cakes, the butter cakes, the oliebollen, and the turnovers.

What was so rich about that night was the happiness I felt with my family. The sheer joy of being together in troubled times, the feeling of being surrounded by the hostility on the outside— that is what glued us to that table. The trust, the family, and the friends all formed what seemed an unbreakable bond with our Amsterdam Jewish tradition.

As the evening wore on, I was retired to my cousin's bedroom, where my baby cousin Ernest lay weeping in his new crib—my old crib. I listened from there, sometimes peeking out, while the grown-ups talked and talked.

Debates began to spring up about how to deal with the mounting terror toward the Jews. My

Papa had strong opinions, and he defended them vehemently. He said, "The signs are everywhere; there's no chance that we are all going to come out of this alive."

Uncle Flip countered that the Jews needed to have confidence in the Jewish Council. What better choice did we have? He reminded everyone that this was his house, and he asked Mama to try and quiet Papa down. But once Papa set his mind to something, nobody could talk him out of it. Papa argued that today the question was of survival and freedom. How could we remain free? What tactics could we use? What about the NSB and their youth gangs?

Life for the Jews was not only dreadful—it was boring, too! Almost all Jews had been dismissed from their jobs, and those practicing an independent profession were so handicapped that it was nearly impossible to make a living income. Papa said he had no confidence in any banking institutions. He had buried some of his valuables in the ground, in a metal box in a secret location.

Years later, the Gompers, who had been diamond cutters for well over 100 years, was a well-established family, and they tended to view things more optimistically than my father did. There were a lot of questions and answers at that New Year's table. Papa and Uncle Flip and Uncle Ab kept going around and around—until finally, Mama could take no more. She stepped right up on a chair, in her black chiffon dress and white-collar, and began to sing—and insisted everyone sing along.

I was listening to all this from the bedroom of my little cousin Ernest. I was scared. My Aunt Jansje was a hat-maker and used that bedroom as a hat factory. All the wooden blocks for hat-making reminded me of so many skulls, and there were bird feathers, and lots of foul-smelling felt for the hats. I didn't understand what it all was, and it frightened me. Then, we saw flashes of light and heard bombs falling in the distance, and Ernest would cry. But what scared me the most was listening to the men out there arguing with my Papa about politics.

Just then, the clock struck midnight. “Gelukkige Nieuwjaar!” they shouted. Happy New Year! I was thrilled when Mama came to get me from Ernest's bedroom Aunt Jansje picked up Ernest, and Mama carried me to the crowded table, where everyone wished us, God Bless. My elders wished me well, and that I should be strong, and that we should have the fondest dreams. And my Aunts and uncles tried to keep on singing.

On the first few mornings of that new year, Papa pulled me around in the snow on my wooden sled. Mama would always make us a hot lunch, sometimes with Aunt Caroline for company. Thursday, it might be fish; Friday, chicken; Monday, leftovers—along with apple or pear cakes. Always something good. On Friday evenings, Papa brought flowers home for Mama for the Shabbat. He never neglected to do this, despite the bitter Cold.

Some afternoons, I would sit in the front of our first-floor bay window, eating sandwiches with candy sprinkles or chocolate chips, watching some house on our street slowly being emptied of its contents. I was curious about all those ropes and big metal hooks used for furniture moving. Unlike American cities, in Amsterdam, the stairs are too steep and narrow to be used for moving anything significant, so large items need to be hoisted in and out of the front windows, with hooks and overhead winches. So, in Holland, moving furniture becomes more of a theatrical spectacle.

At night, Papa would show me how to build houses out of playing cards. He would tell me stories and gently nudge my bed to rock me to sleep. With a kiss on the forehead, he'd wish me God Bless and a healthy rise.

One evening, things would change. It was pouring rain at eight o'clock that evening; the streets had turned icy—and Papa was still not home. Mama and I were desperately worried. Finally, we heard a soft whistle from outside. Mama ran to the door and waited for the quiet knock. Then, she pulled the rope that opened the downstairs door.

Papa, who usually ran right up the stairs, came shuffling up slowly this time—looking more depressed than I'd ever seen him before. Mama put her arms around him, and they both went to the front room. Without a word, Papa fell flat on the couch. He was shaking terribly; he was cold and wet all over; his feet and socks were wet, and he'd lost his tweed cap and knit gloves. Mama was worried that he had a fever—but he did not have an elevated temperature.

