Marja's story of Sara Dresden

One day, just after the (second world)-war, my grandmother, my aunt Annie and my mother
were sitting around the kitchen table. The radio was on and suddenly, to their shock, they heard their own name mentioned. A call for Greetje and Annie Dresden: their half-sister Sara Dresden was alive and lived with people in the town of Delft.

Their father, Samuel Dresden, in 1941 divorced their mother (Christien) and married a Jewish woman (Rachel) who already had a child. Together they afterwards had Sara. Just before they were deported during a razzia, Samuel and Racheltje in their panic, handed the baby over to the neighbors. Samuel and Racheltje and her daughter Judith did not survive. Sara did. The neighbors, scared, handed her to the Germans, who dropped the baby in the Jewish Nursery opposite the Hollandsche Schouwburg and from there she was saved, together with several other children.

Overjoyed Annie and Greetje set off to Delft. Meanwhile Greetje was now seventeen years old and Annie fifteen. Seeing their half-sister, a tiny, cute girl, they wanted to hug her and called her “our little sister Sara”. But the woman asked them not to do that. They didn’t want Maria, as they called Sara now, to know that in reality she was Jewish, and not their own child. Annie and Greet could imagine her line of thinking and were already happy that those people had taken Sara into their home.

My father used to cut out articles from the newspaper and when I asked why, he answered:
your mother can’t bear to read sad tidings. It turned out later that this meant articles about the war. If Hitler or anything about the war came on television, my father ran to the tv-set and switched it off. Ma did not want to know anything about it. She only wanted to direct her attention to the beautiful things in life. That was her way to deal with the past.

One time the doorbell rang, I was around four years old. My mother pulled the rope to open
the door downstairs. I heard some voices and the footsteps of my mother on the stairs and
then I heard screaming. I was so frightened that I crawled under the table. Some minutes later she entered our apartment with a very beautiful girl. “This is Sara, my sister....” I found it extraordinary that my mother suddenly had a sister, and I did not bother to think about the why and how. Sara was a magic girl for me, so beautiful and so sweet.

One day Ma told me what had happened during the war. I must have been around eight years of age. It was a huge shock. My mother, who had been through all of that. Her own father and her grandfather and grandmother and all her cousins were gassed? What is that, gassing? Ma explained. They had to get naked under the shower and thought they would be washed clean, and instead gas came out of the tap and they were suffocating. It was incomprehensible. Then they were dead. All of them: children and old people and everyone. How could people do this? How was it possible? I felt dizzy and nauseous.
Ma told it quietly and explained everything. How life was during the war and that they had been so terribly hungry. That her father was Jewish and almost everything was forbidden for Jews.

She herself had also received a call-up to report to the Hollandsche Schouwburg. Jews had to stay there until they were transported to Camp Westerbork and from there in cattle cars to
Sobibor. The Jewish Council had made a mistake and my mother was registered as Jewish. Her father ‘corrected’ that before his own deportation. She was half-Jewish because she also had a Christian mother, therefore she did not have to go.
I was in tears, it was too much to process. She told me that Sara/Maria was her half-sister.
That her father after divorcing her mother, married a Jewish woman who already had a child Judith at the age of three. Together they had another child during the war, that was Sara, who was the only one who survived, through a rescue operation by lawyer Kees Chardon, who had smuggled her out  of the Jewish Nursery in Amsterdam. When Sara was sixteen, she discovered that she had two sisters and that in reality she was Jewish. Her real name was Sara Dresden, she did not no better than her name was Maria. She began searching and that’s how she, age sixteen,came to our home the first time.

In one way or another the sisters weren’t in touch for years. It’s never been clear why not. I
often thought of my magical young aunt. When I was sixteen I went looking for her. She lived near the town of Hoorn and when I arrived at her home she recognized me immediately. It was lovely to see her again. Meanwhile she had gotten married to Fred; they had two young children who settled down on my lap. We stayed always in touch, sometimes with an interval of one or two years.

Just before Greet and Annie passed away, one day after each other, I took them to Sara and
it turned into a beautiful afternoon. Sara didn’t ask much about her parents. She thought, I’ll
do that next time. But there was no next time.

