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Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
The ugly truth of Trump's America first agenda
The United States became the undisputed leader of the "free world" after World War II for a lot of reasons, but one of the most important was the fact that so many of the most renowned scientists who had been displaced during the war came to America. This was especially true of German Jews and some of their comrades who were chased out of Germany when the Nazis took power. It was a massive brain drain that hobbled the German war effort and benefited the Allies greatly. As reported in the book "Hitler's Gift" by Jean Medawar and David Pyke, Germany had long been the acknowledged world leader in the hard sciences. Between 1901 and 1933, it had won a full one-third of all the Nobel Prizes. Between 1933 and 1960, it won only eight. According to the book, 'some 2600 scientists and other scholars left Germany within the first year [alone], the vast majority of them Jewish. Twenty-five per cent of all physicists were lost from German universities in an insane squandering of talent.' Almost all of them emigrated to the United States and the U.K., winning a vast number of Nobel prizes in the ensuing years. They included such luminaries as Albert Einstein, Edward Teller, Leo Szilard, John von Neumann, Hans Bethe and Stanisław Ulam among many others. This ended up being Hitler's gift to America which spent the next 90 years welcoming the very best minds from around the world to study here and do the research that made the U.S the world's leader in physics, medicine, chemistry and economics which has led to the astonishing innovations such as this contraption you're reading this on right now. The alliance between the federal government and the great American research universities is one of the most successful public-private partnerships in history. The parallels between what happened to Germany's scientific community and what is happening here isn't perfect, but it's close enough. The Trump administration has embarked on a concerted effort to end America's role as a world leader in science and innovation. They aren't singling out Jewish scholars, although plenty of Jews will be caught up in it. They are instead using a blunderbuss to blast the whole system by targeting foreign students for deportation and defunding the research that will lead to the breakthroughs of the future. There is no logical reason for any of this. Their reasons change day to day. One day it's because the research is "DEI" which simply means we have no need to understand anything about diverse populations. Another day it's withholding money for universities allegedly because of antisemitism and revoking Harvard University's right (and probably others in the future) to enroll foreign students. Now we've gone into full red scare McCarthyism toward Chinese students and scientists. Listen to the Secretary of Homeland Security speak about it over the weekend: That's just ignorant smearing by someone who doesn't even know what habeas corpus is. But it's a problem since our secretary of state has just announced that he will 'aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students." There are over a quarter of a million of them studying in the country as well as other Chinese and Chinese-American researchers who are very heavily represented in the scientific fields. They are now being hunted, apparently because our government doesn't value scientific innovation and wants them to go elsewhere to share their talents and ambition. According to the American Association of Universities: [A] recent brief from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) found that the NIH has canceled $1.9 billion in funding across hundreds of grants over the past few months. 'This year's terminations of biomedical research grants funded by the National Institutes of Health are unprecedented in the history of the agency,' stated AAMC in the brief. Every day, there are stories of researchers seeing their life's work being capriciously destroyed without any thought or consideration for the value they bring to the country's economic and social well-being. Foreign scientists working in the country are harassed by ignorant customs officials and, in some cases, thrown in prison on spurious grounds. It's impossible not to see this as another example of an authoritarian government purging the country of its finest minds simply as a way of exerting control. To make matters even worse, we seem to be also intent upon replacing our scientific community with woo-wellness influencers and conspiracy cranks, led by none other than the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr. It's a lethal one-two punch. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is eagerly anticipating that they will reap the benefits of "Trump's Gift." According to Politico, he has sparked Europe's "New Enlightenment." European universities and top politicians have mobilized in response to Trump's domestic measures, creating new initiatives aimed at attracting top foreign talent to Europe by offering generous grants and greater academic freedom. Earlier this month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron unveiled a €500 million plan named 'Choose Europe for Science' aiming to lure foreign researchers to the EU.[...] The Commission last month announced plans to accelerate visa procedures to attract U.S. researchers and EU research ministers met in Brussels on May 23 to discuss how to increase Europe's competitiveness in science and innovation. China and India are also stepping up efforts to lure foreign talent and keep their own at home. All of this is going to affect not just the cutting-edge medical advances, but it's also going to affect U.S. business competitiveness and the jobs of the future. The dynamism of the American economy has been the envy of the world for decades, but we are throwing away the very engine that drives it. But then, the Trump administration keeps insisting that Americans yearn to work in factories and eschew material things in order to engage in more spiritual pursuits, so perhaps our future really lies with supplying the rest of the world with consumer goods while they engage in the services and investing that made America wealthy in recent years. In some ways, it's odd that Trump would go along with all this. He's always been a big admirer of the MIT big brains like his uncle, who taught there (which he often uses as validation of his own alleged genius), and he went to Penn as did Don Jr., Ivanka and Tiffany, and it's an Ivy League school. But then he does have tremendous status envy, which was exacerbated during the pandemic when he commonly made a fool of himself with his attempts to discuss serious scientific subjects. And he certainly senses how much his followers loathe the intellectual elite. At this point, the battle with Harvard is simply a battle of wills. He wants to see them crawl. Whether they do or not, much of the damage is already done. The top scientific talent from around the world is already seeking opportunity elsewhere and they are being offered plenty of incentives. It's only a matter of time before American talent does the same because they won't have the support or the resources to do their work here anymore. It's a hell of a "gift" to the rest of the world. So much for America first.
