YOUNG AMERICA | Dec. 25–Washington Attacks Trenton

Washington Crossing the Delaware, Emmanuel Leutze, 1850

On this day in 1776 George Washington led the Continental Army across the Delaware River in a surprise attack on Hessian mercenaries.

The previous August, the British army arrived–one-fourth of them Hessian soldiers from Germany. The Brits invaded Long Island and forced the Continental Army to Manhattan. The British then attacked Manhattan and forced Washington's troops to retreat along the Hudson River to New Jersey. The British followed, chasing the Americans across the Delaware into Pennsylvania.

At this point the American rebels seemed to be crushed. General Washington was on the run. General Cornwallis was satisfied that the Continental Army was not going to be a threat, having had many defeats and no victories in more than five months.

American morale was low, with many men sick and wounded. Shabbily dressed and poorly trained, they were deserting at high rates. On top of all that, enlistments of most of the militias under Washington's command were due to expire at the end of December and many would be going home. Even Washington thought privately that the jig might be up for the Revolution. By the following spring there would be no army left.

A Marker Nine Miles Upriver from Trenton

Washington had to do something. Then he got word that about 1,500 Hessian soldiers were camped across the Delaware in Trenton. The Hessian mercenaries, one-fourth of the British forces in America, had a deserved reputation as skilled, effective soldiers. The only way for his irregulars to have a chance of defeating them, even with superior numbers, was a surprise attack. Washington decided to risk everything on an attack.

The weather was terrible, with snow, sleet, and gale-force winds. Washington decided the weather would work in his army's favor, because no one would imagine that the Continental Army would attack during a blizzard.

A few hours before attempting the mission, Washington read aloud to his soldiers from Thomas Paine's The American Crisis. The army was divided into at least three different groups to cross the Delaware, each with a different destination point around Trenton; Washington led one group and put commanders in charge of the others. The river was moving quickly, carrying huge chunks of ice, and they were traveling through a blinding snowstorm.

On Christmas Eve, 2,400 men, 18 cannons, and some horses crossed the river in small boats. Only Washington's group persevered through the brutal weather–the other commanders turned their troops around.

Washington's army crossed nine miles northwest of Trenton.

Washington's men marched the nine miles on Christmas Day to Trenton, many of the soldiers with frostbitten feet as they marched on snow barefoot or with rags tied around their feet.

The Tide Was Turned

Early morning December 26, the Continental Army attacked Trenton, surprising a camp composed entirely of unprepared and hungover Hessians. After the loss of their commander, the Hessians surrendered. Washington's victory was complete but his situation precarious. Taking  900-1,000 soldiers captive, they retreated back across the river to Pennsylvania.

It wasn't fully clear at the time, but this victory turned the tide toward the Revolutionaries. It restored everyone's faith in the Continental Army's abilities.

The battle's outcome gave Washington and his officers the confidence to mount another campaign. On December 30 they again crossed the Delaware, this time winning another victory at Trenton on January 2, 1877 and then pushing on to Princeton, where they defeated the British on January 3. The victories stunned the British and were a magnet for support of the new nation by potential allies– France, Holland and Spain.

Eye Witness Report

Elisha Bostwick, a soldier in the Continental Army, said in his memoirs of the battle:

[We] encamped on the Pennsylvania side [of the Delaware] and there remained to the 24th December. [T]oward evening [we] began to re-cross the Delaware but by obstructions of ice in the river did not all get across till quite late in the evening, and all the time a constant fall of snow with some rain, and finally our march began. 

[General Washington rode by and said:]  "Soldiers, keep by your officers. For God's sake, keep by your officers!" Spoke in a deep and solemn voice. ... Our horses were then unharnessed and the artillery men prepared. We marched on and it was not long before we heard the out sentries of the enemy both on the road we were in and the eastern road, and their out guards retreated firing, and our army, then with a quick step pushing on upon both roads, at the same time entered the town. Their artillery taken, they resigned with little opposition, about nine hundred, all Hessians, with 4 brass field pieces. When crossing the Delaware with the prisoners in flat bottom boats the ice continually stuck to the boats... [T]he next day [we] recrossed the Delaware again and returned back to Trenton, and there on the first of January 1777 our years service expired, and then by the pressing solicitation of [General Washington,] a part of those whose time was out consented on a ten dollar bounty to stay six weeks longer, and although desirous as others to return home, I engaged to stay that time.

Sources: Garrison Keillor, Writer's Almanac, December 25, 2014. Henry Steele Commager and Robert B. Morris, The Spirit of 'Seventy Six (1958). David Hackett Fischer, Washington's Crossing (2004). "Washington Crosses the Delaware, 1776," EyeWitness to History (2004).

PEACE | Dec. 24–200 Years, USA and Britain (Comment)

A Celebratory Poster of the Treaty, 1814.
Note the Union Jack does not show the St.
Patrick's Saltire, which was added in 1800,
nor do the stars show on the Stars and Stripes. 

(The following post was published in the East Hampton Star of December 25, 2014. This may be the only newspaper in the United States that took note of the 200th anniversary of peace between Britain and America.)

The Treaty of Ghent “A Treaty of Peace and Amity between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America” was signed on December 24, 1814.

James Madison declared war originally because British Orders in Council made it harder for the United States to trade with France, and because the British Navy was seizing (“impressing”) sailors on colonial ships and putting them on Navy ships.

The British Government repealed the Orders in Council, ending the curb on trading, but impressment remained. If the British had given up the right to impress American sailors, Madison might have called off the war.

Russia's Czar Alexander I in March 1813 offered to host negotiations, but the British were winning and refused. In the fall of 1813, British foreign minister Lord Castlereagh offered to negotiate directly with the United States. The two countries picked Ghent in Eastern Flanders as the venue because it was a neutral city. Everyone's goal was to end the fighting, which was much too expensive for both countries. The two teams were:

• For the United States - John Quincy Adams, chief negotiator; Henry Clay, the hawk (the "bad cop"); Albert Gallatin, Treasury Secretary; James A. Bayard, moderate Federalist; and Jonathan Russell, chargé d’affaires for Madison in Paris. It took the Americans six weeks or more to communicate with Washington, D.C. so they were negotiating largely on their own. The U.S. team wanted to restore territory to what it was before the war, the status quo ante bellum.  
• For the British - Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh and Secretary for War and the Colonies, Lord Bathurst, who chose not to attend the talks and instead, they sent a less-skilled team -  admiralty lawyer William Adams; impressments expert Admiral Lord Gambier; and Undersecretary for War and the Colonies Henry Goulburn. The British negotiators wanted uti possidetis, that each side could keep what it had won militarily, such as Detroit and Mackinac Island.

Admiral of the Fleet James Gambier (L, with Treaty) shakes hands with the
U.S. Ambassador to Russia, John Quincy Adams, as the British
Undersecretary of State for War and the Colonies, Henry Goulburn
 (R, with red folder), and other negotiators look on.

The outcome of the Treaty was favorable for the United States, perhaps because the war was going well for the Americans at the time the Treaty was signed:

• The Americans seemed to be losing early in the war with the burning of Washington. But Lieutenant General Sir George Prévost and a naval squadron under Captain George Downie engaged in Plattsburgh with New York and Vermont militia and U.S. Army regulars, under the command of Brigadier General Alexander Macomb, supported by ships commanded by Master Commandant Thomas Macdonough. The British failed to take Lake Champlain and fled north after the battle. Fort McHenry in Baltimore then withstood a severe attack and inspired the National Anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner".  News of these two battles was the last information that negotiators in Ghent received. 
• The British did not get respect for the independence of Native lands in the state of Ohio, and in the Indiana and Michigan Territories. The British wanted this reserved land to be a buffer state to protect Canada from American annexation, but Clay would not give it up. The British did not get any territory in northern Maine, or demilitarization of the Great Lakes or navigation rights on the Mississippi. Lord Castlereagh asked the Duke of Wellington and his advice was for them to take the status quo ante bellum. 

On December 24 the negotiators agreed on the 3000-word Treaty. After approval by the two governments, hostilities ended and “all territory, places and possessions whatsoever, taken by either party from the other during the war” were restored to what they were before the war.  The United States is considered to have won the war, as the Canadian historian and War of 1812 expert Donald E. Graves concludes:  What Americans lost on the battlefield, "they made up for at the negotiating table.” The United States never did get the British to promise not to impress American sailors, but as hostilities in Europe ended, this issue ceased to be such a concern.

After the signing of the Treaty and before the combatants got word, the British attacked New Orleans on January 8, 1815 with a large army. It was overwhelmed by a smaller and less experienced American force under General Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) in the greatest U.S. victory in the war. The news of the Treaty and the outcome in New Orleans reached a delighted American public at about the same time.

Comment

It is remarkable that the Treaty of Ghent has held up for 200 years. But the Treaty does not imply a  "Special Relationship", just a cessation of hostilities. In fact, with the opposition of many Irish Catholics to the U.S. entry on the side of Britain in the Great War, the Special Relationship is really not cemented until the threat of Hitler brings together the United States and Britain, first with Lend-Lease and then with the U.S. declaration of war in 1941.

FAMILIES | CHAMPS Closes Down

L to R: Deborah and Jennifer
Fink, founders of CHAMPS.

I just received the following letter from Jennifer Fink. The photo at right was not part of the letter. I add it as a way of saying thanks to them for the good things they achieved although they ran into unexpected resistance and have recognized that the resistance wasn't going away...

Dear Operation CHAMPS Supporters,

This morning, with deep sadness, I am announcing that Operation CHAMPS will shut down.

Attached is our final statement that we will be posting on social media and our website. We reached this decision reluctantly, following weeks of distorted and destructive attacks from a group of adult children of military Servicemembers (Brats). Although the situation began as a mere difference of opinion regarding the “CHAMPS” terminology, the Brat attacks quickly escalated and became increasingly abusive. Some of our volunteers have been threatened, and as you know, your organizations have been besieged with posts, tweets, emails and mail requesting the withdrawal of your support. This controversy has become a significant distraction to many of your worthy organizations. Hence, we have made the decision to close our doors.