A couple of years ago I was drinking tea at my aunt’s home when her phone rang. She turned pale: it was Kees Chardon’s sister. She had found out about Sara through an article in
the paper and had been curious if the child had survived. Since that phone call they have met.

Recently when working at the VU (Vrije Universiteit) I noticed the student magazine Ad Valvas lying around. In the twelve years since I worked there I had never even looked inside the magazine, and now I took a copy home. In the evening I flipped through the pages and to my surprise found an article about Kees Chardon. There is a portrait of him in my aunt’s home and my parents had a picture of him in their photo album, with the subtitle: Hero! I sent a mail to the author Wim Berkelaar, he invited me for coffee and we had a good conversation. It turned out that Chardon had been a student at the Vrije Universiteit...

Read also the interview with my aunt: The Story of Sara Dresden


English translation: Eva van Sonderen, journalist, Jerusalem

 Sara/Maria

Sem Dresden

Sem en Racheltje Dresden

Engeltje and her Sisters

Sara/Maria and Fred

Annie and Greet

The story of Sara Dresden

Sara Dresden was born in Amsterdam, January 22^nd 1943. Her father Samuel Dresden (Amsterdam, February 8^th 1901 – Sobibor May 21^st 1943) was first married to Catharina Ledoe (Christien) and in 1941 got divorced from his non-jewish spouse. On April 9^th 1941 he married Racheltje Hindrika Levit (Groningen, March 8^th 1911 – Sobibor May 21^st 1943), who already had a 3 year-old daughter, Judicje (Amsterdam, Febrary 8^th 1030 – Sobibor May 21^st 1943).  Together they lived in Amsterdam, Lepelkruisstraat. Although their mother Christien forbade them to have any contact with their father, Greet and Annie secretly went to visit hem every week, because they were fond of him and of their half-sister Sara.

One day Annie went to visit her father and was shocked to see that the windows were smashed in. The neighbors shouted that they were just carried off and taken to the Hollandsche Schouwburg (the theatre where Amsterdam Jews were gathered before being sent to Westerbork transit camp). Annie hurried to the Schouwburg and watched a big truck offloading people. An SS-man tried to kick her and she fled. Just before being taken from their home, Samuel and Rachel had in panic managed to bring their newly born baby Sara to the neighbors, asking them to take care of her. The neighbors though, handed her to the nazis, who brought the baby to the Jewish Nursery at Plantage Middenlaan (opposite the Theatre). She was saved by Kees Chardon, a young law student at the Vrije Universiteit.

This year I interviewed my aunt about her lifestory:

Sara Dresden’s Narrative:

Marja: "What do you remember from your early childhood?"

I remember my first day in (primary) school. My foster mother brought me to school… a girl there asked me: “Who is that woman?” “That’s my mother.” “You don’t have a mother at all, you are just a Jewchild, and a foundling.” I was six years old then.  Then my ‘computer’ began working.  People always think that a child does not register anything, but after I heard that, I overheard fragments of conversations that were about me. From my father, other people, and how my grandfather presented us: “this is my daughter and that is my daughter’s foster child.” In the street I heard all kinds of stories: I was a Jewchild, I was thrown out of a train and my current mother walked on the railroad in order to catch me, and now I think, what’s this rubbish, throwing a child out of a train, who would actually walk on the railroad, but then I thought it was true. A remark I often heard as a child was: oh, the lame one, or the Jewess.”

We lived in Delft, in those days a small city where everybody knew each other. My foster mother came from a middle class family. They knew: the Venselaar family have adopted a child, a Jewish girl.  They kept talking about it for quite a while. Too often I was present when they talked about me.  Aunt Engeltje visited periodically, she was the only one left of the eight siblings of my father. She escaped from Westerbork in a delivery-cycle, covered with a piece of canvas and she never completely recovered. I only understood later that she was a sister of my father’s. I used to write her postcards and letters. For a long time I thought she was my mother.  That was terrible. She gave me lovely presents, I didn’t get many presents from my parents, and I did from aunt Engeltje.  So I thought: “she is my mother but she is in a care home, that’s why I can’t live with her.”

