[Music plays] >> Bill Benson: Welcome. Thank you for joining us for First
Person: Conversations with Holocaust Survivors. My name is Bill Benson. I have hosted the Museum's
First Person program since it began 22 years ago. Each month we bring you first-hand
accounts of survival of the Holocaust. Each of our First Person guests serve as a
volunteer at the Museum. Holocaust survivors are Jews who experienced the persecution and survived
the mass murder that was carried out by the Nazis and their collaborators. This included those
who were in concentration camps, killing centers, ghettos, and prisons, as well as refugees or those
in hiding. Holocaust survivors also include people who did not self-identify as Jewish, but were
categorized as such by the perpetrators. During our program, please send us your questions and let
us know where you are joining us from in the chat. We are honored to have Holocaust survivor Louise
Lawrence-Israëls share her personal first-hand account of the Holocaust with us. Louise,
thank you so much for agreeing to be our First Person today. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: It's my pleasure Bill, and I'm very
happy with to be with all of you this afternoon. >> Bill Benson: Louise, you have so much to share with us in our
short one hour so we'll go ahead and get started. Before you tell us what happened to
you and your family during World War II and the Holocaust, tell us about your parents and
their life in the Netherlands before the war began. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Before the war began, my parents lived
in Amsterdam. My father worked with his father in the family textile business. They
manufactured clothing, they imported clothing, and they had a chain of stores where they sold
what they manufactured. My mom was an artist and a fashion designer and they were very happy
together till my father was mobilized in 1939. >> Bill Benson: Louise, did you have a large extended family? >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Yes, extended family. The immediate family wasn't that large but there were many, many cousins and second cousins and third cousins yes. >> Bill Benson: and and when grandparents that time were still alive? >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: yes. >> Bill Benson: All four, okay. You mentioned your father being mobilized into the Dutch Army which happened in 1939, and then of course Germany invaded and occupied the Netherlands in may 1940. Tell us what
you know about your father's experience in the Dutch Army. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: So my father was a reserve officer and
was called up pretty fast during the call-up of every Dutch man above the age of 18. He was
stationed in this southern part of Holland, most southern town of Maastricht, and he was part of an
engineering battalion and they were planning to blow up the bridges over the Meuse River what is a
natural border between Germany and the Netherlands, and to try to prevent the Nazis from coming into
Holland in case they were going to come in. My parents had planned to move together to Maastricht
they found a little house my mom started making drapes and curtains but she never moved because
in the first week of May 1940, my father called her just a week that she was supposed to
join him is that you can't come couldn't say why but my mom figured out that in an invasion by the Germans would be imminent and it was because they came into the Netherlands in 1940. >> Bill Benson: And Louise after they came into the Netherlands and occupied your country, they passed a number of
antisemitic laws soon after the occupation. Will you tell us about some of those laws? >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Right. So Jews had lived in the Netherlands for more than 500 years. They were integrated in the country. There was no antisemitism at that time, they just lived out of their own life or they lived a life in the Netherlands and all of it and it was I always say it was a big life and that life became
slowly smaller and smaller. It was very gradual. What happened to my family is that their
family business was confiscated because it was a Jewish business and Jews were
not allowed to have a business. Then the orders came that you had to hand
over your valuables because you were not allowed to have valuables like cash savings books, gold,
silver, jewelry, copper, tin, bicycles, radios, cameras, anything that was of value, he had to hand in. When
you handed your stuff in, you did get a receipt and they said it was just for safe keeping, but
I'm here to tell you that anybody that survived the war never saw their stuff again because it
never stayed in Holland, went straight to Germany. Then also Jews were not allowed
to use any public transportation. Jewish children were not allowed to go to
public schools. You had to be treated by a Jewish doctor, a non-Jewish doctor could not
treat a Jew. If you were sick you had to go to a Jewish hospital if you had to be hospitalized.
So life really became smaller and smaller. >> Bill Benson: Louise, your father had been captured at
one point by the Germans after the the invasion and then he was released. You shared with me
that your father and your grandfather decided, as the Nazis were saying you can't have
this and that and we're going to take everything that's valuable to you, they actually were able to
hide a few items. Will you tell us about that? >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Yeah my father and my grandfather got along really well and discussed everything. It was a very difficult time so nobody really knew
exactly what to do, but they had a good idea what they could do to try to safeguard some of
their property. So instead of handing in everything, turning in everything of value, they also buried
a lot of things in sealed tins in their backyard and especially things that had anything
to do with Jewish religion like prayer shawls Kiddush cups for the kosher wine, anything with
Hebrew letters on it, any prayer books, anything that - they always thought at that time that if
somebody would come to the house and would search, if they didn't find anything Jewish,
maybe they didn't think that we were Jewish that was strange because my last name
is Israëls. Kind of a giveaway anyway. >> Bill Benson: Right. At some point your parents then moved to a town called Haarlem west of Amsterdam where you were born. Tell us about Haarlem if you don't mind. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Right.