When Debbie and I set out on this journey a few years ago, we envisioned an organization that would be at the heart of a community where military families felt supported, understood, and appreciated by their civilian counterparts nationwide. Our path may have ended prematurely, but we are incredibly proud of the footprints we have left behind. Together, we were able to provide thousands of hours of free child and respite care to families of Wounded Warriors, Servicemembers, and veterans, and deliver morale-building, uplifting educational programming to thousands of elementary school-aged children living in the United States and abroad.

Moreover, Operation CHAMPS' legacy leaves a "Full Force Committee" bringing together the five military branch associations to collaborate on behalf of our military-connected children and their families. We find comfort in knowing that their collaborative efforts will continue. None of this would have been possible without your support. Because of Champions like you, we were able to bring joy to countless children and relief to our community’s Servicemembers, spouses and caretakers. We plan to use the rest of Operation CHAMPS funds on purchasing holiday gifts for our Wounded Warrior, military, and veteran families. Our high school and college volunteers will be involved in the purchasing, gift-wrapping, and delivery of these holidays gifts to our deserving Wounded Warrior, military, and veteran families. We believe this is a most befitting way to say farewell.

While Operation CHAMPS’ journey has ended, we have notified our team of dedicated volunteers that we will be happy to assist them in transitioning to volunteer with some of your organizations that would best suit their interests and locations.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions, comments, or concerns. On behalf of Operation CHAMPS’ Board of Directors, volunteers, supporters and the countless military families touched by our programs, we thank you.

V/r,
Jennifer E. Fink, Founder & CEO, Operation CHAMPS, P.O. Box 342431, Bethesda, MD 20827 - 301.758.6717 - www.OperationCHAMPS.org 

FAMILIES | BRATs vs. CHAMPs

The BRAT medal.

In December 2013, I posted something on a new book called CHAMPs, which stands for Child Hero Attached to Military Personnel.

The idea behind the book is that it would replace the existing term BRATs, which in one etymology (see below for others) used to mean "British Regiment Attached Traveler", but came to mean a child that is restless and not totally familiar with local behavioral conventions.

Brats are not necessarily military kids. I was a U.N. Brat and there are Embassy Brats. My Dad worked for the OSS during the war and when the United Nations was created in San Francisco, he was at the conference on behalf of the U.S. Budget Bureau. He became the Secretary of the Provisional International Civil Aviation Organization and worked for them for nearly two decades, when I was growing up. He was then appointed Senior Director, the #3 spot in the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees. So we lived all over - in Washington, DC, Montreal, Dublin, Paris and Geneva and I attended schools and universities in Montreal, Dublin, Yorkshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Oxford and Washington, DC.

The CHAMPs book has since come under attack. Guess what? Military children actually like being called BRATs, which is said to stand for (see medal above):

• Brave,
• Resourceful,
• Adaptable,
• Tolerant.

This acronym is not the only one associated with the term "brat", nor does everyone agree that an acronym is the origin of the term. Wiktionary says it derives from an Old English slang term meaning "beggar's child" - originally from northern and western England and the Midlands dialects - from the word for a "makeshift or ragged garment"; probably the same word as Old English bratt.

There are nearly 30 comments on my post last year, all of them defending the Brat moniker. There is a petition on Change.org to use Brat as the preferred term. It has 4,000 signatures. Apparently they "need" 100,000 signatures. The petition is here.

I've emailed Debbie Fink, author of CHAMPs, to see if she has anything further she wants to say.

Postscript

The next letter I received from Debbie Fink was an announcement that Operation CHAMPS is closing down. http://warriors-families.blogspot.com/2014/12/champs-closes-down.html

WW2 | 70 Years Later

Alfred Eisenstaedt's famed photo of nurse
Edith Shain and sailor celebrating VE Day. 

In 2014 there were many memorials to D-Day and to those who lost their lives in that year. The winter of 1944-45 was deadly in Holland as the Nazis diverted what food there was to their own troops. In 2015 the events will be more celebratory, as victory was achieved in Europe on V-E Day - May 8-9.

Here are two posts that look ahead to 2015:

RAF No. 10 Squadron to Celebrate Its 100th Anniversary in 2015

V-E Day May 7-8, 1945 - UN Remembrance Days

Here are my ten posts this past year that related to D-Day, the most recent ones first. If you have a comment on any of these, please post it or let me know - email me at  teppermarlin(a t)aol.com:

1 Monuments Unveiled to 14 Airmen (Laval, June 6)
2 Willem van Stockum’s Last Letter Home
3 Omaha Beach
4 Total Allied Deaths in France, World War II
5 Vaufleury Cemetery - Forgotten Graves in another part of the cemetery
6 Vaufleury Cemetery - Ceremonies, 2014
7 My Third Visit to My Uncle’s Grave
8 Memorial Visit to Normandy, Laval
9 70th Anniversary of “A Soldier’s Creed” 
10 It’s 70 Years After D-Day in Normandy June 6, 1944

WW2 | 8. Hiding Jews in Holland–Bob Boissevain (Updated Jun 11, 2017)

Memorial to Bob Boissevain and Family by Yad Vashem.
 The plaque is before four trees, one for each rescued person.

This is the story of a family that sheltered four Jews in Haarlem during the Nazi Occupation in World War II. The whole family – parents and six children – were honored by Yad Vashem after the war.

The father was put in a concentration camp for another "offense" and he died there.

Before the Nazi Invasion

Holland for centuries was a magnet for Jewish traders and intellectuals because of its religious tolerance and economic opportunity.

In 1900, Amsterdam was home to 51,000 Jews, about half of all the Jewish residents in Holland. It was called the "Jerusalem of the West" (of Europe).

In the 1930s, an estimated 30,000 more German-Jewish and Austrian-Jewish refugees fled to Holland because of growing Nazi sanctions against Jews. Holland had been neutral in the First World War and was expected to remain so. It was viewed as a safe haven, like Switzerland. Hitler promised that Holland he would never invade them.

How the Occupation Affected Dutch Jews

Despite his promise to challenge Holland's sovereignty, Hitler invaded Holland without warning in May 1940. Jewish people in the cities were trapped.

How many? At the beginning of the occupation:

• Based on the census of 1941, there were 139,717 Jews in Holland. 
• The Nazis counted more–154,000–because they included anyone with one or more Jewish grandparents, including all 2,500 active members of Christian (usually Protestant) churches who had a Jewish grandparent. 

After World War II, based on the census of 1947:

• Only 14,346 Jews survived, 10 percent of the number counted in 1941. The survival rate appears to have been highest among the 19,000 identified as half-Jewish or the 8,500 Jews married to non-Jews.
• About 75 percent of Jews in Holland in 1941 were killed, committed suicide or died in other ways in Holland or in death camps elsewhere.
• The remaining 15 percent, about 20,000 people, are assumed to have escaped Holland during the war, or survived the death camps and did not return to Holland, or left Holland after the war before the census was taken.

[Insert comparative data on other countries.]

The reasons for the high percentage of Dutch Jews who perished is still not fully settled, but these explanations have all found support:

• The Netherlands was controlled by the SS. Other occupied countries were under a military regime. The SS, my relatives testify, "was much worse". We also heard this when we visited WW2 museums in Normandy in June 2014. The Queen and top government officials fled to England, leaving the SS in charge of the hunt for Jews in Holland. They were more committed to this hunt for Jews than the military. Members of the SS had to prove they were free of Jewish ancestry, whereas the Wehrmacht included at the highest levels honorary Aryans despite having Jewish parentage–until Himmler intervened late in the war to expose such people. 
• The bureaucracy cooperated, especially most Dutch police. The well-trained Dutch bureaucracy remained in place at the Queen's request, continuing to do their jobs. The police followed orders, even cooperating in rounding up Jewish families to be transported to processing centers; these eventually led to death camps, but that was not known at first. Dutch trains transported Jews to the processing centers and the death camps.
• Jews were easy to identify. When the Nazi Occupation started, Jews–like Protestants or Catholics–were already registered on the basis of their faith, as they were in Germany. Otto von Bismarck in 1883-1889 set up a system of social insurance that was adopted throughout Germany and copied in the Netherlands. Some programs were administered based on religious affiliation. It was a simple matter to instruct the compliant bureaucracy to stamp the hard-to-forge national identity cards held by Jews with a large "J". From there it was a small step in the logic of Nazi madness, to require everyone with the "J" card to wear a yellow Star of David.
• Holland was hard to escape. The Netherlands, as noted in detail in Chapter 7, was totally surrounded by Germany, by German-occupied Belgium, or by German-patrolled waters. It was the most densely inhabited country of Western Europe, making it harder for Jews to hide in woodlands. Most Jews in Amsterdam could not afford to pay for transportation to escape, especially after the SS confiscated their assets. 
• The Dutch were at first confused by friendly Nazi propaganda. Until the underground newspapers became active, the average Dutch citizen was not made aware in the major newspapers of the extent of the Nazi campaign against Jews, because the news was censored by the Nazi-controlled propaganda bureaucracy. The implications of deportation were not initially negative, because the camps were at the beginning used only as temporary processing and education centers, not for forced labor or extermination, or supply chains for these purposes. The first nine months of the Dutch Occupation were relatively benign for most Dutch people. As the Nazis continued tightening the screws on Dutch Jews, and their plight became clearer, the Dutch Resistance organized the first act of mass civil disobedience in occupied Europe during WW2–the Februaristaking or “February strike” of 1941, engaging an estimated 50,000 Dutch workers.