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
German president recalls hostages' plight on visit to kibbutz Be'eri
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has pledged further assistance to Israel to free the hostages still held in the Gaza Strip, as he paid a visit to kibbutz Be'eri, one of the Israeli communities ravaged during the October 7 attack. "Their fate is an open wound," Steinmeier said of the 58 hostages still being held by Palestinian extremist group Hamas in Gaza. "Germany will not forget them, I will not forget them. Our voice will not be silent as long as they have not returned." The German president also noted the suffering of the civilian population in the war-torn Gaza Strip, which Israel has cut off from humanitarian aid for more than two months. Kibbutz Be'eri is located some 4 kilometres from the Gaza Strip. Some 130 of the community's 1,300 inhabitants were killed when Hamas-led militants launched their unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. More than 50 people from the kibbutz were abducted to the Gaza Strip that day. In total, over 1,200 people were killed and some 240 taken hostage to Gaza during the attacks, with 58 still believed to be held in the coastal area, including the bodies of six people from Be'eri. Steinmeier was joined by Israeli President Isaac Herzog and their wives, Elke Büdenbender and Michal Herzog, in commemorating the victims of the attack. Germany is providing financial support to aid the reconstruction of kibbutz Be'eri, co-founded by German Jews. Berlin is providing some €7 million ($7.8 million) for a new cultural and community centre set to be build at the site of a former art gallery that was destroyed in the attack. Herzog said: "The fact that we are rebuilding this building as a place of the spirit gives us hope." Steinmeier was in Israel for a second day as the two countries mark 60 years of diplomatic relations. To celebrate the historic milestone, Herzog visited Berlin on Monday.
Wall Street Journal
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘Eminent Jews' Review: Pushing the Boundaries
The title 'Eminent Jews' naturally evokes 'Eminent Victorians,' Lytton Strachey's takedown of Victorian culture through crushing biographical essays on Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold and Charles George Gordon. Unlike the Strachey volume, David Denby's 'Eminent Jews' has been written not to crush but to celebrate Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan, Norman Mailer and Leonard Bernstein. The celebration does not come off. Mr. Denby hopes his book will exhibit 'a composite picture of the ideology and practice of postwar Jewish cultural achievement.' Yet even though Mr. Denby is himself Jewish, his 'Eminent Jews' could as easily be read as promoting antisemitic stereotypes—the book's cover features the prominent, or as I think of them the chosen, noses of its four subjects—emphasizing as it does Jews who specialized in vulgarity (Mel Brooks), intractable leftism (Betty Friedan), relentless self-promotion (Norman Mailer) and flamboyant egotism (Leonard Bernstein). Not, any of this, likely to bring much pleasure in the offices of the Anti-Defamation League. All four of Mr. Denby's subjects were ostjuden, or Eastern European Jews, and thus Ashkenazi. Eastern European Jews, who came to the U.S. in profusion in the last two decades of the 19th and the first two decades of the 20th centuries, were once viewed in contrast to the more determinedly assimilationist German Jews, whom the Eastern European Jews called yekkes—Yiddish for jackets—denoting the formality of the German Jews in never removing their suit jackets. A joke of the time asked, 'What is the difference between a yekke and a virgin? The answer: A yekke remains a yekke.' Mr. Denby devotes roughly 80 pages to each of his four subjects. He begins with Mel Brooks, whose specialty was to go up to the line of bad taste—and cross it. For Mr. Denby, Mr. Brooks 'was a more complicated Jewish clown than the world was ready to acknowledge' and 'a significant figure in Jewish history.' At one point he compares Mr. Brooks to Franz Kafka. Informed of the comparison, one imagines Kafka, not a man given to mirth, would have enjoyed a hardy, falling-off-the-couch laugh.
