A Boy, His Neighbour, and Her Diary

I joined the Zoom call with Pieter Kohnstam a few minutes early as I was eager to ask him all of my questions. He was already on the call, with his back to me while rummaging in his bookshelf to find some book of interest. This was not my first encounter with Pieter. A number of years ago I was blessed to inherit a priceless family tree, written by my great-grandfather, Leo Klein, who had narrowly escaped Germany in 1937, arriving in British Mandate Palestine to reunite with family members. This tree, tracing hundreds of family members, and reaching as far back as the early 18th century had names, dates, locations, pictures, and a rather humorous commentary at times. Unlike Leo, I had the internet at my disposal, and after some years of research, I had managed to add hundreds more people to our family tree and something amazing began to unfold. I was finding distant relatives from all over the world, from Israel to Germany, South Africa, Australia, the UK, and the USA. One of those relatives was Pieter Kohnstam. It turns out that Pieter is my third cousin once removed: his great-grandmother was the sister of my great-great grandfather. And he had a story to tell.

Pieter was born in Amsterdam in 1936 after his parents, Hans and Ruth, had fled Germany during the early days of the Nazi regime, leaving behind a lucrative toy merchandising company. The Kohnstams settled in the Rivierenbuurt neighbourhood on a street called Merwedeplein. Fate had it that on that street, in the very same apartment building, lived another Jewish family of four: Otto, Edith, Margot, and Anne Frank.

I asked Pieter what his earliest memory of life in Amsterdam was and he began to paint a picture, “My mother would take me on the tram around Amsterdam. The streets were filled with performers and vendors, singing songs and performing plays. As a young child, I was mesmerised by their performances. I remember Anne Frank, constantly in my home, leaving her papers all over the place.”

When pressing him on other early childhood memories, his words turned dark, “I remember the killings. The murders. The raids. I saw a soldier pull a senior citizen off the streets, ordering him to polish his boots. The elderly Jew did as he was told, and the soldier then spat on the shoes and ordered the man to polish again, this time with his hands. I remember seeing older men being lined up by a wall, only to be shot down moments later.”

As I listened intently to his words, it struck me, how through the eyes of a six-year-old, the world must have seemed such a confusing place. On the one hand, life went on as normal, with street vendors, school, and public transportation; on the other hand, it was brutal and murderous, with an air of betrayal permeating the whispers of those living in fear.

German raids had become a regular occurrence. The Nazis had murdered a family living in the next apartment, killing everyone except for one girl who somehow survived. The raids got closer and eventually reached the Kohnstam home. One day, sirens began to blare, and a truck filled with Nazi soldiers could be seen on the street. The soldiers stormed into the Kohnstams’ apartment, threatening to shoot if anyone dared to move. The Nazi soldiers marked their insignia on all the Kohnstams’ belongings before leaving.?

That was the backdrop to Pieter’s childhood, raids, and killings, mixed in with the more ordinary instances of playing with the girl next door. It is evident when speaking with Pieter, even so many years after these events transpired, how Anne Frank is so close to his heart. I asked him to describe what she meant to him, and his face lit up, “Anne was a young, normal, very brilliant girl. She would act out fantasies and fables and I was her audience. I had to sit quietly and not talk, just listen. She was very smart, and it was clear that one day she would be someone to be reckoned with because of her smartness.”?

“My mother became very close friends with Edith, Anne’s mother. Edith was very orderly, and Anne left her papers around the house, everywhere. Edith would complain to my mother saying she is having problems with Anne leaving her papers strewn all over the apartment. My mother said, ‘why don’t you buy her a diary?’ That became the red-checked diary Anne received on her 13th birthday. There would not have been a diary at all had my mother not suggested it.”