During all of six years I asked my mother everything and she always answered: ‘you are my girl”. Afterwards I would find a quiet place, stumping the floor and crying: “you’re lying, you’re lying!” As a child, I could not understand that one could love a child that isn’t one’s own. I was extremely jealous when a cousin came to our home to play with me and my mother remarked ”that’s a sweet girl”, then I would take her outside and I would kick her. I also kicked the cat. I wanted so much to hear that I was sweet as well. They never said that.  I did understand that it was their fear. Certainly at the beginning, when they were not be sure if I could stay with them.

That was only clear after the war. I am still resenting the way they left me dangling.. Only when I turned twelve I succeeded: I had done my entrance examination for the Gymnasium and I asked my parents again. By then I knew the facts, because in the evening, when they weren’t home, I searched all the closets and I found documents. I began searching when I was seven, so all those years I questioned my parents, I knew. When mail arrived for Sara Dresden I threw it away or I wrote: return to sender.  I didn’t want to be Jewish. Jews were evil, that’s why they had killed six million of them.  That’s what I heard … Jews were on my radar. I didn’t want to be Jewish, I wanted to be Maria. They never told me the truth.

Until I turned twelve. I questioned (my mother) again and again she denied it   and I grabbed her by the collar: “If you don’t tell me now!” and then she had to.

 It was still a shock when I heard it because I had hoped that it wasn’t true. I always hoped I might have siblings who were somewhere looking out of an attic-window if I would come for them, and who then would hide again. Ridiculous of course, but that’s what I thought …

I was always searching.

It was only told me much later that I really had sisters. From the moment I knew that, I began looking for them.  I had already the age that I was allowed to go alone by train to Amsterdam. I think I didn’t even tell my foster mother; I went secretly. It must have been before my 16^th birthday.

They told me that my father and mother were deported and that Kees Chardon, a young lawyer, got me out of the Jewish nursery  opposite the Hollandsche Schouwburg. I was five months old when I arrived at the Venselaar family, so in the meantime a lot must have happened to me.  There is a story that I was (hidden) in the Northeastpolder …but there’s nothing known about it.

My foster mother told that Jews were killed.  So I said: You see….creepy Jews.” If you aren’t bad you won’t be killed and all these people were killed. It is now perhaps ten years ago that I accepted the name Sara, I kept it as my legal name. I am called Sara Brix-Dresden, but I hated Sara, because I associated it with being Jewish. When my mother finally told me I burst out in tears and I collapsed. I don’t remember my mother’s response anymore.

I used to be in and out of hospital.  I had a clubfoot and that wasn’t properly taken care of because of the war. My foster mother always came to visit. I was six weeks in hospital in Leiden and every day she came, cycling from Delft to Leiden. She was not able to show love but she was affectionate in deeds. I was so needy for a mother who would hug me, and that nearly never happened. My father almost never showed his love until his dying day. Then he said he loved me. I knew that he loved me, I could sense it. I did everything with my father … He was a professional actor and when he was on stage I went to see him. Jules de Korte was his pianist and he gave acting lessons to the Lutz boys, they were in and out of our house a good deal. That was very interesting to me. I also wanted to attend the Academy for Theatre Arts. I could have done that. Until I read in my Jewish file that my father said to Jewish Social Work: “She always wanted to be on stage, but that was impossible, right, because of her leg handicap.” He never told me that. What he did say was: “You should have finished your Gymnasium, then you could have attended the Academy.” I’ve always felt guilty  that I didn’t complete high school, that I hadn’t listened, then I could have gone to the Academy. At age twenty I ran away to Amsterdam.

Afterwards an uncle settled in Delft. He was a brother of my mother’s, a survivor of the war. He and his wife began a boarding house for students.

He settled in Delft when I already knew of being a foster child. After the war, all of them heard that I was still alive.  They could contact me.  And they did: Engeltje, but she was too confused to take me in, my two half-sisters Greet and Annie but they were too young, fifteen and sixteen. My uncle said: “Let her stay with these people, she’s gotten used to them now.”