From the beginning of the Occupation, Dutch Jews were subjected to increasingly severe sanctions. They were first banned from certain occupations and were progressively isolated from public life. Starting in January 1942, some Dutch Jews were forced to move to Amsterdam’s Jewish ghetto. Others were directly deported to Westerbork, a concentration camp near Hooghalen–originally built in 1939 by the Dutch government as a temporary shelter for Jews fleeing Nazi persecution in other countries

Westerbork became a hub for transit to the Nazi death camps for all Jews, Dutch and expatriate. Deportation of Jews from the Netherlands to Poland and Germany began in June 1942 and lasted until September 1944. From Westerbork, 101,000 Jews were deported–57,800 to Auschwitz, 34,313 to Sobibór, 3,724 to Bergen-Belsen, 4,466 to Theresienstadt. Most of them were worked to death, starved or gassed to death in these camps. From other locations like Vught in the Netherlands, 6,000 Jews were deported to concentration camps in Germany, Poland and Austria (such as Mauthausen).

The best-known Dutch Holocaust victim was Anne Frank, who with her sister Margot died from typhus in March 1945 in Bergen-Belsen. Anne Frank's mother, Edith Holländer Frank, was starved to death in Auschwitz. Only Anne Frank's father, Otto Frank, survived.

Hiding and Rescue Efforts in Holland

Members of the Dutch underground found hiding places for an estimated 25,000-30,000 Jews, of whom 16,500 survived to 1945. An estimated 7,000-8,000 Jews fled the Netherlands during the war, often on the Dutch-Paris line, headed for Spain, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland.

As a prominent example of the many people who helped Jews and others escape Holland,  Dutchwoman Geertruida (Truus) Meijer Wijsmuller is credited with saving the lives of 10,000 Jewish children and others hunted by the Nazis. She survived the war and received a "Righteous among the Nations" award from Yad Vashem. In brief, she organized

• The first train transport of 600 Jewish children from Vienna in December 1938–an outcome of direct and brave negotiations with Adolf Eichmann, and 
• The last ship out of Holland, Kindertransport, on May 14, 1940, with 74 children on board.
• Many rescues in between those two.

Dutch people received the largest number of awards from Yad Vashem for saving Jews relative to their population–5,200 awards as of 2013. Poles were given 6,100 awards, but the Polish population is larger–the Dutch received one award for every 1,800 people, twice as many as the Poles, who received one award for every 4,300 people. Only the Dutch received as many as three Yad Vashem awards for groups or organizations. The three groups were:

• The February Strike (February 25-26, 1941) organizers, involving perhaps 50,000 strikers, protesting deportation of Jews from the Netherlands
• The village of Nieuwlande in the province of Drenthe, where the whole population took part in hiding Jews.
• The so-called "NV" (Naamloze vennootschap), the anonymous partnership in Utrecht that rescued and hid about 600 Jewish children, all of whom survived the war.

Bob and Sonia Boissevain, Hiders of Four Jews

Robert Lucas ("Bob") Boissevain, Sr. (1895-1945) (NP 74) was the third child and third son of Charles Ernest Henri (Eh Ha) Boissevain (NP 69), the eldest son of Charles Handelsblad Boissevain (NP 67).  

[PHOTO CAPTION: Robert Lucas Boissevain (1895-1945) (NP 74). See photos at end.]

He and his wife Helena Suzanna (Sonia, also spelled Sonja) van Tienhoven Boissevain (NP 74) hid  their eldest son, who turned 18 during the first year of the Occupation and was required to report for work in Germany. In addition, they hid four Jewish people starting in 1943, when it became clear that deportation by the Nazis meant likely death. Bob and Sonia and their six children all received awards from Yad Vashem.

Bob and Sonia's Early Life and Prospects

Bob's wife Sonia was from another big Dutch family, the van Tienhovens. Sonia's mother was Suze van Hall. Both Bob and Sonia could have expected to look forward to a luxurious life, but like many other Dutch families, their fortunes were dissipated first by the Crash and the Great Depression and then by commercial competition, then Nazi confiscation of assets in the mid-1930s, and finally by the occupation of Holland.

Bob and Sonia had six children. The eldest was Robert L. (Bob Jr.) Boissevain, born June 20, 1922. (He died Feb. 14, 2017, of complications from dementia.) He was required by the Nazis to report for work in Germany the month after the invasion, but instead went into hiding in the Boissevain home for the duration of the war. The youngest children, the twins Charles and Hester, have been helping me with this chapter. They were born 12 minutes apart on April 5, 1934.

Until 1936, Bob Boissevain lived with his family in a large home at Emmaplein 2 in Amsterdam that is listed as a Monument by the Netherlands National Commission on UNESCO. The Commission says, in part (my translation from Dutch):

It is the left-hand building of a semi-detached three-building villa. It was built in 1911 in rationalist style by J. F. Steel Jr. , commissioned by I.L. Nienaber. In 1913, the pantry was converted into a garage by Steel, commissioned by W. Zweerts de Jong. In 1924 it was re-landscaped by K. Perk Flanders to create a garden and terrace masonry wall, commissioned by R. L. Boissevain. It is in the heart of Amsterdam.

Bankruptcy, 1936

Bob Boissevain followed his father into the chemical industry, which was growing rapidly in the 1910s and 1920s. In the fertilizer industry, farmers were switching to commercial fertilizers to increase their yield per acre and per hour worked. The average annual consumption of commercial fertilizer in the United States, for example, grew 65 percent from the 1900s to the 1910s, from 3.7 million to 6.1 million tons. It grew again to 6.8 million tons in the 1920s.

The German chemical industry was leading the world during this period in the development of new chemical products, including explosives but also for the dying of fabrics, working closely with financiers in New York City.  I. G. Farben was formed by the merger in 1925 of six chemical companies.

Charles E. H. Boissevain and his son Bob were actively involved in the Dutch fertilizer sales company of Van der Elst & Matthes, which during 1853-1928 had a large market share of the Dutch fertilizer market, delivering chemicals mostly manufactured by German companies–i.e., by I. G. Farben after 1925.

[PHOTO CAPTION: Dr. Charles Ernest Henri (Charles Eh Hah) Boissevain (NP 69), father of Robert L. 

(Bob) Boissevain, Sr.; eldest son of Charles Handelsblad Boissevain.]

After 1928, three big Dutch chemical companies worked together to intercept the sales of octopus I. G. Farben Holland–D.S.M. (Dutch State Mines), Hoogovens and Shell with its daughter Maatschappij tot Exploitatie of Kooks Oven Gas (MEKOG). Van der Elst & Matthes appears to have been a casualty of this effort, having been misled by both Shell and DSM on one side and I.G. Farben on the other. There was a lot of backroom dealing with commercial tricks, says Charles Boissevain.

By 1935, the three Dutch companies succeeded in ousting Van der Elst & Matthes from its leading position in the fertilizer business in Holland and it eventually went bankrupt in 1936. I. G. Farben may have intended to place itself in the position of Van der Elst & Matthes, but it failed, at least until the 1940 occupation.

[PHOTO CAPTION: Bob Boissevain's first home–Emmaplein 2, Amsterdam, where he lived
until 1936, but he had to sell and move to Zandvoort when he was bankrupted.]

Bob Boissevain had to sell his Amsterdam house after his bankruptcy in 1936. They moved to their smaller summer home on the dunes in Zandvoort ("Sand-fort"), overlooking the North Sea. The house, which was called De Duinhut, was in the family because someone won a lottery and used the money to buy the house, a story confirmed by Charles and Hester Boissevain.

After the Invasion

From their house in Zandvoort, Bob Boissevain's family could see the air battles taking place over the sea as the Dutch army and air force initially resisted the Luftwaffe. Huge floating mines washed up on the beach, posing a grave danger to local residents. Hester Boissevain Grinberg says:

We saw many airplanes shot down, burning up and disappearing into the sea. When Bob came home it was often late and he was very tired. Often he looked grave and troubled. For some time he had already been involved in Resistance work. We never knew or were able to find out the big secrets in which he was involved. 

Bob Boissevain early on in the war is believed by his daughter Hester to have engaged in underground activities such as "helping people cross the border" as well as rescuing downed pilots through networks of safe homes and transfers in small boats (Grinberg 2008, 4; 2011, 1-2).

In May 1940 Bob Boissevain gave each of his six children a little bag to take with them in case they had to flee. But Hitler's Blitzkrieg was too sudden for such an escape.

Hitler appointed an Austrian Nazi, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, to head up the government of the occupied Netherlands as Reichskommissar. He had been a supporter of the Nazi Party in Austria before the Anschluss–the so-called "union", although Hitler did not offer Austria an option–in 1938. Seyss-Inquart reported directly to Hitler and worked with the SS and the Wehrmacht:

• He rounded up more than 500,000 Dutch citizens in razzia style and forced them to work for the Nazis–250,000 of them in factories and other workplaces in Germany. In a razzia, which comes via French from an Arabic word for a slave raid by Barbary pirates, a street or a block of houses would be completely encircled and each house, person and vehicle would be searched by the SS while troops kept the perimeter secure to prevent escapees. Young men were told that if they did not report to work their parents would be killed.
• He helped create the Dutch Nazi Party's Landwacht–the paramilitary organization that was allied with the police force to use traitors to maintain control of the Dutch population.  These "landwatchers" inspired great fear, because the Nazis recruited children to spy on their own parents.  (Hilda van Stockum shows this in the character of Leendert in her book The Winged Watchman.)
• In 1941, he banned all political parties except the Dutch Nazi Party.

Seyss-Inquart also cooperated in the genocide of Jews in Holland. He:

• Ordered the civil service to register approximately 140,000 Dutch Jews according to the  Nazi protocol of identifying the number of grandparents who were Jewish.
• Collaborated in operating the "Jewish assembly camp" at Westerbork. This was a way-station to the death camps.
• Restricted Jews in Amsterdam to the ghetto. 
• Assisted in transporting Dutch Jews to Buchenwald in February 1941 and later directly to Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
• Sent to their deaths by the end of the war an estimated 110,000 Dutch Jews, either immediately if they resisted or in the death camps if they were not considered fit to work. 

