Mendelevski's Box Read online

  Mendelevski’s Box

  Roger Swindells

  Contents

  Foreword

  Thursday 20th September 1945

  Friday 21st September 1945

  Saturday 22nd September 1945

  Monday 24th September 1945

  Wednesday 26th September 1945

  Friday 28th September 1945

  Saturday 29th September 1945

  Sunday 30th September 1945

  Wednesday 3rd October 1945

  Friday 12th October 1945

  Saturday 13th October 1945

  Sunday 14th October 1945

  Monday 15th October 1945

  Tuesday 16th October 1945

  Thursday 18th October 1945

  Saturday 20th October 1945

  Sunday 21st October 1945

  Monday 22nd October 1945

  Tuesday 23rd October 1945

  Wednesday 24th October 1945

  Saturday 27th October 1945

  Sunday 28th October 1945

  Wednesday 31st October 1945

  Thursday 1st November 1945

  Monday 5th November 1945

  Tuesday 6th November 1945

  Wednesday 7th November 1945

  Friday 9th November 1945

  Sunday 11th November 1945

  Monday 12th November 1945

  Wednesday 14th November 1945

  Saturday 17th November 1945

  Monday 19th November 1945

  Tuesday 20th November 1945

  Friday 23rd November 1945

  Thursday 27th June 1946

  Afterword

  Further Reading

  ISBN: 9789493056114 (ebook)

  ISBN: 9789493056107 (paperback)

  Publisher: Amsterdam Publishers, The Netherlands

  [email protected]

  Copyright text © Roger Swindells, 2019

  Cover image: photo of Slootstraat in Amsterdam (October 1930), by Nico Swaager (1910-1983), Municipal Archives Amsterdam.

  All Rights Reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  This book was born out of my love for The Netherlands, its people in general and the wonderful city of Amsterdam in particular.

  I am extremely grateful to the volunteers at the National Holocaust Museum and the National Holocaust Memorial in Plantage Middenlaan, to the patient staff of the Stadsarchief in Vijzelstraat and to all those in Amsterdam, too numerous to mention, whose brains I picked and whose memories I explored.

  Finally, thanks must go to my sister-in-law Sandra Arthur (née Mendell), who encouraged me to write. I await her verdict with interest and some trepidation.

  Foreword

  Much is known and, quite rightly, much has been written, about the fate of Europe’s Jews in the extermination camps of the Holocaust. Much less is known, and even less documented, about the life of survivors on their return to their homes.

  Jews living in The Netherlands suffered the lowest survival rate, just 27 percent, of any Western European Jewish community in WWII. Only eighteen of the 34,000 Dutch Jews transported to Sobibor survived the war. Questions have been raised about the attitude of the general Dutch population to the deportations and to property left behind by their Jewish neighbours.

  This is a work of fiction, based (albeit loosely) around immediate post-war events. It seeks to encompass the day to day life of an Auschwitz survivor returning to his native Netherlands in September 1945, and the experiences of Amsterdam residents following the ‘hunger winter’ and liberation.

  The book was also inspired by the discovery in 2009 of a suitcase of family items hidden by a Jewish family in a cupboard in a house in Beethovenstraat in Amsterdam.1

  1 https://www.dutchnews.nl/features/2016/05/a-suitcase-full-of-secrets-found-in-amsterdams-jewish-quarter-after-70-yearssterdam-flat-stirs-memories-of-long-gone-lives

  Thursday 20th September 1945

  ‘Ten guilders? Ten lousy guilders?’

  ‘It’s just an average painting, it won’t be going into the Rijksmuseum, the girl’s features are, well, amateur at best, so that’s my best offer, take it or leave it.’ His hand, white, thin and immaculately manicured, reached out to retrieve the crumpled notes.

  ‘But the frame alone is worth fifty,’ she pleaded, covering her wedding ring, ‘it’s all I have. Look at the gilding.’

  The man smiled, revealing gold teeth below a neatly trimmed moustache. ‘For twenty guilders I could buy a dozen before lunchtime, dear lady. Everyone in Amsterdam is poor, the Nazis have left our country on its knees. Like I said, take it or leave it.’

  She shrugged, reluctantly picking up the notes and watching the painting disappear beneath the counter. Not everyone is poor, she thought, looking at the white cuffs of the man’s freshly laundered shirt, waistcoat with a gold watch chain, and neatly pressed trousers. Her worn shoes and threadbare dress showed clearly that some had done better from the war than others.

  ‘Collaborator,’ she mumbled under her breath as she left. Out from the darkness of the shop and into the early autumn sunshine, she started to make her way back along the Keizersgracht towards the Leidsegracht and the Jordaan.

  Suddenly she heard a voice from across the canal.

  ‘Mevrouw Blok! Grietje! Over here!’

  She turned to see a tall young man, his clothes hanging loosely about his thin frame, running towards the bridge while frantically waving.

  ‘Grietje, it is you, how wonderful to find someone! It’s me, Simon, Simon Mendelevski, you used to work for my father before the war, cleaning at his workshop in Peperstraat, don’t you remember me? We lived on the Dijkstraat, I think you came there once.’