My foster mother told me that my real father was an alcoholic. Until I left home she took care that I didn’t touch any alcohol. Not even brandy-beans or cherry liquor bonbons, because she was afraid it was hereditary.  When I met my husband Fred in Amsterdam, I had not yet ever had a drink. If I had moved to Amsterdam as it is now, I wouldn’t have come to much good …  I was so much looking for love, if I had met a wrong guy things would have turned very bad.  I am happy to have met Fred… a decent man.

One day I was at the door of Greet, my half-sister in the 1^st Jan van der Heijdenstreet in Amsterdam.  That address I knew. I rang the bell and asked “Are you Mrs. Ruijterman? Can you come down for a moment?” She came down the stairs and the only thing she said was: “my little sister!”  Like in a movie. She screamed.  The same day she rang our sister Annie, that was all very nice and cordial, that contact, for a number of years. I’m at a loss to explain why it didn’t last.  But then there was always Marja, Greet’s daughter, who I kept in touch with and who went looking for me when she was sixteen. History repeated itself.  I was a the bakery’s and saw a girl coming in to our srteet  and I thought: “that could be me”. She was Marja, my niece, and it was so special, until today we are still in touch.

Marja took her mother Greet and Annie to visit Sara/Maria, shortly before the two sisters passed away, one day in succession.

When I finally dared to go and ask my sisters how my parents had lived, both my sisters died. One after the other … we had just for the first time shared a meal at my home, it was nice and intimate. Fred and I went on vacation to Spain – one day I got a telephone call that Greet had died and the next day that Annie had died. They were together their whole life, so they did this together as well.  They were so much older than I and they had shared everything together. They liked that I was there, but I could never come between those two ladies, and I didn’t want to either.

When I got to know my sisters I did not dare to ask questions about my parents. I don’t know why … they were holy to me I was afraid I would hear things that would bring me a lot of grief. So when they finally were sitting at my table I thought: next time I am going to ask questions, but … there was no next time.

Once I was sitting on a terrace at Rembrandtsplein.  “Are you a daughter of Samuel and Racheltje? You are a mirror-image of your mother. Your dad was a friend of mine.  Tomorrow we’ll meet and I will tell you about your parents.” He did not come – it turned out he was hit by a car and died. (Fred Wiegman, August 14^th 1924 – October 19^th 1968), he played a part in the comedy De Jantjes.

The first few years were fun and pleasant. The only difficulty for me was meeting Marja’s grandmother (Christien), for she had been married  to my father. I didn’t dare to ask her anything.  For a long time I imagined that my own parents would appear at my doorstep.  But then I was enough of a realist to think: would I have loved them, because I never knew them. I would only be very happy if they had not been through so many horrible things. I had a little sister, Judocje, who went with them.  With every film and every television program about the war that I watch on t.v., I am looking if I recognize something. I am looking with the eyes of a photograph that I have.

Marja:  My mother told me that my grandpa was a very sweet man, who liked making lots of jokes.

Yes, he was proud of his girls, they told me here … He couldn’t be proud of me because he didn’t know me. 

My mother gave me to the neighbors, who handed me to the Germans and that’s how I landed in the Nursery.  There were such good, loving people who saved me.  Kees Chardon (Delft 1919 – Wöbelin 1949) died in Camp Wöbelin, just before the end of the war. After the war everybody claimed they had been active in the resistance … oh well … But you know, what would you do if they were standing with a gun in front of you? You do not know.

I applauded my father after he passed away.  He was an actor who played on stage, and he was a director, everything in a magnificent way. At his funeral I said: “you deserved this applause. As a life-saver you did not want any applause, but dear daddy, I love you and the last applause you are getting is from me.”

“ If you hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have stood here” I said to my foster parents.  Anyway, I stayed grateful to them.  My whole life consisted of gratitude. I’ve done everything that I could for them, and Fred did as well.  Some people told me: “They weren’t forced to keep you, they also wanted you for themselves.” I felt I have to be good for them.

