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The Rescue of Belsen’s Diamond Children

  • Book
  • © 2022

Overview

Authors:
  1. Bettine Siertsema

    1. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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  • Uncovers what happened to the families of Dutch Jewish diamond workers during the Holocaust
  • Investigates how all of their children survived thanks to the intervention of ‘nurse Luba’
  • Draws on extensive video testimonies, interviews and personal documents

Part of the book series: The Holocaust and its Contexts (HOLC)

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Table of contents (12 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
    Download chapter PDF

  2. A Brief Overview of the History

    • Bettine Siertsema
    Pages 1-6

  3. Sources

    • Bettine Siertsema
    Pages 7-13

  4. Amsterdam, 1940–1943: ‘A Rather False Sense of Security’

    • Bettine Siertsema
    Pages 15-34

  5. Westerbork and Vught: ‘It Was a Nice Camp, but Despair Played a Big Role Too’

    • Bettine Siertsema
    Pages 35-60

  6. Bergen-Belsen: ‘Everything Fell by the Wayside’

    • Bettine Siertsema
    Pages 61-85

  7. Sachsenhausen: ‘You’re Reduced to Nothing. You’re Worth Less Than a Dog’

    • Bettine Siertsema
    Pages 87-99

  8. Beendorf: ‘It Is a Miracle That I Survived’

    • Bettine Siertsema
    Pages 101-113

  9. The Children and Nurse Luba: ‘Just Bring All Those Little Children to Me’

    • Bettine Siertsema
    Pages 115-133

  10. Liberation: ‘I Can Still See the Horror on the Faces of the English’

    • Bettine Siertsema
    Pages 135-151

  11. Post-War Lives: ‘Crying Doesn’t Help’

    • Bettine Siertsema
    Pages 153-165

  12. The 1995 Reunion: ‘A Time to Heal’

    • Bettine Siertsema
    Pages 167-175

  13. Testimony: A Valuable Yet Tricky Source

    • Bettine Siertsema
    Pages 177-197

  14. Back Matter

    Pages 199-220
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Keywords

About this book

This book uncovers the history of a group of Jewish workers and merchants in the Amsterdam diamond industry during the Holocaust. They and their families were exempt from deportation for a long time, but were eventually deported to Bergen-Belsen. In the end, almost all of the men perished, and the women barely survived slave-labour. Their children were left to die in the camp, but were miraculously saved by the intervention of a Jewish Polish woman, ‘nurse Luba’. The main sources on which this book is based are video testimonies of the surviving members of this group, personal interviews, minutes of interviews taken down in shorthand shortly after the war, and personal documents such as letters, archival documents, and autobiographical books.

Reviews

“Bettine Siertsema has offered a highly engaging microhistory of the fate of the Jews who worked for the diamond industry in Amsterdam, reconstructed through meticulous research, including a sensitive interpretation of the memories of their surviving children. This is an important contribution to the historiography on agency and survival in extremis.”
  • Christine Schmidt, The Wiener Holocaust Library, London, UK

Authors and Affiliations

  • Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Bettine Siertsema

About the author

Bettine Siertsema is Assistant Professor of History at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Rescue of Belsen’s Diamond Children

  • Authors: Bettine Siertsema

  • Series Title: The Holocaust and its Contexts

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97707-8

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: History, History (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-97706-1Published: 12 August 2022

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-97709-2Published: 13 August 2023

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-97707-8Published: 11 August 2022

  • Series ISSN: 2731-5711

  • Series E-ISSN: 2731-572X

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XI, 220

  • Number of Illustrations: 7 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: History of World War II and the Holocaust, History of Modern Europe, Oral History, Memory Studies

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