So I don't remember very much about Haarlem. I know now that it's a very lovely town. Haarlem had a good-sized Jewish community. So the largest Jewish community was in Amsterdam, but Haarlem had
a really good size. They had a synagogue, they had two rabbis, you could buy kosher food. And my
parents found a small house on a very quiet street and they rented the house. My father,
my mother, and my two-year older brother, and I was born in that house and we lived there
for another six months till we had to what the Germans called "evacuate" to Amsterdam >> Bill Benson: And here of course I think we see a a photograph of Haarlem. Before we go on Louise, I'd like to let you know
that we have people watching and listening to you today from all over the place, from around
the United States from Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Washington, and Tennessee - that's Washington state.
We also have viewers watching from Gratz College, and we have viewers from around the world.
We have viewers watching today from Canada, France, and Italy among other places. So hello
to all those that are listening to Louise and welcome. Shortly before you were born in July 1942,
the Germans began systematically deporting Jews from the Netherlands to killing centers in German-
occupied Poland. Life also became more restrictive for Dutch Jews when they were forced to
identify themselves with a yellow star of David badge. Will you tell us what this was like for Jews including your parents to have to wear this? >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: So in the
Netherlands, the yellow star orders for Jews above the age of six in the Netherlands
came just around the time that I was born and around the time that the trains deporting Jews
to the death camps in Poland had started to run. So there's always a question: so why - so you were
ordered to wear a star, why did people really do it? It singled you out. People might have known
that you were Jewish, but like I said before, in Holland it was not such a big thing, Religion - no
matter what kind of religion, what religion you had was accepted. But now all of a sudden
you wear your religion on your chest and you couldn't really leave your house
without this star sewn on your clothing. The problem for not about not wearing it was that
you didn't know at that time who you could trust. There was an incentive to turn in Jews for the
collaborators so if you had a neighbor that you were friendly with and that
you said hello with every morning, and he knew, he or she knew, that you were Jewish
but that person could have turned collaborator and if that person saw you walk outside
without a star, they could turn you in and they would get actually money for it. >> Bill Benson: Money for it. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Yes. >> Bill Benson: You know the Nazis heaped, of course, abuses large and small constantly, and one of the ones that you shared with me was that you had a very limited ration to get
textiles fabrics for clothing, and yet you were forced to use that ration to purchase the
yellow star to sew on your own clothing. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: That's correct. >> Bill Benson: Your family was close with another
Jewish family who lived on your street in Haarlem. will you tell us about them? >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Right. It was a very
exceptional family. They lived all together. The father of the family was the
president of the Jewish congregation. You can see here before the war how people lived.
They worked hard but they also went on vacation. The father of the family across the
street from us, you see him here in the middle, and one of the daughters in the front, her name
was Selma, and she became a very good friend of my mom's. And Selma's mom is right behind her. So
this family lived in their house with their five children and their two adopted cousins so there
were seven children in the house all the children were about my mom's and dad's age, around 30.
None of them were married, some of them were engaged. Also the father's parents
lived in the house and two unmarried aunts. They were very religious. They pooled
their ration coupons for food every week - because all food for all Dutch people was rationed -
and they cooked every Friday night a Shabbat meal. My parents were very often invited, as often as
they wanted to go, and they could cross the street and they loved it. And they celebrated Shabbat,
the Jewish holiday that comes back every week. It starts at sundown on Friday
night. And they were very friendly. >> Bill Benson: I would like to, before we continue, I'd
like to remind our audience to please share all your questions for Louise via the chat
feature if you don't mind. And we have a comment from a viewer named Brittani, and Brittani
writes, "Hello from Atlantic City, New Jersey. Thank you as always for providing these interviews.
We must always remember." Louise, tell us what happened in January 1943 that had a major impact
on your community and your family. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Right. So I have to track back a little bit about Selma. Selma
was my mom's friend. Selma had been a teacher, and she was fired because she was Jewish. So to
have something to do, she used to come over to our house just across the street quite often
and help my mom with the two little children. After the war she actually became my best
friend. A wonderful person. So in January 1943, the underground, the resistance - and I call them
heroes because they all risked their lives to help people that needed help - they worked against the
occupying Nazis. But they got very organized. Since deportations had started they tried to
do anything in their power to sabotage any of the Nazi rules or things that they were
doing. They had also towards the end of January shot one of the German sergeants,
and as a form of reprisal the occupying Nazis took 10 of the most
prominent Jewish men - Selma's dad was one of them and so was the rabbi - and you see the rabbi here on
the left and Selma's dad is the third from the left. And they shot them in front of the population.
