Amsterdam

Dutch survivor shares his story

Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim (third from right) lit memorial candles with Holocaust survivors (from left) Rita Akselrod, Amalia Boe-Fishman, Marie Doduck, Claude Romney, Peter Suedfeld and Ella Levitt. Behind are Nina Krieger of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre and Cantor Shani Cohen of Temple Sholom. (photo from VHEC)

Until 1943, Amsterdam’s Hollandsche Schouwburg theatre was used by the Nazis as a deportation centre for Dutch Jews. The youngest children were placed in a Jewish orphanage across the street. A tram would come at 10-minute intervals, providing a brief window of time during which the Nazi guards outside the theatre would lose sight of the orphanage.

The Dutch underground, in cahoots with the nurses at the orphanage, would smuggle babies and toddlers out of the orphanage during this fleeting moment. A member of the resistance would ride by on a bicycle pulling a garbage can and a nurse would pass a child through a ground-floor window into the receptacle and replace the lid.

One of those children was Peter Voormeij, who shared his Holocaust survival experience with a standing-room audience at the Bayit in Richmond, Jan. 29, marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“My mother’s family were Orthodox Jewish and my father’s Roman Catholic,” he said at the event. Both families were against the union, partly due to the religious differences but perceived differences in social status were also a factor. “In any case, they got married and I was a result of their union.”

Soon after Peter was born, in late 1940, his father was arrested by the Nazis, suspected of being a spy, and was incarcerated at a Gestapo facility in Berlin.

Peter’s mother’s extended family fled into hiding, but his mother mistakenly believed that her marriage to a Catholic man, even an accused spy, provided her some security from deportations.

“She refused to wear the yellow star as was demanded of the Jews,” Voormeij recalled. “But a girlfriend of hers told the local police that she was a Jew, they confronted her and insisted that she should wear the yellow star. She did and, as a result, I clearly remember that we were not allowed in the park playground, which I was so looking forward to. No Jews allowed.”

He was only 2-and-a-half when he was separated from his mother. She was taken to Westerbork, the Nazi transit camp in the Netherlands, and transported by cattle car to Sobibor. “I often think of her alone, without her little boy, to have her beautiful blond hair cut and forced into a shower with many other women,” said Voormeij. “But no shower – gas.”

At the end of the war, Voormeij’s father returned to the Netherlands. Through his connections in the underground, he located his son, who had survived in hiding – and who, not yet 5, didn’t know he was a Jew.

Peter was raised for a few years by his beloved paternal grandmother. “There, I grew up in a Catholic household, went to a school attached to the church,” he said. “My memories of the time are reasonably good, albeit one time I was sexually molested by a [Catholic] brother – what else is new?”

When Peter was 12 years old, his grandmother died. He then returned to his father’s home, but now had a stepmother who he detested – and the feeling was mutual. One day, during a row, she yelled at him: “You are a typical Jew!”

“From that moment on, my life changed,” he said. “I realized that I am indeed a Jew. I looked at the church in a different way and I couldn’t understand why the Jews were persecuted and killed.”

However, he understood the implications of his new identity. “I became afraid of being a Jew and kept my mouth shut from then on,” he said. “Nobody will ever know that I’m a Jew.”

He indeed kept his identity largely secret. He excelled in school and received a scholarship to art school in Adelaide, Australia – four years with all expenses covered. He became a noted painter and art teacher, completing a master’s degree at what would become Concordia University, in Montreal, and later moving to New York City and back to the Netherlands. A turning point came in the early 1980s, during a conversation with a Dutch gallery owner who was to exhibit some of Voormeij’s work.

“She told me she despised the Jews,” he recalled. “At that point, something broke in me and I told her I was a Jew and left the gallery for good.”

He contacted his uncle, a brother of his mother who had survived by escaping to Switzerland. “My uncle introduced me to what it was like to be a Jew,” he said. “He gave me my first kippah and taught me some Jewish prayers. He also took me on my very first visit to a synagogue.”

At times, when he was alone with his uncle, he would ask about his mother. “I was dying to know more about her,” he said. “He was the only one that could remember. There was nobody else I could ask. Each time I brought her up, he would cry and I would cry with him while holding his hand.”

Eventually, Voormeij and his wife moved to British Columbia and he met a member of the Child Survivors Group that operates out of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC). He joined and found a place among fellow child survivors.

The Jan. 29 event was the fourth annual commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day in Richmond. It was co-sponsored by the Kehila Society of Richmond, the VHEC and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.

Rabbi Levi Varnai emceed the ceremony and spoke as a child of a survivor, noting that his grandfather was murdered when he was younger than Varnai is now. Cantor Yaakov Orzech recited the memorial prayer El Moleh Rachamim.

