WALLY VAN HALL | Movie in English Now

Ben Boissevain (L), son of the late Thijs
Boissevain. John Tepper Marlin (R),
grandson of Olga Boissevain.

May 29, 2018 – Boissevain family members from the Charlestjes (John Tepper Marlin) and the Jantjes (Ben Boissevain) lines have been talking in East Hampton this Memorial Day weekend about the need for a movie about Wally van Hall in English.

(PS: October 21, 2018–It has happened. The Dutch movie about Wally van Hall is now available from Netflix with dubbed-in English. My wife Alice has watched it and says the dubbing is excellent. If you watch, please send your comments to me – john[at]boissevainbooks.com. It would still be good to have a Hollywood-level feature movie.)

Wally van Hall has become well known in Holland, because of several books about him, a documentary and now a feature film. But he is not known in the English-speaking world, which is a pity. He was a banker and a hero of the Dutch Resistance. It is a great story.

He has been called "The Banker of the the Resistance" and even "The Prime Minister of the Resistance" because Wally not only financed most of the Resistance work but used his financial leverage and personal charm to keep the various groups within the Resistance working together.

The following bio of Wally appears on the Resistance Museum website, no doubt tied in to the new movie in Dutch (English translation of the title: "Banker of the Resistance" or "Resistance Banker") about Wally van Hall. The trailer for the movie is here: https://youtu.be/i7bKkoT3p4I.

The link to the Verzetsmuseum (Resistance Museum) is at the end of this post. For more information, contact teppermarlin [at] aol.com.

L to R: Tilly and Wally van Hall at
their Wedding.

WALLY van HALL, 1906-1945. BANKER TO THE RESISTANCE

Sixty-five years after the Liberation of Holland, Walraven (Wally) van Hall has been given a monument.

A bronze tree lies like a fallen giant opposite the Nederlandsche Bank in Amsterdam. In 1945 the young banker was acclaimed as a bridge builder and a leading figure in the Resistance. But the story of Wally van Hall was gradually forgotten.

Wally van Hall – code name Van Tuyl – was a co-founder of the bank of the Resistance, the Nationaal Steunfonds (National Assistance Fund) or NSF. Through illegal loans and a fraud involving millions at the central bank, the Nederlandsche Bank, the NSF was able to distribute over 83 million guilders  to victims of the Occupation and countless Resistance groups. This kind of organisation was unique in Europe in the Second World War. Wally was the undisputed leader of the NSF in the west of the Netherlands.

On 27 January 1945 Wally van Hall was arrested by the Germans. He was executed by firing squad in Haarlem on 12 February, three months before the Liberation.

Seaman, banker and father
Wally van Hall grew up in an Amsterdam family of bankers and directors. But he wanted something different. Wally went to sea. He became third mate on the ocean-going trade with NV Koninklijke Hollandsche Lloyd. In 1929 it was found that his eyesight was not good enough for work at sea. He had to stop peering at the horizon. He went to New York and became a banker after all.

On returning to the Netherlands he married Tilly den Tex, the love of his life. They had three children. In March 1940 he became a partner in the banking house Wed. J. te Veltrup & Zoon. When war broke out the young family were living in Zaandam. Almost every day Wally went to the Amsterdam stock exchange. There he made contacts for his work as the banker of the Resistance.

Running an illegal bank
The NSF was set up in 1943 when ever more money was needed for Resistance groups and to support thousands of people in hiding and other victims of the Occupation.

To keep the money flowing, Wally van Hall argued that in future only large amounts of at least 25,000 guilders should be borrowed. He hoped that this would also reduce the risk of being caught. For this reason he and his brother Gijs devised a system for the intricate web of illegal loans. All loans were administered in code.

On the expenditure side too, where there were the most NSF workers, everything was recorded in detail. Applications for assistance were checked. And all payments were registered, so that after the war they could be accounted for. 

The flow of money at the Nationaal Steunfonds
In the course of the war more and more money was needed to fund the Resistance. By May 1945 the NSF – the bank of the Resistance – had distributed over 83 million guilders to Resistance groups and many tens of thousands who needed help.

Hardly anyone knew where all that money came from. Income and expenditure were strictly separated, so that if one was discovered the other would not be endangered. Only Wally van Hall knew everything about both sides of ‘the bank’.  Together with his brother Gijs he ran the income department of the NSF, the Disconto Instituut.

Dispersed about the country there were 23 NSF districts, with district heads, cashiers, administrators and collecting clerks. They were mainly concerned with expenditure. All told, some 2,000 workers transported suitcases full of money, brought wage packets to homes, helped Resistance groups or did the bookkeeping.

Leading figures in the NSF 
The Nationaal Steunfonds (NSF) was founded in 1943 by Wally van Hall and Iman van den Bosch. They both worked for the Zeemanspot, a fund to help the wives of seamen run by Captain Abraham Philippo of Rotterdam. As the Resistance grew in 1943 and ever more people needed help, Wally van Hall and Iman van van den Bosch decided to extend their assistance.

The leading figures in the NSF were: Wally van Hall, Iman van den Bosch and A.J. Gelderblom. They held weekly meetings in Utrecht. Gijs van Hall played a vital role in the background as the financial adviser. He and his brother raised tens of millions for the NSF.

A monument to Wally
Wally van Hall was arrested by the Germans on 27 January 1945 on Leidsegracht in Amsterdam. At first they did not realise whom they had caught because they were looking for a certain Van Tuyl. But Wally was betrayed while in prison. On 12 February 1945 Wally van Hall was executed by firing squad on Jan Gijzenkade in Haarlem.

In March 1945 the Resistance newspaper Vrije Gedachten published an In Memoriam which described him as "one of the leaders of the Resistance whose authority was unchallenged."

Soon after the Liberation Walraven van Hall was reburied at the memorial cemetery in Bloemendaal. Now, 64 years after the Liberation, a  monument to him has been erected on Frederiksplein in Amsterdam. Read more.

After the war
Immediately after the war the process of clearing up all the wartime financial transactions began. Loans to the NSF were repaid by the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the substitution of the fake treasury notes was set right.

After the war the NSF – now a foundation – still had 22 million guilders left in cash. This money was used to make financial contributions to the building of the National Monument on the Dam in Amsterdam and to the founding of the  Netherlands Institute for War Documentation. In 1953 the NSF Foundation was dissolved.