They also took another about 104 Jewish men and sent them to a concentration camp in the Netherlands, and from there they were deported to death camps in Poland. >> Bill Benson: So every man we see here was executed. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: That's correct. >> Bill Benson: Along with another 100 plus people at that time. Tell us then what happened to the rest of that wonderful family that you described to us, that lived across the street also around that same time. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: All Jews in our area, the coastal area, got orders to move to Amsterdam. The Germans tried to make it easier on themselves and have Jews concentrated in Amsterdam, and then all they had to do is pick them up and and deport them from there. So they wanted to make that whole coastal area what they called "Judenfrei" what means "free of Jews." So after Selma's dad was murdered, she was again in our house and she heard a lot of noise across the street. This
was a couple of days after her father was murdered. And she looked out of the window and she saw
a large truck. It had stopped in front of her house and some screaming people jumped off,
they kicked in the door, and they rounded up all her family members that were left in the house,
of course, except for herself and her father who was already murdered. Two of her brothers escaped
through the backyard but one of the brothers had promised his father that he would take
care of the mother. And he, from his having escaped, he actually came back so
he was also pushed onto the truck. The truck drove away and this family was deported to Auschwitz,
one of the death camps, where they were murdered. So Selma and her brother were the only ones
that eventually survived. >> Bill Benson: And Selma witnessed that taking place from your home. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Correct. >> Bill Benson: Where did your family and - including Selma now - where did your family and Selma go when you arrived in Amsterdam? >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Right so my father was so scared after this happened to Selma's family that he figured that same night we had to move to Amsterdam. He had waited with, about moving but he figured we had to get out of there, and we moved in temporarily with one of my father's trusted resistance friends in a small apartment. So it was my mom, my dad, my brother, and
myself. I was six months old at the time. And our friend Selma who stayed with us during the rest of the war most of the time. And my father went out to look for a place to hide.
He knew that he could not live in the open anymore, and he was very lucky, he had studied in Amsterdam.
His headquarters the family headquarters was in Amsterdam, and he knew Amsterdam really well.
He had trusted friends that at least they showed that he could trust them, they had not
turned to a collaborator, because they helped us. And he found a more permanent place in a
storage attic in part of an Amsterdam row house. >> Bill Benson: The resistance, the heroes that
you've mentioned, they were obviously a huge factor in your survival. Tell us what actions that they were taking to try to slow the deportation of Jews from the Netherlands. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: One of the very important things that they did is they realized how easy it was for the Nazis to
find out where Jews lived. We had this amazing registration system, really thanks to Napoleon so
many hundred years before, and when you were born, within 24 hours, your father had to register your
birth. Your name - your first name, your last name, your address, and your religion. So all the
Nazis had to do was go to a registration office and they knew they could find where
Jews lived. So to make that hard on them the resistance bombed these registration offices,
and you can see what the results are of one of those bombings in Amsterdam. And then they burned
the registration cards. You can imagine that if this was done that the Nazis were very angry.
So reprisals were left and right, and they tried to find the people that actually did it but didn't
always work. But then they took somebody else and killed them or sent them on an early transport to
a concentration camp. >> Bill Benson: I can only imagine that the retaliations were beyond brutal. And what we're looking at here then is like, hundreds if not thousands of file cabinets and the cards stored, and they're all destroyed in this image. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: It's pre-computer times. Everything was on little cards. >> Bill Benson: Louise, your father was able to manage to get false identity papers for the family. Will you tell us about that? >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Right. So this was another
thing that was organized through the resistance. They found a specialist who could work
with different chemicals and they were able to make false identity papers, because everybody
had to walk around with an identity card and for Jews there was always a letter 'J' written in it.
So it was important to have a different name but also not with that 'J.' It was very difficult
to do, it's not like anything that people can do today. If I see a fake identity card today I
have no idea what the difference is between real and the fake one, but at that time it was difficult.
You had to take the old card, use chemicals and erase certain things, but you had to leave certain
stamps to make it real. So it was a lot of work and people did it and we got fake identity papers.
My brother and my name was on my mom's card and my name became Maria. That you're supposed to
have a family name I had no idea. I was too young and my parents never told my brother
and myself our real names. This is all for safe-keeping. >> Bill Benson: So until after the war you
only knew yourself as Maria. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: That's correct. >> Bill Benson: You mentioned that your father was able -
with the help of the underground, he was able to find a permanent hiding place. Tell us more about that. And I think we have an image. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Right. So this is an Amsterdam row house. These houses are more than 700 years old but are very well kept up, so it still looks exactly the same. And you see a little indicator that points to the top part so that's where the storage attics are. It's
a little different than what most people expect. The storage attic has its own walk-up, so its
own entrance, and its own four flights of stairs And you can rent space, so it's owned by a
different person than the people that necessarily live in the apartments. So my father was able to
rent that. He paid 10 years of rent. He still had that kind of money with the help of his father and
he figured going out every month at a certain time to pay the rent would probably be dangerous. The
landlord, I have no idea who he was. He must have been a good person, he never questioned it.
