Mottos:
"We
never hurt each other but by error or by malice" (Dr.
Johnson)
"It
was from this time that I developed my way of judging the Chinese
by dividing them into two kinds: one humane and one not." (Jung
Chang) |
|
Copyright notice: This whole text
of the file this notice appears in bears my copyright: You may
not copy it and you may not quote from it, but you may link to
it. (*) |
I continue being not well, and otherwise also as before,
so I cannot do much. Also, I have meanwhile translated two documents and
added a third
My father tells about concentration-camps
The original is here in Dutch, with
some more text: Vader. The text
is all written by my father, in 1966, in support of his application for
a Dutch
resistance pension, but the explanatory notes between square brackets in
smaller letters are mine and date from 2010. When you put the cursor on
the text the original Dutch will display.
An attempt to write down some main points from the years 1940 to 1945 and
my current condition.
-
Since June 1940 active in forming small groups in Amsterdam, Holland and
the labour-duty[1] in the Zaan.
- Duplicating
and distribution of "De Waarheid" [Dutch:
"The Truth":
illegal paper of the Dutch Communist Party]
since May
1940.
[When the Nazis occupied The Netherlands.]
-
August 1, 1941 arrest.
Doelenstraat [Headquarters of the
Amsterdam SS] first interrogation.
To Weteringschans. [Prison]
Tried to slash my wrist artery for fear of further interrogation.
[My father and grandfather were betrayed by Dutch Nazi-collaborators and
arrested by the Amsterdam municipal police, most of whom also
collaboreated with the nazis, and handed over to the SS.]
-
Transferred to Amselveenseweg [Prison].
Discovered then my father (63 years old) in the yard who had also been
arrested.
Almost every night there I heard the screams of a child - who sounded
like being between 10 and 14 years old.
The stress this caused me in my "einzelcel" [German:
solitary confinement] often bothers me now, either at night or
when I hear children crying. [My father
dreamt every night about being imprisoned in a concentrationcamp, and
survived four.]
-
There was no further questioning.
I was transferred with several others including my father to the
transition camp Schoorl. [One of the first
concentration-camps in Holland, where many arrested communists were
gathered, prior to sending to another concentration-camp.]
-
Together with
Father we had to carry buckets of sand from a pit some
100 meters to a mountain and then from the mountain back into the pit
for weeks on end from 6.30 am to 18.30 in the evening with only short
breaks.
-
Oct 23.
1941 transferred to the PDA in Amersfoort [concentration
camp]
-
Were both housed in the housepainters workshop. [My
father and grandfather were skilled housepainters.]
-
Were witnesses
of and were regularly involved in all varieties of beatings up and
humiliations.
In particular, the Russians and the Jews had a hard time.
-
Despite a certain degree of freedom (my father was called "foreman" [leader
of a work squad]) he had to be taken to hospital.
He got problems with his heart and lungs, in addition to the
debilitating hunger. [Concentration camp
prisoners were systematically underfed and overworked, and were planned
to die after 3 months, yielding a net profit of 1600+ German Reichsmark
each, on average, including their gold teeth and glasses etc.]
-
Some time later, I followed him with oedema [due
to starvation] and we were reunited.
-
Along with two other elderly arrested men, my father was released after
some time.
I have not seen him since his dismissal, because he died only months
after release. [That was the point: To
frighten the Dutch, by showing what happened to those who resisted the
German occupiers.]
-
At that time a "Dr. Nieuwenhuis" was in charge of the hospital, with the
rank of "Hauptsturmführer" [German army
rank].
His barbaric behaviour got widely known and caused his practice and
surgical activities at the St. Elizabeth Hospital in Amersfoort [outside
the concentration camp] great damage.
-
He tried to improve his reputation somewhat by occasionally operating
acute cases [from the concentration camp]
in that [public] hospital thereby
making a show of "care" for the inmates.
Otherwise, I cannot explain this.
-
The first was Willem Serneus with peritonitis.
I lay beside him [in the camp's dormitory]
and after his return his stories about butter, cheese, eggs plus meat
etc. gave me hallucinations.
I weighed then about 40 KG, less than half of my normal weight.
-
After receiving information
from the unforgettable Dick Banning (then chief sanitäter [German:
health worker, also political prisoner]) about the symptoms of
appendicitis, I developed on Feb. 9.
evening the urge to "vomit" and "pains".
