What was the day like when you started wearing
the star?
Well,
have you ever seen the star? Its about - it's the Star of David in
yellow, and in the middle, in Dutch was "JOOD" which means
Jew. And it had black outlines on it and you had to go out and buy
those, and then you had to sew them out on every outer garment that
you wore on the left side, on your breast. SO if it was raining, you'd
have to have it on your raincoat, if you took it off, there had to
be one underneath. If you had a sweater on, and you took your coat
off, it had to be on the sweater. There was no limit, there was no
requirement that you had to wear it on your pajama. That would have
probably come next, but it didn't. There were a lot of Gentiles who
actually went out and bought those stars and sewed them on. And when
the Dutch fascists party found out about that, they went to the Nazis,
and told them what was happening, and then an edict came out "If
you who are not a Jew are wearing a Jew star, you will be picked up,
and you will be sent out of the country to where the Jews were going."
Did you know of any Gentiles who wore the
star?
No,
I don't know anyone who would, but that's common knowledge. I mean,
you read the history books about that time in Holland, and you find
practically whole chapters on it.
Why were the Gentiles wearing stars?
In
sympathy with the Jews, and as a protest against the Nazis. That's
why they wore them. There were many socialists who would wear them
or communists who would wear them, and this was basically done in sympathy
with the Dutch Jews.
If you took off your star, how would the
Nazis know you were a Jew?
Because
you were forced to register. Now the one thing that they, the Jewish
community did in Holland - Jews had been living in Holland since the
1600's. After the Spanish Inquisition, like my own ancestors, they
came to Holland in 1613. My ancestors were kicked out of Spain, and
then Portugal, and finally came back to Holland by way of the new world,
believe it or not, to Holland, and they arrived in 1613. Now, many
of, in those days, all the birth certificates were in the Synagogue.
That's where you had to register. And so what the Jews did not want
to do was not bury or burn those old records. They were historical
documents.
And
so the Nazis took those things and just went right through those lists
of current value, they wouldn't care who lived in 1600, but they were
very much interested who lived in the '30s and the '20s. And so they
took those names out. So they had a total list of who ever was a Jew
in Amsterdam. For that matter where I lived - and people have never
forgiven the Jewish leadership that, to say, "Why didn't you burn
the God dam things?!" Then we would have been of much-freer to
say "Screw you, were not going to register." So that's how
this all came about. Part of it was historical importance, some of
it was fear, some of it was, I would say, um, "Oh, nothings going
to happen to us why bother?"
Were you surprised that people were making
you register and wear your stars, or did it seem like it was going to
happen anyway?
We're
back in 1942. We knew about the Kristallnacht by now. We knew
about the persecutions against the Jews in Germany. We then heard about
the persecution of the Jews in Czechoslovakia. We heard about the Jews
being persecuted in Austria. You know, all this news comes back, and
nobody will ever believe that it's going to happen to you. So, when
the edicts come out of wearing the star, and doing this, and that,
and the other, everybody shrugs and says "So I wear a star.
I can't go to the movies. I can't go to the restaurant." Nothing
becomes important until the day you get picked up, and then it becomes
important. And then you wonder, "Why didn't we resist?"
But wouldn't you start to wonder before
that? It just seems weird that you wouldn't wonder before that occurred.
Do
you know where Holland is? Can you get a mental picture of Holland?
From the North to Belgium is one coastline. All water. On the East
is Germany, no way to escape there. To the South is Belgium, which
is already occupied. Denmark is occupied. There's no place to go. The
only people who went out were the very rich who saw this coming, or
their friends had told them. They had money, they got their visas,
and they cleared out in 1937, 1938, even 1939, even in 1940, before
they were ever invaded. Poor people never have a chance to escape anything.
Rich people do. It doesn't matter what you go through in life. The
rich always have a way to get out. The poor have to take the suffering.
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