After the war, Seyss-Inquart was convicted of multiple war crimes at Nuremberg and was executed.

From Zandvoort to Haarlem

One day, says Hester, "the SS circled around our house and threw us all out forever". Soon after the invasion by the Nazis, Bob and Sonia and their children had to abandon their Zandvoort home on one day's notice. The Germans were fortifying the beach against invasion from England and they flattened the Zandvoort home.

The family moved from house to house four times in six months. They finally ended up in the large house in Haarlem where they stayed until the end of the War–Spruitenbosstraat 11 in Haarlem, about 10 miles east of Zandvoort and 25 miles west of Amsterdam. According to Charles Boissevain (email of Feb. 8, 2015), it belonged to Floris Adriaan ("Floor") van Hall, who died in 1941 in a nursing home, having been predeceased by his wife.

[PHOTO CAPTION: The borrowed Haarlem house, Spruitenbosstraat 11, today.]

So they lived in a borrowed house. Floor's twin brother and executor, Adriaan Floris ("Aat") van Hall, father of Walraven and Gijs van Hall and eight other children, had a valid fear that the SS would take over the empty house since the children had left Holland. So he quickly moved in Bob Boissevain's family of two adults and six children.

The large house was full of van Hall family belongings–"books, toys and clothes, which kept us busy during all those years to come in the dark days of World War II", says Grinberg. The large well-kept parlor (in Dutch, the Pronk or "Flaunt" room) with beautiful furnishings, was from the beginning off-limits to the children (Grinberg 2008, 5). As the war proceeded and other members of the family were displaced, the room filled up with boxes and it became a storage room.

Until the end of 1943, schools continued in some fashion. However, they were a long distance away and German soldiers took away Hester's older sister's bicycle with a gun to her head, so she had to walk three miles each way. Bob Boissevain Jr. turned 18 years old the month after the invasion and from that date was hiding from razzia recruiters at the family house in Haarlem.

Life was bad for all Dutch people during the Nazi Occupation, but was much worse for Jews in the area. A good friend of Hester's eldest brother Bob, Dick Polak, was required to wear the yellow Star of David.

In addition, Bob and Sonia had their four Jewish guests in the Haarlem house from 1943 to 1945:

• The extremely talented Goldberg family. Three members stayed with the Boissevains and survived. Two others survived elsewhere.
• The unfortunate Vecht family. Two members were killed during the war. Two survived, one by living with the Boissevains. Both died soon after the war was over. 

Hidden Family #1: The Goldbergs

One afternoon in March 1943, Bob Boissevain called his wife Sonia to ask her to prepare more dinner because he was bringing "friends" to eat with the family. It was revealed later that the father was a business friend of Bob Boissevain or his cousin Jan "Canada" Boissevain or both (Grinberg 2008, 6; Grinberg 2011, 1). The friends stayed the night, and then for the next two years. After a few days of mystery, the children were introduced to the Goldberg family:

Leo (Lowske) Goldberg (1873-1957?)
Lyubova Elperin Goldberg (1881-1959)
Anya Goldberg, later Anna Ormont (1916-1988).

Many years later, it emerged there were two other Goldberg children:

Maria Goldberg Penkela in Amsterdam (1912?-1986?)
Alexander Goldberg, later Alexander Forest, in the United States (1914?-1991?)

From the files kept by the SS during the war and now accessible through the U.S. Holocaust Memorial and Museum, the records show that Leo Goldberg was born May 30, 1873 in Borstna (? writing constrained by index cards can be hard to read), Russia. His wife was Lyubova Elperin Goldberg, born September 17, 1881 in Minsk, Belarus.

[PHOTO CAPTION: Survivors–Dr. (?) Leo Goldberg (R) and Lyubova Elperin Goldberg, 1948. They lived through the Russian Revolution, the Depression and the Holocaust. Photo courtesy of the Forest Family]

They survived the Russian Revolution by leaving (1918?) for Finland. Capitalist businessmen were not valued by the Bolsheviks, so he found it difficult to operate under the Communist regime. In addition, they faced continued antisemitism long after the Tsars were dethroned. But Finland was economically depressed and the family decided to move in 1920 to Berlin. Slowly they rebuilt their lives.

When in the 1920s German money was destroyed by hyperinflation under the Weimar Republic and then Hitler rose to power, the Goldberg family decided to move yet again, to Amsterdam, where they settled in a house on Minervalaan. That is the period when Leo seems to have found a place in the Boissevain family banking and shipping business:

• Several Boissevains served on the board of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and attended every Thursday evening. Possibly they met there the musical Goldbergs. 
• Since the Boissevain family was close to the Algemeen Handelsblad newspaper before the war, Leo's fluency in multiple languages–Russian, German, Finnish and others–might have been useful to the newspaper as a translator.

This time Leo and his family did not anticipate the swiftness of the Nazi invasion of Holland and so were caught in the Occupation and its murderous SS web. At some point their son Alexander escaped Holland and moved to Washington and New York City. Their daughter Maria apparently married a non-Jewish man named Penkela, and thereby seems to have been saved from deportation during the war. The other three–the parents Leo and Lyubova, and their daughter Anya–survived World War II by hiding with Bob Boissevain's already-large family of eight in Haarlem.

Anya Goldberg was born in St. Petersburg, Russia on December 24, 1916 (one source says 1910). German Occupation war records indicate she had been married to G. Haimisch, presumably before the war, but was divorced. She had already published, before 1940, the novel The 500 Wives of Genghis Khan, in excellent Dutch. She may well have been born in 1910; otherwise it is hard to understand how she wrote so well in Dutch.

Hester Boissevain Grinberg says of the three Goldberg guests: "These people argued a lot with one another–we could not understand their language."

Hidden Family #2: Dr. Jacob Vecht–"Mr. Knoppers"

The following account about the dentist Dr. Jacob Vecht is based almost entirely on one source, Charles Boissevain. I append a note on my efforts to corroborate the information with official records.

Unless they were married to Christians, Jews in Holland had just three options, as described in the previous chapter: Wait to be arrested, try to escape, or hide. None of these options was attractive.

For the family harboring an onderduiver (hider) it was very dangerous. Many Dutch houses are too small to hide anyone. And what if someone in the house gossips about their guest(s)? For families with children, it could be impossible to be sure they would keep quiet. The same for families with older people who might be forgetful. Or families with neighbors who are collaborators, or are incorrigibly nosey and talkative or fearful.

Dr. Jacob Vecht was a Jewish dentist in Amsterdam. He was a professional and lived quietly with his wife, son, and daughter. On the Sabbath, he went to the synagogue as a faithful Orthodox Jew. At some point, he realized he was in danger and had to go into hiding.

The Boissevain children never found out how the contact was made with their father Bob Boissevain, but somehow Bob agreed to hide him in his home in Haarlem. The parents decided that a fourth person in hiding was possible. Robert Boissevain said:

If people are in great danger, then you will have to do your "duty as a Dutchman" to save them.  

So, one day, Mijnheer (Mister) Knoppers arrived–Dr. Vecht with a new name that did not sound so Jewish. Under this name, he spent the war with the family and the other three Jewish hideaways, the Goldbergs. Mister Knoppers was a silent man. The children did not realize that he was anxious about his own family. They did not know even know he was a dentist. He just was “Mister Knoppers”. What you do not tell to children, Charles Boissevain observed, has a greater chance of remaining secret.

I attempted to find Jacob Hecht's name in official Amsterdam records. I found only one person named  Jacob Vecht who might have been the right one. He was born on March 19, 1887, and died on October 26, 1960. He would have been 53 at the time of the invasion of Holland by the Germans.

Bob's Resistance Work

A routine activity of Bob Boissevain was to listen with his family to Radio Orange on their radio. Even this was illegal under Nazi rules because all radios were supposed to have been declared and turned in. The Boissevains violated the Nazi laws even more because the children were involved in typing up and distributing news reports. Charles Boissevain describes how the news-collection and news-distribution system worked:

The Dutch Government and Queen Wilhelmina van Oranje were in London during the war. From there they issued a daily broadcast with radio news... about the war, but also with messages to the Dutch about what to do, like food distribution. Or what not to do, like suggestions for a strike or disobedience. Sometimes even cryptic messages were sent for the Resistance. It was strictly forbidden by the Nazis to listen to Radio Orange. Everyone had to deliver their radio to the authorities, which is what the Boissevain family did. Of course they had another radio and listened to it secretly until the end of the war. Bob Boissevain Jr. typed the most important news with an old typewriter, making six or seven carbon copies. Since he was older than 18, he was hidden and could not go out, so copies were distributed by his younger brothers Willem and Charles. Strictly forbidden and dangerous–a nice thing for boys to do.

Charles Boissevain notes that his father had spent time in public school in England and was fluent in English, had many friends in England, and served in the Navy in World War I. He was a skilled Marconi telegraph operator and could read and send messages. He would therefore have been of great value to an underground organization seeking help abroad and was the kind of person who would not refuse to serve when needed. Bob believed in DDD–"Doing the Dutchman's Duty".

In addition, Bob might have helped arrange the exit of hunted people via the Dutch Paris Line, i.e., a train from Amsterdam to Paris. However, no one can be sure of all the details of what Bob did during World War II, because one of his superior skills was being good at not talking about it–and he died on the day of liberation when he could have started talking.

Bob's Betrayal

Bob was caught in his Resistance work in the summer of 1943 because of a betrayal that appears to have had nothing to do with his hiding Jews in his house. His daughter Hester says:

Father had to flee–we never saw him again. He was discovered, was arrested and spent ten months in solitary confinement in Scheveningen [near The Hague]. His great optimism stayed with him. It was part of who he was. He never gave up.