He took the 10 years and he left us alone. >> Bill Benson: 10 years. So your father anticipated that you might need that for that long of a period. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: He had no idea. It could be a week, could be a year, it could be two years. He just didn't know. >> Bill Benson: Tell us - I'm just looking at that picture realizing
that that's four stories up. That's where your your attic space was. Tell us about the attic
space. What was it like for you and your family? Tell us about moving in there, what you know about it. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Right. So it was a rough place right underneath the roof. It's not very well-insulated so it's really very cold in the winter time. These storage attics had a toilet - with a
toilet that you could actually flush. It had a small sink with cold running water. There was
no kitchen, no bathroom with a tub or a shower, and there were already a couple of things stored
in that attic. There was a table and chairs, there was a couch that was actually a broken down couch,
but for my brother and myself it was wonderful, we could jump on it. It was really one of the very few
things that we could do. It had a dormer window, and there was also a cupboard with some things
stored in it. So it was very important to figure out and to discuss before going in what we
would need right away. So with the help of the underground my father had stored some of
my parents' stuff with a trusted friend, again from the resistance, but we were able to borrow
mattresses. They took in four mattresses, so for my mom, my dad, Selma, and my brother, a crib for
me, as many warm blankets and warm clothing as they could get. They took in some food supplies.
My mom took in a camping stove because there's no kitchen, so if there's anything to cook or
water to boil had to be done on a camping stove. And she took in some oil lamps just in case
the electricity would go off. My father also thought ahead because he thought, I'm going in
with these two little kids. So he brought in a lot of scrap paper and a lot of colored pencils
and crayons. >> Bill Benson: Tell us what you can about what your family's life was like then in the attic, in the circumstances that you've just described. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: So I was six months and I could only crawl at that time, but I was very alert and I saw that most of the time mom and dad, Selma,
my brother were sitting around the table. Here you see me on the broken down couch. I
loved to sit on it because it's nice and soft and you also see that I really have very
pretty clothing on. That was because mom and Selma were always sewing, sitting around the
table, they were mending clothes, cutting up some of their old clothes making new clothes. I did
not have shoes, I had booties because by the time I started walking and my mom couldn't take me to
a shoe store if there are still shoes to be found because we never went outside. The only person that
went out was my dad to try to get food, medicine, or whatever else we needed. So I saw them sitting
around the table most of the time, mom and Selma sewing, but they were also playing games with my
brother. And I learned as soon as I started walking and talking and I could sit with them that
the games were really fun, but what were they doing? They were teaching my brother color and later
on me too, we played games with colors. They taught us letters and words and numbers
and easy math. It was a form of home schooling. It was clever to do that because it was a form
of schooling, but it was a way of keeping us busy. And we didn't know that it was actually a
form of home schooling, we just thought that they were paying attention to us what they
were, and that they were playing with us. >> Bill Benson: And because you had no other real
recreation or things to do, basically it was a full-time education that
you were getting which gave you, as you would describe to me, a real head start later in
life because of the amount of education you got. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Right. When we were liberated I was almost three years old and I could read a book. >> Bill Benson: Wow. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: But it's not because I'm so smart. It's because we had, just like you said, there was nothing from the outside. This was all we did. Since we did
not have books, my mom used to draw. So you teach a child a word - for instance, you teach a child the word 'tree' and then you take a child outside: this is what the tree looks like. So we didn't have that
because we didn't go outside, but Mom was an artist so she would draw a tree and said, this is the
word 'tree' and this is what the tree looks like. This is the word 'bird,' this is what the bird
looks like. And then she would put the bird on a tree branch and she said, and when the
bird goes to sleep it sits on a tree branch. So we had an idea except when you see
that in real you still have to put two and two together but it wasn't that strange. So she
put that all in book form so we kind of knew that you had to turn a page. They really tried
to work with us in a very good way [inaudible]. >> Bill Benson: They sound remarkable. Before we turn to an
audience question I was going to also mention, you had mentioned that you had a dormer window.
What that meant, as a practical matter, is that meant it was a high window so that even though
you got some light coming in, you could not see out. And it also meant that you couldn't be spotted
by somebody on the street if somebody accidentally looked out the window. We have a question
from Marta. She asks, "How did they (your parents) manage to get the small children quiet in
order to not be discovered by the Nazis? >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: So we were never told to be actually quiet but the way we were talked to was not in a screaming fashion. We were talked to in a soft
voice. Children pick up what the adults do. If you as a child are screamed at, you scream
back. You learn. We didn't learn that. So we did walk around and we did make noise but it
was not loud and like I said we were never, they were never screaming at us. We had neighbors
living below us. Must have been really good people because they must have heard us flush the
toilet and they must have heard us walk around. They never turned us in. They didn't know who we
were what was a very good thing. Help really was better if it came from far. If they had known
us and they had helped us and liked us and we had become friends, if somebody had rang that
doorbell said, are there people living upstairs? They could say no because they didn't know us. Had
they known us, they would have had to lie and then you give it away. So by not turning us in, in
my point of view, they were very good people. >> Bill Benson: Before the war Louise, your father had
been an avid collector of art and other objects. How important was that to your survival? >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: It was very important because my father used his art, and this was not Rembrandts or Picassos, this was small artifacts that were actually stored by one of his friends so if he needed to buy food for us or medicine, we had no income, so he was able to barter for things that
we needed by trading his artifacts, and he more or less used everything that he had.
