Latest news with #Dutch-Jewish
France 24
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- France 24
80 years on, Dutch WWII musical still 'incredibly relevant'
The character, a Dutch-Jewish student named Bram, tumbled bleeding down a makeshift dune as the audience gasped in horror and the gunshots faded away in a red mist. This dramatic scene is one of many in the Netherlands' longest-running musical that deliver a message audiences and actors say is as relevant today -- 80 years after the end of World War II -- as it was back then. "Especially now with all the tensions in the world and of course with Russia and Ukraine and everything that is going on in Gaza now, I think yes, even more than ever, that this performance is very important," leading actor Joep Paddenburg told AFP. More than 3.7 million Dutch visitors -- a fifth of the country's entire population -- have seen "Soldaat van Oranje" (Soldier of Orange) since the show first hit the stage in 2010. It has since grown into a cultural phenomenon and will soon also be adapted for international audiences, its producers said. Based on a book by Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, one of the Netherlands' most famous war heroes, it tells his version of events following the Nazi invasion of May 10, 1940. The musical starts with a group of Leiden University students including Hazelhoff, now played by Paddenburg, being suddenly confronted by the news that German troops have invaded. "The war turns everything upside down," the official programme for the play explains. "Everyone has to make their own choices. Will you fight for freedom and country? Will you do nothing? Or will you deliberately join the enemy?" Some -- like Hazelhoff and his friends, including Bram, played by Eli ter Hart -- join the Dutch Resistance. Others don blinkers and pretend the war does not exist. A third group, however, become committed Nazis, not only collaborating but actively serving in the SS. 'Confronting' The latter include Hazelhoff's former friend Anton, who becomes a member of the Dutch SS and approves Bram's execution after his arrest. The role of Dutch Queen Wilhelmina, who fled to exile in Britain, also features prominently. It shows her anguish as her small nation across the English Channel buckles under the Nazi jackboot. Hazelhoff joins the queen, played by Sylvia Poorta, after a perilous journey across the Channel and becomes her trusted adjutant. He smuggles radios to the Resistance and later joins the Royal Air Force. The musical draws to a close at the end of the war, following Wilhelmina's return and the liberation of the Netherlands on May 5, 1945. "The Netherlands was massively impacted by the Second World War," said Kevin Schoonderbeek, 39, the musical's resident director. "Everybody has a story and that has filtered through the generations -- even up to today," he told AFP. Schoonderbeek previously acted in the musical, playing the role of Anton. About 10 years ago "my grandmother, who was a young girl during the war, came to see the play", he said. "For her it was very confronting to see me in a Nazi uniform. She had a sort of a flashback to that time, remembering the sound of boots, uniforms, planes flying overhead," he said. 'Incredibly relevant' The war "was a major national trauma that should not be forgotten", wrote Bo Le Granse of Tilburg University in a Masters thesis on "Soldaat van Oranje". The story "is a way to grasp the idea of the Second World War, not just for the older generations but for the younger ones as well" Le Granse said. With chairs seated on a giant revolving tribune, the musical offers the audience a unique immersive experience, often referred to as "docutheatre". Various stages are placed around the revolving seating disk, providing several unique sets that are used at different points in the three-hour long production consisting of 33 different scenes. Brought to life by state-of-the-art electronics, the Nazi bombing of Rotterdam on May 14, 1940, for instance becomes eerily realistic. But it is the scenes of human drama depicting the torture and fates of the resistance fighters that are the most realistic -- and poignant. After the play, members of the audience said the lessons of war and freedom were as pertinent today as they were eight decades ago. "This musical is still incredibly relevant. There is still war in different parts of the world," said Sofie Groen, 37, a therapist on holiday from Mainz in Germany. "To me it's an incredible honour to play this role," added Paddenburg, who plays Hazelhoff.