The bio above, slightly edited, is from the Verzetsmuseum (Resistance Museum) in Amsterdam, near the ARTIS Zoo.
https://www.verzetsmuseum.org/museum/en/exhibitions/missed/missed-wally-van-hall

Source of photo: Philip Stoffels,  https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Stoffels-29

Memorial Walraven van Hall Amsterdam - TracesOfWar.com

https://www.tracesofwar.com/sights/.../Memorial-Walraven-van-Hall-Amsterdam.htm 

Walraven van Hall, also called "the Banker of the Resistance", was one of the greatest Dutch resistance fighters during World War II. With inventiveness …

Hall, Walraven Wally van. - WW2 Gravestone

https://ww2gravestone.com/people/hall-walraven-wally-van

Hall, Walraven "Wally" van, born 10-02-1906 in Amsterdam into an influential Dutch family, as the third child of the banker Adriaan Floris van Hall and Petronella ...

ExecutedToday.com » 1945: Walraven van Hall, banker to the ...

www.executedtoday.com/2019/02/.../1945-walraven-van-hall-banker-to-the-resistanc...

1945: Walraven van Hall, banker to the Resistance. February 12th, 2019 Headsman. Wally van Hall, the Dutch banker, fraudster, and national hero, was ...

Film on forgotten Holocaust resistance fighter rocks the box office in ...

https://www.timesofisrael.com/film-on-forgotten-holocaust-resistance-fighter-rocks-th..

Oct 23, 2018 - Barry Atsma, left, and Jacob Derwig portray Walraven and Gijs van Hall respectively in 'The Resistance Banker.' (Dutch FilmWorks/via JTA).

Holland reacts enthusiastically to film on banker brothers who duped ...

https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/holland-reacts-enthusiastically-to-film-on-ban..

Oct 18, 2018 - Actors Barry Atsma, left, and Jacob Derwig play Walraven and Gijs van Hall, respectively, in “The Resistance Banker.” (Dutch FilmWorks).

Banker To The Resistance – Walraven van Hall | toritto

https://toritto.wordpress.com/2018/10/10/banker-to-the-resistance-walraven-van-hall

Oct 10, 2018 - Because of his banking experience, van Hall was able to provide funding with the help of guarantees by the Dutch government in London.

Walraven van Hall Monument (Amsterdam) - 2019 All You Need to ...

https://www.tripadvisor.com › ... › Amsterdam › Things to Do in Amsterdam

Rating: 4 - 7 reviews

Sort this monument out after watching the movie of the same name. Located in Frederiksplein Square this fallen life size tree is dedicated to Walraven van Hall.

Here is the story of his wife Tilly: http://bit.ly/2BydfB9.

WW2 | Dutch-Paris Escape Route Mini-Symposium, Nov. 10

My cousin and friend Charles Boissevain, nicknamed "Charles Leidschendam" to distinguish him from other Charles Boissevains, wrote to me recently about a mini-symposium in Amsterdam on Nov. 10.

It will be conducted in English and will discuss the Dutch-Paris escape route during the Nazi Occupation of Holland, which started with the invasion on May 10, 1940 and lasted until 1945. Charles says:

The past few years I have spent quite a lot of time trying to convince the Yad Vashem authority in Jerusalem to award the Yad Vashem honor to Jean Michel Caubo, a Dutchman living in the war in Paris. The Dutch-Paris Line helped some 800 Jewish persons, some 200 Dutch "Engeland-vaarders" [Dutchmen trying to escape by sea, including two of my cousins Gi and Janka Boissevain] and some 200 allied airplane soldiers to escape. Via Paris to Switzerland, Spain, the UK. Caubo received them at the train in Paris and helped them escape. He did so until he was arrested in 1944 and evenrtually killed. His activities are recognised and honored by France, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. Time and again my friend Maarten Eliasar, the organiser of the symposium Nov. 10, and I have sent requests to the Yad Vashem Authority to give Caubo the Yad Vashem award. They have so far refused to do so. Of course I will go to this mini-symposium.

I have written about Caubo before–here and here. The symposium – which will be (reminder) conducted in English – will launch the publication of the Dutch translation of the book "Ordinary Heroes: The Dutch-Paris Escape Line 1942-1945" under the title Gewone Helden – De Dutch-Paris ontsnappingslijn 1942-1945 by Megan Koreman PhD, published by Uitgeverij Boom. Here is the program and other details:

ORDINARY HEROES: THE MAKING OF DUTCH-PARIS ("Gewone Helden")

Program, Nov. 10, 14.00 (doors open 13.30) Mini-symposium with the participation of Megan Koreman, historian and author of the book; Hans Blom, former director of NIOD; Ad van Liempt, author, journalist and tv-producer; Onno Sinke, historian and advisor at Arq Psychotrauma Expert Groep; and Max van Weezel, political scientist, journalist and radio anchor. The symposium will be followed by the presentation of the first copies of Gewone Helden and a reception.
Venue: Hilton Amsterdam, Apollolaan 138, 1077 BG Amsterdam.
Registration: Because places are limited, the symposium organizers ask you to register as soon as possible but definitely before October 20, 2016, by clicking on the following link: http://dutchparisblog.com/symposium-registration/. You will be led to a web page on the Dutch-Paris Blog where you can register. If you know anyone else who might be interested, please forward this email with the request to register as soon as possible.
Other Publicity:TV-broadcast ‘Andere Tijden’, Nov. 5, Dutch public network NPO2, approx. 21.10 hours: Dutch public broadcaster VPRO-NTR will feature Dutch-Paris in the episode ‘Ontsnappingsroute in de oorlog (Escape route during the war)’ in their renowned history series ‘Andere Tijden (Different Times)’.
Lodging: The Hilton Amsterdam offers a room rate for the symposium of €219 based on single occupancy (€239 double occupancy). This price includes breakfast and Wi-Fi but does not include 5% city tax and is based on availability. Reservations can be made through the booking link . If you intend to come and want to stay at the Amsterdam Hilton, make reservations a.s.a.p.
Sponsors: The invitation comes on behalf of Megan Koreman, the Weidner Foundation and Uitgeverij Boom from Maarten Eliasar, Van Eeghenstraat 137, 1071 GA Amsterdam, The Netherlands. symposium@dutchparis.com. The symposium is made possible by the support of Hilton Amsterdam and other sponsors.

AMSTERDAM | At the Concertgebouw Café, April 22

L to R: Aviva Boissevain, John Tepper
Marlin–second cousins once removed (her
great-grandfather was my grandmother's
brother).  Photo by Alice Tepper Marlin.

Amsterdam, April 26, 2016–On Earth Day last week Alice and I had lunch with Aviva Boissevain at the café in the Concertgebouw.

Aviva was the main moving force behind the Boissevain Family Reunion in Amsterdam on April 16-17.