The next morning (my birthday, which is why I remember the date) Dick
Nieuwenhuis pointed out my "symptoms" to Herr Nieuwenhuis doing his
daily rounds (without a word he understood it) and barely 1 1/2 hours
later, I had been operated on and was in St
. Elizabeth Hospital, in the care of nurse Crista.
-
Food and the possibility of escaping dominated my thoughts.
-
Day and night, however, there was an SS-guard ("Dutchman") in my single
room.
-
The care with which I was surrounded by the nursing staff seemed like a
dream.
-
The third day during the daily visit of Nieuwenhuis (of course, he
demanded payment) I pointed out a hernia that I had with the intention
of prolonging my stay.
-
It worked because on the fifth day, I was also treated for this.
So now I could think deeply again about making an attempt to escape.
-
It didn't get further than deep thinking, because the ninth day I was
transferred to the so-called "erholungsbarak" ["convalescent
barrack"] in the PDA ["Politisches
Durchgangslager Amersfoort": concentration camp].
-
There I got an infection in the wound due to the groin surgery for
hernia, that caused a massive swelling of the "scrotum".
-
Again I was transferred to the hospital.
It appeared that one of my testicles was infected, that slowly turned to
puss.
-
Meanwhile, Nieuwenhuis had been replaced by a Dr. Klomp from Veenendaal,
who carried out his duties differently and in a better way.
-
He told me that the second testicle was also in danger
and that I might again need an operation.
Strangely enough, I desired this [probably
irony: he desired not
to starve; he desired to escape] -
but nothing was done.
The wound healed very slowly.
-
In this period Dick Banning and other hostages were taken away to be shot.
The peace and confidence
this strong figure emanated while he spoke about his life in the last
night is unimaginable ....
great dismay ...
-
During my recovery period I was approached by the illegal
camp leadership (this I understood only later), who asked me if I wanted
to act as sanitäter [German: Healthworker,
male nurse. The illegal camp leadership was the organized resistance in
the camps by some political prisoners. This was extraordinarily
dangerous work. The best book I know about this by E. Kogon,
Der SS-Staat, written not long after the war by a former inmate of
the concentration camp Buchenwald since 1937, with the help of many
former inmates, also of various political and religious beliefs.]
-
This was the period when Hurkmans and Eegdemans were respectively first
and second camp elders [Difficult term to
translate: concentration camp prisoners assigned as leaders of the
prisoners. There were also "block" and "barrack" "elders". In general,
these eldest had rather a lot of power over inmates, and some privileges
themselves, and could be very bad or quite good. In some camps, the
illegal camp leadership sometimes succeeded in having their men
assigned; in other camps there either was no such leadership or it
didn't succeed doing this.]
-
I became sanitäter. A
new chapter began with greater care and responsibility for many others.
For example,
a place for "ansteckende krankheit" [German:
infectious disease] was created which the SS carefully avoided
and other things like that,
such
as making those sentenced to death "transportunfähig"
[German: "Not capable of being
transported", generally by having them declared ill with an infectious
disease. There were many dangerous infectious diseases in concentration
camps, such as thypoid and cholera.]
-
At
that time Eegdemans often came to me literally to cry.
This was because in his function of lower second camp elder he tried to
scream louder than the dreaded lagerkommandanten [German:
camp commanders] Stöver and Berg.
He managed to deceive the SS that way.
Thus he succeeded for
example to take over the so-called "sporting" with inmates from Berg.
He screamed louder than he hit.
He also succeeded
in making an SS guard at the gate surrender Maup vd
Berg
(with one arm) to him, who had been locked up in the so-called "chicken
coop", and then while screaming loudly he literally beat him into the
prisoners barracks out of sight of the SS.
For having to staying overnight in the "chicken coop" was often lethal.
-
Likewise
he also beat the Jews apart in the corner between barrack 2 and 4 close
to one of the towers from where one of the "land guards" [Dutch
in the original: Probably a Dutchman] under constant threat with
his machine gun gave humanly deeply degrading orders to them, until one
or more of them in their desperation took refuge in the "Spanish
riders " at the camp fence, so as to get the " final shot of mercy" -
"auf der flugt erschossen". [German: shot
while fleeing, one of the most common pretexts for murder by the guards.
The "Spanish riders" were a kind of metal spiked fences, and inmates
knew that any inmate who came too close to the camp's fence was shot as
a matter of course. Eegdemans tried to save them.]
