Exclusion

On 14 May, we got in the car to drive to the port, but on the way, we got stuck in a huge traffic jam because a few thousand others had the same idea. We couldn’t go any further and had to return home. The trap closed and we were in it.

I was on the street with Mother. We were standing in front of a building that was considered very tall at the time and was called the “Skyscraper”, and she was holding my hand. The Germans entered the city on motorcycles. As they passed us, Mother said, “Brennen sollen sie” in Yiddish, that means “Let them burn”.

One can only be disgusted by the speed and ease with which the Netherlands surrendered and by Queen Wilhelmina, who fled to England.

Even those who were not followers of the royal family felt betrayed by the “mother of all”, who abandoned us. The Queen left, accompanied by government ministers, thus allowing the Nazis to impose civilian rule alongside military rule.

They were harassed and attacked by the Germans and the NSB. The rioters kept coming back. To protect themselves, the shopkeepers sprayed ammonia gas at the entrance to the store. The Germans responded with “actions” during which they apprehended hundreds of Jewish men.

In protest of the Nazi’s actions, the tram drivers refused to drive, and the few trams that did operate were forcibly stopped by Amsterdam residents.

On Tuesday, 25 February 1941, the strike spread throughout the city within a few hours. All the shops closed, and the protest spread to other cities, as well. German soldiers began firing ruthlessly at civilians, shooting to kill. Nine people were killed and many wounded. The Dutch realised that any resistance could cost them their lives. After the February strike, there was no more public resistance.

Marco was the eldest son of Uncle Moishe and Aunt Renée, Father’s sister. A few weeks after Marco perished, his parents received a notice that he had died while working. They were allowed to buy his ashes for 30 guilders. I don’t know if they did this or if they sat to mourn for 7 days according to the Jewish tradition. They did not talk to us about what happened. The atmosphere in the family was very difficult. Aunt Renée was agitated, and Moishe was stoic and did not reveal his feelings.

The Dutch authorities were organised and “helpful”, and the Nazis received accurate data from the Dutch Registry of Residents, including Jews’ home addresses.

The second stage entailed marking Jews. The Nazis ordered all adult Dutch residents to carry an identity card. The cards for Jews were stamped with a red letter “J”, which made it possible to identify Jews quickly at a checkpoint or random inspection on the street.

We were forbidden from entering restaurants, sitting in cafes, spending time in public parks, watching movies in the cinema, watching football games or other sporting events, shopping at the market, and much more ... Suddenly everything was forbidden to us, even sitting on a bench in the street or going out with a fishing rod and fishing.

The purpose of the orders was to remove the Jews from public life, to restrict freedom of movement, and to isolate them.

The Germans forbade Jews from boarding a train, bus or tram. Our car was confiscated, and Father had to hand over his bike, too. We were not allowed to own a phone or radio (TV did not yet exist). We were not allowed to be outside the house between 8:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. or to visit the homes of non-Jews.

This is the bulk of the decrees that the Germans issued against us, and it gives an idea of what it was like to be marked and isolated from the world around us.

They were children who were no longer allowed to attend state schools and had to move to a Jewish school like ours.

The number of students in the class had doubled. Our teacher now had to deal with fifty-six students aged 8-9 ... but how?

This was the next level of isolating Jews from society. Thus, after five years at Bentveld State Elementary School, I had to move to a Jewish school in Haarlem. Every day, Joost and I took the tram from Bentveld to Haarlem. He went to the Jewish Gymnasium, and I went to the 6th grade in elementary school.

I joined a class where all the children came from different schools in Haarlem, Zandvoort and other places nearby and were strangers to each other. It was a big mess, with kids from all different backgrounds, and it was difficult to manage a proper set of lessons. Nevertheless, I felt “at home” among these children who shared a common destiny with me.

In the following months, many thousands of Jews who lived in cities and villages throughout the Netherlands had to move to Amsterdam.

Since there was not enough room for all the Jews from outside the city to be housed in the crowded old Jewish Quarter, some were moved to two other areas of the city, where there were already many Jews. Some of them had already been deported to camps and left empty homes behind.