This concert hall is something for which our ancestor Charles Boissevain fought through his newspaper, the Algemeen Handelsblad. As the late Sacha Boissevain told me at the dinner commemorating the 120th Anniversary of the Concertgebouw, "in 1888, grass grew here".

Two of Charles' sons, Charles E. H. and Menso Boissevain, were actively involved in the program of the orchestra, as was his son-in-law Han de Booij.

25th Anniversary Plaque. In 1913 Charles
E. H. Boissevain, son of Charles Handelsblad 
Boissevain, was on the Concertgebouw Board
with Han de Booy, his brother-in-law.
Mengelberg was one of the two conductors.
Photo by Aviva Boissevain.

The director of the Concertgebouw was nearby at the café and he kindly gave permission for us to go into the building to see the plaque honoring two Boissevain family members and their friend the orchestra leader Willem Mengelberg.

Mengelberg has been described as the greatest classical music conductor of the first half of the 20th century.

At the New York Philharmonic recently, my friend Riva Freifeld tells me the program notes for two different concerts mention Mengelberg:

• For the Béla Bartók program, the notes mention that Mengelberg was conductor of the world premiere of Bartók's 2nd Violin Concerto (a "fiendish, dazzling" piece, adds Freifeld) in March 1939 at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw; his soloist was Szekely, to whom the work was dedicated.



Willem Mengelberg. The greatest conductor
of his time?

• For the three-day Mahler program last week that included  performance of Das Lied von der Erde conducted by Alan Gilbert, the notes mention that Mengelberg conducted the NY Philharmonic premiere on Jan. 3, 1929, at the Concertgebouw.

I have previously written about Mengelberg's importance as an interpreter of Mahler and other new composers.

It was sad, but understandable, that after the war was over Dutch prosecutors decided he should be punished for having continued to perform during the Nazi occupation.

During the anti-collaboration fever after the war was over, Mengelberg's German birth was held against him; he was stripped of the many honors that the Queen had bestowed on him and he was exiled.

He lived out his remaining years in Switzerland. An appeal on his behalf was sustained but it came  too late and Mengelberg died abroad in 1951, his career having ended at the same time as the war.

HOLLAND | Zittin by the Zuider Zee

We are staying at the Country & Lake Guest House overlooking
what used to be the Zuider Zee and is now called the IJsselmeer.
This map was drawn in Leuwarden in 1866. The ZZ is now gone.

When I was growing up this song about the Zuider Zee was popular:

Zing, zing, zing a little sang with me, / I know we're not beside the Zuider Zee, / But when you're zittin by the zide af me, / I want to zing a little zang. 

Zing zome zentimenful melody, / About a chapel or an apple tree, / About a couple livin' happily, / And I'll be glad to zing along. (Music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Leo Robin.)

Well, here we are, Alice and I, actually zittin by the Zuider Zee, except you won't find it on a map any more.

Why We Are Zittin by the Zuider Zee

Where we are in Holland,
just north of Amsterdam.

We are in the Zeevang Polder area of Laag Holland. This literally means "Low Holland", but the tourist brochures call it "Old Holland" because the low-lying areas have been fighting back the water for centuries.

Old towns like Edam, next-door Volendam, and Marken are still thriving, centuries after they were trading centers for cheese and other products that went round the world. Edam is the quietest of the three locations and is just 21 km. (13 miles) north of Amsterdam, accessible via the 314 bus from the upper level at Central Station where the train from Schiphzl takes you.

Alice is accompanying me on a reunion of about 120 members of the Boissevain Family, about 80 from Holland and 40 from overseas.  We are living in a converted three-story barn three or four km. north of Edam on the dike, halfway to the rural town of Warder.

Dove stops and looks in...

The family connection is that my grandmother was born Olga Boissevain. She married an officer in the Dutch Navy, Bram van Stockum. My mother was a Navy BRAT–born in Rotterdam and taken at 2 months of age to Java, where her father had a naval assignment.

The Boissevains were Huguenots–i.e., French Protestants–living happily in the Dordogne, France. They were forced out of France by Louis XIV, the Sun King, who decided to revoke the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and thereby made it treasonous to be a Protestant.

...Then listens. The doves are
like roosters in this area.

If you know all the military-religious-political history, skip the next paragraph and just admire the photos:

Louis XIV was probably encouraged in the direction of persecuting Protestants by the accession to the British throne in 1685 of James II, the Catholic son of Charles I, who had been beheaded by Oliver Cromwell et al. The result was that the Huguenots left France en masse and their impact was huge in both directions. They contributed mightily to the commercial activity of the countries to which they migrated, while their departure seriously damaged the economy of France, which had chased them out. (They were sometimes called the Jews of France in tribute to their business acumen.) The loss of the Huguenots has been cited even by The Catholic Encyclopedia as a contributor to the public malaise that led to the French Revolution. Many Huguenots went to Holland, which was known to be hospitable to Protestants. Some went to England and complained about France while singing the praises of Holland. People remembered England's Mary Tudor (regnat 1553-1558), after whom a tomato juice-based drink is named. She was actually not nearly as bloodthirsty as her father Henry VIII, but she was working for the Catholic side which gave her subjects a feeling of being whiplashed after Henry's break with the Pope. Since the English did not relish having an aggressively Catholic monarch again, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 occurred three years after James II's coronation. James was deposed (unlike his father Charles I, he chose not to go to the chopping block declaiming his divine right to rule) and the crown was offered to William III of Orange-Nassau and his wife Princess Royal Mary.

Morning view by moonlight of the farmland on
the polder behind where we are staying.

The Huguenots who went to Holland generally thrived. The Boissevains started out as accountants and teachers. Their core family business became shipping. They started by keeping track of the bills, then took charge of some ships, and when they made enough money they graduated to the easier lives of financing ships and shipments in Holland and railways overseas. Their companies were called Boissevain & Co., Boissevain & Son, Boissevain Brothers, A. A. H. Boissevain & Co., and H. J. A. Boissevain & Co.

Some of them went into the collateral business of selling insurance on ships and their shipments. Someone has to deal with financing and insuring that long period between paying farmers and manufacturers for their goods when they are loaded onto a ship and getting paid at the other end by the buyers who want to inspect the goods first before they pay.

The genius of Amsterdammers is being able to take a long view and figure out how to run a sustainable business. The Boissevains easily adapted to this business environment.

Many Boissevains lived on the two fanciest streets in Amsterdam, the Herengracht and Keizersgracht. I was given the job of leading walking tours of family houses on these canals. The two tours were last Sunday morning (the Herengracht) and Sunday afternoon (the Keizersgracht). My great-great-grandfather Gidéon Jérémie Boissevain (properly pronounced only by those who know both Dutch and French) lived here.

