Philo Bregstein interviewed Corinna van Schendel (1909-1985), daughter of the writer Arthur van Schendel (1874-1946). This great Dutch author is known, among other things, for the book Een zwerver verliefd. The interviews were conducted on behalf of a television portrait of her father’s life and work, entitled Dromen van leven, broadcast in the NCRV series “Open Boek” on August 22, 1977. Bregstein and Corinna van Schendel toured places where Van Schendel lived and wrote: Batavia, Florence, Sestri Levante and Amsterdam.

The interviewees talk about the time they worked at the film production company and laboratory Triofilm, founded in 1946 by Jo de Haas, Theo Cornelissen and Paul A.J. Wijnhoff.

Interviewees:

• Herman Greven (born 1933) worked at Triofilm as a lab assistant from 1948, before moving to the
  Cinetone studios, and still later found employment in film management at the Netherlands Film Museum (NFM).
• Peter Jonen (born 1927), after years at Polygoon, was employed as a lab assistant at Triofilm from 1953 to 1960. Via several other production companies, including Joop Geesink, he eventually joined the Utrecht Film and Science Foundation (SFW) in 1971 as a cutter.
• Piet van Strien (b. 1929) started out as a jack-of-all-trades at Triofilm in 1948, but soon started working in the laboratory and from 1953 (Watersnoodramp) he handled the camera. In 1959, he left the company and continued as a free-lance filmmaker, including for British Visnews.

Interviewers: Simone Brouwers and Bert Hogenkamp

The interviews were made for Brouwers’ and Hogenkamp’s filmography Triofilm 1946-1978. Film production company and laboratory, Amsterdam: Stichting Film en Wetenschap (SFW working edition no.4), 1994.

Stichting Onderzoek Terugkeer en Opvang (SOTO)

NIOD 889, nventory numbers 47, 48-51

Many of the Jews returned from concentration camps and hiding places faced negative reactions from the Dutch population in the summer of 1945.

Dienke Hondius, “Welkom” in Amsterdam. Aankomst en ontvangst van repatrianten in de hoofdstad in 1945, in: Kristel, Polderschouw, 201-221

See also:

Terugkeer, Antisemitisme in Nederland rond de bevrijding

Dienke Hondius

ISBN: 9789012086455

The interviews were made for Bregstein’s film “In Search of Jewish Amsterdam”, created at the initiative of the City of Amsterdam on the occasion of the city’s 700th anniversary celebrations. Film and interviews cover Jewish Amsterdam up to 1940. The film had its premiere on 29 December 1975 in Amsterdam. It was also broadcast on television by the NCRV on 8 February 1976.

Some of the research was done by Salvador Bloemgarten, who also worked with Bregstein on the screenplay. The film was produced by Jan Vrijman Cineproductie.

The integral film text was later published in the book Op zoek naar Joods Amsterdam / film by Philo Bregstein, Amsterdam: Meulenhoff (film texts), 1981 (partly previously published in Parool and Skoop). At the back (pp.59-76) is a diary Bregstein kept on the preparations and production of the film.

More extensive excerpts from the interviews were included in Herinneringen aan Joods Amsterdam / edited by Philo Bregstein and Salvador Bloemgarten, Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1978 (340 pp). Some additional interviews were conducted in 1977 for this purpose. The book includes a list of ‘narrators’, as well as a list of biographical notes concerning the interviewees.

Copies of the collection are managed by Jewish Cultural Quarter. The original is managed by Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision.

The February Strike was held during World War II in protest against the many anti-Jewish measures and persecution of Jews. Thousands of workers laid down their work. The strike began on 25 February 1941 in Amsterdam and spread a day later to the Zaanstreek, Haarlem, Velsen, Hilversum and the city of Utrecht and immediate surroundings. It was the first large-scale resistance action against the German occupiers in Europe. Since 1946, the February Strike has been commemorated annually on 25 February on Jonas Daniël Meijerplein in Amsterdam, near Mari Andriessen’s statue “The Dockworker”. The collection includes interviews conducted by Jan Dop, Simon Korper and Gerard Maas, among others, with February strikers.

The Foundation Comité Herdenking Februaristaking 1941 was established in 1990 as a successor to the Februariherdenkingskomité.

The interviews were conducted by Jan Dop (1943), (filmmaker who, together with Kees Hin (1936-2020) and Frans van der Staak (died 2001), made the feature film about the February Strike Soldiers without Guns (1985). Jan Dop made some interviews alone, some in collaboration with Simon Korper (1907-1988) and later most with Gerard Maas (Zaandam, 1913 – Amsterdam, 1988) communist, resistance fighter and politician.

Maas wrote about the February strike, a.o. Kroniek van de Februari-staking 1941, Amsterdam, 1961 en 1941 bloeiden de rozen in februari, een korte historische schets, Amsterdam [1985].

