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This is Simon’s story, a Jewish boy born in Amsterdam a decade before World War II. It is also the story of Jaga, a queer kid trying to figure out the world just around the corner from where his grandfather once was deported.
3/20
Together we’d look at the planes. I never cared for planes but it didn’t matter: I cared for my grandfather and his stories. Anything to spend time with him, even if it meant staring into the sky for hours on end.
1989 Not yet in Amsterdam, we spend our time in and around the village we now call home. My grandfather never returned to the city and I still have a decade left before marking my arrival. First we have today, and today is all about adventures with my grandfather. 1999 Just a few months before I turn seventeen, I have my school diploma in hand and finally move to Amsterdam to embark on the future. The past few years have been exhausting and now the moment — my moment — arrives at last.
Four years it had been since I last saw my grandfather. He was still alive but I no longer. Or, rather I was no longer part of my family and it felt like all the life had been drained out of me. My parents and I had not been a match, somewhere things had gone horribly awry, and before I could celebrate my 14th birthday I would no longer live with them. As I was left behind by my family, so I said goodbye to the village. 4/20
My grandfather told me how he and his siblings undertook journeys to Schiphol airport. The airport was nowhere near our village, it would take days to get there by foot. This was an epic undertaking. My grandfather did it. Hero. It was my time to become a hero, too. It would take three decades after my grandfather’s birth before the province on which our village sits came into existence. When I was born it was just a slab of land reclaimed thirty years prior with some towns scattered around. A history not yet there. It was flat, flat like my understanding of history. I didn’t care for it, it even frightened me. Never had I been surrounded by history, the past was an alien entity. I was the kid made for neon and electro, the kid with a view firmly, solely, framed towards the future. Now, the future had begun.
5/20
I was born in the province of Flevoland. My grandparents moved here and so would their eldest daughter and son-in-law, my parents.
At the Keizersgracht I found my new home, my room, inside a canal house built in 1886. It was like breathing the dust of ghosts. It was like being mummified by lingering stories. The future had started several weeks before and here I was, alone. I cried, for finding myself in a past so uncomfortable and a present so unknown. I cried, for I was alone. I cried, for I was in Amsterdam.
Mokum is Yiddish and derived from the Hebrew ‘makom’, meaning ‘place’. In Yiddish it can also translate as ‘safe haven’. Mokum has long been used as a moniker for Amsterdam, giving testimony to the strength of Jewish culture within the city
Mokum would not become my mokum overnight, but I had to explore the city if only to find my way around and get used to what had to feel like home once. One day, not far from my home, I perched myself between the tourists and the pigeons on a large pink marble triangle. Here the present met the past, here men were remembered who were just like me, men who had been exterminated; persecuted; murdered; discriminated against for being just like me. These men once lost everything; I had lost everything too but not nearly as much as they. And here, now, we acknowledged these men to be men. For once they were not a mere afterthought. For 6/20
once they were not omitted from history. The Jewish people were not the only true victims.
Such an endless desire for friendship.
Naar vriendschap mateloos verlangen.
My grandfather had the Nazis banging on his door. This was the story I had been taught about in school, this was the story still lingering in the bones of my family. Thirteen years old and off to Westerbork. Terezin. Two siblings exterminated in Birkenau, another one in Auschwitz. My grandfather survived, his older brother did not. Wolf was one of Simon’s brothers but they never got to play together. He never got to show Simon the secrets only older brothers know. Wolf was a diagnosed retard and placed in permanent care elsewhere.
7/20
zulk
een
Inscription on the Homomonument in Amsterdam from a poem by Jacob Israël de Haan, gay and Jewish writer (1881–1924).
The label ‘retard’ may come off offensive and derogatory. However, as this was indeed the diagnosis in this period of time, the interbellum, it remains here for accuracy.
Het Apeldoornsche Bos, where Wolf lived, catered exclusively to Jewish people since the German occupation. Wolf and the other kids thought they were safe, their secluded home deep in the forest sheltered them from the war. The staff thought they were safe too, Jews all over the country were deported but the facility was left alone, the people here were of little interest to the Germans.
The Jewish Ghetto Police were the auxiliary police units organized in the Jewish ghettos of Europe by local Judenrat (Jewish councils) under orders of occupying German Nazis.
January
22,
1943
The
J端discher Ordnungsdienst of Westerbork arrives. All 1200 patients, naked and often restrained, are put on trains to Auschwitz.
January
23,
1943
everybody on the trains is exterminated.
8/20
At arrival,
April
16,
1943
Wolf’s 17th
birthday, would he still be alive.
August
26,
1999
I celebrate
my 17th birthday at Club Mazzo.
I was too young to enter the Mazzo but no one cared. I danced. I danced. I danced to electronic beats in a building centuries older than the invention of electronic music. And then, then I’d step outside, away from the people, the smoke, the booze, the excitement of being alive. I walked around, in awe of my triumphant life. Only seventeen and I had made it. Dreaming with my eyes open I wandered and found myself in the Rozenstraat, and then the Laurierstraat, just a block away from Mazzo, as was the Homomonument. I walked here before, exploring the city. Now I walked here again only to return back inside and dance some more.
9/20
Dawn arriving, the streets eventually witnessed a dishevelled but content after-birthday kid. Now, being alive was great but being asleep would be even better. My grandfather was asleep when the Nazis knocked on his door. It was in this home where he was born, where he had felt safe. Here he played with his brothers and sisters, here his mother cared for him. Here he was deported. Here in his home in the Laurierstraat.