New York Times
17-02-2025
- General
- New York Times
They Asked for Help to Escape the Nazis. Their Pleas Went Unanswered.
In late November 1939, when life for many Jews in Europe was dissolving, Jakob Aufrichtig in Paris penned a letter to the Committee for Jewish Refugees in Amsterdam. He was gravely concerned about his mother, Rachela, who was in her 50s and living alone in Vienna. German officials had ordered her to vacate her apartment, threatening to deport her to Dachau, a Nazi concentration camp, if she didn't. Aufrichtig asked the committee for its help in relocating her to the Netherlands. 'Although it is my greatest wish, I cannot bring her here,' Aufrichtig explained. 'I am totally desperate, and if I can't save my mother, I will take my own life. The frantic efforts of terrified Jews in Germany, Austria and other parts of Europe trying to escape persecution filled letter after letter that came in to the committee. Thousands of German Jews had already emigrated to the Netherlands, the closest safe neighboring country after Adolf Hitler's election as German Chancellor in 1933. Among them were Otto and Edith Frank, and their daughters, Margot and Anne Frank. But after May 1938, requests for entry to the Netherlands would be rejected because the country had already closed its borders to refugees. 'If you look at the results of this heartless policy, they are terrifying,' said Emile Schrijver, director of the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam. Aufrichtig's letter is one of some 200 anguished, and ultimately unsuccessful, requests for help that were found in an Amsterdam attic more than four decades ago by a Dutch-Israeli documentary filmmaker, Willy Lindwer. The letters depict a landscape of despair as the depths of Nazi depravity began to become clearer, but the options for escape had dwindled. Now several dozen of them are featured in a new book by Lindwer and the Dutch historian Aline Pennewaard, 'Ik weet me geen raad,' which translates to 'I'm at a Loss for What to Do,' published last month. Lindwer, an avid collector of war-era documents and Judaica, said the building where he found the bundle of letters was being cleared. He doesn't know how they came to be left in the attic. But when he opened one and started reading, he said, 'It was chilling, really moving.' Also familiar. Lindwer's parents, Jewish refugees from Ukraine, had arrived in the Netherlands in the early 1930s, leaving behind family members who would later be murdered by the Nazi mobile killing units, the Einsatzgruppen. Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940, and the Holocaust would ultimately claim 75 percent of the Jews who lived there. But not Lindwer's parents, who went into hiding and survived. Lindwer didn't know exactly what to do with the letters when he found them, so he put them in a drawer, where they stayed for more than 40 years. When a new National Holocaust Museum opened in Amsterdam last year, he planned to donate the bundle. But first, he and Pennewaard, his longtime creative collaborator, decided to try to research what had happened to the letter writers and publish their stories in a book. Pennewaard was able to track down what happened to about 100 of the correspondents, and included 35 stories in the book. Most of the letters were written in German and sent to either the Jewish Community in Amsterdam (an official municipal group), or to the Committee for Jewish Refugees (a Jewish-run aid organization established in 1933). But by 1938, these groups could offer little hope, because the Dutch government cut off most paths to legal immigration. Hendrik Colijn, the country's prime minister, justified this decision by arguing that accepting Jewish refugees would increase antisemitism at home. 