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Don’t forget to check our website at www.hobartsynagogue.org
5
A Friendship Renewed
Something very exciting happened to me earlier this year! Last year my daughter Susan travelled
overseas with a friend and they spent a short time in Amsterdam visiting members of Susan's family.
On a visit to the Anne Frank Museum, Susan bought a book about Anne Frank to add to a number she
already had. You see there is a connection! I was born in Amsterdam in 1930 and went to a
Montessori school (now named the Anne Frank School) where Anne and I shared the same class for a
few years.
I don't remember her although I recall a few other students in that class. Each year a class photo was
taken. The earliest known of our class was taken in June 1935 and that photo appears in most books
about Anne. An original copy hangs in my home and is well known to my family and friends.
The book Susan bought also contained this photo, but it was marked with numbers. Susan contacted
the Museum to check on the meaning of the numbers. The response was that Anne herself had written
to them and they corresponded with names of students she had written on the back of the photo and my
name was one of those.
The Museum sent me a copy of the back of the photo. I now feel much closer to Anne. The Museum
also informed me about other Jewish students in the photo with whom contact had been made. One
person, Rebecca, was a girl I had been friendly with at the Montessori School and whom I had met again
after the war when we attended the same High School. She was very helpful to me at the school and we
became friends.
I still have some photos from my time with her family. Later Rebecca and her family moved to the USA, I
left Holland, and we lost touch with each other.
With the help of the Museum we have now made contact with each other again and exchanged emails.
Both of us are grandmothers and our lives have been very different since we last met, besides living on
different continents.
We have started to write about our experiences during the war which were also very different. When we
were high school friends, people didn't talk about what happened to themselves and their families during
the war. It was many years before they were able to do so. The Museum also gave me the address of
another Jewish student I remember from my school days, who continues to live in Amsterdam, and I am
looking forward to making contact with her too.
Clare Steenbergen
Yom HaSho’ah - A Young Person's Perspective
Read by Susan Steenbergen on Yom HaSho’ah.
The Holocaust Survivors and Descendants are moving to a new era. The Second Generation and even
the Third are becoming involved. It's up to us now!
We the children and the grandchildren of survivors must show our photos and share our families’ stories.
Showing the human face of the Shoah prevents it from being relegated to the pages of History along with
the Romans, Crusades, Spanish Inquisition and other Jewish tragedies. Should we allow people to
remove it from the 20th century, act as if it happened centuries ago, rather than just over 60 years ago?
Further, if we remove the personal aspect aren't we enabling the 'deniers' to say it is all just an
exaggeration?
Descendants have an important role. We must be vocal and we must research. Our families' stories
must be documented, whether by writing a book, developing a web site, or producing a home video.
There are many unpublished manuscripts written by survivors, letters between survivors, photographs
etc. Further information such as how people were saved, who saved them, names of towns, names of
family members etc. need to be recorded. The information and the ability to gain it, is rapidly
disappearing.
Only in our remembrance and open discussion is there a chance, a hope that another Holocaust will
never happen.
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