Auf dem Nordflügel hat sich die Widerstandskraft des holländischen Heeres als stärker erwiesen, als angenommen wurde. Politische wie militärische Gründe erfordern, diesen Widerstand in Kürze zu brechen. Aufgabe des Heeres ist es, die Festung Holland mit ausreichenden Kräften von Süden her in Verbindung mit dem Angriff gegen die Ostfront schnell zum Einsturz zu bringen.
“The resistance capability of the Dutch army has proved to be stronger than expected. Political as well as military reasons demand that this resistance is broken as soon as possible. It is the task of the army to capture the Fortress Holland by committing enough forces from the south, combined with an attack on the east front. In addition to that the air force must, while weakening the forces that up till now have supported the 6th Army, facilitate the rapid fall of the Fortress Holland.”
— Hitler’s Weisung No. 11
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May
14,
1940
The German Air Force performs an aerial bombardment on Rotterdam. In fifteen minutes the 600 year old city centre is almost completely destroyed: 24.000 houses, 32 churches and 2 synagogues are reduced to ashes. An estimated 800 people lose their lives and another 80.000 are made homeless. In fifteen minutes a city is gone. Threats are made to bomb Amsterdam and other cities. The Dutch have no choice but to surrender.
May
14, 1940 The Netherlands capitulate and become occupied under Germany. May
14,
1940
Unlike Wolf my grandfather finds himself in the middle of the war.
February
1941
Dutch Jews begin to be deported. It will take two years before virtually all of them, 160.00, half of them from Amsterdam, are eliminated from Dutch society.
11/20
Annelies Marie (Anne) Frank (June 12, 1929) is one of the best known Jewish victims of the Holocaust. During the Dutch occupation she would hide at the Prinsengracht 263, Amsterdam. Her diary describing this period has been published globally. Anne died March, 1945 in the concentration camp BergenBelsen at the age of 15. The house at the Prinsengracht now hosts the Anne Frank House museum.
Frequently I’d pass the Anne Frank House, finding dozens of people around its corner queuing to enter. Anne was born in 1929, my grandfather in 1928. They could have bumped into each other, had she not hidden behind a book closet, had my grandfather not hidden inside his home. They could have known each other. They could have been friends.
February
24,
1941
The people of Amsterdam, Jewish and otherwise, are enraged about the state of things and meet at the Noordermarkt square. Here they devise a plan to bring an end to the pogroms and deportations.
February is on strike.
25,
1941
The city
Trams suddenly stand still, its drivers refuse to continue their routes. Kids are sent home as teachers no longer teach. Stores close as sales clerks no longer sell. Production lines halt as factory workers no longer produce. More and more people participate; more and more the city comes to a halt. 12/20
The strike begins in the Jordaan, but will quickly spread all over the city and beyond.
February
27,
Germans violently suppress the strike.
1941
The
The strike lasted two days and proved unsuccessful. It will forever be remembered as the first organised action against anti-Jewish measures carried out by mostly non-Jews in occupied Europe.
My focus remained on tomorrow instead of yesterday and I never noticed the Dokwerker statue at the Noordermarkt, placed there to remember the February Strike. I was 17 now. I was king of my world. I had conquered my past. I felt miserable. 13/20
The Jordaan is one of the oldest and most famous neighbourhoods of Amsterdam. Both the Noordermarkt and the Laurierstraat are located here. Part of the Prinsengracht looks out on the Jordaan and part of the Keizersgracht lies directly behind it.
There was no one to share my adventures with. There was no family cheering me on. There was nobody to support me. My skin felt uncomfortable. My sexuality felt uncomfortable. I knew no better, even though I tried to deny it with all that I possibly could. I’d kiss a guy because I longed for him. Not him, he was not that interesting at all, but I’d long to be seen, long to be desired. We’d kiss but his touch was acid and I’d push him away. I pushed him away. I pushed him away too. And him, too. I just couldn’t believe this was right, for I was always taught this to be wrong. As time went by the only place I dared to be was the corner of my bed; my life not feeling much different from the house I lived in, even though I was a century younger. There was a beautiful façade, but the inside showed weariness, an unclear identity, something rather to stay hidden.
14/20
Once, with my grandfather, I visited Westerbork, the transit camp where he arrived as a teen. For three years this had been his home. He never spoke about the horrors he endured here, rather told me how he played football with the other boys in the camp. We walked over the terrain and I never noticed how difficult it must have been for him, I just enjoyed spending time with my grandfather and listening to his stories. We walked over the terrain and I never realised I could have ended up here, had I been born in a different time. He never told me how it happened; how the Nazis took him, his brothers, sisters and his mother; if he ever saw his father, who lived elsewhere, before the family was even further pulled apart.
15/20
He was just a teenager. One day he’d walk to the airport to watch the planes. The next day he was forced onto a train not knowing where he went and if he would ever return. My grandfather never stepped inside a train again.
August
26,
2000
It is my
birthday and I turn 18.
August
27,
2000
As I no
longer receive support I have no choice but to move out of my home having nowhere to go. While on a train going anywhere but a known destination I see a plane high above. If only I could sit next to my grandfather now, listening to his stories. With a view firmly framed towards the sky I am reluctant to believe this to be adult life.
16/20
Wolf was one of the many people no one in my family ever spoke about. The stories were too dark; the lives, and deaths, evoked nothing but grim memories. It was better for them not to exist. I discovered Wolf’s existence through family data, their lives only remembered through the meticulous registers of the Nazis. I found the information of whom was sent on which train, sent to which camp. I found information on who returned, and who did not. Simon did. Wolf did not.
17/20
Amsterdamx2
An online version is available via Medium.
An audio version is available via Mixcloud.
jaga n.a.
argentum. 2015.