Hiding and Unhiding in Amsterdam

“Why are you there?” That is what he asked.

“Because I want to be.” That is what I answered.

He did not understand the irony of that exchange, but I did.

In or around the early-1600s, my 9th Great Grandfathers, Aron de Querido and Manuel Abraham de Castro Tartas escaped the Inquisition that had spread from Spain to Portugal by coming to Amsterdam.? The Netherlands at the time were in the height of their Golden Age and accepted these Jews, who up until then would have been living in Catholic Portugal as “New Christians” under the threat of death. For approximately 100 years before Aron came Amsterdam, my family would have been living in hiding in Portugal. In fact, Manuel went by his Christian name in Portugal Christovao Luis. These Jews were baptized into the Catholic Church and hid their Jewish ancestry as they lived under constant threat.

Upon arriving here at that point, they would have joined the burgeoning Sephardic Jewish community in Amsterdam just in time for the consecration of what would be the largest synagogue in the world. From that point on, the records of my family are centralized in that Jewish community, where today I was able to trace their birth, marriage and death certificates to. I can see those two men marry women who were born here and then I can see their two children, Jacob and Ester’s marriage record which dates back to 1654. In fact, I am able to trace my family records from that marriage until the late 1800s, when my grandfather’s father boarded a ship to New York, where he married his wife, Celia, an orphan, on November 11, 1900.

My family found their safety in Amsterdam after years of hiding. And yet this city also is home to the one place that is known the world-over for a Jew in hiding, Anne Frank’s Secret Annex.

Less than a few miles from where my family came out of hiding, she and her family went into hiding.

Had my Great Grandfather not boarded a boat 40 years before her family tried to, our family also probably would have perished.

And today, I am here because I want to be.

While I was researching the lives of my family that had lived in Holland for 250 years thriving in the safety net of large resilient community, the woman behind me was searching for information on her family that had been killed in Bergen Belson, the same camp where Anne and Margot Frank had died.

The same records that I used to trace my family roots would have been used to track down Jews living here during World War II. The same Jewish community that had welcomed and embraced my ancestors fleeing persecution became the persecuted. The same names that are listed at the Portuguese Synagogue, as founders and members are listed on the lists and registrars of people killed by the Nazis. Before the war, there were 4300 Sephardic Jews living here. On May 9, 1945, the Jews who remained in this city came together for their first gathering since 1941 in the buildings that house those names on their walls. Over time, they would discover that about 800 of them remained alive.

The community that had once saved my family was decimated.

The irony is not lost on me.

?