my ironic identity crisis

My ironic identity crisis

By David Verveer

This article was intended to be funny, but I am not sure that it is possible to poke fun at something which is based on the Second World War and the Holocaust. However, in my sarcastic manner allow me to discuss the irony and human stupidity, which again visited me and others in a similar situations.

Please realize that I am not complaining or protesting, I would not dare to bite the hand which might feed me at my old age. Further I need to say that I am neither surprised nor angry, I understand the need for bureaucracy, without it, life would be dull.

But let us start from the beginning, which when speaking of my birth certificate started obviously several days after my appearance on this world, in September 1939, when Holland still prayed to remain outside the forthcoming war in Europe, and my birth enlarged our family to 5 souls, joined by my little sister 2 years later).

I know at some tribes, the official birth certificate is an item placed in a frame and put on the wall, with celebrations around it every year on the birthday of the receiver. In Holland this piece of paper is hardly used, and serves mainly to inform the world that the newly born has been duly written in the Municipal registries.

But then, 9 months later, Holland was over run by the Germans, and slowly but surely, these gentlemen started hunting Jews, and indeed, one day after my 3^rd birthday, my parents decided to flee, and the underground took the 6 of us, separated them, and tried to hide them with non Jewish countrymen. At that time I had just mastered the trick of talking, which I did non stop.

I have now to report the apparently criminal deed of my parents with government property as they burned and destroyed all identity papers of the family, and we were sent on our way, (I was 3 years old, remember) without any trace of our criminal Jewish records. I was moved on from address to address, every time when the neighbors started asking questions about this talkative child, who certainly did not look very Aryan, without knowing my real name and background.

Obvious, I managed to survive the War, and after a few months, my mother found me back, not according identity papers but because a large birthmark on my right leg. I was now 6 years old, without any memory on my identity.

And funny enough, nobody ever asked for my birth certificate, and realizing now, that I can not proof the fact that I really have been born, gives me another reason for having an identity crisis. Perhaps my real name is Jan Jansen, and I suffered for no reason, and without guilt for the crimes of the Jewish people.

Growing up, realizing that as Jew (if I am really me) I knew that I could not take the risk again to depend on other people to safe my skin, and decided to join the young Jewish nation of Israel, as what ever danger, it is us against others, and my being me will not place anybody in danger because trying to stay alive. Not that I am not thankful of being left alive, but I started to have this funny feeling, that somebody did me wrong, and on my 65^th birthday finally I filled in my claim against Germany, on suffering, etc.

About 3 months later I received a postcard, telling me that they received my application and papers, and I will have to wait for their decision if I am approved as a real sucker. In the mean time, as was written, I received a registration number if I would have been in the Concentration camps, I would have received my number much earlier, (on my arm) but who is complaining..

I forgot all about my claim, but surprisingly I received a letter that I have to send them in a period no later than 30 days, the following forms:

A – A document from the Israeli Interior Ministry, telling them my name, my family status and when I arrived to the country and registered as citizen.

B – A financial statement on all my possessions and finances, and C you guessed it, my birth certificate.

Why is this ironic, because precisely the representatives of the country who indirectly caused the destruction of this certificate, needs it now in order to decide if I have the right for compensation. Surely they realize that Jews surviving this period do not possess such papers, nor ever required them, but "order has to be". They know very well my identity, but it is written "birth certificate" and without it, no deal.

Indeed, I wrote immediately to the Municipality of The Hague asking them for a copy of this form, and hope that I will receive it on time, as the bureaucrats involved, do not have any considerations for human input. Both the Germans and Dutch officials deal not with people but with papers, and order, and whom am I, to try to get them to change this thoroughly Germanic duty of working according the book.

The question of my right to claim to be me, without having a birth certificate, put me in dilemma, perhaps if I am really Jan Jansen, do I have the right to open letters addressed to David Verveer?

To be or not to be, all over again.

where is mustapha

Where is Mustapha?

By David Verveer

Introduction

Funny enough, I expected that I would hear more about the disappearance of Mustapha Monsen, the blood son of Mustafa Bey, an army Officer who disappeared from the Palestinian soil, after the Ottoman armies lost the battle against General Allenby, on the end of the First World War.