There was very little left after the war so again, that is very lucky and he just
had enough. It wasn't always enough like if he wanted a whole loaf of bread maybe a little bowl
would give him six slices so it was never what he thought that it would be, a lot of stuff, but it
was just enough to keep us from actually starving. >> Bill Benson: And to use those items it meant, as you
described a little while ago, he had to leave the attic. He had to venture out at great risk to get
the basics: some food to eat, probably some fuel for the little camp stove that you
had, and certainly if you ever needed medicine. So tremendous risks for him to go out there. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: It was,
but I don't think he thought about it because this was survival. So the rest of us did not go out, he
did, and sometimes he was actually warned because he always made contact with - we had three people
in the resistance that kind of took care of us. Two of them survived, one of them
did not. One of them was betrayed. The resistance, when they got organized, they had
a special system, so he was sometimes warned, you're planning to go out next Monday.
Don't go out because we're expecting something. 'Something' was always a roundup in the area, or it
was too dangerous to go out if he hadn't been out for a while. One of these three people from the
resistance used to come and visit us they were the only people who knew where we were. Even relatives had
no idea where we are. When you were in hiding you don't exist anymore and nobody should know where
you are. So they would come and see first of all if you were still there. We could have been
betrayed. And then always how they could help. Pretty amazing heroes. >> Bill Benson: They sure sound it.
They sure sound it, Louise. Despite the difficulties of living in the attic, as you've
described to us so far, in July 1944 your family decided to have a celebration. So you have
to tell us about what they were celebrating. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Right. So again backtracking a little bit, my parents were really amazing people and of course you always discover that when you're getting a
little older, not right in the middle of our occupation and hiding time. But they
had one thought during that time of hiding, and that was to try to keep their children
safe. They wanted for the children to stay together and have a life and they tried
anything. And one of the things that they did is they never talked to us about the outside
world. They didn't tell us that our country was occupied, they didn't tell us that we
were persecuted because we were Jews, and they didn't tell us anything that we
were hungry, and if we were cold in the winter they never made a big deal out of it.
We as children always got something to eat before we went to sleep. Sometimes we shared
a cracker because there was not more, but our parents always saved something for the
children, was always about the children. So my father had gone out again in June 1944 and when
he came back his face looked different. I guess my parents always looked worried but I didn't know
my parents different. That was also normal for my brother and myself, but my brother said, Papa you
look different. What happened? And my father tried to explain but my brother and I of course did not
understand, because we didn't know what was going on in the outside. But my father explained to Mom
and Selma that he had heard from the resistance that the Allied Army had landed in Normandy,
northern France. Here you see one of the landings. And he became more hopeful. He said, so there is
help on the way. When that will come we don't know but I'm hopeful that we might make it. Because
if he worried or the adults worried every hour of the day, every minute of the day, because
we could have been betrayed and betrayal would mean deportation to a death camp. >> Bill Benson: Right. And the
image that we see here are American troops landing at Omaha Beach, June 6, 1944. So on top of celebrating the Normandy invasion and the hope that that would bring liberation soon, it was also your birthday. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Right. My birthday was a couple of weeks later and my father picked
that day. He said we need to celebrate this moment of help on the way. And they had to
really organize this because they couldn't go to a store like today, you can organize
a birthday party within a day or really a couple of hours, but that took a while. So mom cut
up an old blouse and made a beautiful dress for me. Selma from old rags made a doll like the Raggedy
Ann doll, was my first doll I was going to get. My brother had only one toy when we went into
hiding he was two years old and he was allowed to bring one toy and he brought a little wooden
pull horse. I was allowed to look at it but I was not allowed to play with it. It was his toy. So
he wrapped it and he was going to give it to me on my birthday. My father also talked to one of his
friends and this friend said, I'm going to come over on the birthday, and he brought over socks
and shoes that I didn't have. Shoes were a little bit too small, but for the picture they put them on
my feet. He brought a little wicker chair, a doll's chair. He said, she's going to get a doll, now she can
play house. So it was really a fantastic birthday. My best gift when I opened it was my brother's
toy because I thought, now it's going to be mine. Except he told me it was just for the day and
I had to give it back at night, but at least it was mine for the day, it was fine. I saw the chair and it
was little, it was a doll's chair, but I was little and I could sit in it. So here I'm sitting on this
chair, but this picture that I got after the war because my father's friend took the camera and
the film with him and said, if she survives she'll get the picture. And I also realize it's a tribute
to my parents because you see a perfectly normal little two-year-old without a worry in the world
because my parents didn't want us to grow up worried. They never told us what was
happening and they never told us about their relatives they were worried about,