The Dutch-Irish Boissevains

Peaceful farmland that can suddenly become the feeding ground of
many sheep, cattle, or hundreds of birds...

Gidéon Jérémie Boissevain's son Karel became a journalist, traveled to Dublin, got sick, and married the young Irish woman, Emily Heloïse MacDonnell, who looked after him in Dalkey.

Karel anglicized his name to Charles in her honor (she never felt she had to learn much Dutch) and put out the best newspaper in Holland, the Algemeen Handelsblad. He is called Charles Handelsblad Boissevain to distinguish him from later Boissevains with the same first  name.

Otto von Bismarck once proposed that the solution to the Irish problem, as he saw it, would be to "Exchange the populations of Holland and Ireland. The Dutch will turn Ireland into the bread-basket of Europe and the Irish will forget to mend the dykes and will all be drowned."

Flocks of birds descend on the polder to feed. They are pretty to see, but a nuisance to the sheep farmers.

However, the marriage of a Dutchman and an Irishwoman worked just fine. Charles and Emily had eleven children, who are collectively with their descendants called the Charlestjes. Emily was considered wild, but she brought up an extraordinarily successful crop of children and grandchildren.

My grandmother was the fourth daughter of Charles and Emily. The Charlestjes were the largest group at the Boissevain family reunion. Yesterday I had lunch in IJmuiden with my second cousin Charles Leidschendam Boissevain, son of Bob Boissevain and grandson of Charles E. H. (Eh Ha) Boissevain, eldest son of Charles Handelsblad. The day before Alice and I had lunch with another Charletsje second cousin, Ellen Wurpel. Tomorrow we lunch with Aviva Boissevain, who was the primary organizer of the family reunion; we are going to the Amsterdam Concertgebouw café in honor of the Boissevains who helped get it built and who served on its board and staff.

Whatever Happened to the Zuider Zee?

Back to the Zuider Zee. The problem with it was that it was open to the North Sea, and it was unpredictable. When a storm came up the dijks (dikes) around the Zuider Zee were threatened with a break. The places where the dikes broke are forever marked with names ending Braak, just as the Irish post a large black dot on a white background on the side of the road wherever anyone is killed by a moving vehicle.

Morning view of the IJsselmeer (formerly the Zuider Zee) from
the front of our bedroom at the top of the barn where we are staying.  

During the second half of the 19th century Cornelis Lely suggested a plan for the Afsluitdijk to close off the Zuider Zee from the North Sea.

His 1891 plan was to make the Zuider Zee into the largest lake in Western Europe–and also enable the creation of new farmland.

Lely was an engineer and knew what he was talking. He turned his plan into a proposed budget item, what came to be called the proposed Zuider Zee Works.

A long dam would be built connecting the northern tip of North Holland with the western coast of Friesland. This would create a new lake sheltered from the North Sea. The new lake would be renamed the IJsselmeer (IJssel-lake).

Like any big plan, opposition to it came from:

• Fishermen who feared they would lose their livelihood (yes they would if they only fished for salt-water fish, but they could keep fishing if they did the unthinkable and moved to the coast).
• Financial people who doubted the plan's feasibility (that is, of course, the job of financial people who have to risk the money and buy or sell insurance). 

In 1913 Lely as Minister of Transport and Public Works added more detail to his plans. Then, in January 1916 the dikes again broke along the Zuider Zee and exacerbated food shortages caused by blockades during World War I, when Holland was neutral. Suddenly Lely's plan was seen as a way to reduce, not increase, risks for the Netherlands.

Construction of the Afsluitdijk was enabled in mid-1918 and started a year later. The first small dike was built between 1920 and 1924. The main dam, the Afsluitdijk (enclosure dam) ran from Den Oever on Wieringen to the village of Zurich in Friesland. Ships dredged material (till) from the bottom of the Zuider Zee and deposited it into the open sea in two parallel lines. Sand was poured between the two dams; as the fill emerged above the surface of the water, it was covered by another layer of till. The dam was strengthened with basalt rocks and mats of willow switch at its base. The dam was finished by raising it with sand and finally clay for the upper surface of the dam, which was planted with grass.

In May 1932, two years ahead of schedule, the Zuider Zee was closed off to the North Sea and ceased be a Zee. The Afsluitdijk was opened September 25, 1933, with a monument marking the spot where the dam was finished. An average of nearly 5,000 workers were employed in the dam's construction, creating jobs during the Depression. Total cost: about €700 million in 2004 euros.

Looking Over the IJsselmeer

Cyclists enjoying the road by the IJsselmeerdijk. People and animals
walk along the top of the dike and on the other side.

In the back of the three-story converted barn where we are staying on the IJsselmeerdijk, the polder spreads out for many square miles.

Lambs are gamboling around. Several horses pace around in their sandy enclosure. Birds come and go both as single spies and in battalions. A few doves make their homes in the eaves of the barn and from time to time reassure us that they are there.

On the front side, the dike road runs in front of the house between Edam and the much smaller village of Warder, where there is a restaurant. Cyclists go by in singles or groups–I saw many bicycle teams with identical shirts and even saw a tandem bike cycling sedately along–and walkers come by, and a smaller number of vehicles. Alice an I went out cycling ourselves a few times, going north to Warder or south to Edam, both within easy reach.

Animals and people share the dyke itself. On the other side of the dike is the IJsselmeer with a little beach that features sea shells that date back to the days when the North Sea came right up to the dike. I have provided daytime and nighttime photos. The guest house is called "Country and Lake", referring to the two kinds of experience available to the west and east. It is listed on TripAdvisor and gets 5 stars from 9 people who have posted. The stars are well deserved.

WW2 | 4. Months 1-9–The de Booij Dilemmas

The General Strike of February 25-26 in the Amsterdam region was
 the Dutch answer to nine months' wooing by the Nazi occupiers.
 Gijs van Hall was Wally van Hall's older brother, who survived
WW2 and was elected Mayor of Amsterdam.

(Updated Jan. 27, 2020) 

The Nazi invaders of Holland suffered a brief initial setback from the fierce fighting of the Dutch defenders.

But then, for nine months, from May 10, 1940 to February 23, 1941, the Dutch Occupation seemed to be going according to the Nazi plan.

The Public Face of the Nazis

The Nazis tried at first to administer Holland with the appearance of benevolence, while steadily turning the screws on its Jewish population.

Jews in Amsterdam were better informed about the Nazis than the rest of the population, since many of them had fled from cruelty in Germany and other countries, thinking Holland was a safe haven.