Parm Bains, member of Parliament for Steveston-Richmond East, brought a message from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the federal government. Kelly Greene, member of the B.C. Legislature for Richmond Steveston, brought greetings from Premier David Eby and the provincial government. Members of the Legislative Assembly, Henry Yao and Teresa Wat, were also in attendance. Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie spoke and four councilors – Bill McNulty, Chak Au, Andy Hobbs and Laura Gillanders – also attended.

Pascale Higham-Leisen, VHEC program coordinator, introduced Voormeij. Bayit president Keith Liedtke introduced the mayor, who noted that the day of the commemoration – Jan. 29, two days after the official International Holocaust Remembrance Day – was also the sixth anniversary of the mass shooting at a Quebec City mosque, in which six worshippers were murdered.

A smaller, invitation-only ceremony was held Jan. 27 at Vancouver City Hall. Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim lit memorial candles with six Holocaust survivors: Rita Akselrod, Amalia Boe-Fishman, Marie Doduck, Ella Levitt, Claude Romney and Peter Suedfeld. He also expressed condolences for a terror attack that happened earlier in the day at a Jerusalem synagogue, where seven people were killed. Bridges and buildings around the province were illuminated in yellow that evening to mark the memorial day.

Nina Krieger, executive director of the VHEC, which partnered with the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver to organize the civic event, thanked the assembled city councilors for recently adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism. Cantor Shani Cohen of Temple Sholom recited El Moleh Rachamim.

A sapling grows in Jerusalem

A sapling seeded by Anne Frank’s horse-chestnut tree in Amsterdam is growing at Yad Vashem, near its International Institute for Holocaust Research. (photo by Gil Zohar)

treJerusalem and its environs have many historic trees, including the grove of gnarled olives in the Garden of Gethsemane, under which Jesus may have sheltered two millennia ago; the looming cypress planted by Godefroy de Bouillon, today the site of Hôpital Saint Louis, but where French knights camped in 1099 during the first Crusade; and the 700-year-old Kermes Oak that stands alone in Gush Etzion, south of the city. And now, there is another – a sapling seeded by Anne Frank’s white horse-chestnut tree in Amsterdam, which is growing at Yad Vashem, near its International Institute for Holocaust Research.

Initially, Yad Vashem was concerned that the chestnut tree would not acclimate to Jerusalem’s long, dry summers, but it is doing well.

For more than two years until her arrest on Aug. 4, 1944, Frank (1929-1945) hid in her family’s secret annex at Prinsengracht 263-265. Through a window in the attic that was not blacked out, she admired the chestnut tree, planted around 1850, that stood in the courtyard of a neighbouring residential block, at 188 Keizersgracht just north of the landmark Westerkerk. The tree was her only connection to the outside world and the changing seasons.

Frank wrote about the tree three times in her diary. On the last occasion, on May 13, 1944, she observed: “Our chestnut tree is in full bloom. It’s covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year.”

A month earlier, on April 18, 1944, she wrote: “April is glorious, not too hot and not too cold, with occasional light showers. Our chestnut tree is in leaf, and here and there you can already see a few small blossoms.”

The first reference was on Feb. 23, 1944, when Frank noted: “The two of us [Peter van Pels and Frank] looked out at the blue sky, the bare chestnut tree glistening with dew, the seagulls and other birds glinting with silver as they swooped through the air, and we were so moved and entranced that we couldn’t speak.”

For decades, the storied tree was cared for by Amsterdam’s Pius Floris Tree Care at the behest of the city’s Central Borough Council. In 2005, it was determined that the tree was ailing, and valiant efforts were made to save it.

In the meantime, Anne Frank House asked permission of the tree’s owner to gather and germinate chestnuts. The saplings – grown and cared for by Bonte Hoek Nurseries – were donated to schools around the world named after Anne Frank, and other organizations. In 2009, 150 saplings of the tree were donated to Amsterdamse Bos woodland park.

A sapling was recently planted in Vienna’s 2nd district – a neigbourhood that had many Jewish residents before the Anschluss in 1938. Another was planted in Ajaccio, Corsica, to honour the Righteous Among the Nations there. And 11 chestnut trees are growing in the United States, including one at Manhattan’s Liberty Park commemorating 9/11, thanks to the sapling project of the New York-based Anne Frank Centre for Mutual Respect.

As for the original tree, in 2008, the Support Anne Frank Tree Foundation placed iron struts around it to prop it up, hoping the tree would remain standing for further decades. But it was already too rotten. During a violent rainstorm on Aug. 23, 2010, the tree collapsed together with the girders supporting it, leaving a one-metre high stump.

On its website, the Dutch-based Support Anne Frank Tree Foundation responds to the question, was the battle to save the tree all for nothing?