and all their worries. So I'm perfectly happy, and that's really a tribute to my parents. >> Bill Benson: And that's such a incredible photograph in so many ways, but you're wearing that special dress that your mom made for you for your birthday. You're holding the doll that I believe Selma made
for you, and you've got your brother's toy for the day that's yours at your feet, and the
shoes and socks. That's an incredible photograph. And you're sitting on the little
wicker chair so let's see that. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: So this is the wicker chair, what was really one of our very few toys and it's very beautiful. It was 150 years old, was already
an antique of course by the time I got it. And now it's way older because that's
over 80 years ago, 78 years ago. So we were rough with this chair. We stood on
it, we threw it at each other when we were angry, and but it survived and of course it
was pretty damaged after liberation. And you can see a lighter area on the bottom where
my mom had the chair restored. It stayed with us during when our children grew up but
it was fragile, and you always had to have a lot of room around it. And I asked one of our
daughters if they wanted it and they said, no Mom then we have to be careful with it. So I said
well what if we donate it to the Holocaust Museum in Washington? And they said, that's
a good idea, so that's where it is now. They stabilized it and they take good care of it, and
once in a while they show it, and sometimes it's in the Permanent Exhibit. And we're
all very happy that the Museum has it now. >> Bill Benson: Louise, of course in the summer of 1944 after the D-Day invasion and the Allies are on the march, there is the constant danger
of bombs dropping on Amsterdam. There are air raids, bombs being dropped. That must have
been especially frightening for your parents. Do you remember anything about the air raids? >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Right.
So as soon as a bomber flies over a certain area, we had warning signs. They were very sharp
air raid alarms and that was a sign for people to actually go into a shelter because the bombs
at that time were attached underneath the wings and not always attached right because the
turnaround time was not always long enough. So some bombs would fall off, so people were warned
and were told to go into a shelter. Of course we couldn't because we couldn't go out. Also we didn't
exist, we lived in an attic in hiding. So my father knew that the strongest part of a row house in
Amsterdam is the staircase, so we had a routine. The alarm goes off, my brother would grab my hands,
and we will tiptoe to the door because we had a front door all the way up in the attic and my
father would open the door, look in the stairwell, and then point to us to sit on the staircase. Mom
would have an emergency basket with some food and some other things that we might
need, and Selma always had blankets. And we would sit on the staircase till another
alarm would sound again, and that was the all clear alarm. So when the bomber had flown over
and it was safe for people to go back into their houses or apartments, there was a second alarm
and that was a sign for us to go back into our attic. And sometimes there were days that this
happened more than 20 times day and night so it was not always fun to get out of your warm bed,
but we didn't know any better this is what we did. It's also funny when you walked around in
Amsterdam after the war and it took a long time to restore houses. There were some bombs
that had fallen on houses and true enough the houses didn't exist but the staircase was
still there. It really was the strongest part of the house. >> Bill Benson: It may have been but just, you know,
for all of us listening to you, imagine everybody else, you know, who wasn't in
your circumstance could run to shelters somewhere, you remained in a stairwell four stories
up in a building. That just must have been absolutely terrifying to have happen once, much
less multiple times in the course of a day. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: For us it was just following what my parents told us to do. >> Bill Benson: Right, as you said you didn't know differently. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: We didn't really know except we didn't like the alarms, and I still don't
like the alarms today. It still reminds me of that. >> Bill Benson: In late 1944, Allied Forces made their way to the
Netherlands in the hope of liberating your country but they were forced to stop short. Will you
tell us why they stopped - what stopped them - from reaching Amsterdam and being able to
liberate you at that time? so the country >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: So the country south of the Netherlands is Belgium, and when the Allied Army liberated western Belgium and they crossed the border into the Netherlands, one-third of the Netherlands is separated from two-thirds, the northern part, by three
rivers, large rivers, that run horizontal. They really cut the country and the largest river
is the Rhine River that most people know about. So when the Allies came to the rivers and they
had liberated the southern part of Holland, they realized that we had an early onset of a
very severe winter 1944-1945 in northern Europe, that they didn't have the right equipment to
cross three rivers. So they left the Canadian part of the Allied Army, Canadian Army, camped
by the rivers and they were told when the rivers thaw in the spring, liberate the rest of the
Netherlands. And the rest of the Allied Army went into liberated eastern Belgium and into Germany.
So the southern part of the Netherlands, people are dancing in the streets, supply lines are coming
through, no more ration or there was still ration, but I mean there is food at least that they
can buy with their rations. They can sing in the street, they can wave Dutch flags,
and they're happy. And then we in the north have another eight months of a terrible winter.
We actually called it the 'Hunger Winter.' It's for all Dutch people, not just for people in hiding.