The non-Jewish population was ambivalent. They were surprised that life was continuing to go on apparently as usual. They were given the impression that basic democratic institutions such as political parties were going to survive. Deprivations in the first year were not crippling for most Dutch people, especially outside of Amsterdam and a few other large cities.

But the Nazis were relentlessly pursuing the identification of Jews and were then quietly taking action. In Amsterdam, Jews were herded into a ghetto. Gradually their lives became more regulated, and a few deportations started. The horrific extent of the Nazi "final solution" was steadily unveiled to Jews. Jewish families in particular were stunned when they realized that they were trapped in Holland under a venomous régime. The Verzetsmuseum (Dutch Resistance Museum) handbook, English version, quotes from the diary of a housewife living in the Hague about the fear that overtook them all:

Especially for the Jews. Oh, that tormented race. The arrival of the Germans filled them with fear, fear about the fate that was now awaiting them. Many of them preferred suicide to awaiting their fate. Entire families together. (Het Verzetsmuseum, 24, emphasis added.)

But for the next few months the occupying Nazis played a clever game, trying to reassure non-Jewish Dutch people that they were benign rulers.

The occupiers behaved properly, hoping to win over the Dutch, as part of the “Germanic brotherhood”, to National Socialism. As a gesture of goodwill, after the Dutch army was disbanded, they released the Dutch prisoners of war. … Many Dutch people thought they ought to reconcile themselves to the situation. (Het Verzetsmuseum, 24.)

Hilda Boissevain de Booij

My grandmother Olga's sister, Hilda
Boissevain de Booij, wrote on Oct.
14, 1940. The photo is from about
 1897.

A letter from my great-aunt Hilda de Booij in Amsterdam captures the mood of the Dutch in the first few months, and the problems that suddenly confronted residents, as well as problems that did not appear right away.

It was sent to her sister, my grandmother, who was living with my mother at 3728 Northampton Street, NW, in Washington, D.C. It was translated for me by my cousin Engelien de Booij, Hilda's daughter, with the expectation that I would use in in my research on the Boissevain family. Some of these letters were given to me after Engelien died, with instructions to the executor to deliver them to me.

The letter below notes that the first reaction of Dutch people to the departure of their Queen on May 14, 1940 for England was one of catastrophe.

My grandmother Olga Boissevain van Stockum, sent three letters to her closest relative in Holland, her sister Hilda Boissevain de Booij, after whom my mother is named, in April and August 1940.

None of the letters reached Amsterdam until the fall of 1940. Hilda de Booij's response is dated October 14, 1940. According to her daughter Engelien de Booij:

“We could not write to relations in Britain, but we could write to Canada and the USA. Still, we had to take care, the letters were censored [by the Nazi-run post office].” (E de Booij, abbreviated EdB, Note, Nov. 17, 2001 on Hilda de Booij, abbreviated HdB, Letter to Olga van Stockum, abbreviated OvS, Oct. 14, 1940.)

Her letter shows both hope for the future, a sense that the wartime situation had stabilized, and that the Dutch people were finding a way to coexist with the Nazis. (This view was to change greatly in 1941.)

Dear Olga, 

Just now we got your letter from April 22 and 27, also from August 23. Don’t be anxious about us. We are very calm. It is funny how very different everything is from what you would think. Nearly every day bombs fall on the city, last week quite near to where Engelien in living. [The Carlton Hotel in Amsterdam was bombed, a 10-minute walk from Engelien, she writes in 2001, suggesting that bombs were being dropped by the RAF on German-occupied targets in Amsterdam, in retaliation for the bombing of London.]

We are fatalistic or religious. We think: “Well, if we are hit by a bomb, so what? We shall hope to see each other again in this life, but … we are in the middle of a war!

I thought it would interest you to hear something about the life we are having at the moment. Our home has been “blacked out” magnificently, so we can have all our lights on as long as we still have electricity.

Hilda and Hendrik (Han) de Booij

Our central heating is still functioning; our landlord, who is also the owner of the four apartment buildings near us, looks after this. Hanna and Maurits [son of Hilda’s sister Mary Boissevain and Cor van Eeghen] live in one of these buildings, with their sweet daughters -– the second one, Maria, has the same wonderful curls that her grandmother Mary must have had.

After sundown, Han and I take care of the blackout chores and stay home for the rest of the evening, except when the moon is shining. Next Saturday we shall try to go to a talk about Tchaikovsky in the Concertgebouw from 7 to 8:40 pm.

Often I sit next the window knitting and see the soldiers exercising. We hear them as well. In the morning at 7 am or earlier we are awakened by the singing of soldiers as they pass by. They have loud voices; we hear them all day long.

Han had to leave his office because the “Gruene Polizei” took it over for their own use. Han and Tom [their son, who continued in the same nonprofit work as his father, rescuing sailors lost at sea] now have an officer on the Keizersgracht, which Tom very much prefers because it is more in the center of the city.

Han has packed a suitcase for himself in case there are “reprisals” [hostage-taking of people like Han de Booij who had been in Dutch service in Indonesia] because of the “brutal treatment” of the Germans in Indonesia [where they are shunned by the Dutch and are left to native Indonesians for service]. They took Fredrik van Asbeck already and many of our friends and relatives. Those they took went to Germany, so I heard. [Others stayed in St. Michielsgestel, where they were well enough treated, except when five of them were shot by the Nazis as a warning to others.]

Jenne den Tex [daughter-in-law of Nicolaas den Tex and Hester Boissevain, twin sister of Charles the newspaper editor] stayed a week with Hessie [Hester Boissevain van Hall, daughter of Charles], who is in bed with an inflammation of the ear. I cannot leave Han, so I could not go for so long. We have had lovely days with her. It is so quiet there [in Hattem], one does not know there is a war on. The same is true of Mary [daughter of Charles] and Mies [daughter-in-law of Charles] in Bussum.

[In Amsterdam, however] we have nights when I hardly sleep at all. Han can’t go to sleep until the noise [bombs and anti-aircraft fire] stops. We stay in bed during the noise. During the first days of the war [May 10-14, 1940], we used to get out of bed, but you can’t keep doing that. One gets accustomed to anything. When the shooting stops, we fall asleep again till the noise starts again.

We have buckets of sand in every room to empty onto a fire bomb. Supposedly it takes half a minute before it explodes. Han has met people who have extinguished before it exploded. In our bedroom we have a spade with a very long handle to pick up a bomb and throw it in the garden below.

Han and I still have enough to eat. Ot [her daughter-in-law] does not have enough bread, so we give her some of our coupons. It is difficult for children, and men who take food to work, to have enough bread. At home one can make do with something else. I don’t know how it will be this winter. I have no worries for Han and me, but what about families with growing children?