Charles says that their father had an appointment with a man in Utrecht who betrayed him. He did not even tell his wife Sonia where he was going. Charles says that his mother once told him: "If he would have told me that he was to meet this man, then I would have warned him not to. I knew that this person was not to be trusted."

Bob was taken away to the special prison in Scheveningen meant for Resistance fighters, who were treated by the Nazis as very dangerous criminals. (Today this prison is used for criminals on trial at, or after conviction by, the International Criminal Court.)

On many occasions, the Nazis would take one or more prisoners outside of this prison to be shot in the dunes nearby. Every year on May 4, the last day of the war, many Dutch people go there, to remember the war dead and the Resistance fighters. This prison had the ironic nickname "Orange Hotel" because of the noble and courageous persons held in prison, true to their country, to their Queen of Orange and to their personal beliefs.

Every autumn a special memorial meeting is called, by invitation, to remember those who were kept in this prison. The people who remember the war are now old, but new generations come to the memorial as well–the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of those who died. Many representatives of the government, parliament and the Supreme Court attend. Flowers are brought to the so-called "Death Cell". Charles has been going almost every year to the prison in Scheveningen to remember what went on there during World War II.

Bob was moved to the concentration camp at Vught in Holland in June 1944. In September he was moved on to Sachsenhausen in North Berlin through the end of 1944. Some time after the end of 1944 Bob was moved to the Zweiberge camp near Buchenwald west of Berlin, probably because Russian troops were getting closer to Berlin. His son Charles says:

He died April 12, 1945, the day that the camp was liberated. He was completely exhausted by torture and hunger, and deadly ill with high fever, dysentery and typhus. –CB, email of Feb. 16, 2016.

It was the day of Bob's wedding anniversary. The last available photo of Bob Boissevain is from the summer of 1943.

Bob Boissevain's Last Letter to His Wife Sonia

Bob Boissevain was transferred from the Dutch prison to a concentration camp north of Berlin, Sachsenhausen. Hester Grinberg has sent me a copy of her father's last letter to his wife Sonia at Keizersgracht 743.at Zwieberge, near Berlin. The Lager (Camp) Commandant required that the letter be written in German, so that it could be censored.

[PHOTO CAPTION: Back and front of the envelope from Sachsenhausen, north of Berlin.]

[PHOTO CAPTION: Bob Boissevain's last letter, in German, to his wife Sonia and their family. He was prisoner no. 100493 at Sachsenhausen.]

Here is a translation of the German, provided by Grinberg:

Christmas 1944
My beloved Sonia,
These days our thoughts are closer than ever. One may call me happy, since the beautiful memories of our Christmases together live inside of me.
Now the year 1945 begins. I know with great certainty that all the children love you very much, and they know why.
They are now at the age when their spirits are ready to understand abstract, intangible things.
Their minds and hearts are developing a shape and character that will strengthen them later in life and help them distinguish good from bad.
Misusing personal talents leads to instability. Our children have a big advantage in being close to such a personality as their mother, to love her and be in awe of her ability to create and preserve a positive atmosphere at home–which probably requires the greatest level of inner strength.
We remember Willem Barentsz [the Dutchman who discovered Novaya Zemlya but was forced to spend a winter there with his crew]. 

The dear earth soon grows
Green–not only 1945,
Sending eternally,
Blue skies from a distance.

R.L.B. [Robert Lucas Boissevain]

The last four lines are a paraphrase of Der Abschied, "The Farewell", from Gustav Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. A recording of it is here: http://bit.ly/1SDkBr8. The Boissevain family was active in forming the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and Mahler was popular. The conductor, Willem Mengelberg, performed Mahler's work during the Occupation, even though Mahler was Jewish.

Surviving the Hunger Winter

After Bob was imprisoned in 1943, life for the extended family got much worse. Sonia received ration cards that allowed her to get watery soup for six, but she had to feed 11 people including the Goldbergs and Mr. Knoppers/Jacob Vecht. 

We had to go to different shops to buy butter and cheese, milk, meat, vegetables, and soap. We were supposed to be only six people–one mother and five children. We had to shop at two or three stores to avoid suspicion. Many things required coupons. The younger children spent a lot of time shopping. –CB, email of Feb. 8, 2015.

For one seven-month stretch, they survived by eating tulip bulbs. Charles says:

To get tulip bulbs Sonia Boissevain and the older children (but not Bob Jr. after he became 18 and was in hiding to avoid the Arbeitseinatz) would travel for miles on bikes with no tires or with wooden rims. The only bulbs that were not poisonous were tulips. They were not very appetizing, but they could be cooked like onions. Sugar beets were the only sweets that we knew. –CB, email of Feb. 8, 2015.

The Boissevain family and their guests in Haarlem were severely malnourished during the “hunger winter” of 1944-45. They hung on with their guests until American and Canadian soldiers arrived on Liberation Day, May 5, 1945. Many other Dutch residents were not so fortunate and died.

After the War: Discussion Questions

Bob and Sonia and their children have been named to the list of Righteous Gentiles by the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, which takes pains to verify claims to be on the list. Why were Bob and Sonia willing to take such risks, which Bob paid for with his suffering in a concentration camp and his early death in 1945? Hester believes that her father "never forgave the Nazis" because I. G. Farben was part of the group that bankrupted him and his father in 1936.

When Charles Boissevain speaks to teenagers in Holland about World War II, he asks them to think about these questions:

• Could you take somebody in hiding in your house for a long period? 
• If there was a search of the house, a razzia to find young men to send to Germany for forced labor or to find Jewish people to deport, could this person or persons hide without being found?
• Can you be sure that everyone in the house will keep their mouth shut, always and absolutely?
• If you yourself wanted to hide, where would you go? Who would you stay with? 

My wife Alice asked Charles at the 10th Boissevain Reunion in 2011 whether he was afraid as a child about hiding Jews in the house? Charles answered: "No, there was no added fear, because hiding Jews was just one more illegal thing the family was doing on top of eight other Resistance activities."

In Chapter 11, we return to the Goldbergs and Dr. Vecht and find out what happened to them after the war ended.

Other Chapters: The above post is a draft of a chapter of a forthcoming book, How Holland Defied Hitler: The Boissevains and van Halls.

Notes

Yad Vashem: Yad Vashem List of the Righteous for the Netherlands.

Jews in Holland, 1900: Joodsche Courant, 44, 1903.

Concentration camps: Friedhoff, p. 92.

SS vs. Wehrmacht Antisemitism: Research by Bryan Rigg while a student at Yale and Cambridge showed the surprising number of senior Wehrmacht officers with Jewish parentage. His book on the subject won a Colby award.

Bob's Family: Charles Boissevein, emails (see Sources).

Bankruptcy: See Ernst Homburg with the collaboration of Arjan van Rooij, Groin door Kunstmest DSM Agro ["The Dutch Fertilizer Industry and DSM"], 1929 - 2004 (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren,  2004, 383 pp., in Dutch only, €30 plus shipping cost.) Several pages tell the story about the period between 1928 and 1937. Charles Boissevain has been very helpful in explaining the intricacies of what happened. He is not responsible for any errors that remain in what I have written.

Dick Polak: Grinberg 2008, 6. This Dick Polak is not to be confused with the older Marius Polak, who married Engelien de Booy, daughter of my great-aunt Hilda de Booy. Engelien told me late in her life that although the SS was viciously abusive towards gentiles who were married to Jews, the SS put them on a special list and spared the Jewish spouses from deportation to concentration camps. So Polak survived the war, but the couple divorced after the war because, Engelien told me, the burden of her having saved his life was too much for him to carry on a daily basis. However, they remained friends for the rest of their lives - a story confirmed by Charles Boissevain. [More on this subject here: https://nyctimetraveler.blogspot.com/2020/01/boissevain-frans-polak-family.html.]


Goldbergs and Concertgebouw: Charles Boissevain, email, Jan. 19, 2015.

Anya Goldberg: Charles Boissevain, email, Feb. 8, 2015.

Mr. Knoppers/Dr. Vecht: Charles Boissevain, emails, Jan. 5 and 19, and Feb. 8, 2015.

Sources

Boissevain, Charles (Leidschendam), emails beginning January 5, 12,  and 19, and February 8, 2015.

Forest, Greg, personal interviews in Tequesta and Vero Beach, Fla., January 2015 and February 2017.

Friedhoff, Herman. Requiem for the Resistance. (London: Bloomsbury, 1988.)

Grinberg, Hester Boissevain, Autobiographical Notes, 2008 and 2011; phone interviews; and letter to author, January 2015.

Hilberg, Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: the Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945.

Jerusalem Post, May 2012.

U.S. Holocaust Museum, Washington, D.C. - phone interview, 2014.

This is a draft chapter of a book © 2016-2017 by John Tepper Marlin, jtmarlin@post.harvard.edu.

PHOTOS

The people. 

Dr. Charles Ernest Henri (Eh Hah)
Boissevain, father of Robert L. 
(Bob) Boissevain, Sr.; eldest
son of Charles Handelsblad Boissevain.

Robert Lucas Boissevain
(1895-1945) (NP 74)

Hart Juda (Harry) Vecht,
maybe brother of Jacob Vecht.

Survivors–Dr. (?) Leo Goldberg (R) and
Lyubova Elperin Goldberg, 1948.
Photo courtesy of the Forest Family.

The houses.

Bob Boissevain's home, Emmaplein 2,
until 1936, when he was bankrupted,
sold it and moved to Zandvoort.

The borrowed Haarlem house,
Spruitenbosstraat 11, in 2015.

Letters.

His last letter, in German, from
Robert Lucas Boissevain,
Christmas 1944.

Envelope of letter from R. L. Boissevain
in concentration camp, north Berlin.

WW2 | 5. The Dutch Resistance (Superseded)

The post that was here has been superseded by this one.

This post remains open to preserve back links.

Resistance newspapers flourished,
but were strictly banned by the Nazis.