“The answer is a resounding no!” they say. “The tree and the struggle to preserve it … has fulfilled an important task in an extraordinary manner: the reawakening of the world’s collective memory of the Holocaust and a call for tolerance and mutual respect. The seedlings planted all over the world will continue to spread the message, a grand and dignified final stage in the life of this tree. This would not have happened were it not for the battle for its preservation.”

Gil Zohar is a journalist based in Jerusalem.

Netherlands builds memorial

A bird’s-eye view of the Holocaust Memorial of Names to be built in Amsterdam. (photo from holocaustnamenmonument.nl)

More than 70 years after the Second World War, a memorial in Amsterdam will be erected with the names of all the Dutch Holocaust victims. This will finally provide the Netherlands with a tangible memorial where the 102,000 Jewish victims and 220 Sinti and Roma victims can be commemorated individually and collectively.

Up to now, no memorial in the Netherlands has listed each individual Holocaust victim by name. For surviving relatives, a place to commemorate family members is invaluable. In addition, a memorial listing the more than 102,000 names serves as a reminder to current and future generations of the dangers of racism and discrimination.

Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis murdered an estimated six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Sinti and Roma. Of the 140,000 Jews who lived in the Netherlands in 1940, 102,000 did not survive the war.

Not all Jews were murdered in the gas chambers of the extermination camps Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Majdanek, Chelmno and Sobibor. Many were murdered in mass executions or died as a result of sickness, hunger, exhaustion or slave labour. The Dutch Holocaust Memorial of Names commemorates all these victims.

Designed by Polish-Jewish architect Daniel Libeskind, whose studio is headquartered in New York City, the Dutch Holocaust Memorial of Names will be located in the heart of the Jewish Quarter of Amsterdam. The memorial consists of the four Hebrew letters that make up the word zachor, to remember. When visitors enter the memorial, they find themselves in a labyrinth of passageways flanked by two-metre-tall brick walls that convey the message, “In memory of.” Inscribed on each of the 102,000 bricks is a name, date of birth and age of death, in such a way that the name of each victim can be touched.

In combination with the highly reflective geometric forms of the steel letters, the brickwork connects Amsterdam’s past and present. A narrow void at the point where the brick walls meet the metal forms makes it appear that the steel letters float, symbolizing the interruption in the history and culture of the Dutch people.

Anyone can adopt a name on the memorial by donating 50 euros. For more information, visit holocaustnamenmonument.nl.

Caravan welcomes Vazana

Amsterdam’s Noam Vazana will play in Vancouver and Victoria next week. (photo by Robin Daniel Fromann)

Multifaceted Jerusalem-born, Amsterdam-based musician Noam Vazana comes to Canada this month for the first time. She plays in Calgary June 6, Vancouver June 7 and Victoria June 8.

Vazana’s B.C. dates are presented by Caravan World Rhythms, whose managing artistic director is Robert Benaroya, and she will perform with local guitarist and composer Itamar Erez, who also hails from Israel.

“I heard about Itamar through a joint musician friend, Yishai Afterman, and through the presenter of the show, Robert Benaroya,” Vazana told the Independent. “We got to know each other by phone and on Chat. Our first shows together will be in Vancouver and Victoria.”

Vazana’s music has myriad influences, including classical, pop, jazz and Sephardi. She composes, and has two CDs to her credit, Daily Sketch (2011) and Love Migration (2014). Performing regularly on stages around the world, she returns to the Netherlands after her shows in Canada, but has Poland, Morocco, Germany, France and Israel also on her tour schedule.

“This is an amazing year, performing 90 concerts in 12 countries,” she said. “I consider myself very lucky to combine my two greatest passions, music and traveling. I get inspired from new people and new places. I get excited every time before I go on tour – the night before, I can hardly sleep because I can already feel new experiences at my doorstep, waiting to accompany me or take me over or be a part of who I’m about to become. Bob Dylan said once that an artist is always in the state of becoming; somehow, it seems that in order to stay creative I always have to be on the way to somewhere.”

One of the unique aspects of her performance is that she plays the piano and trombone – at the same time.

“My first encounter with the trombone was in an explanatory concert the local orchestra gave at my school,” she said of her somewhat unusual choice of wind instrument. “They were demonstrating several instruments and, the moment I heard the trombone, I fell in love with its rich tenor sound. Another thing that appealed to me is that the trombone is an orchestral or combo instrument, so mostly you play it in a formation. When playing classical piano, especially the old-fashioned way, my teachers always told me it was forbidden to try when I asked to improvise and learn chords and songs. So, I mainly kept to the scores and played alone as a child. It sounded cool to me to play in an orchestra and get to play things that were out of the classical context I was already exposed to.”

The trombone stands she uses had to be invented, she said, “and designed especially for the purpose of playing trombone and piano simultaneously.”

“I first used a model I designed myself from a tripod used to support a window-shopping mannequin,” she explained. “It was working quite well but had one main flaw: it was centred right in front of me, in the middle of the keyboard, so I had to be very creative with the piano parts and manoeuvre around it when moving between the registers.