I went back to my bed and started thinking about how I was almost five years old, how Papa was thirty-five, and how much love he gave us—me, Ido, and Mama. And now, it felt as if some monster was out there in the cold dark forbidding that love. It was trying to destroy that love by not letting us listen to the radio, sit at the sidewalk cafés, or laugh in movie theaters. Now I could no longer visit friends to celebrate Hanukkah. There would be no more sitting in Papa's automobile, as Jews were no longer allowed to use cars. And when we would go to the butcher, the baker, or the greengrocer, they were not so happy to see us anymore, and we'd usually end up with the worst of what they had in the shop. Nowadays, for some reason, we even had to keep looking over our shoulders, lest we encounter unkind people in the street. It was like the story Mama used to read me, of the Big Bad Wolf looking for Little Red Riding Hood to have her for supper.

Papa had gotten an injection to raise his blood pressure not to be sent to a Nazi work camp. After the injection, Mama fed Papa some hot soup but said he was silent. Papa had always been a proud man, well-liked by all his friends and admired for his determination in everything he did. But now, here was Papa, looking sick, degraded, humiliated. And I, at almost age five, was suddenly wondering what our household would do without him— even though I knew Mama was a good mother.

My parents had been married for six years, and because of that monster outside, those years had been very depressing years. Papa was supporting not just our own family, but his mother, too—my beloved Oma Betje—and now he could see his means of earning a living eroding like a beach sand underfoot. It was little wonder he felt completely overwhelmed. I could not read or write yet, but I could read in his eyes.

Things were quiet, and after a while, I dozed off. I dreamed that I saw a kind of siren-like monster standing on a pedestal before my bed, confronting me. It looked like one of the iron characters in The Wizard of Oz. I started to scream as my Mama and Papa came rushing to my side. Papa went to the kitchen to get a cold washcloth to put on my head. It must have been about eleven at night. After ten minutes, they had calmed me down somewhat. Papa prepared a cup of water, opened an aspirin packet, stirred the contents in with a spoon, and made me drink it. It was horrible—a bitter taste and powder all between my teeth. But it must have done its work because soon after that, Mama and Papa were tucking me into sleep again.

The following day, I heard my parents talking at breakfast. Papa said that people out there were being crowded into ghettos, picked up in the street, or dragged from their house.

Papa explained that to stay out of the labor camps; he had to make himself appear unfit for work. So, through a relative of ours, he had found a sympathetic doctor in the town of Hoorn. This doctor had injected Papa with medicine that made his blood pressure read very high for a few days. That way, when he went for his regular physical exam to keep his medical card up to date, he would appear very unhealthy—indeed no good for the labor camps—and would note this on his persoonsbewijs, or personal I.D. card. But the side effects were very unpleasant. It gave him a miserable fever and chills.

Massive fights had broken out. The Germans had raised some of the drawbridges to the south to close off the area. Many Jews had been arrested. Papa said they had blessed him to escape and eventually make it home that night. "All the time," he said, "I was thinking of your Mama and the two of you and what would happen with you boys."

Just a few days later, Sunday, January 11, was my birthday. Papa came home very early that day, carrying something up the stairs. A bicycle! When I saw Papa coming up the stairs with that he'd gone to visit Oma Betje at her home in the Louis Boterstraat, and on his way home, he'd seen a gang of Black Shirts—a semi-military organization of the NSB—marching provocatively through the Jewish neighborhood. Because of the bike, I was so happy; no sooner could he set it down than I hugged him with all my might then, I hugged Mama.

My new bike had big red blocks on its pedals to reach them with my feet, and Papa adjusted the handlebars as low as they would go. Well, I soon found out how difficult it was to ride a bicycle. There were movers' ropes all over the tiled sidewalks on the Waalstraat. Papa tried everything to coach me, but I complained about how hard it was and how cold I was.

That Sunday, I was happy because Papa got my sled out of the closet in the back of the rear balcony. Our balcony closet connected to our neighbor—an architectural feature that would later play an essential role for us. liked snow for two reasons. First, I wanted to play in the snow with my sled. Second, I had noticed that if the snow were falling, there would be no air raid sirens or explosions. The bombers didn't fly in bad weather.

Sometimes, during that January, cars with great big gray loudspeakers would show up in our neighborhood, warning of unexploded English bombs, proclaiming that the whole area had to be evacuated so the bombs could be removed and detonated outside the city. These loudspeaker vehicles also took the opportunity to blare Nazi propaganda, warning our neighbors that it was us—the shiftless, disease-carrying Jews—who were responsible for bringing these English bombers over Amsterdam in the first place. Whenever these monster-wagons came by, Mama would pull me away from the front window, take me in her arms, and start telling me stories—about music, or animals, or whatever—anything to distract me from the spectacle outside.

Those cars were just as scary to me as the nightly bombings. It wasn't so much the messages themselves, but their screaming—how they screamed, never talked, always shouted and railed. I came from a family who tried to speak calmly, and Mama and Papa never raised their voices like that. We even got punished with soap in our mouths if we said something terrible. Papa and Mama were, I think, very civilized and good people, always ready to help anyone. Papa, especially, tried to be good to everybody, Jew and non-Jew alike. Later, this goodness of his would fold back in upon us and help save our lives.