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Jacqueline van Maarsen, Dutch bookbinder later revealed to have been Anne Frank's ‘best girlfriend'
Jacqueline van Maarsen, who has died aged 96, led an unobtrusive life as an Amsterdam bookbinder until the late 1980s, when she owned up to being the 'best girlfriend' referred to in The Diary of Anne Frank; she went on to write several books about the Anne she knew as a child. Jacqueline Yvonne Meta van Maarsen was born in Amsterdam on January 30 1929, the younger of two daughters of a Dutch-Jewish businessman, Samuel 'Hijman' van Maarsen, and his French Christian wife, Eline, née Verlhac. She was 11 when the Germans invaded the Netherlands. She recalled seeing the planes flying overhead and sensing her parents' agitation, although the idea that the family faced a threat because they were Jewish (her father had registered his daughters as Jewish in 1938) did not occur to them. She and her sister were at a normal school. But, as she recalled, 'At the end of the school year, in 1941, the headmistress called a group of us to her office and told us that because we were Jewish we must leave the school.' In October, in compliance with Nazi anti-Jewish laws, she started at the Jewish Lyceum. As she cycled home at the end of her first day, she found herself being overtaken by one of her new classmates, a skinny girl with thick black hair and braces on her teeth. 'Are you going that way too?' the girl asked, pointing to a bridge. 'Great! Then we can bicycle home together from now on.' The girl's name was Anne Frank; that evening she invited Jacqueline to supper with her parents, Otto and Edith, and her older sister, Margot. From then on the girls were best friends. They did their homework together, played Monopoly and table tennis, giggled about boys and compared their collections of movie star postcards. In the spring of 1942, Jacqueline noticed that pieces of furniture were vanishing from the Franks' house, and was puzzled when Otto told her they were being refurbished. On the day the Franks went into hiding in July 1942, she telephoned Anne for a chat. 'She sounded nervous and said she couldn't talk, but that she'd call me back. She didn't, but I thought nothing of it. Then the next day another friend of Anne's knocked on my door and said the Franks had escaped to Switzerland.' In fact the family, helped by Dutch friends, had disappeared into concealed rooms in the building where Otto Frank worked on Amsterdam's Prinsengracht Canal. They remained holed up there until August 1944, when they were betrayed 'by person or persons unknown'. Seven months later, in March 1945, Anne and Margot Frank perished at Bergen-Belsen. Of 145,000 Dutch Jews, 112,000 were murdered during the war. Jacqueline and her sister survived thanks to their mother's initiative: 'Nobody could bring themselves to believe the rumours of the gas chambers. But my mother did... She decided to try and have us removed from the Jewish register by convincing the German authorities she didn't agree with her husband and his religion. Because she was French, elegant and pretty, she succeeded.' Her father, too, was spared deportation because he had a non-Jewish wife, though he had to prove he had been sterilised: 'a good Dutch doctor gave him a false certificate saying he could no longer have children, so he was no longer at risk either.' Other family members were not so lucky. Nor were the majority of Jacqueline's friends at the Jewish Lyceum, most of whom never returned after the war. Even so, Jacqueline found life in wartime Amsterdam far from easy and she sometimes felt envious of her old friend, whom she assumed was still in neutral Switzerland: 'The hunger winter of 1944-45 was very difficult. We had to eat sugar beet and tulip bulbs – I can still taste their sourness. I would think a lot about Anne, living in better circumstances.' She only discovered the truth when Otto Frank, the sole surviving member of his family, returned to Amsterdam in 1945 and tracked her down. He was carrying his daughter's diary and a farewell letter which Anne had written to Jacqueline while in hiding. 'Dear Jacqueline,' it read, 'I am writing this letter in order to bid you goodbye. I hope we will meet again soon, but it probably won't be before the end of the war.' 'Reading it was very emotional,' she told the Telegraph's Julia Llewellyn Smith in 2004, 'which was difficult, because I didn't want to show feelings in front of Otto.' Otto relied heavily on Jacqueline for support until his death in 1980, but she could not understand his determination to see his daughter's diary published: 'I thought, who would want to read a book by such a young child? Also, I couldn't believe anyone would want to read about the dreadful times we had gone through.' She was wrong. From when it was first published in 1947, The Diary of a Young Girl has been translated into more than 70 languages and sold more than 35 million copies, its author becoming to many the face of the six million victims of the Holocaust. Postwar, Jacqueline became an award-winning bookbinder but wanted nothing to do with what she referred to as 'the Anne Frank cult': 'I knew that using Anne as a symbol was good, but I also felt: don't overdo it.' The Anne she remembered was cheerful and intelligent, but also 'naughty', demanding and quickly jealous. In other words she was 'just a little girl'. Jacqueline remained reluctant to reveal that she was 'Jopie de Waal', the 'best girlfriend' who featured frequently in the diary. 'Anne... would have loved all the attention, but I am the opposite,' she explained. 'Besides, talking about Anne was so painful – it brought back memories.' It was only when investigations to prove the diary's authenticity began in the 1980s that she decided to let her identity be known. Beginning with Anne and Jopie (1990), Jacqueline van Maarsen wrote five books about her friendship with Anne Frank and went on to give talks at schools about their relationship and about the dangers of anti-Semitism and racism. In 1954 she married Ruud Sanders. He predeceased her and she is survived by their three children. Jacqueline van Maarsen, born January 30 1929, died February 13 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
