It’s really a pleasure to talk here tonight because after all this is the Slager Chabad centre and my son David Slager is named after my father who perished during the Holocaust in Auschwitz, so it’s very appropriate that I’m talking about my experiences during the Holocaust here.
I am from Amsterdam, Holland. As I’m sure you know, Holland was neutral during the First World War and General Henri Winkelman in 1940 didn’t expect Holland to get involved during the Second World War and hoped that it would stay neutral. Unfortunately, the Germans had other ideas, and invaded Holland on 10th May, 1940, which is when the trouble started. A very important aspect of the occupation was that it was done very calmly; people didn’t notice anything for about two years. For example, at first, they just asked the civil servants to cooperate with the German occupier and then they started to register all Jews, making it easier to trace who they were and where they lived. People were also forced to register with the threat of being sent to Mauthausen concentration camp, so most people registered. That was of course the beginning of the end.
Deportations started at the end of 1942. My mother was just married for a short while to David Slager and because of a fluke situation she wasn’t registered in the proper way, and therefore was not deported. She stayed behind, while my father was arrested and taken away to Auschwitz. I was born in August 1943, and had to be delivered secretly, because an aspect of the occupation was that Jews were expelled from parks and libraries, and they weren’t even allowed to go to hospitals so I couldn’t be born in a hospital. Some very courageous Dutch people started a resistance movement, amongst whom was a doctor who had a house in Vondelpark. This is where I was born, together with about 30 or 40 other Jewish babies.
After a week, I was removed from the house and taken to Delft, an hour or so south of Amsterdam, where I was taken in by a Dutch observant Reformed Christian family. The interesting thing was they had expected a youngster to come to them. They were asked whether they could take in a young Israelite and they said fine. But it turned out I was a week old - having been put into a suitcase, taken by one of the helpers by train to Delft and dumped on their doorstep – and they were absolutely flabbergasted. As they didn’t expect a baby, they didn’t have nappies or clothes - but they coped with the situation. They had already taken in a boy, 12 or 13 years old, and two other girls, non-Jewish people; they were bombed out of Rotterdam and stayed there. The boy, Peter, who now considers me to be his brother, remembered my arrival very well, and how the family were amazed and panicked.
After about 6 months it became known in the area that there was a baby there and on enquiry it was found out that he was a little Israelite, as Jews were called then in Holland. This became quite dangerous, so my stepfather decided to leave Delft with the family, just for me, to a house they owned in a little village called Stedum near Groningen, in the north of Holland, where it would be safer. Only the priest of the Dutch Reformed Church knew of my situation, while the rest of the people were unaware and just accepted me. As there wasn’t much food in Holland at that time, the village was quite a good place to be during the War, as it was near a farm with a nice garden to grow things. At one stage, we had a Nazi officer stationed in our house, and every morning he passed by where I was sleeping, and looked at me. As I looked very Dutch with blond hair and blue eyes - and didn’t have circumcision yet, due to having been born in hiding during the war - he didn’t suspect anything.
We lived there until the end of the war, at which time I remember being taken to the church over the road every Sunday morning, as part of the community. The Bakels family was very attached to me. I was a friendly little boy; they really liked me and introduced me to all the people in the village, among them also the son of the priest, with whom I apparently got into quarrels and who threw me into the river.
When the War was over, my mother was the only one of my family who survived, and she found out via the Red Cross and the resistance movement that I was alive but didn’t know exactly where in the Netherlands I was. She travelled from Amsterdam for weeks on end in search for me on a bike without tyres because in the last winter of the War Holland was completely robbed by the Germans, and everything was taken - there wasn’t even rubber to have tires on a bike. She came up North, and met someone from the resistance in Delfzijl, near the border with Emden, Germany, who happened to be my hidden stepfather’s brother. He said he knew an Israelite staying with his brother in Stedum, and suggested that she go and see – as there was a chance it could be her son.
My mother travelled to Stedum and introduced herself to my adopted family, the Bakels. They said, “That’s all good and well but can you prove this is your son?” She said that he had a little note on him when he was taken away at a week old to call him Robert. Sure enough he was Robert. Together with identifying a birthmark, it was accepted as proof that I was the right person. My mother visited regularly but I just didn’t know who she was because I already had a father and mother, who were very nice people, so I called her auntie. I slowly got used to her, however.
After about half a year, my mother didn’t know what to do because my stepparents were so attached to me and she wanted me back of course. She met a rabbi in Amsterdam who said she should really now take things in her hands and take me back properly. She soon returned and decided to take me back to Amsterdam under the protest of the Bakels family, who didn’t like the idea at all. In the end she did take me back, and consequently I grew up as part of the Jewish community in Amsterdam. After the War, my mother remarried and apparently - I was about 5 - at the wedding I shouted, “ I am so happy, now I have two mothers and two fathers!”
There was another problem; I wasn’t circumcised because there was no time for circumcision in 1943, so when I was about five my mother decided to circumcise me in the Jewish hospital in Amsterdam. This was the beginning of my contact with the Amsterdam Jewish community of which I became a part. I went to a Jewish kindergarten and primary school, where my situation was quite normal because the whole class were hidden children or orphans - people didn’t ask, just assumed, and we didn’t speak about it very much. Of course, the only problem was, after the war, we were a diminishing community. I never met my grandparents. My mother had five sisters and a brother who perished in the camps.
That was always in the back of our minds. We tried to survive, just keep on going without thinking too much of it. I think that was a good attitude for us because we didn’t need a reminder. Today, I think, it’s good we talk more about the Holocaust and that we have lectures and documentaries so we will pass it on to the next generation. I hope this short talk has given you an impression of my experiences at that time.