Even though we were not permitted to own a wireless set, Papa hid one under the staircase and would sometimes listen to the broadcasts from London, where the Dutch government lived in exile. Papa had a copper wire strung up as a clothesline at the back of our balcony, and this was his antenna. We boys were usually not allowed to listen, but sometimes Mr. Noah came over. At my age, I had no idea what they were hearing. They would sit around the radio listening to the news, but I was usually in bed at the time. Papa and Mama had a gramophone, the kind you had to wind up. They loved music and loved to sing and dance—and of course, Mama often played the piano. We had our black upright piano in our flat. Even with all the troubles, she insisted on keeping up hope.

Early in February, I developed problems with my tonsils. The sleepless nights, the cold weather, and the endless hours spent huddling in the hallway waiting for a bomb to drop on our building—I think the terror of it all was beginning to wear down my health. I had a very sore throat, fever, chills, an ear infection, but most of all, my throat was killing me.

Mama said my tonsils would have to be removed. A week or so went by. By February 10, I still had a fever and terrible pain in my ears and throat. So, Mama took me to a doctor friend of my uncle Ams Noah, and he recommended a tonsillectomy. The doctor started to prepare me for the operation. Mama discussed the surgery frankly with me, explaining that what the doctor would do would make me healthy again. She held my hand and provided great reassurance throughout the ordeal. Uncle Ams's family, friends, and doctor were also accommodating in talking to me. About four hours later, I was adequately recovered and released for Mama to take me home.

The next day, Mama spoiled me with milk, honey, sugar, raw eggs, and lots of sugar water and puddings. Before long, I recovered. But I never did like having the doctor take those throat cultures where I had to say, "Ahh."

On toward the spring of 1942, I became aware of some of my parents' more unusual activities. Papa had been a friend of a member of an organization called the Ordedienst. The word means "order service," the body of people responsible for keeping order. This organization had been formed back in 1918 from retired military and civil guards to protect against the possibility of a political revolution. But during the Nazi occupation of Holland, the Dutch resistance movement needed an existing organization to build on—and the Ordedienst, or O.D., was the ideal vehicle.

Great Feeling of Quality

Arie M. Broers (1906-1976) was a fruit grower to the Dr. de Vriesstraat 23 in Benningbroek, where now Peter Feld has his company. Arie thought that the persecution of the Jews by the Germans was wrong and went into the resistance. Among other things, he arranged for Jewish families hiding places and ration cards in West Friesland. Together with his wife Annie and five children, he had six Jewish people in hiding, including the Cardozo family, throughout the war. They all worked in the fruit garden during the day.

In 1944, he became the most important man alongside A. C. Graaf, responsible for the dumping grounds and weapons transport in North Holland as a 'load master' of the Domestic Government in Wieringermeer, where they set up a central warehouse.

In 1948 Arie van queen Wilhelmina received a special certificate for his great sense of sacrifice. People in hiding had nominated him for a knighthood, but he did not want them. He was proud that he planted his name and Annie Cardozo trees for a new forest in Israel.

Papa’s regional commandant was also an old friend of his, Arie M. Broers, of the Nederland’s Binnenlandse Strijdkracht—Dutch Interior Forces. The NBS played an essential role throughout the occupation, working against both the German and Dutch Nazis. (Oddly enough, the acronym for their arch-opponents was very similar—NSB, the Nationaal-Socialistische

Beweging. (movement )

When the Nazis took over Holland in May 1940, instead of employing a military occupational government, as they had done in other countries like France, they established their Dutch civil government. The German Nazis considered the Dutch to be their long-lost Aryan brethren and planned to annex Holland as part of Greater Germany permanently. The Nazi government was headed by one of Hitler's friends, an Austrian named Arthur Von Seyss-Inquart.

While they were still pretending to respect existing Dutch law, one of the first acts of this new government was to take an elaborate census of the whole Dutch population, including data about religion and ethnic descent. Then, they required everyone to carry an identification card, known as a persoonsbewijs. (ID Card) Perhaps because the Dutch have always been a civic-minded people, they willingly complied with these regulations. It was this massive catalog of freely given, precise personal information about who the Dutch were, where they lived, where they worked. These guys did for a living, and to which religion and an ethnic group they belonged—would later facilitate the grand Nazi plan to eliminate all Jews from Holland, forever.

Thus the persoonsbewijs became an integral part of daily life in Holland. Indeed, you would need one if you were ever questioned on the street by the authorities. But you also needed one just to get ration coupons for food, fuel, and other necessities.

