By Nina Siegal; reviewed by Jeannette Hartman
Journalist Nina Siegal had finished talking to two researchers at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam about a photographic exhibit, when one of them, René Kok, invited her to see something else before she left.
He showed her an archive, lit like a scientific lab, filled with rows of metal filing cabinets and camel-colored boxes containing more than 2,100 personal diaries from World War II.
Anne Frank’s diary (#248) is one, but so are others written by “shop clerks, resistance fighters, train conductors, artists, musicians, policemen and grocers.”
Siegal points out that Anne Frank’s diary gave the world the impression that the Dutch protected their Jewish citizens because the Frank family were hidden for more than two years by friends.
The truth, according to Siegal, is that The Netherlands had one of the lowest survival rates for its Jewish citizens of all the Western European countries. Of an estimated, 140,000 Dutch Jews, only about 35,000 survived. That is to say 75 percent of the Dutch Jewish population was murdered in five years, compared to 25 percent in France or 40 percent in Belgium.
Siegal’s exploration of the archive led to her book, THE DIARY KEEPERS. The book offers a snapshot of life during the German occupation, an examination of the role diaries can or should play in recorded history, and how attitudes about remembering the Holocaust changed over time.
The diaries
Seven diaries are excerpted in this book. Three are written by Jews (one survived the occupation in hiding, one wrote from a concentration camp and one worked for the Jewish Council until the Jewish community was liquidated). Two were written by Dutch Nazis, one a policeman in Amsterdam and another the wife of a doctor aspiring to an SS position in The Hague. One was written by a member of a resistance organization and one by a 17-year-old factory clerk.
The excerpts begin on May 10, 1940, when German Luftwaffe paratroopers dropped around The Hague. As each section opens, Siegal gives context for the events unfolding as the diarists wrote. This gives readers many views of the same events. (In one case, two diarists – Douwe Bakker, a Dutch Nazi and police agent, and Ina Steur, a clerk at the Werkspoor Factory – were at the same event they described in their diaries later.)
One writer Siegal selected was Philip Mechanicus. He grew up in Amsterdam’s Jewish Quarter and became a respected foreign correspondent, covering among other things Russia and Palestine. Mechanicus was fired for being Jewish in 1941 and arrested in September 1942 for being in public without a yellow star.
He was sent to Amersfoort concentration camp where he was tortured. Two months later, he was transferred to the Westerbork transit camp. His diary was written in 15 little notebooks he got from the camp’s school. Before he was sent to Auschwitz he was able to smuggle the notebooks to his non-Jewish ex-wife. Thirteen survived.
“I have the feeling that I am an unofficial reporter covering a shipwreck,” Mechanicus wrote on May 29, 1943.
Diaries as history
Siegal repeatedly reminds us that we look back at history with 20-20 hindsight. Today, we know what lay ahead for the diary writers. But they had no idea when they were writing. What they recorded is an experience in a singular moment.
Many academic historians believe diaries shouldn’t be relied on as historical records. They are only one person’s perspective, a subjective record of events and don’t tell the full story of an event or period. Siegal argues that they make a valuable contribution to our understanding of unfolding events.
This book doesn’t end with the end of the war.
One diarist, Douwe Bakker was a Dutch Nazi and an inspector at the Central Criminal Investigation Department of the Amsterdam Police Department. He was arrested in May 1945 and tried several times. In May 1947, as his second trial was coming to an end, his 3,300-page, 18 volume diary, complete with photos and newspaper clippings was brought in as evidence.
He confirmed that the diary was his and had been written immediately or shortly after the events described, but insists that “my words were more fanatical than my deeds.” Despite the proof it contained, he insists that he never harmed anyone or promoted any harm.”
At one point in his second trial he claims “he himself couldn’t understand what he’d written. ‘I must have been hypnotized,’ he said.” In 1948, he was sentenced to life in prison. But his words outline one of the problems of diaries as history: they can be a platform for ego dramas.
Understanding and remembering
Siegal grapples with challenging questions throughout the book:
- How much did people know about the Nazis’ plans and how much did they trust the information they had?
- Why did survivors stay silent after the war and what changed to encourage them to speak out about their experiences?
- How valid are diaries and journals for documenting historical events given that they are one person’s subjective point of view and may — unconsciously or not — be a fantasy view of self and behavior in a given set of circumstances?
- How have the memorials to those lost in the Holocaust changed in The Netherlands over the past seven decades?
Siegal’s book is by turns poignant, horrifying and emotionally challenging. It’s an important addition to our understanding of the Holocaust and life during the German Occupation.
For another view of how history can be reported — and distorted — read HISTORY ON TRIAL.
The Author: Nina Siegal