Supply lines are closed off by the Nazis, winter crops are frozen because the winter started way too early, and we have eight more months of Nazi occupation. >> Bill Benson: How do you think your parents were able to get you through that terrible winter of 1944 to 1945? >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Yeah, I have
very vivid memories because we were hungry, but my father had emergency food. When he found
out that the southern part was liberated, he was able to trade a lot of his things
for a lot of butter, sugar, and flour, and he baked cookies that he sealed in tins that
he had gotten from his friends. And that was emergency food. There was so much butter in those
cookies that it would keep you for a little while, but I do remember being hungry and and getting
to eat things that made us really sick because they were not really edible, like tulip bulbs.
But the other memory is that we were so cold that we developed chilblains on our
hands and feet. Chilblains are very, very painful and that's caused by the cold, and it still
exists today, but you can get a cream for it. And a cream existed at that time but it was
nowhere to be found. We cried, my brother and I, we were in so much pain. So my father remembered
that farmers in the 1930s, when they had to feed their livestock in the wintertime, they also
had chilblains because it was so cold outside. And they knew exactly what to do. They put
their hands and feet in cow or horse's urine. And the uric acid in the urine is the same thing
that's actually in the cream that will take care of the pain. We didn't have horses or cows of
course upstairs, and my father made us pee in a potty before we went to sleep and put our hands
and feet in our own pee-pee. We did not know it was yucky or disgusting, all we knew is that the pain would go away. We could fall asleep without pain. So we were fine with that. >> Bill Benson: And that's a memory
that you still have to this day, doing that. Finally on May 5th, 1945 Canadian Forces liberated
Amsterdam. You were three years old at the time. Tell us what you know about what it was like to come out of hiding for you and your family and Selma after all that time. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: When my father
heard all the noise on the street, he actually pulled a chair next to the dormer window. He
opened the window and he looked out and he said, I think it's over. Well we didn't know what
was over because we didn't know what was going on. But miraculously he had one tin of cookies left
and he was hungry, so he stuffed his face and put the tin on the table and told us we could all
take a cookie, a whole cookie - we'd only share the cookie before. So my brother said, oh that
is what it means. Being free means eating cookies. We had no concept. So after a few days, my parents
wanted to be absolutely sure that it was safe. My father said we're going outside. So my brother and
I, holding on to each other for dear life, followed my father four flights of stairs. My father opened
the front door, it was a beautiful sunny spring day and the sun blinded us. We walked onto the
street and we looked left and right. It was very strange for us and we were scared. We
didn't know what a street was. We thought if you walk to - we lived in the middle of the
block - but if you walk to either side of the street, you will fall off the street. We didn't
know that the street goes into another street or into a square, we were just afraid. My brother
started crying. I mimicked everything he did and I cried too. My brother said, I don't want
to be free like this, I want to go back upstairs. So it was a tough thing for my parents
because they had succeeded. They had no idea what had happened to any of their
relatives because communications were not there yet - took a long time - but they have saved
their children, and then the children don't want it. So they took us back upstairs, also explained that my real name was Louise, so from then on, no more Maria. And after a
couple of days they said we're going out for a walk. So we walk outside again, again crying, holding
on to each other, my brother and I. And we see all these people on the streets. My parents took us
to the end of the street, it took us to a square, and people were celebrating freedom. They were
climbing on Canadian military vehicles, they were just happy. Everybody is wearing rags
because nobody was able to go to a store and buy new clothes if they were even in the in the stores.
And so Canadian soldiers were mingling with Dutch people and talking to them, and then they
see these two kids crying, so they came over to us. I have no idea what they were saying, I didn't
speak English, but they gave each my brother and I a Hershey bar, and my mom said we could taste
the chocolate. You have no idea, the first time you taste chocolate is magic. We couldn't finish
the bar because our stomachs were so little. We took the rest home. But the next morning my brother
wakes up he jumps off his mattress and he screams, "Can we go outside again?" He wanted more Hershey
bars. So that shows you how resilient children are. No more crying. Hershey bars. >> Bill Benson: So at that point, you were able to begin to sort of normalize life outside in the world. We we have a comment
and a question from a viewer named Catherine. Catherine says, "I'm amazed at the foresight
your parents had during such a horrific time. To keep you from feeling trapped and isolated,
that they purposely made your reality the norm. Such love and wisdom they had. What did your
family do following the war? Where did you live?" >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: So we went to the country as soon as my parents could, and then my father had a friend in Sweden - Sweden had been neutral - in Stockholm
who came over maybe two months after liberation. And he offered my dad a job because there was
no job for my father anymore. The business was really worked into the ground. All the machinery
and everything was sent to Germany. There were just four walls left. So my father needed
a job. My mom of course was pregnant again and - my parents had three more children after the war.
