A visit to the Jewish Quarter of Amsterdam

My new friend Femmy offered to go with me to the Jewish museum this afternoon if I could wait until she returned from church.  I had every intention of arising at a reasonable hour so that I could wander about.  My intentions, however, were not realized.

I wrote late into the night last night and then tried reading until my eyes were tired.  By the time I finally turned out the light, it was almost 2 a.m. local time.  Not an auspicious start to my sleeping hours.  My trick for falling asleep is to recite the story of Jane Eyre to myself.  I can tell how difficult my night is going to be by how far in to the story I get.  I managed to make it to the story of Mason being attacked by his sister.  That's pretty far into it.

Once I fell asleep, it was a sound sleep.  The only problem is, I didn't wake until after 11 a.m.  Yikes.

Femmy came around 1 and asked if I could give her an hour and then we'd be off, and thus we were.

We took the #14 tram (at a cost of 2,80 Euro to Waterlooplein and walked a short distance to the Jewish museum, housed in the old Great Synagogue.

I had a funky angle here--this is the Magen David.

Oh...did I mention it was raining cats and dogs?  I tried using Femmy's umbrella to compensate for my not-so-waterproof raincoat, but check out the fate of these umbrellas.

The 12 Euro ticket gave me access to this museum pictured earlier, as well as the still functioning Portuguese Synagogue across the street.  Additionally, there was a photo exhibit in the lower level featuring photographs, clothing, video and a few other artifacts from Antwerp's Chassidim.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  The photos were really interesting--check out these beauties (don't mind the flash):

The caption for this one explained that these boys were thronging the vending machine for kosher after school snacks.

The father of this family is about to swing these chickens around his head to transfer  his (and his family's?) sins to the chicken before the day of Atonement. I prefer our Tashlich service myself "wherein we symbolically cast our sins into the water and leave our old shortcomings behind us, thus starting the new year with a clean slate."

 These two photos feature children dressed for Purim.

I love the little ladybug and her brother, Napoleon.

 But I also loved the clothing display and explanation.

There was a helpful key explaining the nuanced variations in hats, wigs and coats.  I love the shtreimels (second from left in the top photo), although I can't imagine anyone I know wearing one.  The wigs, on the other hand, do not impress me.  I see them and I just think, "hot".

This exhibit also had kiosks with information and video clips from a 1990s film on the Haredi of Antwerp.

The still image above is hard to make out, but it was part of a marriage ceremony.  I have another still from that film which speaks volumes.

The rabbi on the right holds a ribbon which "connects" him to the bride.  He's dancing around and she's just standing there looking mortified.

This exhibit didn't take terribly long to peruse--probably about a half hour.  From there I headed upstairs to the Great Synagogue.

It was packed with Judaica and stories about Amsterdam's Jews.  There were numerous megillot, etc., etc.

I really loved some of the fine paintings.

There were also some modernistic pieces of home Judaica, such as this Havdalah set,

this clock

and this Seder plate.

 This grogger really caught my eye.

It means business!

The upstairs display focused on what it meant to be a Jew in the Netherlands.  Although the Jews enjoyed relative freedom to practice their religion (particularly in contrast to Spain and Portugal during the Inquisition), Jews were not permitted entry to many professions as deemed by guild practice.  Some Jews were able to thrive, but many were very, very poor--particularly the Ashkenazi from Eastern Europe.

I found this image by Rembrandt to be quite impressive.

This is Manessa ben Israel, the so-called "mouthpiece of the Jews".  His family emigrated to the Netherlands in 1604, the year of his birth.  He became a rabbi and printer.

There's much more in this exhibit.  The next room focused on the 20th century.  This display caught my attention.

This was a wall of glass cubes featuring modern images of Amsterdam's Jews.  I thought it was very engaging.

The rest of this room told the story of Dutch Jews in the 20th century.  It's often a tale of tragedy.  Before the war, there were more than 130,000 Jews living in the Netherlands.  After the war, there were only 30,000 Jews remaining. Around 25,000 Jews went in to hiding, and 18,000 survived the war.  Much of the display focused on how hard it was to rebuild their lives in the face of so many Jews having been sent to the transit camp Westerbork, and from there to the death camps of Auschwitz and Sobibor, as well as Bergen Belsen and Terezin.  Still, many of the Dutch came to the aid of their Jewish neighbors and friends and sought to provide them shelter during the war and aid after the war.  It's a complicated story.

The last part of this visit took me to the Portuguese Synagogue across the street.