At the time they took me in they didn’t yet know that they couldn’t have children themselves. They had only be married three years when I got there. They were very catholic and their expectation was: lots of children, but that didn’t come true. They received me from Kees Chardon. It was also “love of one’s neighbor”. They weren’t bad people but they couldn’t express themselves and that was very unpleasant for me. I stole money. If I had to run errands, we’re talking 10 0r 25 cents, not more, then I put one cent in my sock: “because, if you really love me I can also have that money.” But afterwards I could hardly walk from the coins in my socks.  “come and take off your stockings and your shoes!” Why? I don’t know … I wanted so much to hear that she loved me. We lived next to a small square and once I told my cousin: “Go and tell my mother that a car has hit me at the square and I am dead.”  I imagined that she would run to me and be so happy that I’m still alive, but I got a smack to my butt. I wanted to hear: “Oh dearie, I am so glad that you’re not dead” but no, I got smacked!

When I turned eighteen I mingled with people belonging to a Jewish Youth Federation and I felt very much at home there, we spent time singing on the beach and they played guitar. I once came home when my father had just suffered a gastric perforation. My foster mother said my mingling with Jews caused it.  That was the end of my going there. Now I think: how backward, I was a bit meshugge!

In hindsight it is ridiculous: I didn’t dare anything, I was afraid to hurt other people. When I read my Jewish Orphans’ file from Jewish Social Work I said to Fred: “You see, I didn’t imagine it all, I mean you’re telling things and later you think: did that really happen?”  Jewish Social Work came every half year to check on me and I wasn’t allowed to say anything, because my mother said: “then they take you away from me.” I was deadly afraid that that would happen. We lived in a home with all kinds of students, subtenants. And exactly when I thought there would be a room for me again, they rented that room out. For months I slept behind the couch in the living room. When I went to sleep there were 20 guys playing cards with my father and mother, talking and smoking, and I lay behind that couch.

I felt really like Cinderella. There were sales in January, then we went into the city and my foster mother bought everything she could find and then some. But never a pair of panties or stockings for me. They never bought anything for me.

When I had my birthday, it’s not about getting a present, but about the gesture, I never got big presents.  I had a blocked savings-account, my foster parents could freely use the interest (usufruct). I had to ask my uncle if I could give my parents a t.v. set from my account.  My father slapped me once, but afterwards he immediately came to my room to make up for it. I was raised without any emotions. I was always ‘that girl’.  At birthdays everybody was asked what they would like to drink and for me it was: “you get to buy your own wine, right?”

Marja: 'Did you forgive them?'

Yes, I don’t bear a grudge. If they hadn’t been there, despite all the wretchedness I felt, experienced and still experience, I am still glad to be alive.

I sent them on holidays… I’ve given them lots of presents, I gave them everything. I bought love. I bought dresses when I began earning money and I gave them away to girl-friends.  I gave away make-up … I always bought love, because then they liked me.

When I met Fred it was right-away like coming home, as if I’d known him for years. For him as well. We just dated for nine months and got married, no we didn’t ‘have’ to marry, ha ha. We’ve been married for 55 years now.

I did lose the big love of my life: Olaf, my son. He was the first thing in my life that was really mine. Nobody could take that away from me. The first few weeks I held him in my arms and nobody could hold him. Then I woke up and thought, that’s not OK what I am doing now. It is not going to work this way.  Then other people were also allowed to hold him.  I was afraid to lose him.  That passed. I did not get a second baby. After his birth my physician told me I should not have more kids. After much praying and begging at the doctor’s I was allowed get pregnant one more time. I kept repeating ”I want a girl” bur once, when standing at the bus stop I thought: What are you doing, what does it matter and I never said that anymore.  When she was born I called her Rachel, after my mother. Her second name is Jolande, after my foster mother, whose name was Jo. I did that to please her. I often had to walk on eggshells. But still I’m grateful. If they had not been there, I wouldn’t have stayed alive.

On May 4^th I’m watching t.v. with all these stories of people. The thought that comes up: most of them still have somebody. I went to one of these Conferences of the Hidden Child. Would that really be for me … Fred said: “you’ve got a whole story, don’t get snowed under!” At the meeting point there I stood alone.  And I thought, why is no-one looking for me? One of the female leaders had the family name Dresden. I asked her: “Is Mrs. Engeltje Dresden a relative of yours?”  that wasn’t the case and she moved away. ‘Oh God I thought, not so pleasant.’

