Witnessing the Holocaust: The Dutch in Wartime, Survivors Remember

By Mokeham

The Dutch in Wartime: Survivors Remember is a series of books with wartime memories of Dutch immigrants to North America, who survived the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands.
In Book 3, Witnessing the Holocaust, sixteen writers tell us how Dutch Jews were dragged from their homes to be murdered in Nazi death camps. We read first-hand accounts of friends disappearing, of betrayal and its dreadful consequences and of the torment of life in Nazi concentration camps. Designed and written to be easily accessible to readers of all ages and backgrounds, this book contains intimate memories of the victims of the worst crime ever committed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mokeham
• Release date: Dec 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9780991998180

Book preview

I never saw her again

Christina Sobole-van der Kroon

I was 17 years old in 1939 and found work in a sweatshop called Jansen & Neumann. My job was to sew buttons onto heavy dark green uniforms for the Dutch army, eight buttons in two rows. To make some money one had to work fast and good. How proud I was with my first self-earned money, 32 guilders, because I had indeed worked fast and good.

Early one morning in May of the next year my mother came into our bedroom and spoke the words: children, children, there’s war, all the while clapping her hands to wake the seven of us up. I will never forget that day, because I had a dental appointment that morning.

Soon after at work we were ordered to continue to make uniforms, but now for the German army. The same heavy dark green uniforms with the same rows of buttons.

During that time we lived in the Jewish district of Amsterdam, near Waterloo Square (Waterlooplein). We witnessed how Jews were pushed onto trucks with only a pillowcase of belongings on their backs.

Jewish people had to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothes in order to work and live. There were frequent round-ups of Jews in the neighborhood, which was very frightening.

At that point I was angry and I knew I had to make a decision. I should either quit work or stay and rebel silently. We needed the money, so I stayed. I planned to sabotage the German army. I continued to sew on the buttons, but in such a way that by closing the uniforms the buttons would jump off the uniform and the soldiers would have to fight with open and flapping uniforms. ‘That is no way to win a war,’ I thought