Jews had a big letter J stamped on their persoonsbewijs. Non-Jews didn't. Therefore, many Jews and resistance workers had to be supplied with false identity cards just to survive. The Ordedienst was one of the organizations that specialized in providing these counterfeit documents.

The counterfeiting enterprise eventually grew quite large while they printed thousands of false documents. We obtained blank persoonsbewijs cards through resistance workers who had infiltrated and gotten jobs with the population registry. Along with stealing blank forms, these workers also made efforts to unravel the existing documentation housed in these offices. Whole file cabinets full of records might mysteriously disappear—having been dumped into a canal.

Because of his involvement with the Ordedienst, Papa had a phony non-Jewish identity card from early on, bearing the Christian-sounding name Willem Bakker. But Mama still had only a card with the J. Papa's friend Arie Broers, leader of the Schagen chapter of the Ordedienst, pointed out that this was not a good situation. The Nazi laws didn't recognize marriage between Jews and non-Jews, and extramarital intercourse between the two was severely punishable. So Arie arranged to get Mama a new persoonsbewijs, using Mama’s J I.D. They removed the pictures and fingerprints to put on her new I.D. card. We lived on Waal street 109 second floor.

We lived in an area where new apartment buildings were still going up until the war brought construction to a standstill. Sometimes construction halted simply because the authorities said they first needed to collect and dispose of bomb fragments. I don't suppose my parents would have approved, but this disarray made a fascinating playground for a five-year-old. I remember playing outside all afternoon one day, fearlessly climbing in and out of abandoned concrete sewer pipes.

April 8, 1942

I was tired that night and was in bed when we had an unexpected visitor to our flat. It was Louis Stodel, Papa's cousin. I overheard that Louis decided to leave the country and collected some diamonds from my Oma Betje's savings. Louis told Papa that the Germans were making deals with Jews who had something to sell. Louis' sister, Nanny, was married to a musician named Harry Mock, who played violin in the orchestra of a cruise ship—it may have been the Holland-America line. Harry traveled back and forth between Amsterdam and New York, where he would invest the money of his Dutch relatives, just as some people did with the Swiss.

Many Jews had already arranged to have anonymous holdings in enterprises in America,

Switzerland, Great Britain, and Sweden. Businessmen in search of capital penetration were moving in on Holland, offering to maintain the capital of Jewish stockholders "until things would get settled." Our visitor told Papa that every country was going to stick their finger into this apple-tart. We had no real friends, said he. These people would wait until the day of final destruction, then raise themselves as the redeemers of our blood and money.

Toward the end of April, the RAF and the Luftwaffe were having vicious air battles over our heads. The heavens were bursting with shells, and the flak fire from the ground left wiry trails of light reaching up deep into the sky.

It isn't easy for human beings to try and live without sleep, and it's tough for a boy of five. These nightly bombings had my family waiting out the nights, sitting or standing in the doorways in our flat, in the hope that we might survive if the building should crumble around us. There were flashes like lightning and a terrible, percussive bombing all through the late hours of the night. Our terrible dread that bombs would strike our neighborhood had us holding onto each other for dear life; in some cases, my Mama's fingernails dug right into my skin; she was holding me so protectively.

We could not wait for daylight to come. Some days, there was black smoke in the sky at daybreak. The English had sent bombers to destroy some of the oil reserves that they still stored in tanks at the mouth of the North Sea Canal. The North Sea Canal had the most significant sea lock globally, and it was always a prime target.

The fierce bombardment always targeted some critical strategic installation. Then, we'd learn the next day that the whole neighborhood had been razed. But to our surprise, there was very little damage to the area where we lived— primarily broken windows. The air raids would usually knock out our electricity. Papa always had a flashlight in his pocket. He had a little one called a "cat's eye." You squeezed it, and a tiny battery would come on. I think that was the only "weapon" my father ever carried. We also had oil lamps and candles. We had a gas stove, but we usually cooked on a kerosene burner because the gas was out so often. We stored containers of kerosene on our rear balcony.

On Wednesday, April 29, 1942, a notice appeared in the newspaper.

From the Jewish Council for Amsterdam

Nieuwe Keizersgracht 58

Amsterdam CLS

As of Sunday, next, every Jew will be obliged to wear the so-called Jewish star. The Jewish Council will distribute these. Every person will temporally receive a maximum of four stars and will give one textile coupon in return. The price of one star is 4 cents. The star should be cut and folded so that the six-pointed star, complete with a dotted line, is visible on the clothing. The place where who should wear the principal item is indicated in the newspaper.

Yours faithfully,

The Jewish Council for Amsterdam

Asscher, Prof. Dr. D. Cohen, Presidents.