  ‘Simon, yes of course I remember you, I just…’ She tailed off, unsure what to say.

  The man’s face was familiar and looking carefully she could just see in him the handsome teenage boy she had known before the war, but the four years since she last saw him had clearly taken their toll. Gone was the ruddy faced youth to be replaced by a man older than his years with a straggly beard, sunken cheeks and fear in his eyes. The cheeky muscular lad she had chased with her broom was now a thin, haunted man in worn clothes. The jacket, several sizes too large, hung from his shoulders, exacerbating his skeletal appearance.

  ‘I’m sorry, I just didn’t recognise you at first. You’ve changed, well, we’ve all changed I’m afraid, the war was hard on all of us. I don’t suppose I look the same as I did in 1941.’

  He smiled, showing missing and bad teeth, ‘I’d recognise you anywhere Grietje, beautiful as ever. Can I say that now I’m no longer a boy?’ He laughed. ‘I’m so glad you came through it all.’

  ‘Don’t embarrass me, Simon. And you and your family, how did you survive? I heard nothing for two years after you went into hiding, then I was told you had all been arrested and put on a transport.’

  He fell silent for a moment, looking at the ground. ’We didn’t survive, I’m afraid I’m the only survivor. I’ve been looking and asking since I got back to the city two months ago, but no one can tell me anything. There is no trace of my family, in fact I can hardly find any friends or neighbours to even ask about them. The whole area is virtually deserted, looted and stripped bare of anything wooden. Most of the houses on Jodenbreestraat and Weesperstraat are derelict, some have even collapsed. Were they bombed?’

  She shook her head and was about to tell him about the hunt for fuel during the recent winter when he continued, the words flooding out as he recounted his return to his old district.

  ‘The better places on Nieuw
e Keizersgracht are still there of course, who is in them I don’t know. The one belonging to our friends, the Kok family, was boarded up. The houses that are still intact seem to have been occupied by non-Jews, I don’t think they expected any of us to return. I went to our old house. There is a Dutch family in there now. I told them it was our family home, but the man said that wasn’t possible as all the ‘dirty Jews’ were dead, and he slammed the door in my face. The workshop building looks alright but it’s boarded up and I couldn’t even find a door, but then I have no key anyway. Father never registered the business and he closed the workshop after the first arrests in 1941, so I assume he cleared it out then.

  She nodded, remembering his father packing his most precious possessions from the workshop when it closed. ‘The Germans had made it a law that non-Jews couldn’t do domestic work for Jews anymore, so I had had to leave you anyway. Please go on, what did you all do?’’

  ‘We didn’t hide until the middle of 1942 when they started taking everyone and fencing off the area to make a ghetto. In June they’d started calling all Jewish boys aged sixteen and over ‘to work in Germany’, so they said. They found us after six months and we were taken to the theatre on Plantage Middenlaan with hundreds of others. There were some families like us who had been in hiding, but almost all the other people had just been rounded up from the street. Then we were taken to Centraal Station and put on trains. After that we were at a camp called Westerbork before we were transported to Auschwitz. I didn’t see my mother and sister again after we arrived. As for my father, I know he died there. The Red Cross are saying that less than a thousand of us Jews, out of the sixty thousand who were sent there, have survived.’ His voice began to break and he sobbed, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t go on.’

  ‘Come Simon, come home with me.’ She put her arm around his shoulders and tried to lead him away. ‘It’s only a short walk from here.’

  He forced a smile. ’Walk? But where is your bicycle?’

  ‘Jaap managed to keep a bicycle when the official confiscation was on, but the tyres gave out and he said riding on wooden tyres or on the rims was noisy and uncomfortable, so he gave up. I’m certainly not going to use it until there are tyres available again. At least the Germans left it behind—they took most of the rideable bikes with them.’

  ‘Ah yes, of course, Jaap. I had forgotten his name. Enough about me, how is Jaap and how are your children?’

  It was her turn to fall silent. ‘Not now, please. Come on, we can talk more at home, I must hurry, my neighbour can only look after my daughter until four.’

  They linked arms and walked towards the Jordaan. The better canal-side houses on Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht were still grand and sparkled in the sun, and they came across several well-dressed groups at the corner cafes and bars still celebrating liberation. Once they crossed into Elandsgracht and walked deeper into the Jordaan, amidst the remaining signs of Nazi occupation with ‘V’ for victory signs, some altered to ‘W’ for Wilhelmina, daubed on the walls, they merged seamlessly with other war-worn citizens struggling to go about their business.

  ‘Come in, I’m on the first floor. It’s not much, I’m afraid. Jaap said that after the war we would be able to move out to the Spaarndammerbuurt as there would be much more work on the docks, but it never happened.’

  Squeezing past two tyre-less bicycles in the hallway they climbed the near vertical stairs to the first landing and a heavy dark brown door. She unlocked it. ‘Please go on in, I need to collect Irene from Maaike downstairs, she minds her while I work but she has to work herself from six.’