'If we were to admit here an unlimited stream of fugitives from abroad,' he said in a speech to Parliament, 'the necessary consequence of this would be that the feeling in our own country with regard to the Jews would swing in an unfavorable way.' As the world dealt with the lingering effects of the Depression, the Netherlands was not alone in deciding against expanding refuge for Europe's Jews. In July 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt convened an international conference in Evian-les-Bains, France, with delegates from 32 nations, to discuss the refugee crisis. But few countries agreed to ease their immigration rules, and nearly all refused to admit more refugees. The U.S. quota for German and Austrians stayed fixed at around 27,000 a year, and the waiting list for entry visas reached 140,000 in 1938, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Lindwer said it's not hard to make a comparison between the difficulties faced by refugees in the 1930s, and those who are trying to escape persecution in their home countries today. 'This refugee problem is a problem of our times,' he said, 'and with the chaos we have in the world today, I'm afraid it will only get worse.' Despite the 1938 border closing, thousands of desperate letters continued to flood into the Netherlands. 'They all got an answer,' said Pennewaard, but it was usually a standard form letter, saying no aid was available. The plight of the writers can be read in the exclamation points. 'Extremely urgent case!!!' wrote Blima Bierzonski, on Dec. 13, 1938 seeking entry for herself and her 7-year-old daughter, Gerda. Her husband, Viktor, had left earlier that year for the United States, where they hoped to join him. But now the Nazis gave her just a few weeks to leave the country or be deported. Any stay in the Netherlands would be temporary, she promised. 'I will really not be a financial burden to anyone,' she said. Blocked from the Netherlands, she and Gerda fled to Belgium and moved from country to country for the next few years, finding no safe place, until Bierzonski was forced to leave her daughter with a family in Switzerland. They would not reunite again until 1946. One tragic tale that Pennewaard tracked concerned a 33-year-old father, Nathan Awrutin, from Berlin, who wrote begging for temporary entry. He only wanted to wait in Holland until his family received papers that would allow them to join his parents in Palestine. The German police had ordered his family to evacuate their home by Jan. 1, 1939, he said. But he, his wife, Hertha, and their 5-year-old son, Ronald, had nowhere else to go. 'We've tried every possible means to emigrate from Germany, but without any success,' he wrote. 'My family and I place all our hopes on you, because you are the only one who can help us. My wife and I aren't able to sleep at night, because we worry about what will become of us. I cannot provide for my family here, and my son has become malnourished.' Searching public records, Pennewaard found only a few documents about the Awrutins. The couple, she discovered had had a second son, Simon, born in 1942, but she could find no record of their whereabouts at that time. Then she scoured a list of people taken on a transport from Berlin to Auschwitz, the death camp. On the list, dated July 12, 1944, were all four members of the family. Hertha and her two sons were murdered on arrival in the gas chambers. Nathan was selected for 'work duty,' and had prisoner number 42921 tattooed on his arm. Nathan survived there until the Germans evacuated Auschwitz in January 1945, and made prisoners march to Natzweiler, a concentration camp, where he was forced to work until he died on Feb. 19, 1945. No photos or other documentation of the family Awrutin were preserved. Feige Bisseleches, a 76 year-old widow living in Vienna, had no better luck. 'I am totally alone,' she wrote in her letter, 'and now I have to leave my home where I've lived for 46 years because it has been given to strangers. I cannot stay here as a Jew. I am desperate and completely helpless. In view of my situation, I ask the committee to have mercy on me.' Bisseleches received no help. Two years later, she was deported to Theresienstadt, a Nazi concentration camp in the former Czechoslovakia, where she managed to survive 14 months until December 1942, when she was transferred to the camp's hospital and died. The Aufrichtigs were luckier. Although Aufrichtig's request to the Netherlands on behalf of his mother, Rachela, was denied, he kept reaching out to other countries Finally, she was granted a domestic worker's visa to Britain, and was allowed to enter the country as a housekeeper. Eventually, mother and son reunited in New York. Rachela lived to be 91. Her son's first letter had not saved her, but he kept writing.