WW2 | 12. Holland after the War (Updated June 9, 2016)

After the War, it was a time for the Boissevain family to add up their deaths at the hands of the Nazis. In the immediate family, those who died in the Resistance were:

Janka Boissevain, 1943
Gi Boissevain, 1943

Louis Daniel Boissevain, 1943
Jan Canada Boissevan, 1944

Bob Boissevain, 1945

Walraven van Hall, 1945
Frits van Hall, 1945

Gédéon Jérémie Boissevain, 1945

Hester Boissevain, daughter of Bob Boissevain, counts 18 members of the Boissevain family involved in fighting the Nazis or rescuing and hiding Jews. That would be ten people other than Bob's family of eight. She says the family members were acting independently and were not primarily motivated by Christian faith. “It had nothing to do with religion,” she said. “They just thought what the Nazis were doing was absolutely wrong and wanted to do anything they could to keep Jews alive."

Others, like Willem van Stockum, son of Olga Boissevain, died in the military; Willem was a bomber pilot for the RAF who was shot down over France. Or, like Evert, they died in German labor camps, or they were killed by Allied bombs.

After the War: Deaths in Concentration Camps

The full extent of the horrors of the concentration camps–the Konzentrationlager, or K.L.–was not known until after the war. In fact the details of how they operated are only now in 2015 coming into full view. They were a combination of prison, army, and factory, as prisoners were treated simultaneously as inmates to be corrected, enemies to be combatted, and workers to be exploited. These forms of dehumanization were amplified by ideology and war.

Jan Canada Boissevain died in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp on January 30, 1945, just a few months before the Allies liberated it. Mies barely survived the Ravensbrück camp in Germany and the war. Annemie, daughter of Jan Canada to whom he wrote from Buchenwald, married Fernand van Asbeck and emigrated to New Zealand. Her son Jan van Asbeck is the only child of Annemie living in Holland.

Jan Canada's cousin Robert Lucas Boissevain was also in Buchenwald and died there on April 12, 1945–the day the camp was liberated.

Han de Booy and Willem Mengelberg (Chapter 4)

In the "hatchet days" after the liberation of Holland, the conductor Willem Mengelberg was stripped of his honors and his pension. He was close to several members of the Boissevain family who were at various times on the Board of the Concertgebouw, and they pointed out his help to many Jewish musicians and his belief that continuing to play music was good for the morale of Holland.

              

The Bob Boissevain Family 

After the war was over and the celebrations were held, a waiting period started full of dread, as the news of those who were killed was revealed in bits and pieces. After some time the wife and children of Robert Boissevain received the awful news that he had died in Buchenwald, the Nazi concentration camp.

He died from extreme hunger and severe illnesses - typhus, dysentery or cholera - the very day the camp was liberated by the Allies.

Postwar Migrations - Hester Boissevain Grinberg

After the war, some people who had left Holland did not come back. Others moved to Holland. Since the end of the war the Jewish-Dutch population, for example, has been fluid. Thousands of surviving Jews needed to leave Holland to forget the war. Some emigrated to the United States and about 10,000 Dutch Jews emigrated to Israel, of whom 6,000 remain.

Migration of Jews has also occurred to Holland. Between 5,000 and 12,000 of Jews in Holland are from Israel, mostly living in Amsterdam. There are now 41,000-45,000 people in the Netherlands defined as Jewish, of whom 44 percent are in Amsterdam. Approximately one in three Dutch Jews now has a non-Dutch background, the other large group being from Russia.

After the war, Hester Boissevain finished her studies to become a nurse and looked for a way to apply her skills. She was one of a relatively small number of people who decided to move to Israel without any religious identification with the new country. She says:

I saw pictures of the [Jewish] immigrants coming in the ships and landing in Haifa, and I said, "This country needs help, so why not?" I arrived in 1961. 

In 1964, on a kibbutz, she met Edy Grinberg from Istanbul. They married and moved to Kiryat Tivon, Israel. Hester converted to Judaism when she married, because she wanted her children to be part of the Israeli nation. The Grinbergs have a son and daughter, and five grandchildren.

Honors for the Bob Boissevain Family

In 1980, Hester's mother, Sonia received two decorations for her work with the Resistance. She received the Resistance Cross (Verzetsherdenkingkruis) from the Dutch Government, and the Yad Vashem Medal from the Israeli Government. This was for hiding the four Jewish people in her house - the three members of the Goldberg family and Jacob Vecht - and for preparing and disseminating underground newspapers.

All eight members of Bob and Sonia Boissevain's family are included among the Yad Vashem List of the Righteous for the Netherlands - seven in 1980 and Hester Boissevain Grinberg in 2007. The family was invited to plant four trees in early 1980 in the Garden of the Righteous. Sonia Boissevain joined the tree-planting ceremony. Photos that show the group sharing a meal in honor of the occasion in Hester's home town, Kiryat Tivon, are on the Yad Vashem web site.

Students in Haifa in 2012 put together an exhibit called "The Light in Darkness", on the wartime Resistance work of Robert Lucas Boissevain and his family.  Seniors at the Leo Baeck Education Center, a 2,000-pupil school founded in 1938, worked on the project for three years.  The exhibit includes documents, photos, and other objects from the Boissevain family and from the Jewish community in Amsterdam.

The exhibit had the support of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority and the Dutch Friends Foundation of the Holland Department of the Ghetto Fighters House Museum Association. The initiative began through Yael Rosen, director of the Righteous Among the Nations Project at ATZUM, a social activist organization. She tends to the financial and social needs of about 30 surviving Israeli residents who rescued Jews during the Holocaust, from about 130 who chose to accept citizenship in the Jewish state after World War II. Hester is among the few who converted to Judaism.

The Fate of "Mr. Knoppers"

Mister Knoppers returned home to Amsterdam and the family in Haarlem never heard from him again, for reasons that are understandable - his memories of the wartime period were horrible. He was a depressed man, hardly speaking with anyone. Mostly he worried about his wife, his daughter and his son. Hearing what had happened to so many other Jewish deportees, he became increasingly afraid about the fate of his own family.

"Mister Knoppers" returned to his life as Dr. Jacob Vecht. After some time he heard the news he feared so much, that both his wife and his daughter had been killed by the Nazis in a gas oven. However, his son was still alive, which gave him the energy to keep going. An Orthodox Jew, he kept alive the hope that he could transmit the Jewish faith and culture to his son.

His son, however, could not understand how God could have permitted the mass murder of some six million Jews, God's Chosen People. The son looked for shelter within the Roman Catholic Church, deciding he should become a Catholic priest.

Despite his doubts about himself, about his God, about the world, about his son, Dr. Jacob Vecht stayed interested in his son. Then one day his son was killed in a traffic accident. It was too much for him, and Mr. Knoppers, who survived the years of the war, went to the kitchen and put his head in a gas oven.

Charles Boissevain concludes: “Jacob saw no other way to bring peace to his tortured mind than to share the fate of his wife and daughter.”

The Goldbergs after the War

After that very sad story, it is a pleasure to tell the story of the Goldbergs. They fared well after the war. They were skilled and adaptable and they made their way successfully in the postwar world.

Parents - Leo and Lyubava Goldberg. We have a photograph of the parents, Leo and Lyubava Goldberg, in 1948, shown at the top of this story. That their family survived intact is miraculous, and their happiness at their survival is conveyed in their expressions in the photo.

Daughter 1 - Maria Goldberg Penkela.  The parents apparently returned to the home of their daughter Maria Penkela in Amsterdam, possibly at their pre-war address of Minervalaan.  Little information is available about this daughter.

Daughter 2 - Anya Goldberg / Anna Ormont. Anya Goldberg (1916-1988) was a talented pianist. She used the name Anna Ormont for her novel  The Five Hundred Women of Genghis Khan, a history of the warring tribes in Mongolia united to make the largest empire in history under Genghis Khan (1162?-1227?). Hester Boissevain Grinberg has seen the book (Grinberg 2011, 3). Anya/Anna married a Canadian soldier and moved to Canada via Montreal in 1946. She worked at her husband's business until she died in Ottawa in 1988. Her husband survived her by five years and presumably was left with whatever family letters or papers she brought with her from Europe or acquired.

William Ross Dakin (1913-1993), her husband, met Anya when he was serving in Europe as a Canadian soldier and they married there. Dakin was born in Gatt Cambridge, Waterloo, Ont., Canada, the son of William Scott Dakin (1877-1921) and Jesse Maud McKay (1877-1955). Anna Ormont and William Ross Dakin had no children, so his next of kin was probably his sister Jesse (?) Dakin. Any family papers were probably left to her.

Jesse was married to Edward James Houston (1918-2003), born September 15 in Arnprior, Ontario. He attended the University of Toronto (BA, 1947). He was admitted to Osgoode Hall Law School in 1947 and was called to the Bar in 1950. Houston served as an Assistant Crown Attorney in Ottawa in 1950-1952, when he resigned to go into private practice. He was appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1961. In 1975-82, he was a County Court Judge with the York Judicial District Court. Then he served as Judge-at-Large with the Ottawa-Carleton Judicial District Court, then as a supernumerary judge. In 1990-1993, Houston was a supernumerary judge with the Ontario Court of Justice (General) for Ottawa-Carleton. Houston served as director and vice-president of the Advocates' Society of Ontario. Houston served as a Commissioner with the Law Reform Commission of Canada. Houston was a founder of the Eastern Professional Hockey League and was appointed its first president and later as an arbitrator for the National Hockey League. In 1989, Houston was inducted into the Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame. He died in Ottawa on May 27, 2003.

William T. (Bill) Houston is the son of Jesse (?) Dakin and Edward James Houston. He was General Counsel of an energy company in Toronto until 2013. He was in touch with Hester in 2008 and was excited to find out more about the war years from her (Grinberg 2011, 5).