Unlike the sumptuous synagogues of Prague, this one (still in use to this day) is downright austere.  There's no heating or electric lights in the synagogue proper.

Not only do you see candleabra, you also see candles in the pews.

 There's also a burning candle in the Ner Tamid (the eternal light) in the lower left of this photo.

I found a tallis (prayer shawl) in the seat of the pews.

The most surprising aspects (other than the lack of heat and electricity) were the couches by the ark (where the Torah scrolls are kept),

Special guests may sit on these couches during Simchat Torah, but that does not mean politiciams.

and this wooden chuppah (wedding canopy).

The chuppah was built by the bride's father in the 1950s.  She was a survivor of the concentration camps.  Her husband had also suffered during the war.  It must weigh a ton, literally!

The synagogue was built in 1675.  It's amazing that it is still in use.  It is surrounded by one story level apartments containing the book shop, a mourner's room, study rooms, etc.

The museum was getting ready to close by the time I crossed the street to find Femmy in the coffee shop, so we suited up and headed out to explore the rest of the quarter.

This image took me by surprise.  When I saw it, I thought, "how cute!"

Femmy asked if I knew what it meant.  Obviously, I didn't.  She informed me that this is an image which is placed on spots where great violence had occurred. 

Fortunately, we ended our evening on a much more positive note--Supper!

I recommend the Blauwberg cafe! 

Elburg

I'm staying at an apartment in a women's group apartment house.  The building houses only women over 50.  There's something very comforting about that, I must say.  My next door neighbor is 93 and has lived here over 28 years.  Today, she invited me to go with her to a small town to the north and east called Elburg.  We took a "taxi" which she arranged.   I can't believe how kind and generous a gesture this was.

This may be a language thing, but I had thought the plan was to leave at 10:30.  When I awoke at 8:30, I didn't think I'd have time to shower and get breakfast before the car arrived.  Instead, I joined some of the women of the house for coffee and biscuits while I waited for the car.  My hostess for the day, Lizbeth, came in a bit past 11 and then I learned the car was expected at half-past 11.  Right around that time she received a call from the driver informing her that he'd be later still.  He finally arrived about an hour later.   One really can't complain when the ride is subsidized by the state (due to my friend's age).  I tipped 7 Euros all together--not bad for four hours (two hours each way) worth of driving.

The problem is...I got sick.  I started praying for a calmer stomach while we were still in Amsterdam.  I was hoping to God that our driver's car would remain pristine (it did).  Once we arrived at our destination, I had to make a beeline to "a certain place" (as my friend Leonore refers to it). 

I was able to manage fairly well for the first part of the exhibit.  It's really a fascinating story.  Elburg, established in the 14th century,  is a tiny fortress town to the north and east of Amsterdam.  It was once a fishing village directly on the Zuiderzee, but no longer.  It has the distinction of being almost a perfect rectangle.  My companion for the day described it as having been designed on a table.  

Another distinction, and frankly, the reason I was there, is that this tiny town has set up a museum to honor its lost Jews.  In fact, I believe the town actually has at least four museums, two of which deal with Jewish history in the area, as well as a Jewish cemetery.   My friends here at the house thought I would enjoy seeing the museum and their special exhibit on Sobibor.

The museum we visited was once the town synagogue (built in 1855). 

The woman who sold us tickets was also the museum educator, and took us on an abbreviated tour.  The first room we visited told the story of a number of Elburg's families, and also explained Jewish holidays and religious observance.  Our guide told us about the lessons she offers visitors on Judaism.

The illuminated boxes in this image offer written text, photos and an audio narrative about each of the families featured...all in Dutch.  The guide gave us a thumbnail sketch of some of these stories.

At its peak, Elburg had a Jewish population of 120 Jews, but by 1938 the number of Jews declined to 38.  By 1940, there were only 20 Jews in the town.  According to the website for the museum, "During World War II, half of the Jews of Elburg were deported and murdered in Nazi death camps. The other half managed to live out the war in hiding."  The synagogue, however, came through unscathed.

Given the absence of Jews in the community, the structure was later used as a community center.  A film we watched after the tour mentioned that among other activities the community choir rehearsed in the space.  In 2005, the town opened the current museum.  In addition to the stories about the Jewish inhabitants, there was also a collection of Judaica.  The display below features a megillah, a haggadah and a hannukiah.

This display featured a Torah scroll, and ark curtain, a Torah cover, two hannukiah and a kiddish cup.

Yet another hannukiah.

A Torah crown.