Telegraph
15-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The Anne Frank who lived
Born in 1925, Edith Velmans was raised in The Hague, the youngest child of a loving, liberal family. Swimming, skating, cycling, she was not overly concerned by the threat from Nazi Germany, even when, in 1938, her German grandmother was stripped of her citizenship, shunned in the street by former friends (it had become illegal to fraternise with Jews) and arrived to live with them in Holland. Omi, as she was known, brought with her a portrait of her only son, killed in the First World War, and the cross issued by Hitler to those who had sacrificed their loved ones for the Fatherland. She also brought Edith her first diary. Threatening clouds hang over the ocean Swarming with birds, flying along in motion Here it comes Here it comes It's dark over all the world. This is part of a poem Edith wrote, aged 13, in June 1939, of which she was 'rather proud'. Clever and popular, she has much to be proud of: her diary is filled with the details of parties, outings, descriptions of a cabaret that she wrote herself. There are sailing trips, a festival of ice, boys she likes who invariably like her, the relief when her family's plans to relocate to the United States come to nothing. Her grandmother isn't granted a visa – the US has accepted enough German Jews already – and they can't leave her behind. Anyway, decides Edith, there could be nowhere better to live than Holland. The Netherlands remained neutral during the last war; nothing really bad could happen here. But when Germany invades and Holland is occupied, slowly, surely, the darkness descends. It is a story that we know too well. The accumulation of slights, the yellow stars that must be sewn onto all items of clothing. Soon, there is no access for Jews to the beach, the tennis club, the school. Money is frozen. Houses are seized. 'It's strange how much you can bear if your doom is parcelled out to you in small doses,' her father writes later. 'It's just like poison: if you start taking it very gradually, increasing the quantity drop by drop, then your body will eventually get used to it.' By 1942, Edith's life is unrecognisable. The adults are in hospitals or camps. One of her brothers, Guus, is far away in America; the other, Jules, has been arrested while attempting escape. Edith, adopting a new, Christian identity, has found refuge in Breda with Tine and Egbert zur Kleinsmiede and their daughter, Ineke, friends of friends prepared to risk their lives to take her in. There are moments of relief: the liberation of unpicking those stars, burning the material, flushing the ashes down the sink. The surprise of cycling again, of leaving the house unrestricted. But the strain is immense. Edith finds that her new home is opposite an army barracks. That there is a German officer billeted in the room opposite her own. But Edith cannot falter. 'I forbid you to be afraid,' her foster mother instructs her. And when the officer is confronted by his hosts, questioned about Germany's losses, the fate of the Jews, he seems ignorant of the facts. 'That cannot be,' he responds. 'It isn't true.' Before Edith left home, she packed the seven volumes of her diary into a small case and gave them to a friend. It is too dangerous for her to keep a diary now. It is too dangerous even to be Edith. Alone in her room, she lives off her memories: the house full of visitors, of poetry and music, the celebration of achievements, of anniversaries and birthdays. These are the things that formed her, and they are what will sustain her, along with the letters from her parents that are smuggled in by friends in the months and years ahead. Letters she is instructed to burn, something she finds she is incapable of doing. These letters, along with Edith's diaries – which were returned to her, miraculously, after the war – form the backbone of Edith's Story, her prize-winning memoir, first published in 1998 and reissued this month as a Virago Modern Classic. They show us how she was taken into the confidence of both her parents, how even under the most harrowing conditions her father attempted to guide her, so that she in turn was able to guide him. To reassure him that if he needed to leave them, if he had to go, that she would be there when – and if – the others returned from the camps. All that she'd received during her childhood would be enough to find her way into the future, alone. It's 25 years since I first read Edith's Story. It was powerful then, and it is powerful now; it continues to bring with it the shadow of that other young Dutch girl confiding in her diary, her circumstance and preoccupations so often the same. In acknowledgment of Anne Frank, Velmans begins her story with a vignette, skipping forward to happier, post-war days in July 1950, when she befriends a new mother in the hospital where both women have just given birth. This woman is Miep Gies, and on being introduced to Aunt Tine, the woman who hid Edith during the war, Miep confides that she too helped to hide a family, but that the family were betrayed. Later, when she sees Edith jotting down her thoughts, she tells her how the youngest daughter, Anne, also wrote a diary. That the diary has recently been published. Edith nods, polite. Privately, she wonders who will read it. Who will be interested in the diary of one young girl? Those that have survived will be too busy getting on with their own lives. This may be why Edith Velmans had to be coaxed into translating her diaries; why she took so long to tell her story. I'm glad she did. Is this who Anne Frank might have been if she'd lived? Courageous, determined to help others, to seek out good. 