Please ask Alfred about Jimmy’s daughter Lisbeth, and Victoria and Frances.

Every Thursday, Han takes violin lessons in the morning from Dick Mesman. On Tuesdays I take singing lessons from Fiep Kwast. They both stay for lunch.

We see a lot of Frans and Engelien. They are very happy and they do not worry too much about the future. Time will tell.

The NSB (Dutch Nazi Party) has given themselves beautiful uniforms - black with a cocky hat, black and orange. The Netherlands Unie has no uniform - they sell their party newspaper in the streets. We are members of the Netherlands Unie - everyone in the party is free to have their own ideas about what should be done. [The Nederlandse Unie was a new party, not anti-German, but pro-Dutch; it did not last long.]

When our central heating fails, we have other fuel, made from the remains of coal and pressed with tar. We have a small pot-belly stove, so we won't freeze.

All the grandchildren are well. This evening we are going out to eat in town with John [van Marle] and Olga [de Booij van Marle], and Inez Hissink [daughter of Nella Boissevain Hissink], who is staying with them to recuperate from a bronchitis attack. We will have to go home at 8 p.m., because we are not allowed to be outdoors after 10 p.m., even in our own gardens.

Robert Boissevain [son of Alfred and Mies Boissevain?] has a new job with Economic Affairs, but you will have heard about this from Kitty [engaged to Herman Boissevain, son of Alfred and Mies Boissevain, but escaped the Nazis by going to America; Herman remained unmarried]. Jo H. [??] is of course deeply unhappy not having any children.

Heentie [daughter of Charles E. H. Boissevain] and Dick Mesman and their three children are very happy - a nice family. I greatly miss my Dante evenings - Miss Kuenen, who gave the lectures on Dante, has died. Last year I went to Shakespeare afternoons organized by Gerarda Lely, but I prefer Italian writers. I simply love Dante, and in my old age I have fallen in love with his Virgil. However, it’s best to read it with other people. I worked through the whole Divine Comedy twice with Miss Kuenen and whenever I am going to stay somewhere for a while I take Dante with me. 

Han has packed in his getaway suitcase Don Quixote, something by Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy’s War and Peace. He would also like to take his violin and drawing materials. Then maybe we could get through all this, if only we could go out for walks, which we are not sure we will be able to do. Enfin, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

We don’t hear so much now from family and relations. Everyone has their own problems and fears. It is especially difficult for car-owners. We have gone back to using bicycles. That way we went to see Christien van Even, former housekeeper to Aunt Nella [Brugman Boissevain], who did sewing for me and lives in the Oudekerk neighborhood of Amsterdam. It was a beautiful ride beside the Amstel River. We loved there being not cars – one of the good things about the war.

Cissy [daughter of Willem Boissevain 1849-1925] Crommellin’s husband had a business in illuminated advertising, and now his business is helping people comply with the blackout requirement. It sounds like a joke but it really is true. Cissy came to see me at lunch time. They are poor because business has not been good and the extra income they got from Farmiloe, the husband of Connie [the late sister of Cissy], has stopped [Connie lived in England until her death; after she died, her widower sent money to Cissy until the war started].

Cissy stays with her children and with Tine [van der Warden] den Tex. I have not seen Attie [like Tine, wife of a son of Nicolaas den Tex] since my birthday. She is not well and Paul den Tex says she is not up to receiving visitors. 

Emily [Henn] Cruijs is unbelievably brave, as always. Geraldine [Campbell-Dickinson], her half-sister, is even braver, if that is possible. [Both women are Irish relatives - daughters of Emily Heloise MacDonnell’s sister, Auntie May MacDonnell, who married twice. Geraldine came to Holland with her son Dick, who was a tap-dancer. Her son got away before the Nazis took over, but Geraldine stayed. She died in 1944.] She rents a small room for two guilders a week, and is sewing for friends and relations. She is proud and does not want to depend on charity. She has a problem with one of her eyes and she can’t walk well – something is wrong with her legs. She still doesn’t know what happened to her son Dick – they were both in Rotterdam on May 8, just before the invasion and the bombing.

At a time like this, you see what people are made of. I see only very strong iron or wood. Beautiful to see. In the past I have made jokes about our admiration for the Dutch in the Eight Years War, but now I see that our people have remained steady again. I don’t understand it, the curious thing called the character of a nation. How is it formed? Does climate have something to do with this? Tradition? Enfin, cleverer people than I must ponder these questions.

Dieuke [Boissevain, daughter of Charles E. H.] has had a good review of her detective novel. ... 

Han de Booy and Willem Mengelberg

Mengelberg performed Mahler every year.

Hendrik (Han) de Booij, Hilda de Booij's husband, was a staff officer of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, which hired the world-class conductor Willem Mengelberg, in 2013 and 2014. Mengelberg made the Concertgebouw into a world-famous, immortal institution.

Two of my grandmother's first cousins  were on the board and staff of the Concertgebouw, but not at the same time–Charles E. H. Boissevain was on the Board of Directors for a long time but resigned during the period that his brother-in-law Han de Booij was a staff officer.

Charles E. H. was the eldest child of Charles Boissevain, who was a leading advocate for the Concertgebouw and he helped raise money for it in his role as the editor and publisher of Holland's leading newspaper, the Algemeen Handelsblad.

The Boissevains became very close to Mengelberg, who was appointed conductor at the young age of 24, and through him to Gustav Mahler and there is a famous photo (made into a Dutch stamp) taken by de Booij of them out on the beach.

On the Zuider Zee by Valkeveen, March 1906. Standing (L to R): Alphons
Diepenbrock, Gustav Mahler, Willem Mengelberg. Seated: Mrs. M. Wubbe
Mengelberg, Hilda G. Boissevain de Booij, P. J. Boissevain and Mrs. 
E. H. (Maria Pijnappel) Boissevain. Photo by Han de Booij.

A 1995 New York Times story  acknowledges the high reputation of Mengelberg before World War II:

"What Rembrandt is to the outside world in the realm of painting," the Dutch minister of education proclaimed at the 1920 [Mahler] festival, "you are throughout Europe and America as the leader of an orchestra." In the 1930's, Mengelberg's popularity rivaled and perhaps exceeded that of Queen Wilhelmina.

Mengelberg was born to German parents who had emigrated to Holland. He was a huge fan of fellow-German Gustav Mahler, perhaps Mahler's biggest promoter, and performed him after the invasion of Holland by the Nazis until he was ordered to stop because Mahler's German-speaking parents in Bohemia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) were Jewish. Mahler married a Christian and attended a Christian church, but that was not good enough for the Nazis, although Jews married to Christians were rarely deported.