 Of all of the displays, I think the miniature replica of the synagogue's interior was my favorite.  I've come to appreciate the miniatures I've seen thus far.

There was a children's corner featuring a story about one of the Jewish children from Elburg who perished.  Her name was Gerda, but she went by "Kitty".  Her aunt was one of the few survivors, a teacher named Anna Shapira.  The story of Anna and Kitty is situated in the children's corner, across from a chart of the Alef-Bet.

I was very much taken with the Women's Gallery on the second floor, behind the blue railing in the third picture in this post.  There was something very moving about the women's photos and the displays filled with their everyday things.

The next room featured displays on Sobibor and Westerbork.  By this time I was feeling ill again, so I mostly rested my eyes and sat still.  I did manage a few snaps before succumbing.

This sculpture sits below a wall of remembrance of all the people originally from Elburg who perished in the camps.

There were a number of additional placards featuring facts about both camps, and I could make out some of the information.

I liked this display of profiles of Elburgers who had perished with the over-sized rocks.  I perceived that this was an homage to the practice of placing stones on the gravemarkers in Jewish cemeteries.

There were also interesting displays of suitcases which offered a new way of looking at the sadness inherent in seeing the cases Jewish prisoners brought with them anticipating resettlement.

It really was a worthwhile trip--illness notwithstanding. 

We ended our tour with a film which offered a narrative overview of the presence of Jews in this small town.  The docents had some difficulty getting the English subtitles to work, but it says a great deal about them that they worked so hard at it.  After about 10 minutes, they called in a young man in his 20s who set things to rights.

Our trip back to Amsterdam took us through some gorgeous countryside as we collected another woman from her daughter's farm and dropped her off at her own about an hour away.  I've observed lots of ponies, very fat sheep, cows with that big belt of white in the middle, goats, pheasants, storks, chickens, horses, etc.  We also saw a number of absolutely lovely farm houses, all very pristine, as well as gracious manor houses.  Even the "caravans" (or trailer homes) seemed so well kept.  It is a lovely country.

Unfortunately, I will not get to go to Westerbork on this trip.  My new friend Femmy worked very hard to show me how to do it, but I just couldn't justify a two hour train ride either way, along with a 20 Euro cabfare each way to and from the camp.  After my close call with the cab this morning, I've decided to explore more of Amsterdam itself tomorrow. 

I ended the evening at Femmy's just upstairs from my room.  She made a lovely vegetarian supper and we talked about the Old Catholic Church to which she belongs.  She has been so kind and generous to me. I feel very, very fortunate.

I will definitely be returning to this great city.

Amsterdam, day one

Readers of this blog will recollect the numerous times I've copped to being a nervous traveler.  I just get terribly anxious about making connections and getting to the right place.  It's particularly unsettling for me (and I imagine many others) when I don't know the language.  Dutch is one of those languages.

I have to say,  Dutch has always struck me as a "friendly"-sounding language.  I perceive the people speaking Dutch to be jovial, well-meaning people--which is a nice, though rather ridiculous, stereotype.  Still, I've come to realize I'm not as thrown here as I was say, in Turkey.  There's the added advantage of cognates in German, a language I used to know somewhat, and English, my native tongue.  I find myself tuning up my ears a bit to try and catch what I can.  Figuring out pronunciation helps somehow.  For instance, I was able to comprehend "next stop" fairly quickly while I was riding the bus from the airport this morning.  Of course, that wasn't terribly difficult.

All that said, I couldn't have had an easier trip from Duluth to Amsterdam.  I was able to get some good work done while at the Duluth airport yesterday afternoon.  My plane to Minneapolis landed early and, even more amazing, my plane to Amsterdam landed early (by 30 minutes, no less!).  I sailed through passport control, luggage retrieval and customs, and marched directly to the bus I needed to take into the city.  I bought my ticket (4 Euros--sooo cheap compared to what it would have cost to take a cab), and got quick and easy directions to the house where I'm renting a room (at 10 Euros per night!!!!!).

While my contact for the room arrangements wasn't home when I got here (due to my early arrival), Her neighbor across the hall managed to communicate with me that I should come in to her apartment to wait.  This lady spoke very little English (still--a LOT more than I speak Dutch), but we managed quite well.  Yet another resident stopped in and got me set up in my room.  It was all very easy.

My primary contact stopped in within an hour of my arrival and then proceeded to host me for coffee, sandwich and WI-FI hookup!  Talk about hospitality!  She tried to help me by-pass the lines at the Anne Frank House by purchasing the ticket on her credit card (with my reimbursement), but after a half hour of arduous effort, gave it up.