'Don't ever let hate, in whatever form, overpower your soul, because nothing good has ever come of it,' her father writes in one of his last letters. 'Hate is a disease that only brings out the same – but stronger – in others.' Reading Edith's Story (extracted below), it seems impossible that this could happen again. The suppression of one race by another. The hiding away of unwanted people behind walls. Velmans asks us not to look away. Not to pretend, not to insist, like the soldier billeted with her foster family, that 'it isn't true'. And just as powerfully, Edith's Story shows us what can be overcome; how rather than be consumed by darkness, it is possible to live on in the light. 'It is as if all hell has broken loose!' Extracts from the wartime diaries of Edith Velmans September 1938 There are times when I'm so happy that I think I'm going to burst. I want to hold on to those moments – I want to catch, keep, and freeze them for ever. Like sun-rays in a little box that I can open when it's dark outside. 6 February 1939 I've decided to begin a diary. I hope to illustrate it as well – whether I will or not is another story. I think it's a little risky to record my deepest secrets here, because you never know into whose hands this may fall someday. 20 April 1940 Lots has happened. Politics: Denmark is now Germany, and we wake up every morning with the question, 'Are we still Dutch?' I've been going out a lot. Loads of fun [...] There was the party, last night, at Kitty's. Twelve boys and twelve girls. We played games, we danced and ate a lot. Jan de S took me home, with Anneke and Riet in tow. We were all wearing evening dresses. Très chic. Of course I spilt some orangeade on my dress! 10 May 1940. 4.30 am I was just woken up by a great banging outside. With my groggy head, all I wanted to do at first was to go back to sleep. But then I realised that the sounds I was hearing were... gunshots! Everyone is awake. The neighbours are all standing at their windows, you can see exactly what kind of pyjamas or nightgowns they have on. All of a sudden I feel so close to them. Masses of aeroplanes have been flying overhead. The anti-aircraft guns parked on the field behind our house are shooting like mad into the sky – bullets that give off light. What a racket! As if all hell has broken loose! [...] What's the future got in store for us? Don't know. But things have calmed down, for now. It's quiet again. I'm going to try to get a little more sleep. 5.45 am This is it. It's for real. We have to get dressed. We just saw a plane get shot down! It's the Germans. I have to get up! Father, Mother and Jules had all gathered in my room just as a plane came crashing down near our house [...] It really must be serious. I pulled on some clothes and went downstairs. My diary and my pencil came with me. I had a mission – to report events as they happened. 9.40 am We're at war with Germany. They're fighting at the borders. There are non-stop bulletins on the radio. Practically nobody is going to school today [...] But the English and the French will come and help us, you'll see. Courage! 14 May – night It's just come over the radio: Holland has CAPITULATED!! Given up! Except for the Fortress Zeeland. I can't possibly describe how deeply this news has shocked everyone. Everybody (practically) is in despair. [...] We are German now. The Netherlands belongs to Germany. We had to give ourselves up, in the end, because they bombed Rotterdam so badly that they say there's not a single house left standing, practically, and not a soul left alive. I pray to God that our whole family is safe, and will remain so. Tomorrow they're coming to occupy The Hague. Everyone is desperate. 2 June 1940 Evening. A peaceful calm has settled around me. Dusk. The sky is a soft blue, threaded with wisps of pink. Across the street I see the silhouettes of trees in which blackbirds are still chirping. The sound of light footsteps in the distance. 6 September 1940 All foreigners have to leave The Hague. There are very few parts of Holland where they are now allowed to live. Most places are off-limits to them. Omi got a notice too. But she's in the hospital. Let's hope that she'll be allowed to stay with us. Something fishy is going on and I don't like it. 13 October 1940 Omi is all better. Had dinner with us. Regal in her flowing robe and high heels. She's an angel. She's been able to help Mother again with the housework. I'm too lazy. I'm really hopeless. 