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Here was Bertram, this is where he lived.
And no one had any inkling of the terrible fate that awaited him.
Good morning, everyone.
We would like to begin.
These are the documents I received from the building archive.
With the title deed and the building permit.
The building plan of the house.
It says: Plan for a country house on the Professor Dondersstraat in Tilburg.
And on the bottom it says: The applicant, M. H. Polak...
and the date: April 1, 1927.
It doesn't take much thought to realize...
that this house was built by a Jewish man.
That was in 2000, when I discovered that.
It immediately triggered my curiosity about the story behind it.
After we'd been living here for a few years, I contacted Ernst Elzas.
He told me Bertram Polak had been a classmate of him.
He also told me that the Polak family had fled in May 1940...
but that Bertram hadn't been able to go with them, as he was in the army.
But some time later, and Ernst Elzas didn't know exactly when, of course...
in 1941 or 1942, he had also tried to flee.
There, have a seat.
Would you like some tea or coffee? -I'd like some tea.
First of all, I never knew Bertram.
I met my husband in the beginning of 1942...
and it didn't get talked about.
He did tell me: A friend of mine lives across the street, but he's often gone.
So I never knew him.
But I had photos, which I've given you.
Other than that, I also found this in his diary:
'December 15, Bertram gone.'
That's all I've been able to find in here.
Because later on he did say to me:
'I can't talk about what Bertram does.
He sometimes goes into hiding, because he's Jewish.'
I think there were eight families like that here, if I'm not mistaken.
I checked the whole diary, but it only mentions when he left.
And that's correct, because he fled on December 9.
And this is Monday, December 15.
Look: 'Bertram gone.'
In the summer of 2010 I searched the web for more info about Bertram Polak.
I had the advantage that Bertram isn't a very common name.
I came to a site I'd never heard of, which was the most important link:
The Digital Monument to the Jewish Community in the Netherlands.
It's a site from the Jewish Historical Museum...
on which every Dutch Jew who died in the Holocaust has his own web page.
And Bertram Polak also had a web page, as I found out to my surprise.
I added myself to the community...
and posted what I knew at that time on the website.
Then a small miracle happened.
Within a week I received mails and phone calls from Israel and America...
from relatives of Bertram Polak.
And contrary to my expectations, there were still peers of his living.
Mails from his cousins, who lived two doors down, on number 73.
All three of them were still alive, Adah, Edith and Judith.
I received a mail from a half-sister...
whom I didn't know existed, Connie...
who was born in New York during the war.
I received a mail from Fred, who would have called Bertram 'uncle'.
His mother, Bertram's sister, was still alive, but unfortunately too demented.
What struck me most was that no one knew what had happened to Bertram.
Adah, what's that window up there?
The bathroom. -That's what I thought.
Those two Polak families had been living in this street since the 1920s.
They were part of a small Jewish community, some 125-140 people.
So relations were very close, of course.
They became even closer after 1931...
when Bertram's mother died after a long illness.
Especially after her death, the two families spent a lot of time together.
The children also went to school, together, so they were very close.
I found a class photo with Bertram on it and probably more people you know.
You are... -I'm Ernst's wife.
This is Bertram. -Here.
Edith tells a story, which is much sadder, really.
We fled from IJmuiden, on Tuesday or Wednesday...
On Tuesday. We arrived in Harwich on Wednesday.
Yes, that's right. On May 14.
On our first Saturday in England we went to the synagogue.
We didn't have anything with us when we arrived in England.
Only the clothes we wore.
We'd left everything in the car and boarded the ship.
So we only had the clothes we wore and we went to the synagogue.
And Edith says, which I don't recall, that there were these English ladies.
After we left the shul, they asked:
But in retrospect... We were terribly offended, of course.
We were totally upset about what had happened.
But in retrospect you have to see it within the context, of course.
Those ladies didn't know what had happened to us and who we were.
They just saw these girls show up, and girls were supposed to wear hats.
