69
which amassed as many as 2,000 signatures
Ibid.
69
“Naturally, it is far easier”
Ibid., 20.
69
“Their actions are beneath contempt”
Ibid., 27.
69
“this noble son of our people”
Ibid., 27–28.
69
Cleveringa was arrested
Ibid., 28.
69
thousands of copies of his speech
Ibid., 28.
69
Before dying
Flim, 34.
69
On February 6, 1943
The source of these statistics is “Van Studenenverzet naar Universitaire Gemeenschap?” by Fjodor Molenaar. See
http://www.kriterion.org/content/Meer
Geschiedenis.html.
70
Despite the additional threat
This was told to me by Pieter Meerburg. The statistic comes from Flim, 34.
70
the raiders
Flim, 34.
CHAPTER FOUR ~ GISELA SÖHNLEIN
74
a dull blow
Flim, 184.
74
“What do I do now?”
Ibid.
75
What I learned in Ravensbrück
In this passage Gisela paraphrases a favorite quote of hers by Arthur Koestler, one that he wrote about is imprisonment during the Spanish Civil War, but that Gisela feels captures her experience in Ravensbrück: “The life we led was a proof of man’s capacity for adapting. I think that even the condemned souls in purgatory after a time develop a sort of homely routine. That is, by the way, why most prison memoirs are unreadable. The difficulty of conveying to the reader in his armchair an idea of this nightmare world from which he has emerged, makes the author depict the prisoners’ state of mind as an uninterrupted continuity of despair. He fears to appear frivolous or to spoil his effect by admitting that even in the depths of misery, cheerfulness keeps breaking in.” See Arthur Koestler,
Arrow in the Blue: An Autobiography
(London: Hutchinson, 1969).
76
“Come along, mates
This and the other lyrics by Gisela and Hetty have been translated by Martinja Briggs, professor of Dutch at Cornell University, and the author.
CHAPTER FIVE ~ CLARA DIJKSTRA
82
“When father looks through his photographs”
In Hanvander Horst,
The Low
Sky: Understanding the Dutch
(Schiedam: Scriptum Books, 1996), 149.
95
extreme and horrible circumstances
From a lecture by Ervin Staub given at Amherst College, March 29, 2001.
95
“They had been spared”
Simon Wiesenthal,
The Murderers Among
Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Memoirs
, Joseph Wechsberg, ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), 48.
96
In addition to the more than 100,000 people
All these statistics are from Henri A. van der Zee,
The Hunger Winter
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska P ress, 1988), 305.
96
The German children of 1918
Henri A. van der Zee,
The Hunger Winter
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), 146.
97
“the Germany which Britain now faces”
Clarence Pickett, “America’s Food and Europe’s Need,” an address given to the American Academy of Political and Social Science, summarized in the Fellowship of Reconciliation’s journal,
Fellowship
6, n o. 9 (Nov. 1940), 135–37.
97
Since the time of . . . economy.
R. R. Palmer and Joel Colton,
A History
of the Modern World
(New York: Knopf, 1963), 674.
98
“the terrifying momentum of diplomacy”
From jacket copy to Sidney Bradshaw Fay,
The Origins of the World War, Volume 2
, 2nd ed., rev. (New York: Free Press, 1966).
98
“a dictum exacted by victors”
Ibid., 549.
98
the exchange rate
John R. Barber,
Modern European History
(New York: HarperPerennial, 1993), 270.
98
In 1923, the mayor of Berlin
Gordon A. Craig,
Europe Since 1815
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), 613.
98
“rose from the ranks”
Ibid., 525.
98
“If a man’s bare existence”
Inge Scholl,
The White Rose: Munich
1942–1943
(Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1983), 12.
99
“the chains of Versailles”
Gerhard Ritter, “Nazism Arose from Democratic Radicalism,” in
Critical Issues in History: 1848 to the
Present
, ed. John Rule, David Dowd, John Snell (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1967), 730.
99
“honestly hoped Hitler”
Luigi Barzini,
The Europeans
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 80.
99
“every institution that under democracy”
Franz Neumann, quoted by Gordon A. Craig in
Europe Since 1815
(New York: Holt, R inehart and Winston, 1961), 641.
99
“Now that we have discussed the political situation”
This anecdote is contained in Luigi Barzini,
The Europeans
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 80.
99
“was as efficient in the techniques of control”
Gordon A. Craig, “Facing Up to the Nazis,”
The New York Review of Books
(2 February 1989).
99
When the Great Depression
Gordon A. Craig,
Europe Since 1815
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), 643.
99
“The question of the treatment”
Quoted in
Nazi Conspiracy and
Aggression: Opinion and Judgment
(Washington: Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, 1947), 12–13, 16–21, 27–34.
CHAPTER SIX ~ KEES VEENSTRA
101
have remained almost completely unknown
Kees has not received the Yad Vashem award, or been recognized in any public way.
118
“Death’s Stairway”
See
http://www.mauthausen-memorial.gv.at/ngl/Geschichte/f.Geschichte.html
118
“The ‘work’ took its toll”
Hilberg, 373.