And so we moved to Sweden for a couple of years. Just before - my father went first so the
first month that we lived in the country, my parents had enrolled my brother and I in
a Montessori school system where everybody is not on the same page. We were so far ahead in
certain things and so far behind in other things. And we lived in Sweden for two years. My father
was asked by the Dutch government to come back and restart his business. So we moved back to
Holland in 1948 and we, my brother and I, went back to the Montessori school. We stayed there for the
whole grammar school and that really was a very good thing for us. The rest of my siblings
followed, we all went to the same school. My father was able, with the help of the Marshall
Plan, monetary help like a loan, to restart his business and it took five years of very hard
work. In 1953 the business became profitable again. >> Bill Benson: Louise, at what age do you think - do you
recall - that you began to understand the enormity of what had happened during the Holocaust? And
what was the impact on you when you finally had that realization of what it really was about? >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Right. So I knew that we were different. I knew different things that happened to us, but my parents didn't want to talk about it. I did ask my friend Selma some things but I realized what the Nazis had done to Jews when I started working as a physical therapist in Amsterdam. I joined a large practice and a lot of my patients were camp survivors that had all kinds of
ailments, most of them caused by being in the camp and the hard labor they had
to do. And they talked. Nobody else in the Netherlands talked, but they talked. You have
a special rapport when you have patients, and you try to put them at ease and they
talk, and I realized what had been done. And then I wanted to know more about it and I
read as much as I could but really everything - not everything, nobody knows everything - but
I learned most of course when I started volunteering at the Holocaust Museum in 1994. And
every day there's something new that we find out. >> Bill Benson: I've been amazed at what you're still
learning about your own personal story to this day. I have one more question for you today and that
is in the face of rising global antisemitism, tell us why you continue to share your first-hand account of what you and your family went through during the Holocaust. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Right. So during the Holocaust
approximately 12 million people were murdered by the Nazis. Out of those 12 million, there were 6
million Jews, and out of those six million Jews, there were a million and a half innocent Jewish
children. They had never done anything wrong in life. They were murdered because they were
Jewish, and people let it happen. People stood by and did absolutely nothing. I want people to be
aware what really happened. The Holocaust was genocide, and when you learn about it,
you think that should never happen again. Never, never. But people didn't learn. It's still
happening today. In late '70s, there's a genocide in Cambodia, 1992 in Bosnia, 1994 in Rwanda.
And look in this age that we're living in now. Genocide in countries in Africa. There was genocide
in the Middle East. And today still the the Uyghurs in China - there is a Muslim group that lives in
China - they're being persecuted by the Chinese. And the Rohingya people in Burma. We cannot be
silent. So if I tell you that a million and a half innocent children were murdered and people
didn't do anything, that is so horrendous. And when people learn that, my hope is that they will
join me. I don't know how long I can still talk. I will talk till I can't talk anymore, but I need
everybody's help. People need to speak up when they hear that there's something horrible going on,
and you need to learn about it and then speak up. So the website of the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum can keep you informed of what is going on in the world, and it can also help you and
give you ideas what you can do. My advice is though, always do something together. Do it with a group.
For instance, if you have a bully in your school and that bully wants you to do something and you
confront that bully by yourself, that bully doesn't want to be confronted. He or she will bop
you over the head and hurt you. But if you confront that bully as a group, he or she has nothing
more to say. You will succeed so don't be silent. Tell people what happens when you don't
respect other people, when people have a different religion than you, have different color
skin, dress differently, have a different language. We need to respect each other and we need to help
each other, and that's why I'm still speaking. If you've heard from me and people tell you the
Holocaust never happened, you can say, but I heard it from somebody who was there. Yes it did happen. That's why I'm still speaking and I will speak till I can't speak anymore. >> Bill Benson: And we are so grateful and
blessed by having you continue to speak as you are doing today. Before we wrap up, I'd like to share
with you, Louise, some comments from the audience. Douglas writes, "Thank you for sharing your
story. You are such an inspiring and positive soul." And Cheryl writes, "As the grandchild of a survivor,
I listen to as many first-hand stories as possible. Ms. Lawrence-Israëls, your story is absolutely
remarkable and I appreciate the opportunity to hear you speak." And I think Cheryl speaks
for all of us that are listening to you today. Louise, thank you so much. There's just so
much that you shared with us but one of the most compelling for me is you gave us
such an insight into that small world. You talked about the big world your parents had, the big
life, and then you had that very small life, but your parents did everything possible for that
small world, that small life to be your normal life. That is just extraordinary. So thank
you, thank you, thank you for that. >> Louise Lawrence-Israëls: Thank you very much, Bill. Thank you all for listening. And please do not forget: help. It should never happen again. >> Bill Benson: I would like to take a moment to thank our donors. First Person is made possible through the generous
support of the Louis Franklin Smith Foundation. And I also would like to invite you to
join us again next month on July 20th, 2022 at 1:00 PM Eastern Time for a conversation
with Holocaust survivor and Museum volunteer, Rose-Helene Spreiregen. At the age of 12, Rose-Helene
shouldered adult responsibilities as fundamental as finding food for her and her grandmother.
Tune in to learn about her survival in France.