So the English girls wore hats, but those poor girls...
who had fled from Holland had forgotten to bring their hats.
Bertram wasn't there. Were there any plans to have him come over?
We'd heard that the Dutch army had capitulated to the Germans.
That was when we were still in the Netherlands.
So no, Bertram was in the army.
We didn't know anything about him.
They knew about the period before and a few things from during the war.
But they only had a vague idea about what had happened to him.
And what's more, when I asked one of his cousins...
if they had a photo of Bertram, she sent me a photo...
which I casually sent on to Bertram's half-sister Connie...
who then called me to tell me that she'd never seen that photo.
Then I thought: Apparently this family has never had the chance...
or the opportunity to share their stories about Bertram.
Apparently they need an outsider like me to bring everything together.
I started searching, with the help of my entire network.
People at the NIOD, from the regional archives.
I was referred to the Red Cross.
I started with what I knew: The prison in Scheveningen.
The NIOD gave me information about the prison in Scheveningen...
where in cell number 362 four names had been carved.
'Dear Arnoud-Jan, it seems your two protagonists did indeed do time here.
Probably in the company of a certain Spier.
The source of this information is what we would now call prison graffiti.
The scans included from the Scheveningen Memorial Book...
provide you with this information.'
Spier, Polak, de Wit, Mrs Spier-Bendien...
with the date December 9, 1941.
That corresponds to other data I had about Bertram's escape attempt.
The NIOD referred me to the Red Cross.
The Red Cross still keeps records of war victims.
There's also a file made for Bertram Polak.
Number 101861.
It was of great juridical importance to determine of all missing persons...
where and when they died.
All these documents reflect the entire investigation process.
At the beginning it was only known that he'd been deported to Germany.
That's a very broad concept.
Later on a statement was drawn up.
Here's a request for information, made by Alfred Polak from Tilburg.
Undoubtedly a relative.
Polak, Polak... Yes, this should be it.
The Jewish Council set up the card catalogue during the war...
to keep track of what was known about their Jewish members.
The transport date has been added. It says Amersfoort.
So from Amersfoort via Westerbork to Auschwitz.
One of the first transports.
It also says 'arrived in Auschwitz'. 'Matriculation number'.
That's actually the prisoner number that was tattooed on people's arms.
48321.
Hello, Adah. -Hello, Arnoud-Jan.
Nice to see you. -Welcome.
The stronger ties within the family...
and the children who will also hear about the history tomorrow...
that would never have happened.
A young man of barely 20, 22 years of age whose whole family suddenly...
He comes home from the army and finds an empty house.
It gives me the shivers, because when my son was in the army...
and he came home, his mother had to be waiting with hot soup...
and the washing machine ready to do his laundry.
And he comes back to an empty house.
By piecing together the puzzle of Bertram's last two years...
I've formed quite a good idea of what happened to him...
from the time he came back from the war, in May 1940...
and found an empty house...
to December 9, 1941, the day he tried to flee.
And then up to August 17, 1942, when he died in Auschwitz.
All kinds of documents in archives and collections, photos and letters.
All that information together made the story pretty complete.
Especially his letters, which are very informative...
gave me a good idea of how he, and his friends and acquaintances...
tried to make the best of it here, for that's how it was.
'Tonight Fred and I are going to dine and play bridge at the Loewenstein's.
We come there quite often. They're extremely friendly people.
We usually have a good time. What more do you want in times like these?'
Bertram is more than his arrest, deportation and death, of course.
I also wanted to know what he was like as a person.
Initially I found it difficult to ask the family about that...
but gradually more and more things kept surfacing.
It started with something my friend Ad van den Oord sent me.
An article from a local newspaper in which Bertram is mentioned.
It's about a school play, when he was 16.
Do you know the story about that play? -No, I don't.
Let me tell you. I'm curious how you'll react.
Bertram went to the HBS. -So did we.
First in town, then on the Ringbaan-Oost.