Since we didn’t have a home in Amsterdam, we stayed with my father’s brother, Uncle George, and his wife, Aunt Martha, on Pieter de Hoochstraat. It wasn’t easy. Fortunately, after a month, we were able to use the vacant apartment of Aunt Ri, the first wife of Uncle Max, my father’s older brother, where we lived in secret because we were officially registered at the home of Uncle George and Aunt Martha.

Since my parents thought it was too dangerous to live in secret, we went back to our uncle’s house at night to sleep. We had to walk about half an hour to reach his home by 8 p.m., when the curfew imposed on the Jews, began. To shorten the distance, we crossed the Amstel Canal on a tiny ferry. It was the only vehicle that Jews were still allowed to use.

I was considered a stranger, and I was miserable. School, which I’ve always managed very easily, didn’t work out for me now. I’d been behind since Haarlem, where we hardly learned anything. The teacher had no patience or understanding for my difficulties. In class, I couldn’t keep track of the lessons and was mostly daydreaming.

At the end of the year, I was the only one who wasn´t allowed to take the high school entrance exams. With the help of the principal of Bentveld Elementary School, who testified that it was the difficult circumstances that made me a weak student, I was able to go to the Jewish high school without entrance exams. [...] At this school, I studied for a few more months. It was fun. Every morning [my] girlfriends [...] picked me up with an old stroller into which we threw all our books, and together we walked three-quarters of an hour to school because we were not allowed to take the tram. 

Every patch had to be cut out along a dashed line that surrounded it.

Ruth and I, who loved doing handicrafts, sat around the table with our mother and grandma, and we meticulously cut star after star along the marked line. Mother and Grandma sewed them on all our clothes.

The next day, 3 May 1942, we left the house with the stars sewn on our clothes. Father said we have nothing to be ashamed of; we have something to be proud of! It wasn’t exactly a jewel on our nice summer dresses, but I don’t remember being ashamed. It must have helped us to be together and with other “star kids” who accompanied us on the way to school.

He transferred it to Herzog, a German leather expert who became the factory manager overnight. The situation got worse, the summer vacation came, and we could feel the tension in the air.

One day I went with Father to the factory and saw him go to open mail, and the German manager forcefully stopped him as he put his hand on the pile of letters and said, “Mr. Reiner, from now on I am the boss here.” He said it in Dutch, in a language devoid of etiquette or emotion. Father got the message. He did not reveal to me the pain he must have felt having to hand over to foreign hands the “Rynco” factory that he had painstakingly built and that was named after him. It was no longer his.

In September, he was moved to a different job working for the Jewish Council.

He worked as a metalwork teacher at a vocational training school – Jewish, of course – a job that suited him much better.

Father spent quite a bit of time with his friend, usually in the neighbour’s house, even though the Nazis forbade Jews from visiting the home of a non-Jew.

In May 1942, when the Germans published a decree demanding that Jews hand over their valuables, such as jewellery, silverware, carpets, pictures, etc., Leo Hillen hid ours for us in his house. We also gave him books and photo albums.

After the war, we got it all back. This is why we still have the old pictures that accompany this project.

Marion was born in Germany on 9 April 1928. In early 1939, Marion and her younger sister, Ruth, arrived in the Netherlands on two separate Kindertransports. After a few days in quarantine, they arrived at the “Burgerweeshuis”, an orphanage housing several Jewish children.

Ruth, Marion’s sister, left on 14 May 1940 as part of the last Kindertransport from IJmuiden, Netherlands, and spent the war in Wales.

In the summer of 1939, Marion moved into foster care.

Three years later, on a Friday, her foster parents went into hiding with their children and did not take Marion with them. When she got home from school, she found an empty house. A note and a bar of chocolate were placed on the kitchen table. The note said she had to contact her guardian at the Jewish Council’s “Department for Assistance to Non-Dutch Jews”. The guardian was single and couldn’t accommodate a 14-year-old girl in her rented room on the Shabbat. She called my mother and asked if she could take in Marion for the weekend.

We stood there, excited, looking out.

There she is! Down the street, walking next to someone from the Jewish Council. She was invited to stay with our family for Saturday about an hour earlier at the Jewish Council. She had no idea what kind of family she was going to! Scary!

However, it is clear that she accepted the invitation, which for her meant rescue. Where else would she have gone after the Cohen family, her foster family, disappeared?