If you remember, the story started when friends of mine told me about the treasure box they found hid in a hole of an old wall, when their parents left the house, and they took down the antique wooden cupboard, which hid the treasure hole.

In the treasure box they found a button from a Turkey's Army Tunic, a story that asked for more explanations, and indeed a few months later, I got a phone of Palestinians who left Palestine before the Second World War and immigrated to Canada. It was an old gentleman with his Grandson, who was visiting their relatives in a village nearby my house, called Jaljulia.

They told me about Mustapha, the cousin of this old man Musa Monsen, which were raised together, as the mother of Mustapha was killed by his uncle, as a family honor crime, as Mustapha's mother had given birth without having been married to the father.

At the age of 15, Mustapha run from home, with the intention to look for his father in Turkey, and since then Musa never heard again from Mustapha, even though he tried with the help of the Red Cross and other organizations, however without any success. Musa and his grandson returned home to Canada, with the hope that my story would help him somehow to find his cousin Mustapha Monsen.

Last week I received a very happy letter from Hassan, telling me that on arrival back home, they found a letter from the Red Cross with a small list of people who somehow answered to the description and age of Mustapha Monsen, a man who was now also nearing his nineties birthday. And indeed, one of the people listed was a Gentleman calling himself Gustavo Monsen Bey, who lived in a small border town on the Colombian and Venezuelan border.

And, due to the Internet era, they found also an Internet address which they could call for further information. To make the story short, Gustavo was indeed Mustapha, the lost cousin, they phoned and arranged a reunion between the two old men, next spring, where and when has not been established yet, but they spoke several times on the phone, and from this lengthy discussion he following story of Mustapha's travels and life became clear. Hassan asked me to write and publish the story, as he thought it had some historical value, which of course, I am doing now with great pleasure.

I will tell the story chronologically with background information, which I found in history books and on the Internet, I might have included facts which did not really happen in this way, but I tried not to beautify the story with events happening in that era, but still, in order to comprehend this fascinating story, I needed to create the right environment, thus please do not expect absolute true story but the general trends are based on historical facts.

Mustapha runs from home

It was 1932, Mustapha lived with his cousin in the old farm house in the middle of the citrus groves, (today the town of Raanana) which were owned by the influential merchant Muslim family Monsen, mostly living in Jaffa area, the grandfather of Mustapha and Musa was never cut out for trading, and therefore chosen to run the citrus business which was flourishing and profitable, but did not require the sharp business sense required for the international trading.

Mustapha, as I wrote before, was an orphan, as his mother was killed by her brother and the father disappeared to defend his country, during the

First World War, and never returned from the battle.

Mustapha decided to run from home and to look for his father in Turkey, and on a cold night 1034, Mustapha packed his rucksack with cloths, and the next day, he took a ride to the harbor of Jaffa (about 10 km from his home). Mustapha looked much older than his age, and he had no trouble what so ever to get a job of cabin boy / cook on a coaster, who was trading the Mediterranean and Black sea harbors between Marseille in France and Odessa in Russia.

And as he was a quick learner, he soon spoke a mixture of languages, required to make your self understood, in this region of the world. His trip to the Turkey's harbor of Istanbul was not very eventful, he did not have any money, and did not participate in the sailor outings on the way, (Beirut, Tripoli, Nicosia, Izmir, etc.), and when finally anchored in Istanbul, his fellow sailors wondered why he intended to go on shore, but Mustapha never intended to stay on board, and jumped ship.

Istanbul

Here he was, penniless and without papers, looking for a Mustapha Bey, a name which appears to be in Turkey likes looking for John Smith in the USA. But not only his financial status was troubling him, also the fact that he did not speak the language and the Turks of those days, did not like Arabs, specially not the Palestinians. He found a shelter in the bazaar of Istanbul, and some Arabs in the Bazaar gave him some work, sufficient to keep alive, but nothing more.

He soon realized that he had to change his plans, and decide that looking for his father was a childish dream, and if he wants to live, he had to take actions.

