Category: the Resistance

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A New Year’s Eve Miracle

May the New Year bring the “miracle” you wish for.

We walked with deliberate steps.
Placed our feet with care
on the slippery surface
of the ice-covered sidewalks and bridges
of our Nazi-occupied town.
Held on to each other tight,
so not to slip and fall into the dark canal,
where thin ice would not hold 
or protect the body of a seven-year-old
that could disappear in the stagnant water below.

A mother and her little girl,
barely visible in the winter’s dusk,
walked with purpose and determination
that last night of the year.
Two small human shapes
in a world swallowed up
by cruelties of war and hatred.
Obeying an inner need for
human contact and hope,
they risked the curfew of the oppressors
that had extinguished all light.

Heavy blankets of clouds clung
to the earth in dark layers,
shrouded its familiar landmarks.
No illumination eased the harsh
darkness of a desperate world.
No visible light guided the path.
Not from windows of homes
covered with war’s black out material.
Not from historic old lampposts
that stood powerless to help.
Their lights extinguished indefinitely
in a conquered city without power or heat.
No flashlight, no matches, no light permitted.
The powers of darkness in total control.

Mother and child continued with vigilance
along the treacherous path
that led to the ancient church
for the gathering in a communal prayer—
a plea for the end of hatred and oppression,
the return of human kindness and peace.
On this last evening of the year
they joined hands with neighbors and strangers,
united as one in a desperate last hope:
“Let there be an end to the war
in the coming New Year.”

The child would remember
the burning smell of tiny candles
held in the hands of wearied bundled-up adults.
Squeezed together in hard pews,
they beseeched a God
for a miracle with which to survive
the unknown months of dwindling food,
of hatred and violence that still loomed ahead.

A benediction ended the service.
The church doors opened.
The shuffling to the exit commenced.
Sounds, strange human sounds of
“Ahhh…Ohhh…and Ahhhh…,”  
reached the little girl’s ears.
A lilting lifting symphony
of tired human voices awakened and in awe
sprang into words.
“A Miracle, a miracle, it’s a miracle!”

Lifted by the power of the human voices,
swept up by the throng that moved as one,
mother and child reached the large open doors.
The child blinked.
The Light almost blinding her eyes.
A brilliant full moon had pushed through the clouds
and touched the earth where she stood.
As if mocking the darkness,
the moon’s full round brilliance
lit up the landscape
with the light of high noon in the midst of day.
“A Miracle …a miracle,” the mother whispered.

The Light guided the mother and child’s steps
to find their way home with ease.
They reached safety before curfew,
avoided the threat of death
at the enemy’s hands.
“A miracle” the mother insisted
for the rest of her life.

Mother and child would have to endure
four more months of cold and starvation,
run for their lives on the Day of Liberation
in a mass shooting by Swastika-bearing men
who refused to accept defeat.
But Peace came.
And human warmth and decency
would restore the Light to the city of Amsterdam,
whose heart the Nazis had almost destroyed.

A miracle? perhaps…
On that New Year’s Eve,
on that particular night
in Amsterdam long ago,
a seven-year-old girl learned that
the powers of hatred, oppression and darkness
ultimately did not have the last word.

And deep inside her
the Light from the darkness
would grow and illuminate my life’s path
in the many long years that still lay ahead.

                           —Excerpted from Hendrika’s memoir:
When a Toy Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew.

book-cover

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A Mother’s “Foolish Idealism”

       

             This week a daughter in Poway buried her mother, a victim of yet another vicious hate-fueled shooting on a House of Worship.  As we send cards and flowers, and make phone calls and visits to our mothers on Mother’s Day, she will be grieving instead. And,  at age eighty, I suddenly miss my own mother, a strong woman of deep faith. I wonder how she would have responded to our current environment of escalating hatred and bigotry.    

             I was just a little girl when the Nazis occupied Amsterdam in WWII.  