“Then I had a second prototype designed by an engineer who had good intentions but his strength lay in theory and not in mechanical skill. I was struggling to set up the stand during a soundcheck and the owner of the venue told me he knew a blacksmith who might be able to help me. That guy is amazing, autodidact with phenomenal skill, designing motorcycle engines from scratch. He mended the flaws of the second model and eventually created a much lighter third prototype, which is the stand I use today. I have two different models, one for pianos and the other for keyboard.”

Vazana also leads a Sephardi group called Nani, and she will be performing some songs from that repertoire on her tour. While the spark for Nani was kindled in Morocco, its source lies further back.

“At our house, Israeli culture was eminent,” said Vazana. “My father grew up in a kibbutz and I was brought up part traditional, part secular. Foreign languages were forbidden at home and, although my mother spoke fluent Moroccan Arabic and French, my father insisted she talk to me only in Hebrew.

“My grandmother on my mother’s side spoke Ladino and Moroccan Arabic and never assimilated in the Israeli culture, so some of my first memories include her speaking Ladino with my aunt and singing Ladino lullabies for me. She passed away when I was 12 – you can imagine that, throughout my childhood, she was very old and I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with her.

“In both 2012 and 2013, I was invited to play at the Tanjazz festival in Tangier and I took these opportunities to explore the cities where my families originated from, Casablanca and Fez. On my second visit to Morocco, in 2013, during one of my many walks down the narrow streets of Fez’s medina, I heard people singing on the street behind me. As I made way to them, there came more and more people, singing and playing drums and wind instruments, all to a familiar melody. The procession ended in a square and, as I arrived there – I was one of hundreds of people, young and old – I suddenly realized this is a melody that my grandmother used to sing for me in Ladino. It was a special moment and the rest of my travels in Morocco called memories of my grandmother back to me. I felt drawn to a root that was longing to be rediscovered.

“When I got back home,” she said, “I started researching more and more about the Ladino language and culture and started combining a song or two in Ladino in my regular shows. Slowly, I studied the language over the course of a year and developed a substantial repertoire. It resulted in recording a new Ladino album that will be released in September 2017, and winning the Sephardic music award … at the International Jewish Music Festival in Amsterdam,” which took place last month, May 4-8.

Vazana first visited Amsterdam on tour with an orchestra, as a classical trombone player, she said. “At the time, I was a student at the music academy in Jerusalem and this was intended as a 10-day work trip and another 10 days to explore the Netherlands, as it was my first visit. I checked some information about local musicians and schools and applied for lessons with musicians from the Concertgebouw Orchestra.

“After having a lesson with their bass trombonist,” she said, “he asked me if I’d be willing to come back for another lesson with his colleague, the principal trombone player. After a 45-minute lesson, they both decided to invite me to study with them at the Royal Conservatory of Amsterdam, with an internship at the Concertgebouw Orchestra. The day later, I found myself attending a rehearsal with the orchestra, absolutely mind-blowing, because it was the best orchestra I ever heard live (and the No. 1 in Europe at the time). It didn’t take a lot more to convince me to quit my studies in Jerusalem and transfer to Amsterdam.”

This move forms the creative foundation of Vazana’s second album, which won the ACUM (Israel Association of Composers, Authors and Publishers of Musical Works) album prize, charted No. 14 on the iTunes bestselling chart and No. 2 on DPRP’s (Dutch Progressive Rock Page’s) best albums of 2015. It was financed in part by crowdfunding, through which 800 advance copies were sold. (There is a video, set to her song “Waiting,” in which Vazana personally delivers the CD to various supporters, giving each of them a hug. It can be found at youtube.com/watch?v=tW5Y2IEjgI0.)

“Love Migration is a very personal and exposed album, combining parallel stories about two migrations: my first migration to follow my heart, which is music, while longing to find a feeling of home. The second migration is the long-distance relationship I had with an Israeli guy whom I met just as my EU visa was approved, eventually resulting in him migrating to live with me so I could continue to follow my dream,” explained Vazana. “The process took three years to evolve into stories one can retell [with] perspective…. It could have turned many ways, but my personal search eventually led me (and still is leading me) towards taking the feeling of home with me wherever I go. It has been a long journey, but life is a journey and I feel that I evolve every day anew. In my song ‘Lost and Found,’ I describe that sensation: “Every time I look in the mirror / Every time I stand in the corner / Every time I knock something over / It’s a way for starting over / It’s a way to see it anew.”

Vazana and Erez’s Vancouver concert is at Frankie’s Jazz Club June 7, 8 p.m., and their Victoria appearance is at Hermann’s Jazz Club June 8, 8 p.m. Tickets to both shows are $20 at the door and $15 in advance. Visit caravanbc.com or call 778-886-8908.