Think about what was going on at the time I was born. We were all taxed, robbed, beaten, arrested, and jailed for no reason other than for the fact that we practiced our religion. And we were shipped off to labor or concentration camps. Adolf Hitler and the Nazis seduced a nation, bullied a continent, and attempted to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

At that same time, my Papa had already made his plans with his nephew, Harry Stodel, for us to procure Portuguese visas. We wanted to escape from Holland. We were of Portuguese descent, and recent events led us to believe that we could look to Portugal for our escape. Between 1940 and 1941, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a Portuguese diplomat, issued visas enabling Jews and their relatives of Portuguese descent to travel from England to Portugal.

Harry Stodel was a diamond merchant, and he had his car. My Papa worked for him as a part-time driver. Papa and Harry planned to rent a vacation house near the coast of Holland. But as time went on, it became more dangerous to reach Portugal because of the mines, spikes, and nails the Germans had begun to lay along the roads. Although passage to Portugal through France and Spain was no longer possible, we hoped to reach Portugal by sea. There, we would wait for visas sponsored by Papa's lovely to go to America. Although the plan seemed perfect, we were unable to get our visas in time. Papa and Harry scrapped their scheme, and we returned to Amsterdam, never having seen the beachfront.

We would spend the next three years in hiding. Harry died in 1943 at the Sobibor Concentration Camp in Poland. As the war continued when I was a child, the so-called "Nuremberg Laws" once again expanded their scope.

Our flat was in the Waalstraat, in the south of Amsterdam. Early on the morning of Sunday, May 3, 1942, Dr. Ams Noach knocked three times on our front door, Papa rushed out, and Dr. Ams Noach came upstairs with the terrible news that his brother Alphonse was picked up at a Jewish Razzias and was sent to Westerbork. Mama packed them a big bundle of food for Papa and Uncle Dr. Ams to take to a friend in the country, with the help of forged ID cards and membership of the doctors' guild. Uncle Dr. Ams and Papa (with the help of local physicians to assist in hiding doctors who were under attack from Nazi police) traveled from the central station in Amsterdam to Hoogeveen by train. It takes an average of 2h 5m to travel from Amsterdam to Hoogeveen by train, which is over 70 miles (113 km).

Generally, sixty-six trains travel from Amsterdam to Hoogeveen. Including the bicycle route, this is a distance of thirty-two miles. Security guards armed with rifles greeted them and advised them that this was a dangerous place to be. Papa and Uncle Ams boldly announced that they would like to see the commander and bring him a copy of our ID cards and a letter from doctors who were members of the medical guild. After a brief waiting time, the commander answered the letter by sending out the guards, lifting the gate, and letting them go. Now there were three men left on a bicycle. My Uncle Alphons accompanied them as they returned home on the train at Hoogeveen. On their way back to Amsterdam, they were confident that it would take at least until Monday for the authorities to check for non-compliant Jews entering Westerbork, a transit camp in the northeast.

Looking back, it seems an object lesson in pure chutzpah. Two Jews walked into a Nazi labor camp, armed only with a letter, while three Jews walked out. I see now just how brave my Papa was.

In the latter part of May, the Allied bombing in Holland got worse again. On Sunday the seventeenth, there were low-level RAF bombings all day long. On the eighteenth, they came at night, and the air raid sirens were wailing. Then, on the night of the twenty-first, I thought there must have been a thousand bombers in the air. By the twenty-seventh, U.S. and RAF bombers were making raids both day and night.

Not long after that, the Noah family moved to a hiding place in the Spuistraat, and we did not see each other again until 1945. On July 1, 1942, I overheard, in conversation, that Papa was thinking of going into hiding.

The very next day, people were moving some of our furniture, including Mama's piano, into the shared balcony closet—and then straight through into our neighbors' flat. Later, I would come to understand what was going on that day. When a Jewish family was deported or disappeared, all their personal property was confiscated by the Reich. That's why Jews were not allowed to remove furniture from their homes. But with the help of our neighbors and the adjoining closets, our family could secretly remove valuable possessions for safekeeping without appearing to break the law.

TThe next day, Friday, Papa came home and rushed up the stairs. Mama embraced him, and they immediately went into their bedroom to talk about something. By now, every night was full of air raid sirens, bombs falling, lights flashing all around. It made me a nervous wreck. On Friday, July 24, Papa took me to visit Oma Betje at her home in the Louis Boterstraat ,. who had lost her husband and I had visited him with my papa in the hospital ,I still remember in my dreams the white hospital beds in a very large room .I cried to my Oma. I told her I’d had enough of the bombings and sirens every night. Oma Betje took me in her arms and said, “Maxje, just a little more time and things will be back to normal; don’t worry.” Oma Betje lived in a neighborhood where there were now daily roundups of Jews. But the Jewish Council had assured her that because her age she would not be deported. Only people between the ages of sixteen and forty were “called up.”

