Diary of a Jew in the Second World War

Another one has been found. Now, rather than just one by Anne Frank (Who lived in Amsterdam) there is one by a lady called Klaartje de Zwarte-Walvisch, whom, too, lived in Amsterdam. She had given her diary to her brother-in-law and wrote in it: “I wish that this will reach the outside world someday” which it now has as they are going to publish it. It had been in the possession of the “Joods Historisch Museum” or Jewish Historical Museum, In Amsterdam for several years, but it was not known who had written it. It had taken some time for a Dutch tv program, who was doing a series on the second world war, to find the anonymous document. Once they did they tracked down who it was by use of old transport lists they realised it must be that of Klaartje de Zwarte-Walvisch. It’s exciting that there is another account, this time by a 32year old. It allows people to see what really happened in the Second World War in Amsterdam, not just from the perspectives of a child. Many Dutch people feel that they were very much innocent in the Second World War, after all Holland was occupied by the Germans. And I grew up with the same ideas, as that is what the general conception is. It was only when I learnt more about it, watched more programmes and especially the film of ‘Zwart Boek’ or ‘Black Book’ has opened my eyes to the contraversiality of what really happened. There were always colaboraters, no matter where you were in the “third reich”, but they seem to be forgotten at times in Holland. And it is only now that people can fully understand that there were plenty of colaboraters in Holland, and thus it was hard to get away from all of it. I feel it is important that the catastrofes of the Second World War are not forgotten, no matter where you live. (And those of the First World War).

My History teacher told me that 1 in 20 children thinks that the Holocaust (the systematical mass murder of Jews in the second world war) was a party at the end of the war to celebrate that it was over.
Children think that Hitler was a footbal coach.

And then there are people in the world who have the audacity to say that we should not commemorate the first and second world wars simply because it was a long time ago. Yet things such as Burns Night are still celebrated… and that was far longer ago – but there is no question of stopping that, after all it includes fireworks and drinking. It seems ridiculous to me, and it is something I will never be able to understand, that these children do not know or understand fully about what happened in the second world war, so many people were murdered for no reason at all. So many innocent people died because they didn’t fit a certain description set up by some idiot who thought that all blond people were the best in the world. (The irony with that is… the mixing of the genetics of two “races” – for lack of better word – makes it stronger. If you keep “breeding” the same genetic characteristics there is a higher chance of relation and thus degeneratif mutation of the genes) Hitler was making the “übermensch” weaker, not stronger.

All in all it is important that everyone realised and is educated about the atrocities in the first and second world wars, without them our world would not be as it is today.