I am still processing the stories she shared. I need to get to know her more and convince her to do a guest post.
She was born in Utrecht in May of 1940....exactly as the Germans were invading Holland. They had just bombed Rotterdam and were threatening to bomb Utrecht next if the Dutch did not surrender. All of Utrecht had evacuated. All of Utrecht except for my neighbor's mother and father. They could not leave because her mother was 9 months pregnant (with her) and went into labor. Alone (no doctors could be reached or would come over) in their home, under the threat of a bomb attack, her father delivered her into this world. The Dutch surrendered to the Germans. Utrecht was not bombed. She was born into chaos and lived in it (hungry, poor, scared) for her first 5 years. She has a lot of memories (Nazis, fear, evacuations, deportations).
A few days a week she watches her grand kids (both under 5) and almost daily she interacts with my kids (5, 3.5). I cannot begin to imagine how different her young life was from theirs. I am sure she is well aware and grateful of those differences.
She also told me about our street in Amsterdam. I had heard this before, but she confirmed, it was full of Jews. She was pretty sure that most of them were deported to Sobibor. Google is an amazing thing. Google tells me that she is right, and that the people at my exact address were among those deported to Sobibor. Many others on the block also ended at Sobibor, several from the block went to Auschwitz.
All those lives ruined then lost, it is impossible to accept. I don't even know that it is process-able.
This weekend we are going to ride our bikes up and down the block a jillion times, because that is what 3 and 5 year olds on a block like this should do, as their parents look on smiling.
The photo above, from here, offers a view of Rotterdam after the German bombing in May 1940.
The map above, from here, commissioned by the German occupiers, has black dots for every ten Jewish people.
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