Papa went home and left me to stay over with Oma Betje that night. All night long, Oma Betje and I talked and played checkers together. What a splendid grandma I had! I wish I could explain to you just how much I loved her. But there are no such words.

Oma Betje had a unique way of banking. She had one jar for electric bills, one for gas, one for rent, and on and on. However, she had one jar of quarters, and when I would visit, I would get a quarter. That was a lot of money in those days. I didn't know it, but this was the last time I would ever see my Oma Betje.

Later on, I learned that the Germans were not only deporting sixty-year-olds but were pulling people out of Jewish hospitals and nursing homes, even taking children from Jewish orphanages. People had begun to wonder just what kind of labor service the Germans expected to get from old maids and toddlers. And no one received any more mail. I believe that the whole neighborhood was emptied of all inhabitants. It had become a ghetto.

"Are we going to have to leave, too?" I wondered. "No, Maxje," Mama reassured me. We would not leave—we would stay here, with Ido and Papa, until the bombings stopped. And then, we would all go for a few weeks to the ocean resort at Egmond aan-Zee. She knew that would make me happy. I loved to play in the sand and build sandcastles.

The following Sunday morning—July 26, 1942—a visitor showed up at our flat at eight o'clock. I didn't know who he was. Papa wasn't home. Mama told Ido and me to hurry up and get dressed—not just the usual way, but with four sets of clothing, one over the other—and to pack even more clothes in a bit of suitcase. I was very fond of my sailor suit and my football shirts, but it was midsummer, and with a blue navy suit and so many shirts and pants under that, I was soon sweating like crazy.

Our mysterious visitor accompanied us as we left our flat at Waalstraat 109. We started in the direction of the Centraal Station. I was excited. Nobody had said so, but I was pretty sure we were going on holiday to Egmond-aan-Zee.

I also noticed that for some reason, Mama and Ido were not wearing their yellow stars today. Something was a little odd about this. We stepped right up onto the tram. Mama was nervous—she said she was worried about air raids. On hearing an air raid alarm, everyone was supposed to clear the streets and take shelter. Mama held onto Ido and me so tightly; there was no way we could even open our mouths.

The team arrived at the Centraal Station. It was a unique, massive, ornate building from the nineteenth century. Mama took us inside the station, past the coffee shops, past the many people in uniform, and those with Red Cross buckets collecting money. The station was filled with people who seemed to me like scary ghosts. Most of the skylight windows overhead were missing or broken—there had been a bombing of oil tanks not far away, at the harbor's edge; its percussion had shattered the glass, and no one had bothered to replace it. There were very noisy steam engines, lots of black smoke, and many soldiers with helmets and big boots and guns.

We climbed aboard a train bound for the town of Hoorn, which is north of Amsterdam, on the eastern coast of a peninsula called West Friesland. There were still more scary-looking people on the train. Mama was a nervous wreck the whole time. Ido and I had to be very quiet.

Arriving at Hoorn, we were met by Papa’s old friend, Arie Broers. Arie got us all to climb into a milk truck, and then he jumped in and got behind the wheel. He started up the car and began driving a while; we arrived in a town called while we arrived in a city called. Heerhugowaard. There was Papa, waiting for us.

He brought us to the home of a family named van Diepen, who had a dairy farm in a rural part of Heerhugowaard. He showed us to a small upstairs farmhouse. I was told this was where we were going to stay for a while.

That was undoubtedly no Egmond-aan-Zee. That was no holiday place at all. Our little bed had two straw mattresses, with urine stains on the ticking and the buttons hanging loose. From a wooden box, we pulled out some flannel blankets. These would serve as my new bed. Somehow, the four of us would eat, live, and sleep in a room about ten feet square.

Sometime later, I wondered how Papa must have felt, bringing his wife and children to a place like this. His lovely, intelligent wife, from the stellar family Gompers, who grew up on the Nieuwe

Keizersgracht and had a taste for all the finer things in life. Now, here she would live. Here, in an upstairs room of a farmhouse. But then, the facts were simple. Our accommodations, albeit humble, were better than a boxcar.

Going into hiding in Nazi-occupied Holland was by no means a simple matter. We were putting our non-Jewish hosts at significant risk. Hiding Jews in Holland was not a capital offense—but it might also have been since The Nazis often sent those caught doing it to concentration camps. By agreeing to hide us on their dairy farm away from the city, the van Diepen family tried to do its part. But there had to be severe restrictions on our activities—mainly because there were always farmhands coming and going, and we couldn't trust everyone. We were only allowed to go downstairs between nine at night and five o'clock the following day. Our washing water came from a pitcher. Then, we had the pot. All four of us used the pot as a toilet during the day for emergencies. If the coast was clear, we could use the outhouse.