I also went to school in town for a year. -We didn't.
And there Bertram performed in a play, probably in the fifth grade.
It got reviewed in the newspaper, in 1935, when he was almost 17.
About Bertram, who played Gerrit Jan Loos, it says:
'Especially the latter amused us very much.
This spirited actor had a good feeling for the humour of his part...
and rendered it in a way that can hardly be improved upon. Perfect.'
We never knew about that.
That he had a talent... -As an actor? No, we never knew.
Adah, you knew him best. -Yes, we were close friends.
Nevertheless, we lived parallel lives. He had his own friends, I had mine.
But we also had friends in common. We had nice parties.
And sports, tennis and hockey.
We played hockey in Oisterwijk. That was great fun.
At first I thought there'd be very few photos.
The family fled and had to leave everything behind.
But it turned out that there were a lot of photos after all.
Photos of which we now know that Bertram saved them himself...
when he had to leave this house in '41, storing them in his father's warehouse.
They were found after the war.
Many photos of Bertram, his sisters and his cousins, as children and later.
They sketch a picture of a well-to-do family...
that swam, played hockey, that was very active, that had family parties.
And there are letters, which show Bertram to be a very smooth guy.
With many friends, male and female. Photos of dance parties, love poems.
He was obviously popular among the girls.
All that made Bertram more than just a story.
Were you Bertram's classmate? -No, Bertram was older than me.
But you did play football together. -Yes, and Edith was in the same class.
And there was Guus Monnikendam. -Guus Monnikendam was very quiet.
It was a very mixed bunch. Catholic, Protestant, Jewish.
What did you notice about that? -We didn't notice that at all.
Looking at these photos only brings back very pleasant, warm memories.
The way we all interacted was wonderful.
Here is Edith, and this is Floor. And this is Guus Monnikendam.
Guus, as I've found out... -Was he gassed or was he...
He went to Mauthausen.
He died in September already. It was a terrible labour camp.
I heard that Floor died a natural death. -Yes, last year.
Is that the football team? -Yes.
You were on it too. -Yes, and so was he.
Bertram too? -Yes, they all were.
Is this Bertram? -No, Bertram is over there.
This one? -Yes, that's him.
1936, in Eindhoven.
Was he a good athlete? -He played well. He was a fair player.
Let me tell you that during that period before the war...
we knew very well what was going on in Germany.
I never understood why Bertram didn't grab the opportunity to flee the country.
I know that he was in the army.
His family went to Amsterdam on May 11.
Not with the intention to flee, but they thought they'd be safe there.
On May 14 they decided to drive to IJmuiden after all.
There they took one of the last ships. -So they were lucky.
But they didn't plan to flee. They hadn't brought anything.
I heard that he attempted to flee by way of Switzerland.
But I don't know if that's true.
No, he tried to flee by boat, from Dordrecht.
Maybe it was his second attempt. There must be some truth to that story.
His family didn't know either.
I eventually found out that... Ernst Elzas knew about a boat.
But he thought from Scheveningen... -Elzas is that short fellow, right?
They were betrayed, and he was brought to Scheveningen.
There he carved his name on the wall of the cell.
After a few months he was taken to Camp Amersfoort, in '42...
I spent one day there. -Sorry?
I spent one day there. -You'll have to tell me about that later.
From Amersfoort Bertram was put on the first train that went to Auschwitz.
In July 1942, and a month later he was dead.
Aunt Bertha, and there are Grandpa and Grandma.
I started by ordering the facts, the way I learned to do as a historian.
And I increasingly found that the facts were becoming less important.
It's good to know exactly what happened and when...
but the colour and life of the story came with the memories of relatives...
and what people told us about who Bertram was.
That's more important than knowing exactly what happened on what day.
Here was Bertram. This is where he lived.
And no one had any inkling of the terrible fate that awaited him.
And that that's now been given a shape...
a countenance, that's extraordinary.