August is Summer Reading Month in Daily Nutmeg, and Daphne Geismar is this week’s local author. Please enjoy this excerpt—featuring a history primer followed by personal recollections—from Geismar’s book Invisible Years: A Family’s Collected Account of Separation and Survival during the Holocaust in the Netherlands (David R. Godine, Publisher, 2020).
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When the deportations began, Jews had few options for escape. German E-boats (fast attack craft) made a sea crossing to England impossible; journeys to neutral Switzerland or Spain were very difficult. By the late summer of 1942, knowing that they would not receive an exemption from deportation, some 40,000 Jews sought hiding places—though only 28,000 would secure them. Going into hiding meant one of two things: either one assumed a different, non-Jewish identity, or one quite literally hid—or, as the Dutch called it, lived ondergedoken (literally, “submerged”)…
DAVID
My parents told me what was going to happen. They did not talk to me about concentration camps but said that Jews were arrested and put in jails, and going into hiding would be the best thing to do. They told me I should listen to the people where I was hiding, and we would all get together after the war. They told me about the danger of the whole thing.
I left home in March with one suitcase. I was thirteen. They said it was only for a short time. I was hidden in a wallpaper factory with the factory superintendent for about five weeks on a little island behind the central station in Amsterdam. Then some work had to be done in the factory, and I had to be moved to another place. A friend of my parents arranged this—I forget her name. She had two bicycles with her because we had to go a long distance. I wasn’t wearing a star and had false papers under the name of Dirk van Leeuwen. All during the war, my name was Dirk van Leeuwen. I was registered with that name in the Blaricum town hall.
We had to go on a ferryboat back to Amsterdam. As we left the ferry and stepped on our bikes, there was a Dutch Nazi policeman who followed and stopped us, asking for our papers. The woman was from Blaricum, which was legitimate. She had papers. And the thing was, the woman looked very Jewish. She wasn’t Jewish, but they thought she was and that I was bringing her away. At thirteen years, I did not have to have papers—all I had to be was registered at the town hall. The policeman took us to the Dutch Nazi police headquarters in Amsterdam.
They separated us. They beat me to find out what my name really was; if that woman was who she said she was; if she was really a friend who took me for an outing that day. Before, it was arranged that if anybody asked, our story was that she took me on the ferryboat. They kept us there for about four hours. They beat the hell out of her. They beat me on and off with their hands, with their belts. They mainly slapped me in the face and asked, “Isn’t she Jewish?” This went on for about four or five hours. They said they would turn us over to the German Grüne Polizei (Green Police), and it was too bad for me because they could let me go if I told them who she was. I said, “Well, she is who she says she is.” That was the truth. They never asked me if I was the Jewish one.
They transferred us to their headquarters on the Euterpestraat where the Grüne Polizei interrogated us. They never beat us. They called the offices in Blaricum, where I was supposed to be registered. It was a holiday, and they got disgusted that those offices were closed while they had to work. They said, “Look, everything is closed, we can’t do anything today. Why don’t you go home, come back tomorrow, and we’ll straighten it out.” I was scared—the only thing that got me through it was that they didn’t realize I was Jewish. Well, you know we never went back, right?
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Invisible Years: A Family’s Collected Account of Separation and Survival during the Holocaust in the Netherlands
by Daphne Geismar
David R. Godine, Publisher, 2020
Where to buy: RJ Julia | Bookshop | Barnes & Noble