Ido and Papa would sit at a bit of table, playing cards and chess during the daylight hours. Papa got some bicycle-wheel spokes to keep us busy and sharpened the ends—and Mama taught us, boys, how to knit.

There was a narrow hallway just outside our room, where we could sit and eat. Here we ate our breakfast, before five in the morning, of course. Usually, we had some hard-homemade bread, butter, and jam. And then at night, once the farmworkers were gone, we would get some hot potatoes, rice soup, and a vegetable. Sometimes we would even get a little meat stew. But we had to be very careful not to leave any crumbs behind.

It's funny how in my mind, it now seems those days and nights passed quickly. I know they must have been agonizingly tedious. To lay low—to stay out of sight—means having very little to keep you stimulated. Of course, for someone whom the Nazis were set on murdering, an uneventful day was a good day. But the things that stand out in my mind are those few moments when we had some excitement—usually moments of jeopardy.

It's funny, the kinds of things that pose a danger when you're in hiding. For example, you wouldn't think that children playing could pose a grave risk, but they did. On Sunday, the van Diepens invited some of their extended family over for a hot lunch, so naturally, we were obliged to hide in our room and stay completely silent. The visiting children once left on their own, began to play together. They came up the stairs, and we heard them fooling around just outside our door. There was no lock on this door. So, my Papa very quietly got up and put his hands on the doorknob in case they tried to open it—which, of course, they did. The door held fast.

The kids would go, then they would come, and someone would try the door again. Maybe they were playing some sort of game of hide and seek—but on our side of the door, only the "hide" part counted. Papa didn't dare let go of that doorknob nor even shift his weight lest a creaking floorboard gives us away. It would take but a second for one of these youngsters to pop the door open and abruptly find himself staring wide-eyed at four strange faces—faces of people who frankly weren't supposed to be there. Were that to happen, there would be some explaining to do in the family— and later, in town, someone might say something to someone else, and we might all lose our lives.

So, for what must have been an hour, Papa held that doorknob firmly in his two hands, in a way holding on for dear life. At last, the man of the house noticed something was going on and came up to intervene. He explained that the children mustn't open that door because he kept his furs and skins in that closet—and daylight would damage them. So, we sent the children downstairs, and we were left alone again.

On another day that summer, a prominent German army truck pulled up and stopped right before Petrus and Agatha van Diepen's house. The driver got out and rang the doorbell. My Mama, already terrified of these familiar heavy boot-steps, turned white as a sheet. And judging from the sound of her voice, I guess Mrs. Agatha van Diepen must have been terrified, too, when she opened the door. We heard the German soldier asking for directions.

Then, he asked our landlady, "Are you all right, madam? You're shaking." "Oh, just a little cold," she said. The soldier said, "Cold? But it's summertime!" Then, he walked away.

That night, we were all expecting the soldiers to return. Mama and Papa told my brother and me to be brave—and you know, that did make us strong. My Papa said, "The strong will always remain and never go under." I was afraid for my parents—yet I felt proud of their courage. But the soldiers didn't come back that night. Life went on. One night, around midnight, the airplanes with their heavy bombs returned—and then came a genuinely terrific explosion. We were very much afraid to leave our hiding place to see what was going on because we knew that the German secret police would follow shortly—so Papa calmed us down, and we stayed inside. The following day, we learned that a bomber had gotten hit and dropped his bombs—and they'd fallen right on the next house down the road.

The days ticked on. Outside, summertime swelled and passed across these pastures and polders of West Friesland, so unfamiliar to a city boy. I didn't spend much time outdoors. Sometimes at dawn, we would all go downstairs to the empty cow stalls, and Mama and Papa would try to tidy us boys up a little. However, one day at about seven in the morning, I had to pee so badly, I decided to go outside and use the sewer. Well, as luck would have it, I glanced up and saw one of the farmworkers watching me. At first, I didn't apprehend what kind of trouble I'd caused; but apparently, this hawk-eyed dairyman had noticed that I was circumcised. Hence, he knew I must not be a Christian. And he went, with that story, to our hosts. After that, someone suggested that we'd better be leaving soon.

People were working very hard in the resistance movement, trying to save as many Jews as possible by finding them hiding places with various families in the towns and the countryside of Holland. A division of the Ordedienst was dedicated to this challenging task; it was called the L.O., or Landelijke Organisatie. Unfortunately, it was usually impossible to find room for a whole family to live together in hiding. Very often, they could only persuade a host to take one person.

So, my family came to split up in September 1942 and live in different homes.

