With the release of the book “Jew Face: A story of love and heroism in Nazi occupied Holland” imminent, I will be putting up photographs daily that pertain to important events and stories from the book. The book is the story of my parents, Nardus and Sipora Groen mainly during the period between 1940-1945. Today’s pictures are of Nardus Groen in 1945 as a Dutch Marine attached to the US Marines in Camp Lejeune and then Sipora Rodrigues Lopes in 1943 when working as a nurse in Amsterdam.
If you want to purchase the book “Jew Face:A story of love and heroism in Nazi occupied Holland”, and want to be notified via email on how to purchase the book when it become available, you can leave a comment in this post with your email address (it will not be made public) or send and email to hollandsheroes80@gmail.com.
With the release of the book “Jew Face: A story of love and heroism in Nazi occupied Holland” scheduled for April 13, 2012, I will be putting up photographs daily that pertain to important events and stories from the book. The book is the story of my parents, Nardus and Sipora Groen mainly during the period between 1940-1945. Today’s picture is of Lubertus and Geeske te Kiefte with their son Gerrit. Who were Bertus and Geeske te Kiefte? As good as this world ever had to offer. Want to know more? Read the book.
If you want to purchase the book “Jew Face:A story of love and heroism in Nazi occupied Holland”, and want to be notified via email on how to purchase the book when it become available, you can leave a comment in this post with your email address (it will not be made public) or send and email to hollandsheroes80@gmail.com.
With the release of the book “Jew Face: A story of love and heroism in Nazi occupied Holland” scheduled for April 13, 2012, I will be putting up photographs daily that pertain to important events and stories from the book. The book is the story of my parents, Nardus and Sipora Groen mainly during the period between 1940-1945. Today’s picture is of the Hollandse Schouwburg, the main Concert Hall of Amsterdam that would be turned into a detention and transit center by the Nazis. Besides being a symbol of the devastation that befell the Jewish community at the hands of the German occupiers, one of the most defining moments in the book also takes place in the Hollandse Schouwburg.
With the release of the book “Jew Face: A story of love and heroism in Nazi occupied Holland” scheduled for release on April 13, 2012, I will be putting up photographs daily that pertain to important events and stories from the book. The book is the story of my parents, Nardus and Sipora Groen mainly during the period between 1940-1945. Today’s picture is of the “NIZ” (Nederlandse Israelitsche Ziekenhuis ) which was the main Jewish Hospital in Holland up until the Nazi occupation. When looking at the photograph, take note on the left side of the building where it says “Zusterhuis”. This was the nurses quarters and is of significant importance in the book’s Prologue and in future chapters.
All human beings are flawed. The average normal human being will have flaws ranging from minimal to unbearable. However, most of them will be decent people. Even with their flaws. This is a philosophy I used as a guideline in the writing of my book, “Jew Face: A story of love and heroism in Nazi occupied Holland”. Not only did I not focus on the flaws of the average person, I hardly ever came close to describing them. For in this book there is one clear evil, and that is anyone who supported or participated in the Nazi effort to systematically eliminate the Jewish people. Everyone else, for lack of a better word, was good. When evil is so distinctive, what is left can easily be classified as good. And in reality, failed marriages, family arguments, lost friendships, are all results of decent people doing or being the recipient of, mistakes or misunderstandings. But the evil perpetuated by the Nazis and their sympathizers during the reign of Hitler’s Germany has no justification. And in the book I make that distinction clear. Not only do I hope to increase awareness of what took place, maybe I can also help people keep things in perspective by revealing these evils from a different angle.
I found the following paragraph on the Anti-Defamation League website regarding the topic of Holocaust denial:
“Holocaust denial, which its propagandists misrepresent as “historical revisionism,” has become one of the most important vehicles for contemporary anti-Semitism. It is the invention of a collection of long-time anti-Semites and apologists for Hitler…” http://www.adl.org/holocaust/introduction.asp
This is a significant problem facing the worldwide Jewish community. The logic is simple. You can’t fight the battle to make sure it never happens again if you have to fight the battle of whether or not it happened in the first place. Hitler’s Germany persecuted the Jews of Europe in systematic fashion. In my upcoming book, “Jew Face: A story of love and heroism in Nazi occupied Holland”, I show how the Nazis destroyed most of the Dutch Jewish community in incremental fashion, ultimately murdering 104,000 of what was a community of close to 150,000 people. The concept of Holocaust denial can only be seen as ultimately having the same goal. The evidence is clear. The photographs are there, the names are there, the personal accounts have been given. To anyone other than the avid anti-Semite, there is no doubt that these atrocities took place. It is my hope that by getting the attention of as many people as possible, I am helping increase awareness of what took place. For if we allow acts of barbarism to be forgotten, we increase the chances of them happening again and again. Not only to the Jewish people, but to innocents all over the world.
Camp Erika, also known as Camp Ommen was a hard labor and prison camp in Holland during the Nazi occupation and is a setting for an important story that takes place in the upcoming book “Jew Face” . Many members of the Dutch Resistance once arrested were sent to this location. On many occasions they were forced to dig their own graves and then shot.
When writing a book about a time so significant and devastating to the Jewish people, one has a moral responsibility to acknowledge and honor those who perished from the brutality and suffered the horrors perpetuated by one of the most, if not the most evil governments in the history of civilization. On the surface this seems to be an uncomplicated task, but when confronted with decisions on how to present the story, one must use their own judgment in choosing the means that best accomplish the goals set out in putting pen to paper.
Once on a visit to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I made the comment that although I live my life almost entirely different than the Hasidic Jews that live there, I love going there because when I walk through the neighborhood I realize that with all the death and destruction Hitler orchestrated against the Jewish people, in the end he did not win. Nazi Germany is long gone and the specific threat that it posed to the very existence of the Jewish people no longer exists, but the war of the anti-Semite against the Jewish people has not ended and still needs to be fought. The attempt at intellectualizing Holocaust denial and the efforts by those who wish to accomplish this on a global scale threatens the Jewish people in a deceptive and methodic way. Little by little there is a danger that more and more people will choose to believe that it did not happen and that 6 million Jewish lives were not killed by Hitler’s Germany. In writing this book, and titling it “Jew Face”, even at the risk of offending some of my fellow Jews, I do so with the purpose of getting the attention of as many people as possible. The alarming title will startle people, but if it gets many to read what happened and be aware, then it has served a positive purpose.
You can’t fight fire with smoke. You must fight fire with fire. And if giving this book a title that shocks people and makes them interested in its content I increase awareness of what truly took place, I have been successful in accomplishing the book’s most important task. Honoring the victims and helping the world never forget what took place.
Holland's Heroes 