Hilda Gerarda Boissevain de Booij
with baby (Engelina de Booij?).

The problem for Han de Booij would have been how to advise Mengelberg on performing Mahler. The SS were in attendance at the Concertgebouw and made clear that they disapproved of performing Mahler, but Mengelberg went on with his performances. I do not have information on de Booij's point of view.

That Mengelberg kept the orchestra going at all during the war was an issue during the postwar hatchet days. The response of his defenders is that he thereby kept the musicians employed, and many of them were Jewish. More troubling is that Mengelberg was reported as toasting in Germany to the invasion of Holland and he was photographed talking with the hated Hitler's Austrian puppet occupation leader Seyss-Inquart. However, Mengelberg also helped many Jewish violinists hide from the Nazis (probably including Theo Olof who was sheltered by the Boissevains) and is viewed by some as having been unjustly stripped of his greatest, well-earned honors. In any case he was exiled to Switzerland for six years and never conducted again after the war. He died in 1951 at 80, after having led the Concertgebouw for 50 years (1895-1945).

Hilda Boissevain de Booij about 1970. She died in
1975, 11 years after her husband Han.

In the 2013 post I noted that Leonard Bernstein was so passionate about Mahler that he was buried with Mahler's Fifth over his heart. Recently I received an email from Riva Freifeld, who is a moviemaker. She said, confirming my account:

What a wonderful connection your family has to Mahler, Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw! And the NY Times quote was correct. [Mengelberg was the] Greatest ever. One afternoon back in the 1990s I was in Bernstein's apartment when we were making a short film about preserving all of his work on digital media, which was rather new back then. There was a photograph of Mahler in the music room, I think it was on the piano. And some scores were lying around. It was like being in a sacred place.

An autodidact-conductor of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, New Yorker Gil Kaplan, was reported in 1984 as promising to leave a score by Mahler to the Pierpont Morgan Library.

Engelien de Booij

The daughter of Han and Hilda de Booij, Engelina (known as Engelien), was a good friend of my mother when she was studying in art school in Amsterdam and stayed with the de Booys. Engelien married a Jewish man , Frans Polak, at the beginning of the war. Hilda shows her worries over the two of them by denying her concerns in her letter to her sister in 1940.

Engelien had to stay in bed because of the threat of a miscarriage. I am convinced it will be all right.

It was not all right – Engelien did not give birth to the baby, although her mother did what she could to make Engelien's life as easy as possible.

We exchanged our help–she now has my daily helper and I have her twice-a-week cleaning lady. I cancelled all my tradesmen appointments and do no cleaning–I only straighten the blankets and cook simple food. I am now the sole mistress of the home and that is wonderful.

Engelien told me late in her life that although the SS was viciously abusive towards gentiles who were married to Jews, the SS put them on a special list and spared the Jewish spouses from deportation to concentration camps. So Polak survived the war, but the couple divorced after the war because, Engelien told me, the burden of her having saved his life was too much for him to carry on a daily basis. However, they remained friends for the rest of their lives–a story confirmed by Charles Boissevain. [See also https://nyctimetraveler.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-first-year-of-dutch-occupation.html.]

The de Booij Housekeeper, H[ilda?] van Rijnbach

Originally in Dutch, this letter from Hilda de Booij's housekeeper H[ilda?] van Rijnbach, translated by my mother, describes  the brave, bordering on reckless, underground activities of the housekeeper of my mother's Aunt Hilda, who was loaned out to Engelien. The letter is  candid about some stupidity by the writer's husband in the early days of the Occupation, when the Nazis had yet to show their full inhumanity; for this, the writer was clearly ashamed. I have summarized, excerpted and annotated this letter. [This letter is the basis of Chapter 11, which could be deleted in favor of a mention here.] The full text of letter is here.

The End of the Goodwill Attempt

Public ignorance or uncertainty about the treatment of Jews in Holland ended in February 1941 and with it ended the period of hope amidst despair. The occasion was a reprisal by the Nazi government. The Dutch Nazi Party leader, Hendrik Koot, died of wounds sustained when he assaulted businesses in the Jewish ghetto. The Nazis decided on an outraged  reprisal on February 22-23, 1941 for the spraying of a police officer with ammonia gas (a cleaning agent) by a Jewish ice-cream-parlor owner. The response was to beat and deport 425 Jewish youths. 

After this, the Dutch Communist Party, which was illegal under the Nazi government, called for a strike, which shut down Amsterdam and nearby communities. This response shocked the Nazis, who thought that what they viewed as a velvet-glove approach to the Dutch had been winning friends. The strike showed 

• Dutch citizens that they were not alone in wanting to fight back, and 
• the Nazis that Holland was no Austria–the German occupiers were mostly abhorred, and the Dutch were not going to be won over.

After February 1941, the situation in Holland changed, tragically.

Notes/Sources:

de Booij, Engelien (EdB), Note, November 17, 2001, prefacing her translation of Letter from Hilda de Booij to Olga van Stockum, October 14, 1940.  

de Booij, Hilda Boissevain (HdB), Letter to her sister Olga Boissevain van Stockum (OvS), October 14, 1940. Translated by Engelien de Booij, November 17, 2001.

Gil Kaplan: Conductor of One Work Buys Mahler Score, by Will Crutchfield, May 13, 1984

Verzetsmuseum. Guide and exhibits.

This is a draft chapter of a book about the Boissevains and the Dutch Resistance; the book outline is here.

BOISSEVAIN | B. Walking 20th C. Amsterdam

The lines for the Anne Frank House are shortest in
the evening, so the walking tour might best begin at
the high number and work down.

The buildings that housed the offices of Boissevain businesses before World War II were not destroyed during the war, one of the few consolations of the German Occupation.

A Boissevain family reunion is planned for the spring of 2016, preferably not during a vacation when school children will be visiting Amsterdam museums in large numbers.

I have suggested a walking tour on the map at left to visit some of the sites with family associations to the west and south of the Dam - I apologize for my inadequate map-annotating skills.

It would take about two hours for a group just to visit sites 2-10, without taking into account time spent inside.

At the last stop, the Amsterdam Stadsarchief offers sandwiches, coffee and fruit juices for sale.

Special exhibits of Boissevain or van Hall-related books or archives might be arranged at NIOD or the Stadsarchief, or both.

The tour is marked as starting at 0 - the Anne Frank House, and then proceeding toward the Royal Palace via 1 - the Raadhuisstraat. But probably these should be left for a different day. Getting tickets to the Anne Frank House has to be arranged well in advance and unless the group goes together there is no point in assembling at the House. The tour should probably begin with 2, behind the Palace.