Jewish Social Work took me in, took me under their wings,that was beautiful.  I could tell my story. I’ve had lots of therapy. I am 76 years old now, but if they are going to burrow deeply, I’ll go mad until I die.  Just let me be. I’ve got lines in my face, not just from crying, also from laughing. I often laughed my problems away.  Always playing the cheerful girl, joking, but you should see me on the inside. I’m not going to open up completely to everybody. I’ve had some therapies that helped me.  For example, I had to learn to tell that my parents were murdered. I used to say, my parents perished during the war. No: learn to say, “they were murdered”. It sounds so harsh, but it is what happened. I was also taught to look at my foster-parents in a different light. They did want to keep me. “So, don’t spend the rest of your life thinking only: ‘ I am so grateful!’

Well that is engraved in my mind.  I sort of was relieved when they died. I brought my parents here, near to me.  They reached the age of 89 and 82. For twenty-five years they paid me a visit every Sunday. When I went on vacation they said: “Just let us be alone …” I always left with guilt feelings. Every time signing out when I went  on vacation and signing in when I was back.  For years I’ve taken care of them, every evening I locked the door for them and in the morning I unlocked it again.  They thought that every day there were rapists and killers out there. They were afraid. I had to lock them in. When we went on vacation, Rachel or Olaf had to do that. The neighbors were informed. My physician said: “You’re going on vacation? Just put the key under the doormat so I can let myself in.” They have always supported me very much.

Marja: 'What helped you to keep your footing?'

I don’t know? Two years ago, within 14 months, we lost our son and our son-in-law and we pulled trough. Rachel lost Peter, her husband. We were very fond of him. I’ve got such a survival instinct… people tell me, “jeez, how do you cope with such things?” What does it help if we keep crying? I’ve still got a daughter, she also needs a father and mother to rely on. She’s doing so much for us. I am eternally grateful to my child, but she says: “in the past you two have done everything for me.” She used to have pneumonia, broken fingers and what have you … I willingly took Olaf along to the tennis court, I wanted to be a mother. If it was up to us we would have had six little toddlers here. I once said to Rachel: “I am jealous of your mother” not because it is me, but because of how we are with each other. I myself longed so much for that way of being with each other. Then Rachel says: “Mom, it’s not because of how you were brought up that you became who you are.”

As a child I always thought: you can’t love a child that is not your own. Of course that is not true.  For years I was the babysitter of children in a family, I loved them very much and they still come to me. Every year they come to aunt Maria. If it is up to me everybody I love is welcome to join us, eat here, cozy and fun. A Yiddishe Mamme.

Marja: 'You are speaking Yiddish, you make a Yiddish impression, how can that be? You were raised in a catholic family?'

As a small child I already had that. It’s in my genes. It is unconscious. When telling a witz, I do it with a Yiddish accent.  No idea where that comes from.  When I really think about it, it’s weird.

As a small child I could not say goodbye.  Always glad when I have everyone around me again. I may cry when someone goes on vacation. I am happy for them, but so afraid they won’t return. I can’t say goodbye.  Jewish people couldn’t do that either, they didn’t know whether they would come back.

I always need people around me to eat with and share: come to me! Especially when you have problems, so I don’t have them!

I am sensitive to people asking: “how are you?” Just when you want to answer they talk about what they watched last night on tv.  I only really answer if someone really wants to go deep.

How I’ve processed everything?  I don’t know. In the past I loved getting into someone else’s skin, on stage … but now?

I often listen to deliciously sentimental music at night. Glorious …. For instance ‘Nights in white satin’, just blues or soul, old tearjerkers … howling guitars. Then I can howl too. Nobody hears me here, so I loudly sing along.  Percy Sledge, Fats Domino, they were my idols. A tearjerker can really make me cry, such as ‘a bouquet of white roses’ by Ria Valk, where the mother dies with the baby in the coffin …tremendous. ‘The Rose’ by Bette Middler, great. Music does it for me.