Thus after spending three cold and unpleasant months in his father's homeland, he found a new ship and was taken on as cook. Like the first ship, it was also a coaster, trading from harbor to harbor. We have to remember, the political atmosphere of those days was extremely complicated, both Germany and Italy were changing into dictatorships, Spain and Portugal were also losing out on democracy, countries such as Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon were ruled by France and England, Greece was instable, in Turkey, Ataturk was establishing himself as a single power of force, the Austrian empire was falling apart, in short, nobody knew what was going to happen in the next years, poverty and political unrest became the rule.

chain letters

Chain letters

By David Verveer

Amazing, apparently intelligent people do not realize that by re- sending chain letters, they open for somebody clever, a wonderful tool to receive email addresses. All the spam you receive is caused by the chain letters in which you are requested to send a copy of this writing to 7 or 20 other friends, and if you do it, you will go direct to heaven, you will earn the lottery (irrelevant if you bought a lottery ticket), you will be bloating from health, only please send it on, without making changes.

Beautiful, are those letters who tell you about this poor child, suffering of a terrible disease, near death, and his only wish is, that you send on this letter to your best friends (in this case, please remember, I am not interested, nor feel a pity for this cyber space sick kid).

But there are nice chain letters, with beautiful power point presentations, clever photography, nice tailored text, I receive them with pleasure, because I know that I already am listed, but before I send it on, I erase the names who already received it before me.

Most of the chain letters are based on our strong believe in voodoo, as you and I know that sending onwards this meaningless bullshit (excuse me for my expression) you can not believe that your luck is changing, that the stars are changing your horoscope and that you are now free from apparent danger and you can without hesitation cross the road, as you have send onwards this flipping chain letter, nobody will run you down on the road crossing (of course, only if you send 20 copies of the letter, if only 19, boy you are in danger).

There are other chain letters, in the form of protest letters, letters to the President of the United States, to the Pope or to the Wailing Wall. Only send the letter and peace will prevail, the president will of course read your signature, and now he will stop immediately the Global Warming and you saved the World (plus provided some more spam letters). I forgot petitions, asking to stop the famine in Sudan, the killing of whales, smoking in public places and globalization.

Did you ever think what it means, to oppose globalization, how can somebody stop globalization, and what is wrong with Coca Cola in Zimbabwe, I think that the natives in that country have worst enemies than drinking extra cool diet Coca Cola, but I might be mistaken.

And before I finish this letter, my full-hearted request, please send a copy of my letter to 17 people you know but don't like, and I promise luck will come to you, next week Monday you will get a letter with happy tiding, or an announcement which will make you very happy, but remember 17 is the number, less, and the happy tiding will go to your worst enemy. In name of the Cyber space sick children, the Microsoft organization for handing out money, the US Postal Services, and all other names used in order to trick you, dear sucker, keep on biting, but don't send me chain letters.

By the way, if you do not send my letter to 17 enemies, your stew might get burned, so be warned, I have your best interests at heart.

signage

Signage

By David Verveer

Signage means by definition, symbols or words whose function it is to provide directions, identification, information, orientation, warnings, regulations, or restrictions. Any development project, irrelevant to its size requires signage, which advises the people inside and outside the project, the direction to go, how to behave during emergencies such as fire, explosions, etc. in short, what in the past was a logical development, today is considered a science, as size, color, form and picture, clear enough to give the reader an instant message how to behave, might very well save his and other lives. And like many other subjects, it is taught at universities, and obligatory readings for engineers and architects. But when I learned engineering, signage did not yet receive the attention it really deserves, and when I was asked to manage the signage installation at a huge high tech factory, I really did not know what I am getting into.

Signage, like any other engineering, is based on logic rules and comprehension how one should behave during emergencies, and if one includes also some basic understanding of the process and possible mishaps using this type of raw materials, one really realizes that signage is a serious subject, worthwhile doing it correctly.

The Americans and Europeans developed a safety code, in which the signage plays an important role, we Israelis, who are used to improvise think we don't need strict rules and codes, we will manage ("everything will be all right, we will manage") is our favorite expression.