  He looked around what was a dark living room overlooking one of the narrower Jordaan streets, whose houses prevented the entry of sunshine through even the largest windows. The furniture was old and equally dark wood, and the carpet was worn with a hole showing just inside the door. It reminded him so much of the place where his family had hidden for six long months, which had also been somewhere in the Jordaan.

  His thoughts were interrupted as the door opened and Grietje led a beautiful little blond girl into the room. ‘Simon, this is Irene, my daughter, she’s three. Irene, this is Simon, a friend of mine, he’s come to visit.’

  The girl hid behind her mother’s skirts, eyeing him suspiciously.

  ‘I’m sorry, I think it’s the beard,’ she said apologetically. ‘She never saw her father with a beard.’

  He laughed. ‘Don’t worry, I think I probably look pretty frightening generally, not just with the beard, I’ve been sleeping rough in derelict houses for two weeks. A quick wash at Centraal Station every few days obviously isn’t enough.’

  His smile clearly placated the girl as she came out from behind her mother and stood between them.

  ‘Goedemiddag meneer, I’m Irene, I’m named after the Queen’s daughter and I’m three and a half.’

  He extended his hand. ‘I’m Simon and I’m pleased to meet you.’

  Grietje interrupted the introductions with a question. ‘Are you hungry? I can make some food but I don’t know if I have much that you can eat. We have nothing that is kosher.’

  He grinned. ‘Don’t worry, I may be a Jew but if I had a strict diet I gave it up a long time ago. I was happy to eat anything just to survive and yes, I’m starving, but please, I don’t want to take your food.’

  ‘Nonsense, you are a guest here and anyway there are just the two of us to feed so there will be plenty.’

  ‘What about Jaap and the boys?’

  A sad look passed over her face and she turned to the girl. ‘Go to the bedroom and play with your doll, I must talk with Simon.’

  When the girl had left, she continued speaking. ‘Jaap and the boys won’t be coming home, they are all dead.’

  ‘Oy gevalt! What happened?’

  Her chin and lip trembled and the tears came and he wanted to hold her but was unsure if it would be the right thing to do.

  ‘Please, please, I’m so sorry I asked you, I would not upset you for the world.’

  She sniffed and wiped her nose. ‘No, no, I was going to tell you when you asked about them out on the street but I wanted to wait until we got home, that’s partly why I suggested we came here.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me at all.’

  ‘I must, I want to, there have been so few people I could talk to and I’m sure you will understand, after all the damn war treated you cruelly too. All three of them were killed within five months. Hendrik, my eldest, was twelve. You met him, I had to bring him to work with me one day in the holidays before the war, he was only six or seven then. Last winter was cruel, many died of starvation and the cold.’

  He nodded. ‘I heard that from people while I was asking about my family.’

  ‘He wanted to help us, to provide, to be a man like his father. He was out in January collecting wood to burn on the fire. He was with some other boys stripping a door frame over in the Jodenbuurt, probably one of the houses you saw. The stone lintel collapsed, and his skull was crushed. He died two days later. Jaap was devastated to lose his first-born son and so angry. The Germans eventually allowed the British airforce to drop food and supplies but for many, including our eldest son, it was too little too late.’

  By now she was sobbing and he reached out and took her hand. Feeling the hard skin and callouses from many years of cleaning for people like himself he was ashamed.

  ‘Please Grietje, no more, you don’t have to.’

  ‘Jaap was killed by the Germans in April, just three weeks before we were liberated. He was shot with two others as they were leaving a safe house. I knew he had been working with the resistance while he was on the docks. He used to go out at night and not tell me what he was doing. I asked a number of times but he said it was better for me that I didn’t know. The Germans must have been aware of him since the dock strike in 1941, so when he became more actively involved in the resistance he was quickly identified. Within weeks our little boy Johan was killed, also by the Nazis. He was just eight years ol
d. He was shot standing right next to me and Irene in Dam Square on the 7th of May just as we were celebrating our liberation. Many people died that day when some German sailors in a drinking club overlooking the square started shooting down into the crowds. Bastards! The war was over, they’d already surrendered. He died in my arms. I had to bury them all, the men in my life are all dead because of the Nazis. Thank God Irene was spared.’

  She clung to him and he put his arms around her, smoothing her hair as her whole body rocked with grief.

  ‘Mama!’ Irene appeared at the door to the bedroom and ran towards her mother. ‘Mama!’ By now she too, seeing her mother’s tears, was crying.

  ‘It’s alright my darling, your Mama was just being silly, don’t be upset.’

  ‘I’ll go, you and Irene need to be alone, she doesn’t want a strange bearded tramp sharing her table.’

  ‘No, you will stay! Please, I need someone here and besides I didn’t realise you had nowhere to sleep, wash or eat. It will be a tight fit but you can sleep in the box beds in the small back room the boys used, Irene sleeps with me these days anyway. There is no bath and the toilet is shared, it’s out the back downstairs but you can wash up in the kitchen, I will boil a kettle for you. Oh, and it’s chicken soup for dinner, more soup than chicken I’m afraid, and there’s some fruit, bruised and given away when the market closed, but you are welcome to it.’