The Buildings Near the Palace

The noodle place that used to print Het Parool.
All photos by JT Marlin, Feb. 19, 2015.

2 - #160 Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal - the printer of Het Parool. This is now a noodle restaurant with rooms upstairs for rent. The stairs at the left of the entrance may have led up to the printing room. Printers made stencils that were then used to create plates for the presses. Since the printing press is gone, there isn't much to see inside, so this is strictly a starting point. The hotel at 3 may be a better one to assemble in.

Now an upscale hotel, this building used to serve
meals to workers and is where the armed
 CS6 group met.

3 - #178-180 Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, a few doors down, was the workers'  soup kitchen where CS6 members met, led by Gi and Janka Boissevain. After killing many traitors, Ji and Janka became the Nazis' Most Wanted; they were both caught and were shot in the dunes at Overveen. They are buried next each other and their cousin Louis in the Eeregraafsplaats Bloemendaal. Their father was the first to be arrested and he died in Buchenwald. Their mother Mies Boissevain and the youngest son Frits also went to concentration camps but survived. Mies after the war promoted the "Festival Skirt" as a way of proactively making fashionable what clothing that was available. The skirt became a symbol of rebuilding Holland. One is on display at the Verzetsmuseum near the Artis Zoo. The plaque on the wall at #178-#180 Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal reads (my translation from the Dutch):

This plaque is located to the right of the entrance to the
hotel at #178-#180 Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal.

During the German Occupation 1940-1945 / in these buildings, a foundation, / Central Commercial Kitchens for Amsterdam South of the Ij River, / prepared 4.734 million liters of meals on behalf of workers / for Amsterdam industrial companies.

That would mean about one million liters for each year of the occupation. If the soup kitchen was open 250 days per year, that would mean 4,000 liters per day.

One can speculate how the 4,000 liters were consumed. A 12-ounce bowl of soup with 300 calories is about one-third of a liter - with a slice of bread, half a liter. So the kitchen may have been serving 8,000 meals per day. During the hunger winter in the last year of the war, the portions would have been much smaller.

The old Handelsblad building now has an art
 gallery on the ground floor.

4 - #240 Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal - The Algemeen Handelsblad name is blazoned in stone across the entrance (the building now houses an avant-garde gallery). The newspaper was made famous at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th by Charles Boissevain, but he and his wife Emily died before World War II. Like all the other big newspapers, such as De Telegraaf, the wartime editors of the newspaper complied with Nazi censorship because they didn't want to lose their jobs (or their lives). It was a blow for the reputation of the Handelsbad that it went along with the censorship. However, the 1,300 upstart underground newspapers and many thousands of family and business newsletters doubtless got help from regular journalists - a story that would be interesting to tell if there were anyone left to tell it. The Dutch people also regularly listened to radio broadcasts from the Queen in London, although it was strictly forbidden and all radios were confiscated. Bob Boissevain turned in one radio to the Nazis and listened in to the other one.

Muntplein

Skipping down to the Muntplein at the southern end of the Kalverstraat, Amsterdam's brand-name shopping street, we have three sites to visit.

Tobacco company at 118 Nes that hid people in the basement.

5 - #380 Herengracht - NIOD. Everyone interested in the Resistance should be aware of NIOD, which has a huge library as well as archives and a professional staff to look after them. For example, both NIOD and the Amsterdam Stadsarchief have complete sets of the 18-volume history (in Dutch only) of World War II by Louis (Loe) de Jong. The Verzetsmuseum near the Artis Zoo has some books but they are not organized like a library, more like a used book sale, whereas NIOD's books are well organized. More about NIOD.

6 - #118 Nes was a tobacco company that hid people in the basement. This basement at least had windows. Across the road is the "Tobacco Theater".

The former central bank of the Netherlands, now the Allard
Pierson Museum. This is where the audacious robbery of
Treasury bills took place to fund the Resistance.

7 - #127 Oude Turfmarkt - De Nederlandsche Bank, Holland's Central Bank, was the target of a huge bank robbery engineered by the kindly Wally van Hall, who carried off an exchange of counterfeit Treasury bills and banknotes in the region of $500 million in today's money. He kept excellent records so we can probably find out the exact number. In addition, he raised an equivalent amount in gifts and loans from Dutch individuals and institutions.

Rembrandtplein and Stadsarchief

The tour goes to the Rembrandtplein, where picture-taking in front of the sculptures around the front of Rembrandt's statue is an option.

This used to be the Rembrandt Theater, where the Dutch
Nazis went in the evening. CS6 set fire to it.  

8 - #21-23 Rembrandtplein - The Rembrandt Theater used to be here and it is where the Dutch Nazi Party used to meet. Hitler tried to make Rembrandt the Dutch equivalent of Wagner - a symbol of the artistic cleverness of the Dutch branch of the Master Race. It didn't work. Holland never supported Hitler in very large numbers - according to Loe de Jong, no more than 1.5 percent of the population of Holland supported the Dutch Nazi movement (de Jong, 1988, 33). CS6 burned down the Rembrandt Theater. It is now the NH Caransa Hotel.

The statue of Rembrandt with sculptures of some of the
people he painted. Hitler wanted Rembrandt to be the
Dutch equivalent of Wagner -  an illustration of what the
Master Race can do. The Dutch didn't buy it. At. All.

9 - #32 Vijzelstraat - Amsterdam Stadsarchief - crossing the Herengracht and going west one street to Vijzelstraat, we are at the last stop, the Amsterdam Stadsarchief, which has several interesting features. Many Boissevain family and van Hall family papers are archived here and could be displayed for the family. In addition, the building used to be the headquarters of a bank that the Boissevain family was heavily invested in and at which individuals were represented on the staff and board. The building itself is of unusual interest architecturally because many environmentally interesting features were built into the design. It was the ABN AMRO headquarters until they moved to a more modern building. At the family reunion a few years ago we were given an architectural  tour of the Stadsarchief.

Sources (in addition to my having walked the route):

de Jong, Louis (Loe). The Netherlands and Nazi Germany. The Erasmus Lectures at Harvard. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988.

van Tol, Ineke. Persecution and Resistance in Amsterdam, 2006. A walk from the Anne Frank House to the Verzetsmuseum. Reviewed by Liesbeth van der Horst and Ruud Lindeman of the Verzetsmuseum, Erik Somers of NIOD and Hans Westra of the Anne Frank Stichting.  English version translated by Maneke Piggott. Sold by the Verzetsmuseum.

Other Posts:

I have been posting stories and information and sources about the Boissevain family in World War II. They are in the form of chapters of a book.

A walking tour of 19th Century Boissevains in Amsterdam is here.