Alexander Forest,
Eisenhower's staff

Son - Alexander Goldberg / Forest. Alexander, the sole son of Leo, is an interesting person who emigrated to New York City, "before the war" according to Grinberg (2011, 5). He took the surname Forest upon arrival.

After the war he came back to Europe as an enlisted American soldier and was posted to Germany as part of General Eisenhower's staff, says Grinberg (2011, 5), to put his multiple language skills at the service of the U.S. Army.

Alexander's only surviving child is Gregory, who told me (Interview 1, 2014) that he understood that his father when in Germany was involved first with the Nuremberg Trials and then in responding to questions raised at Senator Joseph McCarthy's Hearings.

Alexander's knowledge of German, Russian and the ways of Communism must have been in demand, especially when McCarthy overreached himself in 1954 and accused the U.S. Army itself of being Communist, calling a decorated general a "disgrace". Joseph Welch famously ended McCarthy's leadership of the "Red Scare" on June 9, 1954 with his comment: "Have you no decency, sir?" McCarthy, his power destroyed, retreated into alcoholism and died at 48 in 1957.

Wedding of Gregory Forest and Eileen Hills Forest, Fort Lauderdale, 
Fla. (1983). L to R: Anna Ormont, Greg's half-sister Madeleine, his
 late sister Alexandra, Eileen, Greg, Madeleine's son Andrew, Greg's
 late mother Marion Drews and her third husband Paul McDonald. 
Photo by kind permission of (thanks!) the Forest family. This is 
the latest-dated extant photo of Anna.

Alexander was discharged from the Army and returned to New York City where he became involved in the instant-lettering business, which took aim at the high cost of printing. (I remember Letraset as one of the bigger companies in the business.)

Alexander's son Gregory and Greg's wife Eileen live in Florida, where I visited them. He is a regional sales manager for the Mercury Division of the Brunswick Company, based in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.

They have two sons–Gregory Jr. and Jason. Like his grandfather, Jason serves in the U.S. Army in Germany.

The Jan Canada Boissevain Family (Chapter 6)

Graves of Gi and Janka Boissevain at the Heroes' Cemetery in Overveen,
sons of Jan "Canada" and Mies Boissevain. Photo by Mariska Muller,
posted by permission, taken at a Cemetery remembrance ceremony in 2014.
I visited the site in February 2015 with Charles Boissevain.

Jan Canada Boissevain was recognized by the Dutch Government after the war. He and his sons are included in the List of the Fallen in the Resistance.

His sons Janka and Gi Boissevain are buried in the heroes' cemetery, Eerebegraafts Bloemendaal Cemetery, along with their cousin Louis Daniel Boissevain.

Matthijs Ridderhoff, who betrayed CS6, was sentenced to death in 1947.

When CS6 was betrayed, the Nazis found ammunition at Corellistraat 6. But they didn't find it all. When the house was purchased in 1962 by the De Mol van Otterloo family, they began renovating the basement. They found under the cellar enough ammunition to blow up many blocks of houses, according to Het Parool.

Matt Hyland (standing) and Hansje van
Lennep, January 1995. Photo by JT Marlin.

Their mother Mies van Lennep Boissevain was very active after the war. Hansje van Lennep Hyland wrote to Diane Haddick:

Mies had been sent to Ravensbrueck, the concentration camp for women in Southern Germany. She was part of a group liberated by Sweden's Count Bernadotte and was sent to Sweden. When she heard that her husband and her two eldest sons had died, she did not want to live any more. But then she looked out of the window of the plane that was bringing them all to Sweden. They broke through the clouds and the sun shone on a quilt of farms and towns below. She decided there was still a lot for her to do on earth.   

When she eventually returned to Holland, she started a movement where people would make quilted skirts out of remnants of cloth left over from the war. Friends and family would donate the pieces of cloth. The called the skirt the "feast rok" (festival dress), to celebrate the liberation of Holland. 

Because of her heroic behavior in the concentration camp, where she would save her fellow prisoners from despair with talk and deeds, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt invited her to come to America as she wanted to thai her and meet her personally. [Diane Haddick Query: Did Mies van Lennep Boissevain ever did come to America at Mrs. Roosevelt's invitation, "and if she did, what happened?" Answer: Yes, she gave a lecture tour.

After the war, even though she had endured terrible hardship and her health was still poor, she overwhelmed her surroundings with energy and optimism. Bob Boissevain (her second cousin once removed, close to the family) says:

I remember how she once told us, roaring with laughter, how happy they were, when they got moved to another camp, that they were allowed to sleep on mattresses covered in cockroaches, rather than in barracks full of lice.

Mies Boissevain deserves to be on the Yad Vashem List of the Righteous, but during her lifetime she insisted that she only did her duty as a Dutch citizen and she did not want to be recognized officially for that. Her children for that reason did not seek any honors for their mother, nor did her sister Hester van Lennep Baračs.

When Mies returned to the Netherlands, there was not much left. She decided to cut from every piece of clothing that wasn't worn out yet, a small square or triangle. She sewed these together in 1947 to create what she called a Nationale Feestrok and is translated as “National Celebration Skirt". With this dress she went on tour in America, lecturing to women's groups and others about everything that was destroyed in the Netherlands and what had happened in the camps during the war. The skirt  became a symbol for Holland's post-war reconstruction.

A Resistance Museum (the South Holland Verzetsmuseum) in Gouda organized a 1994 exhibition "Present-Past, Carried Cheerfully" (Heden-Verleden, Blijmoedig Gedragen) which included a special book on Mies Boissevain-van Lennep (1896–1965).  In the Verzetsmuseum in Amsterdam (entrance opposite Artis) an example of her National Celebration Skirt is permanently displayed.

Summary of the Jan ("Canada") Boissevain Family in World War II 

Hansje van Lennep Hyland summarized the losses of Jan Canada's family as follows:

The Krauts ... first imprisoned ... Jan ["Canada"] Boissevain, then let him free (he was a banker and was accused of lending money to Jews, which was trumped up, as Holland never differentiated among its citizens), then arrested him again and sent him and Mies to two different concentration camps. 

Also taken were their two oldest sons: Jan Karel [Janka] and Gideon [Gi], who were part of an underground resistance group, all in their early 20s. In 1943 they and others were killed by a firing squad in the dunes. 

Their younger brother, Francois Boissevain and the kid's nanny, Jane, were sent to a concentration camp in Germany. They survived the war. Alas, Jan Canada did not - he died one month before Holland's liberation, in April 1945 in a camp near Berlin.

Gijs van Hall–Mayor of Amsterdam (Chapter 9)

In 1946, Gijs van Hall joined the Labour Party (PTB), but clearly showed that he was no ordinary member. Before the war he was not politically active. He had, after his return from the United States in view of the elections in 1933 with a group of friends with him at home speakers from different directions invited to explain on several evenings the programs of their parties. Among others, A A van Rijn spoke for the Christian Historical Union and HB Wiardi Beckman for the Social Democratic Workers' Party; in addition, a communist and a member of the NSB spoke, because there was time to make a choice. In 1946, however, he and his wife decided it was time to show their colors. Only the Freedom Party and the PTB were eligible. Again, they organized two nights of speeches, and then they decided to join the WPB.

In October 1948 Hall changed his job and he became director of the banking house Labouchere & Co. NV, a subsidiary of the Amsterdam Bank. To the dismay of the directors of the bank he became a candidate on July 31, 1956 for a Labor seat in the Senate. When the mayor of Amsterdam position became vacant, van Hall was appointed to it as of February 1, 1957.

As Mayor, van Hall confronted the government with the big problems of Amsterdam. He lobbied for the construction of the IJ tunnel, and for more housing. The city council in 1957 designated Bijlmermeer was the designated place. After eight years of conflict, in 1966 this happened.

Starting in 1945, van Hall was a member of the board of governors of the University of Amsterdam, then a purely municipal institution. The municipality, however, could not finance the necessary renovations and expansions, so starting in 1960 the rules were changed and the distribution of the burden was shared workably.

The Amsterdam police were understaffed and enjoyed little esteem by the population. In 1961 van Hall asked the Minister of Internal Affairs chief HJ van der Molen to be replaced. This request was not honored. Later in the sixties faced the metropolitan police with disturbances of a new kind. It was especially demonstrations against the US action in Vietnam, where in chorus 'Johnson murderer' was called. That was insulting a friendly head of state and, according to the law.

Provo deliberately set out to provoke authorities and provoke conflict in order to attract the attention of press and television. The overstretched police did not cope with the colorful mix of genuine protest, old-fashioned cop-taunting and rioting and often had no other alternative but to disperse the crowd. Amsterdam became divided into two camps. One saw the Provos as the source of turmoil, the other the police. The marriage of Princess Beatrix to a "German" on March 10, 1966 led to heavy riots.

The "construction workers riot", in which Provos and youthful vandals played a major role , occurred on June 13 and 14, 1966. They resulted from  misunderstandings quite symptomatic of the situation in Amsterdam at the time. The police chief was fired. A committee headed by C.J. Enschede was commissioned to investigate the Amsterdam problems.

Although van Hall was harassed at his private home, he wanted to hold on. The government, however, decided that van Hall was not the right man to solve the problems of public order in Amsterdam. In early May 1967 the Cabinet De Jong enabled him finally the choice: resign or get fired. He chose the latter - "there must be a scapegoat" he let slip on that occasion - and on June 30 of that year he resigned his office.

He remained a member of the Senate and became a member and vice-president of the Assemblies of the Council of Europe and Western European Union. In 1971 he introduced himself no longer re-election to the Senate, and with it fell the other two functions. In 1976, a year before his death, he published his memoirs: Experiences of Amsterdam.

Hall was a good Mayor, who felt a kinship with directors and financiers. He was open to new ideas, as evidenced by its membership of the WPB. In general there was great appreciation for his work as supervisor of the financial and economic condition of his city. It characterizes him as a tough negotiator, a resourceful improviser and a stubborn fighter. The contact with the council and the official duties were to him less, partly due to chronic back pain.