Gently, carefully, Papa explained to Ido and me why it would be safer for the four of us to stay in separate places, just until the war was over. We just had to play this game of make-believe for a while. Besides, where I was going, now I'd get to play with other kids. And it wasn't as though we'd never see each other. He promised to visit whenever he could. As a bonus, I would even be given a new name—Dickey Kramer.

Even living underground, one needed a false identity because, without a persoonsbewijs, no one could obtain food ration cards on your behalf. When it came to getting our phony I.D. cards, Papa had had the foresight to make sure his children's false names were different from his, so there would be no record of a family connection. We could not be traced that way, even if one of us got picked up by the Germans and talked. Thus, Papa’s name was Willem Bakker—and now, my name was Dickey Kramer. "Who cares?" Papa said. "As long as it's a Christian name, the Gentiles will be happy." Anyway, I liked the name, Dickey.

That Sunday, September 6, 1942, we said goodbye to our first hosts. I put my blue and white sailor suit back on and my leather shoes. Mama, Papa, and Ido took me to the home of a family called Schimmel, who lived in a place called De Weere. Here, I have warmly introduced myself to my new make-believe "parents."

For a few minutes, everything was pleasant. It seemed like a lovely enough house. Then, it was time for my own family to move on to their new hiding places. My brother Ido turned and said goodbye to me. I broke out in tears—and, to my surprise, so did he. At this, Mama began to weep, too. She grew hysterical. Maybe she felt this might be the last time she would ever see me. Papa tried to calm her. Mrs. Schimmel took me in her arms and promised Mama that I would be in good hands.

I sat with the Schimmels, where they fed me. It grew late, and I asked Mrs. Schimmel if I might go to sleep now. She gave me a blanket and told me to lie down on the floor, right there in the front room. In Dutch, this was called the pronkkamer, or "show" room, used for special occasions. That was where they left me to sleep.

I had not sucked my thumb for two years, but at that moment, I was so lonely, I lay down with my thumb in my mouth and cried until long after everyone had gone to bed. The following day, Mrs. Schimmel came in to wake me up. Right away, I had to go to the outhouse. I'd already pooped a little in my underpants, but I could not let anybody know that—so in the outhouse, I did my best to clean them. I would have to wear the same underwear for the whole week.

That first few days with my new family, I cried night and day. I was like a puppy that someone had taken from its mother. Even though there were other kids in the house, nobody could help me feel better. I just had to cry myself out.

The following Saturday, I had my first co-ed bathtub experience. The tradition was that everybody took a bath on Saturday night. The Schimmels had two children of their own—a boy and a girl—and to save hot water, they put all three of us in one bath. It seemed like an okay idea at first. But then, the little Schimmel boy noticed that my penis was different from his. Trouble again. I think it's safe to say my penis got me in more trouble when I was five than it ever has since! Of course, Mrs. Schimmel had to tell her husband, and they were worried the little boy might mention it to someone on the outside. So, within a few weeks, little Maxje (alias Dickey) was on the move again.

On Papa's birthday, October 5, 1942, Papa came and fetched me on the back of his bicycle, which had rubber-hose tires. I still remember the pure love in Papa's eyes that day, as he brought me to stay with the Koopman family in Spanbroek.

With the Koopmans, this city boy would now get a real education about life in the country— beginning in the first few moments of my arrival. We arrived at the farm in the early evening. The Koopmans' farmhouse was long and narrow, sparsely furnished, and very clean. But I didn't get a good look at the place right off, as I had to go to the toilet very badly. Wim Koopman pointed me toward the outhouse and handed me some old newspapers to clean. The outhouse was quite a journey away— about fifty meters from the back of the farmhouse. Wim warned me to lock the outhouse door when I was done, or else the wind might blow the door off its hinges. Having just arrived, I walked through the mud in my leather shoes and short navy-blue pants, of which I was so proud. It was slippery, and I went down—into the ground that was more manure than clay. That didn't make me happy. I cried. But then, I remembered that Papa had always told me big boys didn't cry. So, I stood up, and for a moment, I almost forgot what I was doing out there—but nature soon reminded me. And then I had to run.

The outhouse was a wooden shed built over a water hole. I went up three steps and opened the door. The door had a knob to be locked either inside or the outside, with another hook and eye inside for extra privacy. Inside the little shed, I found a big box with toilet covers on top of the hole. The toilet lid opened onto a delightful vista of human and animal waste. There were old catalog sheets, cut into four pieces, hanging on nails in the wall. Although Wim had given me my ration of newspaper, I used some of these sheets to try and get the mud off my shoes and clothing. That was not a place where I felt the urge to linger. As soon as I had accomplished my purpose there, I hurried back to the farmhouse.