6 December 1940 Jan de S took me home. He insisted. When we reached the lane round the corner, he put his arm around me. I let him, because it was either that or bumping into him or into the walls. We turned into my street. At the corner, in front of Jackie's house, he suddenly tried to kiss me. I didn't like that at all. Yuck. I pulled my head back and said, 'Hey Jan, stop it!' 20 December 1940 First I danced with Dicky P; he's a little weak – he's just too good and too sweet. He lets people walk all over him. Then we lit the candles, and I danced with Walter V. Then with Ernst. Then Jan K asked me to dance. We didn't say too much. I mentioned the mistletoe. Then he asked me if I'd give him permission to make use of it. I said, 'Well, I'd rather you didn't.' He asked me to dance several times after that, we even danced the last dance together. People say he is NSB [a member of the Dutch National Socialist Party; Dutch Nazi]. But I think he's nice. Good-looking. 1 Jan 1941 1941! Will this year bring us something better than 1940 has? Will the war finally be over? Nobody knows. My wishes for the new year are: health, happiness and many more New Year's Eves. Peace. Guus back home with us. Omi with us for many more years, and all of us together – for now and for ever. And now it's 2.30, and my second journal is full. I end the old year and this diary together with the hope that this old Afrikaans saying will come true: 'Alles sal reg kom!' (Everything will turn out all right.) 11 February 1941 It does everyone good sometimes to feel wanted and liked. Some days I feel this more, some days less. But let me declare here, in case of inferiority complexes to come, that there are some people who like me, and some people who think I'm nice. So there. What the others think of me, I don't know. But at least I don't have any enemies – none that I'm aware of, at any rate. I want to have friendships, always, and love everyone, and only see the goodness in things and in people. [...] (I realise that on every page of this Sturm und Drang diary a different boy's name is mentioned. Well, what's the point of being a girl otherwise?) 10 May 1941 One year ago today they invaded our country... At school it was great. Deathly silence. Hardly anyone was talking or laughing. At recess everybody kept their mouth shut. You could hear the shuffling of about 400 feet but not a word. Outside all you heard was hollow footsteps, sombre and deadly, and when we went back inside it was like a funeral service. 4 August 1941 We got a letter from Guus, for Dad's sixtieth birthday. Beautiful letter. Proud of my oldest brother! He writes that a friend of Mother's, Mrs Oppenheimer, has committed suicide in a concentration camp in France. Mother was very upset. How desperate you must have to be, to take your own life. Things must have seemed very bleak, her daughter in America, her son in a training camp in Canada, husband also in a concentration camp, she herself a prisoner and a diabetic to boot. Poor woman... 21 August 1941 Times are pretty bad. Jews are not allowed to keep more than a thousand guilders of their income. Apparently that's a pretty low blow. And other measures too. But I don't care. As long as Jules isn't picked up and sent away, as long as we can stay here in our cosy house, I can stand anything, and I hope I'll be able to help others. [...] I guess most people are depressed these days. But I want to be strong! I want to come out of this war tough and unbeaten. And if we're not allowed to go to school any more, well then I'll just keep on working, and learning things, and getting wiser! 12 December 1941 War has broken out between Japan, America and Britain.[...] I don't hold out much hope for a quick end or an early peace any more. Everything is tense and scary. It has turned into a real world war. There isn't a single place on earth that is not involved... I have never written very much about the war in my journal. [...] Maybe it's selfish of me, that I write so little about what goes on in the big world, and only about my own unimportant little life. 4 May 1942 We're all wearing our stars. I can't stop laughing – I can't help it. It's such a hoot, this star business. You hear the most ridiculous stories, and the jokes are making the rounds faster than the rumours. The people wearing stars are greeted warmly by strangers, people take their hats off to you in the street, make all sorts of comments like 'Keep your chin up' – it's wonderful. Today apparently even a German soldier nodded at Father. I had sewn mine on my scarf, you are not supposed to, but I'll just wait until someone says something about it. Everybody was incredibly nice at the Distribution Office. Someone said to me, 'Why don't you take that silly thing off? Throw it away!' It really is a riot. 1-2 July 1942 New measures again. Not only are we not allowed to bicycle any more, we are not allowed to ride the trams either. We have to be off the street by eight, and we are not allowed inside non-Jewish homes. Shopping is restricted for us to the hours between 3 and 5 pm. It's a mess. 3 July 1943 [Written in address to her father, who had died 10 days earlier, in hospital in Utrecht] Today I turned eighteen – the birthday that I looked forward to so much when I was younger, and so did you and Mother, the day when your youngest one