Winning entry in short story competition
Elisabeth Holdsworth is the winner of the inaugural Melbourne Jewish Writers Festival’s short story competition. Here is her entry.
IT started with a word: Dodenherdenkingsdag. A word to curdle your tongue, unless you’re Dutch. The literal meaning is “the day of remembering the dead”. On May 4, the Netherlands remembers our dead of World War II.
Here’s a couple of other words to chew on: Dutch Jew. A rare creature; not too many survaived the Holocaust.
My mother described herself as a graduate of the university of Dachau. My father, an adherent of the Dutch Reformed Church, and two of his brothers, were in the Resistance.
My uncles were executed by the Gestapo. Another uncle was a collaborator who met his executioner after the war in the bleak, lawless time of reprisal.
On this Dodenherdenkingsdag I watch the new King and Queen lead the celebrations at the Dam in Amsterdam from the comfort of my sitting room in a country town in Victoria.
Despite long-distance television the profound silence of the thousands who mourn with the King and Queen is palpable. When the wreaths are laid I struggle out of my armchair to sing with the rest of the Netherlands our national anthem. “I am Willem of Nassau. I am of German blood”. When I was a child we hummed that bit about having German blood.
My mother had a friend called Anne Frank. No, not that Anne. Another one whom I called Tante Anne. With her dark eyes and black hair Tante Anne looked uncannily like the girl from Amsterdam, but somehow grown up.
I was so sure that my Anne Frank and the girl from Amsterdam were one and the same I never mentioned the matter to my parents. Tante Anne lived in the Jodengang, Jews Alley, next door to a cemetery that had fallen to disuse centuries before. Cats slept on stones where the Hebrew lettering had worn away. They were the only ones who got into the graveyard as the keys had been lost during the war.
The Dam, where the Dutch King lays the wreath on Dodenherdenkingsdag, is within walking distance of Rembrandt’s House. Around the corner is one of the saddest places in the world – the Portuguese synagogue. In this temple are held the records of all those who were sent from Amsterdam to the camps.
In the early 1950s my father and I visited Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam. Papa was intrigued by the secret doors and the sliding panels. I thought the secret apartment was tremendously cosy – gezellig – and told the man who showed us around so. His name was Otto Frank.
Back home in our provincial town I rushed around to Tante Anne’s to tell her I had seen the place where she had hidden during the war and that I had met her father.
That dear sweet lady asked me inside and listened to my tactless prattle while we watched the cats in the graveyard from her side window.
The day following Dodenherdenkingsdag is Bevrijdingsdag. Liberation Day. I don’t bother with that. My mother believed that liberty is something you cherish every day.
She would also have been the first to tell you she wasn’t much of a Jew. She wasn’t observant, didn’t understand Hebrew, barely knew her way around a temple, but she possessed a string of Yiddish oaths powerful enough to strip paint.
A couple of years ago I visited Munich for the first time. I was shocked when we arrived at the station to see a train with “Dachau” on the front. And then, outside, a tram with the same destination. People were getting in and out of the tram, sitting down and reading newspapers, books and texting to each other as though nothing had ever happened.
I promised my mother that I would never set foot in a concentration camp.
They’re all dead; my parents, Tante Anne. There are no more Jews living in the Jodengang in the town where I was born. The other Anne Frank, the girl in Amsterdam, her words grow and grow each year.
On this day of remembering 2014 the silence of the living gathered on the Dam is with the new King. The Dutch know he has come to his high honour amid the burden of recent tragedy. My generation still venerates his great-grandmother who led us during the war.
As I get older I think more and more of the ones I knew when I was young who survived against the odds.
It’s all so simple really. Survive. Live a good life. Bear witness.
Competition prize winners
First: Elisabeth Holdsworth (Festival pass to all sessions plus the gala opening).
Second: Bob Selinger (Festival pass to all sessions).
Third: Ruth Mendes Barnett (Festival pass to a session of choice).
The short story competition was judged by author Bram Presser and Professor Ilana Snyder of Monash University.
The Melbourne Jewish Writers Festival runs from May 31 to June 2. Enquiries: www.mjwf.com.au.
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