The walk to Anne Frank's house is less than 10 minutes from the place I'm staying.

One can see the Westerkerk from the bridge near "my" house.  I remember reading about the chimes from the bell tower of the Westerkerk in Anne's diary. 


The only "fly in the ointment" of my day was the rain.  It's been raining since we landed this morning.  My primary contact, Femmy, came to the rescue one more time and loaned me an umbrella, so I was good to go.

I caught a couple of fun images on my way to the Anne Frank house.

These pumpkins were sitting outside an Algerian restaurant, alongside a basket of fresh tomatoes.

 

I tried looking up information about this placque (if that's what it is), but was unsuccessful.  It appears to show sliver being turned in to gold through a castle.  I can't read the name at the top, but the date is 1985.  Still I thought it was interesting.

By the time I got to the museum, the line to get in stretched around the block.  I was committed to "doing" the museum today, so I just got in line and crawled with the rest of them up to the entrance. It was quite the international experience standing in line.  The people in front of me were speaking in Spanish, and the people behind me were speaking Italian.  There were people from all over Europe and Asia waiting to visit the museum.  Most disturbing were warnings about pickpockets.  Glad to report I didn't see any evidence of that problem.

The cost was 9 Euros, and the guards at the entrance were kind (and smart) enough to give those of us toting umbrellas plastic bags so that we wouldn't drip throughout the museum.  No large backpacks are allowed, purses may be searched, and photographs are prohibited.

It's a self-paced tour through a very spare space.  Once the plans for the museum were underway, Otto Frank had insisted that it be stripped of furnishings, and that's the way it appears today.  There were, however, numerous photographs of the rooms "staged" with furniture to show what it looked like while those eight people were trapped there for over two years.  There are also models, diorama cum dollhouse setups that show where the furniture was situated.

There's a liberty to taking in a place like this on your own.  You don't have to worry about someone else's schedule or museum modes (skimming versus poring over every word).

I have heard some people criticize the museum as not offering much, but I disagree.  I appreciated the approach the curators took in setting up the displays.  There's a power to seeing the actual diaries (she wrote quite a few between 1942 and 1944), and the pages she revised.  There were interpretive audio segments, film clips (most no longer than three minutes).

One of the most compelling features was the very last room featuring young people's experiences with bigotry and challenging issues of freedom (of religion, of sexual preference, of ideology, etc.) from around the world.  It's a Prezi-like presentation with films and polls assessing how audiences' respond to these issues.  Audience members are sitting on benches with buttons they can push to respond to screen commands.  The system then reports the present audience's responses and follows up with an accumulated total from all people who've responded in the past.  This part of the museum took the longest to process (or perhaps that was my jet lag kicking in), but I thought it was really important in highlighting some of Anne's most poignant messages regarding bigotry and prejudice.  In fact, I think it does an excellent job of blasting apart the old call for "tolerance", which was a big part of Otto Frank's platform in the 1950s and 1960s.  Additionally, the featured individuals are youth, which I think made it more compelling to a young audience (although us old folks sat and listened for at least 20 minutes, if not more).

I ended my visit with a trip to the bookstore.  I was very "weight" conscious with respect to my purchases.  I have to lug my backpack and suitcase (very small) on and off a number of trains over the next two weeks, and I just can't afford to take on too much more weight.  I think I made good choices, but I had to leave a couple of items I would have liked to buy because they were just too heavy and bulky (including a three dimensional 'Anne Frank House' kit and a 10 pound compendium of an inside look at the Anne Frank house).

I'm having trouble keeping my eyes open, so I'll bring this to a close.  I think this was an excellent first day.

Ravensbrück, part I

Cindy arranged for us to take a tour of the women's concentration camp, Ravensbrück.  This camp is only 50 miles north of Berlin, but it took us about two hours to get there.  The direct line from Berlin to Fürstenberg/Havel was being repaired, so we had to find an alternative route.  When we got to the train station near our hotel (by the zoo), the clerk had trouble understanding where we wanted to go.  At one point, she was going to send us on a seven hour train ride.  Finally, Cindy asked her to show us a map and we were able to show her where we needed to go; we had a clear itinerary at last.  Unfortunately, we had  to make two changes--which was a bit intimidating.  We took the S-bahn to Berlin HbF and then a regular train to Birkenwerder.  From there, we had to catch a bus to Fürstenberg/Havel.  

