my uncle sam and aunt frieda

My uncle Sam and my Aunty Frieda

By David Verveer

My Uncle Sam was the oldest brother of my mother, born in 1895, in The Hague Holland. When he was 18, my Grandmother died from cancer, and my Grandfather was forced to take a housekeeper, to take care of the younger children (my mother at the time was 7 years old). The first housekeeper was a girl from Germany, from the northern harbor town Lubeck. We are talking about the years after the First World War, which was lost by the Germans (Holland remained neutral. Great poverty caused the young people to look for jobs outside Germany, and this is the reason that Frieda Hill arrived and started working for the Jewish family Alter.

My Uncle Sam was not very intelligent, rather a likable simpleton, and soon love developed between Sam and Frieda, and even though the Jewish community did not approve of mixed couples, they married and in actual fact he was excommunicated from his Shul (synagogue), a fact he took extremely hard.

Aunty Frieda was a very short woman, very fat and of course, even though no Einstein, kilometers more intelligent than my uncle. My uncle worked for a packaging factory owned by Jews, and worked there until his retirement 1955.

During the Second World War, after the German Arm attacked and occupied Holland, and Jews were taken to the camps, my uncle was taken to a concentration camp, were he remained until the end of the war. He returned home in 1945, a broken man with a heart complaint, which would kill him a few years after retirement.

He never understood what was going on, simply lived his life from day to day. The new inventions such as an electric shaver nearly killed him as he put it before shaving in the water. His only pride was his polished shoes, and his only complaint to us was the terrible state of our shoes. He seldom left the house, nor did he read papers, but I don't think he was ever bored, as boredom requires a certain amount of intelligence.

Writing about him, is very difficult, as he never conveyed any emotions or interest in us or anybody else.

On one of his birthdays, my mother brought him pictures of the Portuguese synagogue in The Hague, where my grandfather served as caretaker (after he lost all his money and his business, in sorrow because the early demise of my grandmother), and where my uncle would pray, before the war, as he was unwelcome in the Ashkenazi synagogue, due to him marrying a non Jewish wife. He was very emotional over the gift (the first time and last time that I saw him happy and exited).

My aunty was absolute the opposite, she was inquisitive, talked non stop (she did not have a German accent, and nobody in the neighborhood knew that she was German.

After the war, my mother remained alone (my father was executed by the Germans), with 4 small children, and my aunt was our only family in the town. I had another surviving aunt, but she lived in another town with her two daughters, and 3 cousins on my father's side, who also lived outside our town.

She would come over (by tramway, a trip of over one hour) to help my mother with the laundry, mending of clothes, sometime cooking and babysit, in short, she was a blessing.

She loved us very much, but had terrible ways in showing us her love, she would kiss us, embrace us and shout (she never talked quietly), and if we had the luck (let us say misfortune) to meet her in the street, she would embarrass us terribly, but you could not complain, she loved us and would do everything for us. Her squeezes (knijpjes) were famous, enough to try to avoid her, but we were everything for her, and her devotion to us and our mother was without limit.

In 1955 our family fell apart, my oldest brother had already immigrated to Israel, my second brother went with the army to Suriname South America (at that time, a Dutch colony), I went to study in England, and my mother remained home with only my sister. The relationship between my mother and my aunt became relatively strained, as my mother did not have the patience for the lamentations of the aging women, who complained about the bad people, the neighbors, the postman, the shop owner, etc.

She loved buying hats (especially green ones), and later on changing furniture (a thing unheard of during my uncles lifetime).

In 1958 I also immigrated to Israel, and in the following years both my sister and mother came also to Israel, and my aunt remained absolutely alone in The Hague.

I feel still somehow guilty about her, but her contact with us was through long letters with my mother and birthday cards on birthdays, .and my second brother followed us to Israel several years later.

When I returned to Holland, for studies 7 years later, we my wife and I would visit her, bur as we lived far away and did not have a car yet, this would be with intervals of at least six months. Tante Frieda would not talk about her German past, her family, possible brothers and sisters, the only thing she told us that she did not want to visit there, and that she hated Germans and people speaking German to her.

After I finished my study, we moved to Brussels (for my stage) and bought a car. Occasional we would take a trip to visit her, which made her very happy. I remember, once we visited her, and when we left, she asked to accompany us to the car, where she shouted, "this in my nephew with his wife, they came from Belgium to visit me, with their own car".

After I finished my stage and we returned to Israel, (with my daughter 4 months old) she would write to my mother that she was extremely lonely. To solve it, she took in students (who studied at the postal school, near by). She got rather attached to these boys, and would mother them, and smother them with love. She died 86 years old, depraved from the family she loved so much.

Now, 30 years since she passed away, I still feel somehow guilty of leaving her alone, I don't know if there was another way, but I have the feeling we never tried to repay her for her devotion to us.