I wanted to share a few thoughts here, because it matters. When people say "never again", it seems like they are just words. I look at what is going on around the world, in Europe, the Middle East and the USA and I wonder. I was amazed how few people who were not survivors, i.e. relatives like me, let themselves be seen at this monument as part of the bigger family. You see, we are survivors too.
I was born in the late 50's and my family moved to New Zealand, "for a better life". New Zealand was multicultural and we would be safe. Funny though, when I was a little kid in Christchurch, people used to throw stones on our corrugated iron roof at night when my father wasn't home, yelling for us to go back to where we came from. Sometimes they would break a window and my mother and I would cower in the dark. I didn't understand except that we spoke differently, with accents or in different languages.
As a kid, I studied Hebrew at Shule, went to Habonim, sang and danced, went to a few camps. Many of the people there came from well to do families. We were more well to don't. But other people judged us, that if we were Jews we had money. I learned to not tell people we were Jewish.
Once I was doing fundraising. I was 10 and Habonim was fundraising to send money to Israel, to support Kibbutzim and people after the 7 Day War. I went to a local milk bar and asked if I could do some work to earn 10 cents. The owner, also an immigrant gave me a broom and let me sweep the floor. His son, a kid I went to school with came into the store and asked what I was doing sweeping. His father said, I want to see the jewboy sweep my dirt. I won't mention his name. The son thought it was funny and gave me a bit of a sneering shove as he walked past me.
My parents used to eat their food very quickly after having done strict portion control, making sure everyone more or less got the same, based on seniority. It wasn't about whether you were hungry or not. You had to eat everything on your plate even if you hated it. I had many nights as a child sitting at the table not allowed to go to bed because I hadn't finished eating my dry, gristly piece of steak. It wasn't until I was a teenager that we discussed these things and we realised those behaviours were subconscious left over PTSD symptoms from the war. There was no other logic. We weren't well off, didn't own a home, but were never short of food.
When I was 20, living in another town, my parents contacted me and said I needed to become a New Zealand citizen urgently. If I didn't, I would be drafted into the Dutch Army. They had always been pacifists, I wasn't even allowed to play with toy guns as a kid. The Dutch would draft me and send me back to Holland to serve. I didn't understand, but became a New Zealand citizen.
Later I regretted it, not only because the Dutch Army does a lot of good peace keeping work and I would have developed new skills and experience, but because I feel I should have given something back. My father escaped national service by living in New Zealand as the eldest male in his family, but one of his brothers had to do it in his place. He loved it, as did another uncle who did his time learning to be a field medic, not through the draft, but because he wanted to give something back. He was born a difficult breech birth from a malnourished mother, my grandmother on Bevrijdingsdag. He was named Tommy (after the Canadians) and Victor for the war end. he also loved being in the service for the cameraderie and experiences.
My parents marriage broke up and I was sent back to Holland to live with my grandparents and went to school there from ages 11-13. We learned all about moffen, onderduikers, collaborators and I even got to see my grandparents house that was apparently given to collaborators as a reward for supporting the Germans. I met a farming family who hid my father for a couple of years including that really cold winter; and they treated me like long lost family.
As I grew up, there was still prejudice and living in a country that had never been occupied, people didn't understand how it impacted not only the people who lived and died through the Holocaust, even though New Zealand per capita gave up more people than most countries when it came to lives lost defending Europeans and Brits in both world wars. Yet there remains prejudice here, but it is more subtle.
Only 6 years ago, my boss (I don't work there anymore), who now ironically works for a global Dutch company, but lives in New Zealand, went to great lengths to tell me on multiple occasions that the global financial crisis was brought about by the greedy Jews and how they control the money in the world and that something needs to be done about the Jewish problem. I ignored his postulations because I didn't want to lose my job. Ironically another of my colleagues, an Austrian woman told me that her family frequently hid and fed Jewish people during the war.
I can still sing the Sh'ma and I still remember Seder rituals to the word; and many old folk and Israeli songs, but I am not religious. I always struggled with people's cruelty to other people in the name of religion. How could a god put people through so much anguish. I'm not an atheist either, I just struggle with things I don't understand. Sometimes I hedge my bets.
In the last 18 months I have been off work because I have a back injury and the State Insurance Company that covers accidents says the surgery I need is for spine degeneration, not the accident that put me in accident and emergency 4 times. The injury merely rendered the condition active. As I write this I am about to go and have a CT Bone scan which will hopefully allow me to go and have surgery through another policy where they will pay up to 80% of the surgery and hospital stay. Cross your fingers for me. I need this to be a success because I have also just lost my job through a restructure and redundancy. I can't apply for a new job until I can say that I will be fit for work and people of my age are not highly sought after. Wish me luck.
During the time off work I discovered MyHeritage.com and through that Joodsmonument.nl which has really opened my eyes and I have learned so much. I started a spreadsheet and so far have found over 100 of my relatives, mostly from Amsterdam, who died in concentration camps, mainly Auschwitz and Sobibor; some who committed suicide; some shot during curfew; some mysteriously disappeared from places like Westerbork. I also found out in researching people that I had relatives who were in the resistance. I discovered that we had friends also in the resistance.
I found out why my family is relatively small. I also found out about family members I had never heard of, one who was Mayor of Amsterdam for a time (during my lifetime), another who held the Torah and walked with Martin Luther King on that famous bridge crossing. I learned about diamond cutters and street vendors, seamstresses and retailers. I learned about how many people's records were destroyed by the Nazis which has made my journey of family discovery difficult.
So why am I here, sharing my name, when I still sometimes feel like looking over my shoulder and that things might not go well for me if I stand up and say I am a Jew and descended from many of these people? I guess I am writing this because I see so few names of living people on this monument. I have evidence that I am related to many of the people who are listed on this monument as not having any known family. So I feel a need to recognise them as my family. It may not mean anything to anyone else, but it feels right to do so.
I'm creating a family tree for my children and future descendents so they can at least have a bit of an idea of some of their heritage. My daughter visited Auschwitz about 10 years ago. She knew that her great great grandmother passed away at Sobibor and found the experience deeply emotional, without knowing anything about her association with the many spirits who were lost there. I'm kind of glad that she didn't know that dozens of her family members were murdered there, she is very empathetic, perhaps a Jewish trait. But she has always been proud of her heritage, something she has fortunately never been ridiculed for.
So here I am, amongst my family. I don't mind if no one reads this. But these people, these Jews and their descendants, are my family. In some cases fairly close bloodlines, in some cases the links are more tenuous, but in opening up my heart, I am saying that in my small way, I am recognising you. You are not forgotten. People still care.