Oral history interviews with feminists who pioneered women’s mental and physical health care.

For brief descriptions of the interviewees, see the website van Artria

The international cultural heritage project A World of Diamond: Diamond Workers in The Netherlands, Belgium and France, 1895-2000 will collect, describe and disseminate the dispersed heritage of the international diamond workers during the twentieth century and beyond. A consortium will be created bringing together partners from The Netherlands, Belgium and France. The project will study and testpilotstrategies to digitally aggregate, improve and disseminate the digitized documents, images and testimonies of the worlds of diamond workers.

Publication on the occasion of the project “A world of diamond: diamond workers in Belgium, the Netherlands and France, 1895-2000”.

48 p.
ISBN: 9789464330045

With a dozen filmed interviews, this project contributes to the knowledge and image of the Jews deported from the Netherlands and their memories of the German concentration camp Theresienstadt in the present Czech Republic. Theresienstadt was mainly a transit camp for Jews, who were mostly sent to the extermination camps. The interviewees are Jews who were deported from the Netherlands to the camp in 1943 and 1944 and stayed in the camp for short or long periods of time (or even twice) during the last two years of the Second World War. The following questions are central to the interviews: How did the eyewitnesses experience Theresienstadt and which elements played a decisive role in their survival strategies? How did the prisoners cope and what gave them their strength?

The approximately 5000 Jews from the Netherlands in Theresienstadt were a very heterogeneous group. About half of them were German-speaking and as Austrian or German emigrants or refugees they had a completely different history than the Jews born in the Netherlands. There were also several groups of privileged Jews (such as the ‘Barneveld group’ and the ‘Mussert Jews’), while other categories (such as the Jews on the ‘Puttkammer list’) had a much less protected status.

It is often said about the Dutch group that they were conspicuous in Theresienstadt for their unwillingness to work, their maladjustment and their passive resistance. These characteristics, attributed mainly to Dutch prisoners, were mentioned indirectly in the interviews with survivors, but were not automatically confirmed by the respondents.

When the Jewish merchants had to disappear from the markets on 3 November 1941 as part of the arisation of the Jewish retail trade, the special Jewish markets were not yet ready. The Jewish markets, intended for Jewish market vendors and their Jewish customers, existed for two years, from the end of 1941 to the end of 1943. For these markets, the German and municipal authorities chose spacious, fenced-off places (‘gänzlich umzäunte Gelände’) and therefore sports fields and children’s playgrounds were often chosen.

As part of this oral history project, local residents at the time look back on the days of the Jewish markets. What were the consequences of the German measure on a neighbourhood in Amsterdam (the Rivierenbuurt) where Jews and non-Jews lived together? The interviews also address the question of the extent to which these events affected the interviewees’ later lives.

Although little known, Jews were also active in the resistance during World War II. They were members of communist and social-democratic resistance groups, the Ordedienst and were involved in the February strike of 1941.

The ‘PP-group’, named after the fantasy creatures Porgel and Porulan from the clandestine published nonsense rhyme by Cees Buddingh, was led by Bob van Amerongen and Jan Hemelrijk. Both had a Jewish father. The resistance group specialised in helping Jewish people in hiding and probably saved the lives of dozens of Jews (mainly family and friends). Bob van Amerongen occupied himself with hiding people and Jan Hemelrijk specialised in forging identity cards. 

The group got more and more work as the war progressed. As a result, more and more members came from the group’s own circles. Most members had a Jewish background, such as interior designer Ab Stuiver and actor Rob de Vries, but there were also non-Jewish members, such as Tini Israël and her friend Karel van het Reve. By the end of the war, the PP group had grown into a close-knit organisation with 19 core members, mostly former pupils of the Murmellius Gymnasium in Alkmaar, where Jan and Bob had been at school, and the Vossius Gymnasium in Amsterdam.

The PP-group was one of the 38 Amsterdam resistance groups that united in 1944 in the federation Free Groups Amsterdam (VGA). It was only on this occasion that Jan Hemelrijk gave the group the name PP-group; all groups had to choose a pseudonym. The 38 groups, of which about 20% of the members had a Jewish or half-Jewish background, played an active role in helping Amsterdam Jews even before the LO (the national organisation for helping people in hiding) became active in the summer of 1943.

The five interviewees – Dineke Broers-Hemelrijk (Jan Hemelrijk’s sister), Mark van Rossum du Chatel (a member of the PP group) and Bob van Amerongen and his hiders Jaap Lobatto and Miep Gompes-Lobatto – talk about their experiences during the Second World War.

The interviews (recorded 2008-2009) have been incorporated into the documentary and the book ‘Fatsoenlijk land’ (2013) by Loes Gompes.