Miep Gies 1909-2010

Miep Gies, holding her son Paul, Otto Frank (left), and her husband Jan, A'dam, January 1951, nicked from here

The famous protector of Anne Frank, and my hero whom i had the privilege to meet is remembered here and here. ברוך דיין האמת.

'On My Mother's Side, We're Chassidim'

Other Stuff the Schippers Were up to During the War

Testimony of the nephew of my grandmother (Anne Schipper-Broedelet)-who was 13 at the time of the war-that my grandparents sheltered a Jewish woman named Rosette Spetter from Nazi arrest. We call her Tante Rosette, and her husband,ז"ל Oom Levie. He gave my grandparents this chanukia, (i will try and dig up Christmas photos with the Chanikia in all its glory!) which my mother recently sent to me in Jerusalem.

(In case there is confusion with the names on the documents, in Holland, when a woman takes her husband's name, it goes in the middle of the hyphenation: Rosette Spetter becomes Rosette Cohen-Spetter, Celine Schipper became Celine Weiss-Schipper, etc.)

The Examiner III

The Examiner II

The Examiner I

For Joost: The Examiner Articles

There have been numerous requests to post the original articles written by my grandfather during World War II. Well, i have finally found them and my friend Ibel generously let me use her scanner, so here they are. Please excuse the highlighting i did when preparing for previous posts. Also, by clicking the post titles, you will be directed to the downloadable Google Doc.

Joost gave me a lift from his place on the Keizersgracht (where John Adams had a residence a few doors down) to my cousin Kathelijn's in de Pijp, even though it was snowing! He didn't want to disappoint me--what a great cousin! 

Nationale Bevrijdingsdag 'Liberation Day--Inside Story of Eindhoven Told by Dutch Parents'

They are greeting us with the V-sign or with their thumbs up. We are on the road to victory! And when the column stops for a minute because apparently the narrow streets further on hold up the traffic we shake hands with those men and we are able for the first time in all those years to speak to an Englishman. Have we ever been so thankful towards complete strangers? ‘Thank God you have come at last.’ ‘It is good to be true.’ They are laughing all the time and they tell us that only a few miles from Eindhoven they had to fight hard when we were sleeping peacefully. It is a curious world, indeed! ‘Jerry gave us hell on the Dutch border,’ they say, ‘but here we are, anyway’. They ask us how the Germans treated us and they can't believe what we tell them. They shake their heads and say, ‘Well, that’s all over now. You are free again.’

Free! Think about it, children! That one can say what one wants; that we are going to have decent papers again and all the rest of it. I am sure that we shall only gradually get used to it.

They are very generous, those English troops. They distribute cigarettes among the population. Those first English cigarettes after all those years! We snatch the English papers from their hands. They just laugh at those people who are so happy with all those very simple things. At the cars which are pulled up at the roadside, groups of children are pushing and hustling and begging the soldiers for their autographs. They are quite willing to give them not once but hundreds of times. I asked one of them how many times had he done that. He answered, ‘Numerous times. Yes, it’s being like Gary Cooper.’

For us this entry has something unreal. Such a mad enthusiasm we had not thought possible. But for the troops, too, this entry must be unforgettable with the radiant evening sun over all those flags and pennants flying from the houses. We have been watching all this together with you, children, and we told you that those men were our friends. At times there were touching moments and one felt a lump rise in one’s throat. Mummy is holding you high, Saskia, and you shake hands with a soldier on top of a huge tank, and very shyly, with a very small voice, you say to him the first words in English you ever spoke, ‘Good luck to you!’ And smiling, the answer comes back, ‘Thanks, kids. We’ll need it.’ Yes, they’ve got to carry on. From the bottom of our hearts we wish them God speed.

When it is quite dark we go home again tired out but happy as never before. With friends we spend the rest of the evening, talking about this gigantic war machine about which we heard so much over the wireless and which at last we were allowed to see with our own eyes.

As published by The Examiner, Saturday, May 12, 1945
* 6 years to the date of this publication, the Schippers had another daughter, Celine--my mum.