The M.S. Boissevain

The following story about the M.S. Boissevain was told in 2004 by Charles Boissevain of Twello, near Deventer, Holland in the family Bulletin, at boissevain.org. Within the family, because of so many Charles Boissevains, he is called Charles Twello Boissevain.

The M.S. Boissevain was used as transport ship for troops during World War II.

Charles Boissevain reports that, 30 years earlier, he came into possession of a Neptune Diploma in Amsterdam. It was presented to a soldier on the M.S. Boissevain. In 1974, when Charles was a student, he was given a birthday present by Roland Pessers - a ticket glued onto some cardboard. Pessers, says Charles, was a neighboring boy their neighborhood in Oisterwijk who used to scour flea markets. On the back he had written: “For Charles’ birthday, that this family picture may always have a place on your wall, under penalty of my discontent”.

Neptune Diploma for the M.S. Boissevain. It was given to
Dutch troops heading for Indonesia after World War II.

Closer inspection of the Diploma explains something about the Boissevain and Neptune christenings on crossing the equator, and on the last stage of the heyday of the great shipping companies and of Holland's colonial history in the Dutch East Indies. The diploma reads (translated from the Dutch):

I, NEPTUNE, GOD OF ALL SEAS Patron of all Mermaids, Treasure-chest keeper of all treasures which are thrown over board etc, etc, declare herewith that: Soldier 1st class Maas, J.K. I-2-R.lt.LuA crossed the equator on May 18, 1947 and in my opinion has been found suitable to defy all the dangers in the Far East and, after services done, to be returned home safely over my seas. Therefore it is pointed out to everyone, that the person in possession of this diploma, may he - land-dog that he obviously is -, again sail in my waters, gets the homage he deserves, given to him by me under penalty of my discontent. THUS DRAWN UP ABOARD M.S. Boissevain led by the C.O.T. The Lt.-Col. Der Art. A. Tuytel.

On May 4, 1946 the Dutch Government, back in power after Hitler's occupation, returned the ship to the KPM (Koninklijke Paketvaart Maatschappij), the shipping company founded in 1888 by Jan Boissevain (NP 52) and others. Because the ship was fitted out for transporting troops, it was leased by the Dutch government for almost two years for the supply and removal of Dutch soldiers to  uphold the authority of Holland in the former Dutch Indies. Like the United States, Holland continued in war status after V-E Day because of the continued fighting in Japan.

In May 1947 the last of these journeys took place, after which the ship was converted into a passenger ship by Taikoo Dockyard in Hong Kong. During this transformation the Boissevain got the colours of the KJCPL (Koninklijke Java-China-Paketvaart Lijnen), the shipping company that resulted on July 1, 1947 from merger of KPM and the Java-China-Japan Line (JCJL).

Subsequently the ship and its sister ships Ruys and Tegelberg were deployed between the Far East and the east coast of South-America via South Africa. The journey Before the M.S. Boissevain was converted in Hong Kong, it made its last journey as transport ship for troops in May 1947. It involved the transport of a second regiment anti-aircraft artillery, consisting of 1,000 troops of the D-division, otherwise known as the Palmtree Division.

It was an odd mission for the participants, for in March 1947 it was clear that the Indonesians posed virtually no air threat. The regiment anti-aircraft artillery would therefore ultimately be used to supplement other divisions that were short-staffed, and it was thus that the men came to be at the disposition of the quartermaster general (QMG), the man responsible for the supply and outfit of the army.

The Transport Service Department was responsible for transporting troops to the Dutch Indies. The stamp on the diploma contains the inscription “Service of the quartermaster general, Dep. Of Transport Service, M.S. Boissevain, C.O.T.”. (C.O.T. stands for Commanding Officer Troops, i.e.,  commander of the troops being transported.)

On April 25, 1947 the troops boarded the Boissevain in Amsterdam. On board was the 1st battalion of the 2nd regiment light anti-aircraft artillery (1-2-R.lt.Lua), of which the 17th corps AAT (Supply- and Delivery Troops) was a part. Soldier J.K. Maas was one of them and lieutenant-colonel A. Tuytel was his commanding officer.

On May 6 they entered the tropics and on May 17 arrived in Sabang on the most northern point of Sumatra. The next day the ship crossed the equator at 14:20 hrs., the moment the diploma refers to. On May 20 they reached their destination, Batavia (now Jakarta).

Although the diploma states it was presented on crossing the equator, this is not wholly correct. The equator was crossed in the Malacca Strait, just South West of Singapore. This is a short and very busy route, in which there is certainly no time to hold a Neptune party. Therefore the christenings of the passengers and crew members for whom this was the first time, were in reality held on entering the tropics in the Indian Ocean. The christening ceremony had a sort of ragging feeling about it where a bucket or more of water wasn’t really an issue. For the more than 120,000 troops of the Royal Army, that served in the former Dutch-Indies between 1945 and 1949, this ritual was a welcome change to the month-long journey. Why soldier Maas didn’t do a better job in looking after his souvenir of the occasion is a mystery to me, says Charles Boissevain of Deventer.

The United Nations

Delegates from nations that had joined forces against the Axis powers met in San Francisco in April 1945 to "make the post-war world safe for peace-loving peoples." They called this the United Nations Conference on International Organization. The goal of conference was to prepare "a charter for a general international organization for the maintenance of international peace and security".

Spike Marlin, husband of Hilda van Stockum and son-in-law of Olga Boissevain, was at the United Nations conference in 1945 for the U.S. Government. He started work for the International Civil Aviation Organization and continued to work for the United Nations for the next 20 years.

Visiting Hilda van Stockum in Washington, D.C. in 1946

Hansje van Lennep Hyland wrote in 1999 about her visit in 1946:

My mother [Mrs. Cornelis van Lennep, 10 in the van Lennep family genealogy excerpt that is included referenced in the chapter on Wally van Hall] was rather concerned that her daughter [10c] was going far away in 1946, to work in the Netherlands Embassy in Washington, DC, and she said this to Hilda's cousin Olga Boissevain van Lennep [1d]. Olga offered to write to Hilda van Stockum to ask her to put me up for a while. Hilda agreed. 

I stayed several weeks at Hilda's house on Northampton Street [#3728] near Chevy Chase Circle in Washington, D.C., until Hilda's husband (Spike Marlin) was transferred to Montreal by his employer, the International Civil Aviation Organization, a U.N. agency. During that time Hilda suggested that we would PLAY being real cousins, since both of our families were back in Holland. 

Spike went ahead to try to rent a house in Montreal. Not able to find anything right away (it being  summer), he had to settle for a house that was, literally, IN THE WOODS, outside Montreal [in a place called Ste. Marguerite]. 

So the family moved into this house, with no running water. The smallest of Hilda's six kids was 1 1-1/2 year old Elisabeth. There was no driveable road to the house, so the rented car dropped them off a small distance away. Hilda's widowed mother, Olga ("Aunt Olga" to me) later had to go buy a bathing suit, as did the rest of the family: the "bath" was a lake... As a result, a book was born - Canadian Summer. 

Thanks to correspondence with Hilda and Aunt Olga, I knew beforehand of some of the adventures later printed in the book. Years later, I spent Christmas with them at Ste. Adele. They had a house near the church and on several occasions the priest (or minister) had to ask the Marlin family to tone down their noise during the church service! That told you a lot about Hilda and her family!! 

Hilda will be 91 on Feb. 9, 1999. She is writing a book about her studies at the State Academy of Arts in Amsterdam and is doing two paintings, RIGHT NOW!"  

Other Chapters: The above post is a draft of a chapter of a forthcoming book, The Boissevain Family and the Dutch Fight against the Nazis.

Notes

"Bill Houston": Archive on his father's papers, http://bit.ly/1xxNR80, from which the bio of his father was abbreviated. I have tried to reach him by phone to find out if there are any extant family papers from Anna Ormont.

"Yad Vashem": Yad Vashem List of the Righteous for the Netherlands.

Gijs van Hall: In April 1968 van Hall tape recorded his view of the problems during his mayoralty. What was said, he summarized in his memoirs. This tape is in the audiovisual department of the Municipal Archive. His book is Experiences of Amsterdam (Amsterdam [etc.], 1976). Obituaries on May 25, 1977 were in the NRC Handelsblad, Het Parool, Trouw and De Volkskrant: interrogation of G. van Hall, in Report containing the results of the study [of the] Committee of Inquiry into Government Policy 1940-1945 VIIc (s -Gravenhage, 1955) 194-204; first interim report ..., Second interim report ... [and] Final Report of the Commission of Inquiry Amsterdam. [Chaired by CJ Enschede] (three parts .; Hague, 1967); Rosenthal, "Amsterdam '66: the acquired crisis." Crisis decision-making in the Netherlands (Amsterdam [etc.], 1984), 135-190; W. Breedveld, interview with PJS de Jong, in For the unity of policy. Reflections on the occasion of fifty years, Ministry of General Affairs (The Hague, 1987), 219-228; Richter Roegholt, "Beatrix wanted to renounce her marriage in Amsterdam, Netherlands in Vrij, March 19, 1994. Photo: ANP Historical Photo Archive, frame number 30 843 [Gijs van Hall in 1967].

"M.S. Boissevain": Charles F.C.G. Boissevain, Deventer (NP 116). [I am curious about the use of the ship during World War II. Was it carrying troops in Asia? Europe? Under what flag?]

Sources (in formation)

Boissevain, Charles, emails of January 5 and 19, and February 8, 2015.

Forest, Greg, personal interview, January 2015.

Grinberg, Hester Boissevain, Autobiographical Notes, 2008 and 2011.

Grinberg, Hester Boissevain, phone interviews; letter to JT Marlin, January 2015.

Hilberg, Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: the Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945.

Jerusalem Post, May 2012.