Once at the "bus station" (really, it was more of a covered bus stop with a dirt floor), we had to figure out how to get to Ravensbrück.  We finally figured out that we weren't too far from the Fürstenberg/Havel train station.  We made our way there and noticed a taxi parked outside the station.  Entering the station was a bit like taking a trip back in time.  This place hadn't been updated in many, many decades.  The whole facility could do with a fresh paint job and updated furnishings.  It had a definite GDR-feel to it.

According to one of the online sites I reviewed, Himmler chose this site for the camp because it was both out-of-the-way and easy-to reach.  The area around Fürstenberg/Havel is lovely and wooded and Lake Schwedt separates the town and the camp.   

The Information Center at Ravensbrück is a modern building.  The women at the desk were very friendly and charming, and summoned our guide, Thomas.

Thomas gave us an overview of the camp using a 3D model.

We could see the homes of the commandants just up the hill from the Information Center.
 
And the houses where the guards lived are still in place.

Administrative offices are being re-purposed for the museum.

There are a number of other buildings on the periphery of the camp.

And yet no barracks remain at the camp site, only furrows in the ground.

Before the wall fell, the camp housed Soviet troops.  It was off limits for the west until reunification.
 
The first inmates at Ravensbrück when it opened in May of 1939 were German women characterized as anti-fascists.  The camp was designed for 2,000 prisoners, but toward the end of the war, following the evacuation of Auschwitz, 50,000 women were crowded into the camp (according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).  The women who passed through the camp came from 30 different countries, including (much to my surprise) some British prisoners.  There were more Polish women there than any other nationality group.

Ravensbrück has a wall of nations commemorating the nationalities of women imprisoned there.
Most of the inmates came from  Poland and the USSR, but also  included those who'd been declared "asocials,"such as the  Roma & Sinti, Jehovah's Witnesses and Jews.  

 

 Although none of the online sites I reviewed acknowledged this, lesbians were also sent to Ravensbrück because of their sexuality, or "deviance" as the Nazi state deemed it.  Our guide told us this was actually a controversy among the governors of the Ravensbrück museum.  While they recognize that lesbians were among the women imprisoned there, they claim that sexuality was not a rationale for arrest.  There is, however, evidence illustrating that this was indeed true in at least four instances.  One of the consequences of this failure to acknowledge the truth of lesbian imprisonment is that they are not recognized on the "wall of nations" as the Sinti, Roma and Communists are.

We learned that although this was considered a "women's" camp, there were barracks added for men, although in much smaller numbers.  There was also a youth camp.  Interestingly, many women who had been at Ravensbrück were unaware that men were there.  The men were assigned work at the crematorium, but were forced to sleep there sequestered from the women inmates and forbidden to reveal their secret work.  In 1945, the Germans built a gas chamber on the premises.  Over 2,000 women perished there--mostly Hungarian Jews, but also Russian and Polish women.  Their ashes rest in Lake Schwedt.

Ravensbrück supplied slave laborers who worked on the V1 and V2 rockets produced at the Sieman's factory near the camp.

According to the Virtual Jewish Library, the camp was a primary depository for confiscated clothing.  The inmates were employed at a factory where they reworked leather and textiles.  They made the striped "uniforms" for prisoners and fur coats for Waffen-SS  and Wehrmacht.  They were also employed in making carpets, as well as road construction and work for the officers.

The camp had to be enlarged four times to accommodate the growing population of inmates.  The women imprisoned there had to provide labor for those construction projects.

 

Thomas told us a story about the commandant's young son who, when he saw one of the prisoners assigned to work in his family's garden, said, "Get back to work or I'll have my father punish you."  Thomas noted that the guards at Ravensbrück were young and cruel.  One of the most despicable was a young woman named Dorothea Binz who started working at the camp when she was 19.  

Binz moved rapidly up the ranks as a guard.  She often tortured prisoners herself, rather than passing them on to other guards to do the job.  She also sent women who refused to go to the sick ward on to locked bunkers before being subjected to medical experiments.

Thomas told us that the guards' behavior was quite capricious.   At times they were benign, at others, unspeakably cruel.

When I first heard about Ravensbrück, I was a little confused about the presence of Jewish women at the camp.  Apparently, the Jewish women who were there initially were exterminated through a program called Operation Reinhard in 1942, a.k.a., the implementation of the Final Solution.  The women were sent to the death camps.   More Jewish women were sent to Ravensbrück by the end of the war.

There's so much to reflect on with respect to Ravensbrück, I've decided to finish my discussion in a second post.