My philosophy of life?  Live and let live … let everyone do their own thing. Live well and don’t cheat anyone. I need to feel ‘senang’ in my social circle, people must be real. I used to have 80.000 friends … we lost many friends when Fred lost his job and we did not get whisky on the table any longer.

After the death of Olaf, he had left our home 25 years ago, we still received two hundred and fifty condolence cards … that strengthens you in a lot of things. It’s not about money or possessions.

Another motto for life: Enjoy, you only live once!  I enjoy looking out of my window here, and I see the hares running around. When I am with friends of ours in Schoonloo, there is a garden, then the men go take a walk, while I see squirrels. A squirrel eating from a dish in  the windowsill, and a mouse sitting under the table where birds are cleaning themselves and the mouse eating the crumbs, then I am enjoying myself.

I love to see someone with a baby, seeing a bride, that moves me. A lot of things do. Like when I am watching television and thinking: what’s that rolling down my cheeks? Then I’m not aware even of crying.

Sick people who have the energy to still be so active, great! Athletes, sport for disabled people, of which television shows so little. Those people have to work much harder for it than healthy athletes.

My body doesn’t want what I want … I’ve been hospitalized circa 42 times and had operations.I still need some operations, but I won’t go, I stop. One of my lower vertebrae is narrowed but it is too dangerous an operation, so I choose chronic pain. I always have back pain, pain in my arms, dystrophy. I was eating a bread roll and I couldn’t cut it. I didn’t have the strength to cut my bread. Rachel helped me.  I can still solve a cryptogram, but sometimes I can’t cut my bread anymore.

 And I accept it, because if I don’t then I have to fight and I don’t feel like fighting.I have always accepted everything with my mind and heart and all.

I’ve never had a real fight with anyone. I’ve been angry but not like ‘furious’, I cannot.  I would like to do that: to get all-out mad.

Once I received a big compliment from Rachel: about how most people think, when I’ll be an adult, I will never do what my parents did … “You will probably think so too, right?” I asked. “No Mum, with you and Dad there is nothing that I would do differently later.”   So that feather I can put on my hat.

One time I really got furious … then I got into my car and did some driving around until the emotion was gone.

I’ve also had lots of fun. Every day I try to get something out of life every day. “Dry your tears, Pierrot! And keep laughing…”  My therapist said: “In the morning go stand in front of the mirror and say: I love you!” and I answered: “yeah, then I stand there with my hair in a mess and I have to say I love you, now that’s enough to start laughing.”

Marja: "How is it for you to be in Germany?"

I don’t have a problem with that … never had. In that regard they didn’t raise me to hate. My father said: “Well, some boys had to go. What do you do when they face you with a pistol?” Yes of course (there was the expression) ‘those bastard-Krauts’…  Once I had an experience in Germany, I wanted to buy cufflinks. I am always wearing a necklace with my Star of David , when a kind of nurse walked by with a very small woman, and I heard the small one asking the big woman: “Is that a Jew?” “Yes, that’s a Jew”. I turned around and thought: ‘I didn’t hear this.’ Afterwards Fred remarked: “Good that I wasn’t there, or World War III would have broken out.” 

I’m always wearing my Star of David, also in Germany. Germany is a beautiful land, clean, the people are friendly and it is close by. How they commemorate the war victims -  we could learn something from them. Everywhere there are ‘stumbling stones’ and memorial boards to tell what happened there, what they have done there. Very impressive.

Recently I was present when stumbling stones were placed in front of the house where my grandparents and an uncle of my mother’s side have lived, in Groningen. There were photos of them there, I never knew them … people prayed … I don’t understand (the Hebrew prayers) but it does move me.

When I brought all my correspondence and the information about where I was after the war to Westerbork, then on leaving the place, I saw the portret of my mother on the memorial wall. It gave me the feeling that my mother gave her permission. There is nothing coincidental!


Also read: Marja's story of Sara Dresden and how we first met.

English translation: Eva van Sonderen, journalist, Jerusalem

Samuel and Racheltje, parents Sara/Maria

Sara/Maria

 Sem Dresden

Engeltje and her sisters

Sara/Maria and her husband Fred

 Kees Chardon

Annie en Greet