00:00 There was a curfew imposed, you weren't allowed to go out after 8 o'clock at night.
00:05 It was illegal to own a car, not that many people have cars in over there anyway,
00:09 but it was also illegal to have a bike. There were many, many bikes at the time.
00:14 And many of the bands were using public transport, so the only way you were suddenly going to get around was on the road, two feet.
00:20 In July, Jewelry and Antiques were confiscated. Shopping hours were restricted.
00:27 You could only go shopping between the hours of 3 and 5 in the afternoon.
00:31 You were not allowed to go into non-Jewish homes.
00:35 But we played with our friends in the street, you know, there weren't many cars about in those days.
00:39 And we were always in one another's houses.
00:42 He was put on a cattle truck and he was sent to the gas chamber of Auschwitz,
00:47 where he was murdered on the 31st of January, 1943, aged just 39.
00:55 Holocaust Memorial Day is so important to me, because it is so close to the death of a man,
01:08 who in his short life had done so much for his fellow human beings.
01:13 Just to give you one example, he set up with a group of lawyers in Amsterdam,
01:17 what in this country we call legal aid, helping the poor of Amsterdam to get legally redressed
01:23 in the courts for which they had the cat in hell's chance of being able to pay.
01:27 They would do it for nothing.
01:30 When my father was in prison, my mother took control.
01:35 First of all, we had no money coming in. So what did she do?
01:38 She set up a barber shop in her house, cutting men's hair.
01:42 She never cut men's hair, but in her life.
01:45 As a Jew, you were not allowed to go to a non-Jewish barber to get your hair cut.
01:50 And there were no Jewish barbers in the district where we were living.
01:54 When my father was in prison, she found out who the cleaners were.
01:58 She actually went into that prison disguised as a man by changing places with one of the cleaners.
02:04 And was briefly scrubbing the floor when she met my father,
02:07 who had told her he had been tortured, but he had given nothing away.
02:11 And that was the last time that she saw him.
02:16 And during that time, something happened that made a very important impression upon me,
02:21 but much later in my life.
02:24 Three of my father's friends,
02:30 these three men here, Gerwin Jan Wiersma and Arno Daeyi,
02:33 the last one actually became the burgomaster, or the mayor of Amsterdam not long after the war,
02:38 these three men petitioned the German authorities for clemency for my father.
02:43 Now this was a very dangerous thing to do, because they were pleading for a man,
02:47 not only a Jew, but a Jew in the Dutch resistance.
02:50 And these men were all married and they had children.
02:53 They had responsibilities.
02:55 But they were prepared to stick their head over the parapet and plead for a friend.
03:00 And ever since I've known that, friendship is a very, very important thing in my life.
03:05 There is no better asset that anybody can have than a good, loyal friend.
03:11 You don't turn away when your friend is in trouble.
03:14 You stand by them and help them as best you can.
03:17 There's a saying in English, I don't know if any of you know it,
03:19 "A friend in need is a friend indeed."
03:23 And these people were wonderful.
03:25 And although the Germans were relentant, as far as my father was concerned,
03:29 they continued to badger and badger and badger to get us on one of these paratroopers
03:35 that the Germans had set up in Holland in order to stop mass panic among the 140,000 Jews that were living in Holland.
03:46 When I walked and walked, suddenly I came up to the Pyramids of Rome.
03:53 I just missed everything, because I couldn't go any further.
03:56 I looked behind me and I saw all the barracks behind me on a flat part,
04:01 just flat with a land that I had crossed.
04:03 Then I looked up and I saw a guard looking down at me with his machine gun.
04:07 Then I looked along the Pyramids of Rome and about 20 metres away,
04:11 two German guards with an artillery dog.
04:15 I froze.
04:17 Then I looked at me and I looked at them, then I looked at the dog.
04:20 And this snarling artillery came running towards me.
04:23 I put my hands and my arms in front of my face.
04:26 I was bitten all over my arms, my chest, my legs, my thighs.
04:30 I can still hear these guards laughing at me, but the Jews making it very hard to believe.