Donne and Dodenherdenking--the Art of Rememberance Day

The 4th of May, is known in Holland as Dodenherdenking, or War Dead Remembrance. Similar to Israel's Memorial day followed by Independence day, the Dutch have a similar progression. The official, nationally televised commemoration begins in the evening with a service at De Oude Kerk (the Old Church) in central Amsterdam, after which veterans and victims’ relatives lay wreaths at the National War Memorial on nearby Dam square. Church bells ring for a quarter of an hour till 8 pm, when there is a nationwide two-minute silence. Dignitaries and other victims’ groups then lay more wreaths and a child reads out a self-written poem, selected by a local jury. A ceremonial procession past the National War Memorial marks the end of proceedings. As the saying in Holland goes, 'No celebration without commemoration'. This sentiment reflects gratitude, but it also a value placed on the progression of redemption.

We constantly evoke World War II, and the Holocaust with a pledge to prevent further bloodshed. We're not doing so well. I believe that precisely at this fault-line between the fleeting historical awareness of the event, and our collective memory, these rituals may bridge that gap by offering the opportunity for us to experience the redemptive process on an individual, national, and universal level.

When John Donne preached to his congregants, he chose to appeal to them through what he called 'the gallery of the soul'; memory:

Of our perverseness in both faculties, understanding, and will, God may complain, but as much of our memory: for, for the rectifying of the will, the understanding must be rectified; and that implies great difficulty: But the memory is so familiar, and so present, and so ready a faculty, as will always answer, if we but speak to it, and aske it, what God hath done for us, or for others. The art of salvation, is but the art of memory.

In preparation for liberation day, and in honour of remembrance day, the following are extracts from a memoir which was published in the English paper The Examiner in April of 1945. The diary was written by JHT Schipper (my grandfather) for his two children Saskia and Jan. Schipper translated these extracts for John and Maureen Jones, the children of Alfred Wynn Jones, a member of the Balloon Barrage who was stationed in Eindhoven, as an expression of the friendship that developed between them. Sentences in orange are my own.

On the 18th of September, 1944, the town of Eindhoven was liberated by the second British Army after more than four years and four months of German oppression. That is something you ought to know; that is worth while recording in this book […] When you, in years to come, have to study from your school books the history of this war and you are able to form for yourself a rough idea of these dramatic happenings you will understand something of what we felt as that long-awaited day of liberation, which was anything but a mere phase, at last dawned. It was the day for which we had been longingly looking out for four long years, a day on which we (probably for the first time,) could realise fully what it means to get rid of a more than brutal and inhuman oppressor […]

One doesn't dare to go out in the streets. The Germans steal bicycles all over the city. During the night, you would hear gun-fire in the distance. During day-time the offices are practically empty. One tries to collect as much food as possible and then suddenly without pause we see German troops withdrawing and over the wireless they go on talking about the bitter fighting on the Belgian-Dutch frontier.

After the Germans and Dutch Nazis flee the town, it seems as if the English will arrive shortly

But as it is, we have got to wait still for many days. Even Germans dare to come back again, and the notorious murderers of the Gestapo are to be seen again in the streets. We’ve got to be careful again while listening to the news from London. The set was kept in a secret place and using it was a very serious and dangerous affair indeed [...]

Time goes slowly…Nobody seems to know anything better to do than to dig ditches in the garden and listen to the news from London…

After witnessing numerous air battles, news arrives that paratroopers have landed at Son (a small village north of Eindhoven) and have marched to the centre of Eindhoven.

This situation for us who live in the southern part of the town is then very peculiar. Practically the whole town is in the hands of the American paratroopers but we haven’t seen anything of it at all, and we know the Germans are still all around us. In little groups they (the Germans) pass by our houses, rifles and hand grenades at the ready. Curious idea to find yourself all of a sudden more or less in the front line while we are having our meals and the children, quite unconscious of the dangers around them, are playing in the garden.

People in the town are euphoric and celebrating liberation; it turns out to be premature. The Schippers are warned to take their flags in for the Germans are still quite near.

In these hours of waiting we have put more than a thousand times the question, 'When will the English come in from the south?' Tormenting was the news that they had captured the small town of Valkenswaard, a few miles to the south and were staying there. Why did they not march on? Where are they now?