The Israeli behavior is of course not acceptable to the owners of the project (Americans), and even less so to the project managers, a European firm. The "lack a daisy attitude" of the Israeli worries them terribly and caused them to insist on a much stricter management than really is required for. I have full understanding for their attitude, but even though, their excessive pressure of execution by the word, of foreign signage for local population causes frictions and stupid mistakes, which might lead to catastrophic results, precisely those they intended to prevent, on the first hand.

One of the major mistakes is those caused by absolute ignorance of the Hebrew language by most of the Owners and Project Managers, and their ruling that English is the only acceptable language for the correspondence. Let us assume that about 20% of the Owners and Project Managers are English spoken as mother tongue, the remainder learned some basic English, but insufficient to write or comprehend it. I can tell you numerous jokes and mistakes in instruction sentences I received from the project managers, from using a English Hebrew dictionary phonetically, to choosing expressions which somehow, after research, have by accident, in a special combination, the same meaning as the word intended by the writer. The letters seem to be translated by a bad computer translation program.

The problem is that besides the hilarious letters, we (the contractors) receive, the contents are non-comprehensible, and don't provide the results required by the writer, but of course most of the contractors never studied Shakespeare, and the daily meetings are more or less, like the tower of Babylon.

The project managers (especially in the lower ranks) are Israelis, some but not too many, are professionals who due to the high salaries paid by foreign firms, were willing to take on a project for a limited period of time, and are likely to be fired from one day to the other, based on a computerized management program which ignores the leadership of humans. The remainder is a bunch of misfits, who were able to get their jobs due to absolute lack of knowledge of the Israeli by the management team, composing their work team.

Those Israelis (the latter described bunch) are the contractors greatest problem, because the don't understand the reason for any command, but need to oblige their masters, in order to be kept on for some more days, as the project is nearing its end, and the factory already started trials in production, etc.

They use any legal and illegal excuse in putting the blame of failure on somebody else, specially the contractors, who are continuously threatened with stoppage of payment for their performed and contracted functions, installations and activities.

In signage this is mostly evident in signage which has been forgotten for some reason by the management, and suddenly has to be installed next day. The system of daily published SPR's, (list of complains) by the project manager, in which the contractor is accused of failures (divided in critical and non critical observations by the inspection teams), as far as signage, those observers failed to read or comprehend the designs, nor do they have a notion, who, why and which contractor has to install the missing signage, which resulted in my case last week, by being publicly humiliated, without allowing me to respond and to explain what, and what not was executed by us, and why the list included parts which are outside our package, but that is the way when the expression;" the client is always right", rules the waves.

Based on common sense, the signage application should be the absolute last contractor activity in the execution of the project, in order to minimize the damage and theft of the signs, however, in our case, this logical approach does not apply to the project management wisdom resulting, besides the damage done by the contractors, a mixture of sectors which could not yet receive signage, as they were not ready, not yet installed or where the signage would obstruct the projects at hand. Of course, in this case, we automatically get spots which are not completed, and somehow forgotten between the thousands of signs applied. Outside signposts were erected one day and next day flattened by the trucks and heavy equipment working in the area, which means, we have to remove the installed asphalt or paving, dig up the foundations, reinstalling the entire signpost, and all this has to be finished inside the tight time schedule dictated by the manager / owner. Look at the money, the sweat and input wasted on serious mismanagement, of which we warned the project management in the beginning of the project.

If I would have been ten years younger, I would have resigned from the job, a long time ago, but I don't like to end my career with a failure, thus I keep on until the bitter end. On my answer to the above mentioned SPR's, I failed to erase the Cc's (all other contractors) one of the large contractors wrote to me the following, I quote:

"Good for you, I enjoyed reading your reply to what is a very frustrating team of managers, this is the worst run project I have ever been involved with. Good luck."

As you noticed, I did not mention the name of the project, nor the project managers, as I don't want to get anybody in trouble, as truth is not something allowed in our modern business world, and the only reason I wrote this was to relief me of cropped up anger and frustration, and my gratitude that most projects I have been involved with were more satisfactory. I don't think I will add this project to my résumé, as I am most certainly not proud on what I managed to accomplish.