118
“On the third day”
Presser, 53.
119
The Chief Rabbi of The Hague”
Ibid., 54–55.
119
the Jewish Weekly
This is
Het Joodse Weekblad
, 7 August 1942. Available in the archives of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation.
119
“police-controlled labor contingents”
This anecdote comes from Peter Hellman,
Avenue of the Righteous
(New York: Atheneum, 1980), 69.
120
“conscientious, much admired physicians”
Robert Jay Lifton,
The
Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psycholog y of Genocide
(New York: Basic Books, 1986), 457.
120
“Quite a few killed themselves”
Ibid., 458.
CHAPTER EIGHT ~ PIETER MEERBURG
130
“Once those fanatical Frisians”
Wouter expresses this sentiment directly and at more length in Flim, 32.
133
The woman went ahead and took her
Mia Coelingh tells this story directly in Flim, 31.
136
a message from Esmée van Eeghen
Piet provided this detail in his United States Holocaust Memorial Museum video interview. See USHMM Archives RG-50.030*0154, 19.
145
Fifteen percent for Mr. Le Pen!
Jean-Marie Le Pen, roughly the equivalent of David Duke in the United States or Jörg Heider in Austria, won second place in the 2002 French presidential election with five million votes.
146
“At best, they gave the odd fugitive”
Quoted in “Kroniek der Jodenvervolging” (Chronicle of the Persecution of the Jews) in
Onderdrukking en Verzet, Part 3
(Amsterdam, 1949–54), 160.
146
“crowding on a small piece of wood”
Etty Hillesum,
An Interrupted Life:
The Diaries of Etty Hillesum
1941–45 (New York: Washington Square Press, 1981), 188.
146
were appointed by the Romans
See Alan Segal,
Rebecca’s Children:
Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986).
147
“will represent a natural selection”
International Military Tribunal,
Protocol of the Wannsee Conference
, Nuremberg: document NG2586F, 6.
147
“they couldn’t even conceive”
Christopher Browning, “An Insidious Evil,”
The Atlantic Unbound
(online), 11 February, 2004.
www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200402u/int2004-02-11
.
147
When someone discovered
Yad Vashem testimony of Sam de Hond, in file of Walter Suskind, Yad Vashem Department of the Righteous, Israel; also personal correspondence with Dr. Maurice van der Pol, 21 September 2005.
147
slip yellow armbands
Mordecai Paldiel,
Saving the Jews
(Rockville, Md.: Schreiber, 2000), 277.
148
“Over there, he wanted to do”
Ibid., 279.
CHAPTER NINE ~ MIEKE VERMEER
149
Naamloze Venootschap
In addition to information provided by Mieke Vermeer, this synopsis is based on Flim, 40–41, and Moore, 183–84.
150
“a unity in all human minds”
Paramahansa Yogananda,
Autobiography of a Yogi
(Los Angeles: SRF, 1956), 44.
152
one newborn even passed through
I have supplemented Mieke’s recollections with Lisette Lamon’s direct testimony, contained in the Walter Suskind file at the Yad Vashem Department for the Righteous, Israel.
CHAPTER ELEVEN ~ THE HEART HAS REASONS
183
if you observe . . . seagulls
Karl Popper,
A World of Propensities: Towards
an Evolutionary Theory of Knowledge
(Bristol: Thoemmes,1990).
183
at a crossroads where ethical action
Zygmunt Bauman,
Modernity
and the Holocaust
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001). See also István Deák,“The Incomprehensible Holocaust,”
New York Review of
Books
(28 September 1989).
183
“the hand of compassion”
Otto Springer, quoted in Eva Fogelman,
Conscience & Courage: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust
(New York: Doubleday, 1994), 57.
184
Many even had parents or siblings
Heiltje Kooistra; Kees Veenstra; Mieke Vermeer; and Piet Meerburg, whose mother took in many Jews after his father died in 1942.
187
simply acted from the heart
I will not attempt to further explain what “acting from the heart” is, because, in the words of novelist Robert James Waller, “Some things, magic things, are meant to stay whole. If you look at their pieces, they go away.” Social scientists, however, do not share my qualms, and I would recommend the work of Pearl and Samuel Oliner to those who desire a rigorous analysis.
191
“All people make their own decision”
From Miep Gies’s speech at the College of St. Rose in Albany, New York, on March 3, 1996.
191
Jews killed Christian babies
This was a revival of a medieval anti-Semitic myth known as the blood libel. See James Carroll,
Constantine’s Sword
(New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001), 268–77.
191
without the purposeful
See the new preface to Philip Hallie,
Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon
and How Goodness Happened There
(New York: Harper-Colophon, 1994).
192
“Few among the perpetrators”
Christopher R. Browning, personal correspondence with the author, June 10, 2002.
193
“truth-in-reconciliation”
Bill Moyers has produced a fine video about these hearings:
Facing the Truth
(Princeton: Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 1999). See also Desmond Tutu,
No Future without
Forgiveness
(New York: Doubleday, 1999).