By 1942, the condition of the Jews in occupied Amsterdam was as dire as it was throughout Europe. When the Kohnstams were issued deportation orders to Westerbork, a transit camp later issuing transportations to Auschwitz in Poland and to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia, they had an important decision to make. Otto Frank extended an offer to them to share the concealed annex where he intended to hide his family. Instead, the Kohnstams fled Amsterdam in what would be an arduous year-long journey on foot through Belgium, France, and Spain, eventually reaching freedom in Argentina. That decision, not to join the Franks in hiding, was a brave one; the pain of not seeing them again was one that Pieter describes in his book, A Chance to Live, which was written through the eyes of his father, Hans Stefan Kohnstam.

In the morning of July 6, 1942, Anne Frank came to say good-bye to us. The Franks were about to go into hiding in their secret annex. It was a sad and difficult parting for everyone. As things had deteriorated, Anne had come down every day to play with Pieter [age 6]. Ruth [Pieter's mother, age 31] and Clara [Ruth's mother/Pieter's grandmother] had become very fond of her. We hugged and kissed each other good-bye. Remembering that moment still brings tears to my eyes.

The Kohnstam’s story of survival took quite a different route to that of many of the survivor stories we usually hear. Their story is a story of being on the run. Leaving your place of relative security in exchange for being constantly on the move, not knowing where you will end up tomorrow is a frightening thought. I asked Pieter if he could describe what he felt while being on his journey. “Insecurity. The invisible enemy was betrayal. Betrayal which impregnated all the things I was seeing and witnessing and living through. You didn’t know who to trust anymore.”

Of course, Pieter and his family had to trust several people along the way, none more so than Gerda Leske, a German Christian friend and owner of two salons, who had helped the Kohnstams flee, devising a clever plan. Her audacious idea was to create a mock fashion show in her Maastricht salon, with Pieter’s mother impersonating the model. Pieter’s father, who was an artist, falsified the documents so well that they were used all the way until their eventual escape to Argentina. This moment, when they fled Amsterdam, is described in Pieter’s book, written from the perspective of his father, Hans:

Fortunately, we all made it safely to Gerda's salon. Since we did not look like shoppers, we entered through the back door, so as not to arouse suspicions. The first thing we did was to remove the Stars of David from our garments. It was a cumbersome process, but critical for our survival. We rubbed dye into the areas where the yellow patches had covered the fabric, so they would match the rest of the coat where the material looked more worn.

?Gerda had come up with a clever cover story: She was taking her staff to a fashion show in Maastricht. Since Ruth was a young and beautiful woman, she would go as her fashion model. I was the artist and would act as the company's fashion designer. And Pieter would come along as Gerda's son. We impressed on Pieter that he would have to be absolutely quiet for the duration of the train ride, and that he would have to act as if Ruth were a stranger. Knowing what a challenge it would be for a gregarious child who liked to talk to anybody, and who was, no doubt, as scared as we were, worried me. How would he behave under these tense circumstances? Would he be able to keep silent and deny his own mother?

These were the questions a parent on the run had to ask of his young child. I asked Pieter, how did your parents know who to trust and when. He told me, “My mother spoke 11 languages fluently. They learned how to make the right connections with the underground and resistance movements. My mother worked for about three months in the French Resistance, La Résistance. But it didn’t always work out. At one point, a few months later, she was imprisoned trying to cross the border to Spain to meet us in Barcelona. Luckily, she was later released. I was always with my father. We constantly had to ask ourselves, ‘where does trust end and betrayal begin?’”

The Kohnstams eventually reached Argentina after a yearlong journey. Interestingly, Pieter recalled how his mother recognised the faces of many of the Nazis in Argentina for years after arriving. Pieter spent many of his formative years in South America before eventually moving to the USA, where he lives today. More recently, he has been very active in meeting and speaking to groups from all over the world about the Holocaust and his experiences.

When considering what his message for the future generations would be, he said, “First of all, don’t be indifferent. Second, educate yourself. Go visit the camps, read the books, it’s all there; you may not like it, but you will never forget it. Combat ignorance with knowledge and with respect. And remember, there is something the Germans couldn’t take from us – that is hope.”

?