Will They Ever Learn From the Past?

A psychologist friend of mine, Dr. Susan Statland, once told me, “Your glass is full. Max, you have to let something out. You have to write it down.”

Ninety-three Times the Cattle Cars Left the Netherlands

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Ninth-three times the Holocaust cattle cars trains left the Netherlands for the concentration camps through Germany, and on to Poland. My Grandparents, Aunts, and Uncles were in those trains, just like Anne Frank and her family. They were among the 107,000 Jews who were transported silently across the Dutch border.

From July 1942 to September 1944, organized resistance never attempted to obstruct any of the convoys . Wilhelmina of the Netherlands remained silent, while it took them 1 and a half years to ask the Polish government what was happening. Yet the two governments were housed in the same building.

On my last trip to Holland, I was reading a newspaper article about a brave young lady, Ayaan Hirsi. It reminded me of the days of Anne Frank. Here was a young lady—or at that time, a child, born in 1969.

The young lady was treated similarly to Anne Frank. Had the Dutch not learned from the past? I can honestly say that the religious education at school merely skimmed the surface. In fact, my school never really had much to do with religion in general, and my history classes never delved into the whole reason behind the Jewish thing; it was never really discussed in any depth, just reported. I understand the whole master plan of the Nazis (Generalplan Ost), but I was a little baffled that it was still totally out of hand. It is shocking that many Dutch still go along with the same ideology on this sensitive subject.