            “Don’t let them make you afraid,” my mother said, and when they deported my father to a POW labor camp in Germany, she joined the Resistance and hid a Jewish girl in our home.  A moral choice that caused one of my uncles to accuse her of being a “bad mother” on the day of my grandmother’s burial.

            WWII had been over for several years, when in a voice dark with condemnation, he demanded to know what had possessed my mother to risk her life and especially the life of her own child, me, by hiding a Jewish girl.   

            I will always remember my mother saying softly “Because I would hope that someone would do the same for her if circumstances were the other way around.”

            He called her a “foolish idealist.”

             “Yes, foolish,” my mother said, “because I want my children to grow up in a more just world.”

             Perhaps in a moment of grief at losing his own mother, he yelled: “You are a mother. A mother! Your responsibility was the safety of your own child!”  

             “But that’s exactly why I did it,” my mother said, pointing a figure at his chest:  “Don’t you realize that not one of our children is safe unless they are all safe.”

            Years later when I became a mother of my own three children, I often thought of my mother’s words and asked myself what kind of world I wanted my children to grow up in. Motherhood has been both idealized and demonized, with examples of mothers ranging from the immaculate Virgin Mary to the vengeful Medea, who fed her children to her philandering husband. In reality most of us mortal mothers muddle along, somewhat less dramatically, in a fair-to-middling way. We do the best we can, but above all our concern is for our children to be safe. 

            Motherhood comes without an instruction book, and I am not sure that the maternal instinct is always a given.  I have seen many a non-biological mother or father doing a better job at mothering than the women who gave birth.  In recent years we have witnessed tiger moms, soccer moms, and moms who paid large sums of money to help their children cheat on college entrance tests so they would get a step up in the relentless drive to success that is the American dream.  

            My own mother could be a “tiger mom.” She disciplined and demanded the very best from my sister and myself.  She also attended all of my swim meets and my sister’s running events, where she made no attempt to hide her joy when we won or her chagrin when we lost. So I guess you could also call her a “soccer mom.”   But in my mind she would always be a “warrior woman,” a mom who taught me never to let oppression have the final word. I recognize her fierce faith and courage in those who fight for Civil Rights and equality, and in the members of the #Me Too and the #Never Again movements.  

             Right now, it may seem as if evil is in the ascendency and Mother’s Day for many a day of grief rather than joy.  But let’s not forget that women throughout history have always known grief.  They have stood at the graves of sons and husbands slaughtered in brutal wars.  They have cradled their dead children murdered in senseless shootings in schools and violent neighborhoods.  They sit at their elderly mothers’ bedsides and grieve as they ease their deaths.  And, yet, their emotional strength endures from generation to generation. It is passed on from mother to daughter and from mother to son, in the desire that their grandchildren and great-grandchildren may live in a more just world. 

            So on this Mother’s Day, as we remember our own mothers, let us honor the “foolish idealists.” The women and men who still dare to imagine and fight for that better world–a world where every child’s mother and every mother’s child is treated equally and able to walk, study, play and worship in safety.  

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Announcing the publication of my book:

I am excited to announce that the book about my childhood in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam during WWII was published by SheWritesPress in August of 2019.

The story in this book has been gnawing at me for decades, but for a long time I hesitated putting it out into the world.  Writing about my childhood always felt somewhat self-indulgent.   I have lived a long and richly-textured life, where so many others suffered unspeakable torture and did not survive the brutality of those years. However, when I began to see torch-bearing neo Nazis displaying swastikas on my television screen this year and again saw women’s stories of abuse being dismissed, I realized that those of us who survived tyranny and oppression in any form have an obligation to tell our stories.

The title of my book is: When a Toy Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew…

 The images in my title spring from true events described in the memoir. Born in  a time of tyranny and violent bigotry, when traditional gender roles expected women to be domestic and obedient as a toy dog and gently reflective as the feminine moon,  I was given a great gift. I would witness the fierce power of female disobedience and the mystery of the light that could pierce the darkness of oppression and light a path for a little girl to discover the woman she could one day  become.