04:36 Before they called the dog off, I ran back.
04:39 These black marks were leaving all over the place.
04:41 After that, I was alone before I proceeded around the corner and I saw guards and I was stunned.
04:48 I came into the barrack.
04:51 As I came into the barrack, I heard this howl.
04:53 I heard a "chhhhhh" and then a "ra-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta".
04:58 I looked up at the base roof of our barrack and I saw these four hoes appeared in the barrack.
05:04 I thought, "What on earth is going on?"
05:07 Panic, panic only, people screaming and shouting and running in all directions.
05:12 I ran instinctively to my table and I ran through this hail of bullets.
05:18 I was nearly scrunched.
05:20 I was completely panicked.
05:23 When I got to my table, there was this sweet, kind, lovely man who had more or less, with his wife, adopted this argument.
05:31 Surrogate grandparents.
05:34 Across the table, riddled with holes, blood pouring out of his body in a steady stream onto the floor.
05:42 It was the first time that I came face to face with death.
05:47 And it was the death of someone who had come to life.
05:50 And the sad thing is that this man, who loved England so much, was killed by British bullets fired from British aircraft.
06:01 Here's another example where the intelligence is completely wrong and they've got the wrong target.
06:07 Our barrack was completely destroyed and those of us who survived it were moved to other barracks within the camp.
06:14 We were put in the other behind and there were two brothers.
06:17 Take one, you need the other behind.
06:19 The brother and sister, they take one, you need the other behind.
06:22 And there was this howling, this screaming and we're going, "Please, please, let it go with her. Stay with him."
06:30 To which the guard would say, "Nine! Two! Go! Snell!"
06:34 Those going to Auschwitz to their certain death.
06:37 Those who were in the behind, to a very uncertain future.
06:40 The cruelty of doing that still irritates me today.
06:45 Because that's what this, that's all those children had left.
06:48 Mothers and fathers gone.
06:50 Brothers and sisters disappeared.
06:52 All those children had left were one another.
06:55 And they broke the last link in the chain.
06:58 And I thought that was so unbelievably cruel to do something like that.
07:04 Terrible, terrible to do that sort of thing.
07:08 And on the ramp was this, you saw these flat rectangular holes of cattle trucks.
07:14 And we got onto the ramp and we were pushed into these rectangular holes more and more and more until it was completely full.
07:23 And then suddenly I heard a great big "Bang!" as the cattle truck door slid through.
07:28 Suddenly we were in complete darkness.
07:30 Some people started to scream and shout and cry.
07:33 But then you become aware that it's never completely dark.
07:38 Fortunately in our cattle truck we had four tiny little slip windows in the four corners of the cattle truck.
07:44 And something to control.
07:46 The rucksacks and the little suitcases were ploughed into two corners when this train set off.
07:53 A journey that I shall never ever forget.
07:58 39 hours in a cattle truck.
08:02 No sleep.
08:04 No food.
08:06 No water.
08:08 And what I remember most was the stench that built up in this cattle truck.
08:13 Of human sweat.
08:15 Of vomit.
08:17 Of urine.
08:19 Of feces.
08:21 The oxygen levels within the cattle truck was dropping.
08:25 We would climb around the little suitcases and things to get to the little slip windows to get the air.
08:30 The air-doubts would pull us back.
08:33 And then suddenly it was night time.
08:36 And it stopped.
08:38 Suddenly there was a great big "Bang!" as the cattle truck door slid open.
08:44 And I remember this great waft of ice cold air that came into the cattle truck.
08:49 [Breathing]
08:54 You could breathe again.
08:56 It was almost like, you know, if suddenly you're at the side of a swimming pool and somebody throws a bunch of keys into the swimming pool,
09:02 and says "Go and get them!" and you dive in to get them.
09:05 And all you want to do is get the keys, you want to push yourself off, you want to break the surface of the water.
09:10 It was like that in ultra-slow motion.
09:14 Have I got time to go on?
09:17 I hope so.
09:19 Just stop me when you want to stop.