would be all grown up – it has turned out quite differently from what I had expected. Now I am eighteen and I don't have a father any more – at least not a tangible one. I feel your presence close to me, but I can't see your dear face, or hear your soft, tender voice, your jokes, your witty comments, your wise words, your songs, your enthusiasm for sports, your love – those I will have to miss for ever... This morning was a morning like any other – quite different from the other years: no musical procession down the stairs to the gaily decorated birthday table, no suppressed impatience and excitement before being allowed to dig into the delicious birthday cake, no Mother, no Father, no wonderful happy day that always ended with my falling into your arms, exhausted, thanking you both from the bottom of my heart... Today I did not get a witty poem from you, no amusing drawing, no moving speech... but still I feel you are here… 30 August 1944 To be honest, Father dear, I am comforted – happy, even – that you are no longer of this wretched earth. Even if you had recovered, even if you had been reunited with your loved ones, all this – this great injustice that can never be righted, the wrong that has been done to us, to our people, to some more than to others – it would all have been so impossible to forget, to go on with one's life as if nothing had happened. But Pappie, tonight I can't stop thinking about our loved ones, out there in the unknown. Only you know, Pappie, whether they are still alive, whether they'll come back to me some day – I wish I knew. I am preparing myself never to see them again... then it can only turn out better than I expected... But the thought that while I am lying here in my cosy bed, they may be being tormented-humiliated-worked to death, or exposed to the cold or suffering or disease... Oh God, oh Father dear, please help them – save them! 2 December 1944 I did enjoy the dancing a little last night, I couldn't help myself [...] It is strange, but I can't stand it any more when people ask me about my family. From now on I just won't tell them much. I will just say: 'Poland.' That's all. Because, of course, they feel sorry for me, and then they want to do something for me, something friendly, something cheering and consoling, but I don't want people to feel sorry for me [...] Most of the time you can stay cool inside, and calm – but then again you get such a terrible longing for home, the home you left behind, with Mother and Father and the boys. That you may never have that again – it's hard to accept. Strange, it hurts at the bottom of your skull, in the back of your throat – is that your heart that you feel aching? Silly girl. 27 February 1945 I don't think I have ever felt as bad as I feel today. This morning I had a crying fit in my room, Ineke sitting beside me. I feel so awful, so lost sometimes – I can't really explain what it is. Sometimes you feel like a totally isolated piece of human meat that someone is using for a spinning top. I feel I don't belong anywhere – everyone I know, I have known only since I went into hiding. [...] And sometimes I hate Breda, I miss The Hague so much, I miss my friends, our house, the people I love – not all these new superficial acquaintances. 4 May 1945 HOLLAND IS FREE!!!!!! 5 May 1945 It's wonderful, I have no time to write, so much has happened... Now Miep is free, and Nina, Uncle and Aunt and the Verhulsts, and lots of other friends. Strange, at first you go crazy with joy, with the feeling that 'home' is finally free. But then when you think about it a little more, what is awaiting you there? Mother, Father, Jules and Omi are gone. It will take a long time before you can go there again. 14 May 1945 How come you only understand what a mother is when she is no longer with you? ... You talk about your mother as if she is no longer there. Is that the right thing to do? You just saw some pictures of Bergen-Belsen and other camps. It was something you can never forget. Piles of exhausted corpses – thrown together in a heap, men and women, naked, almost skeletons, their faces carrying that martyred look, old people, young people, children and babies. Gallows. Ovens. German women, about twenty of them, who were supposed to 'guard' the camp. And a few survivors, horrible to look at, with legs that looked like they were walking on their own fingers – living corpses, or worse, is what those people looked like (those were the workers). After seeing that, then you don't have any reason to believe that Mother will come back some day, and how can you begrudge her the peace that she may have found? You just can't figure out what exactly you should hope for. And today Mother would have been fifty-one years old. [A couple of months later, Edith received official notification from the Red Cross that her mother and grandmother had lost their lives in the gas chambers of Sobibor extermination camp in May 1943. Her brother Jules was killed in Auschwitz in February 1944. Edith died aged 97 in 2023. She is survived by her three daughters, Hester, Jessica and Marianne, five grandchildren, Anya, Jack, Nick, Saskia and Luca, and five great-grandchildren.]