-
Having
my job, I had to take care these people [who
had been shot for coming to close to the fence]were removed to
the morgue or were brought to the "badenraum" [German:
bathing room] where they bled to death on orders of Stöver
or Berg. The most I could do was to try to relieve their suffering
during
the
night with morphine injections. [Which no
doubt again was mortally dangerous to my father: One shouldn't try to
help Jews shot by SS-guards in concentration camps.]
-
In Barrack 4 behind the kitchen among other things I have been able to
help De Miranda during his last hours.
He was literally beaten to a pulp. [De
Miranda was an alderman of Amsterdam for the Dutch Labour Party SDAP
with a Jewish background. The Dutch Labour Party claim him as one of
their great examples, and indeed, unlike them, he was a brave and humane
man.]
-
I had to cut down
at least 8 persons who were hanged.
They were all killed in the same way. They were dragged with a rope
around their neck along the floor of the then empty Shack 8 and then
strung up to a beam of one of the wooden bunks.
This was done by an SS Unterscharführer nicknamed "Father Christmas"
because of his large boots, his grey moustache, and his way of walking.
He selected his victims at night when drunk on beer.
-
The suffering of the Russian prisoners of war is another tale.
The sad story of these wonderful people is well known, I believe. [Actually,
my father probably was again ironical: Russian soldiers who were caught
alive were sent as a matter of course to concentration camps where they
were treated awfully.]
-
However, I do want to remark that I've seen while in a blind rage that
the remaining barefoot survivors in front of the Revier [German:
hospital] were loaded into trucks followed by a carriage with
shovels and lime.
It was their last journey.
-
Time and again I was deeply
impressed by the transports elsewhere, especially of the groups who were
sent to Utrecht to be executed.
-
In early 1943, the PDA [PDA=Politisches
Durchgangslager Amersfoort: Political Transport Camp Amersfoort]
was evacuated to make way for others and we were transferred to Vught. [Another
place in Holland with a concentration camp.]
-
Again, I held a position as sanitäter.
The first primitive operations were carried out by the German chief
sanitäter Heinz Wons (whose occcupation was miner) and by Joe Birnie, a
medical student at Groningen.
In the newly built Revier [German:
Hospital] (in which there was a fairly well-equipped operating
room) I got the charge of the surgical dept. that was later led by the
unforgettable human being, Dr Steyn. [Again,
these were all political prisoners like my father. I believe Birnie was
Scotch and studied medicine in Groningen when the war started. Heinz
Wons and Dr. Steyn were always referred to by my father with admiration.
I may have met Heinz Wons in the early sixties, but am not sure. In any
case, he also was a communist.]
-
I want to mention one case from the series of daily events.
This was before the presence of Dr Steyn.
-
One
of the guards had shot a dum-dum bullet [that
when hitting a target explodes in tiny parts] into the abdominal
cavity of a young man from Den Haag, called Frans Wagenaar.
He was brought immediately to the operating room where the present two
doctors (I do not give their names) refused to do any surgical
intervention because of their professional oath.
I cannot understand such a conflict of conscience.
Heinz drove them from the operating room and performed the surgery,
assisted by me.
Frans recovered. [Let me note here that my
father wrote these notes to get a so-called "Resistance Pension", and
that his claims were tested and found true. The pension he did get, but
unlike nearly all other pensions former resistance people received,
his was hardly higher than the dole, because my father was still a
communist. This I found out only in 1996, after my mother's death, when
I also found these notes of my father's.]
-
I also nursed the young Groningen marreschausee [Dutch
Royal Police] with gangrene, who managed to escape with the help
of Dr Steyn, Hans Tiemeier [later a
well-known Dutch actor] and Harry Kindt, using a Red Cross car.
-
Philips [the Dutch international
electronics firm, collaborators with the Germans in WW II]
went into production in camp Vught. Hundreds of women and men were put
to work in separate barracks.
I was appointed as sanitäter on the Philips Site in order to treat
simple wounds.
-
Because
my job gave me a certain freedom (because I visited my patients [Unlike
modern Dutch GP's who are called "huisartsen"="home doctors" because
they used to visit their patients at home. In the present modern times
people only are free to go at office hours to G.P.s, and mostly only
after having made an appointment. This is called "medical progress" in
Holland.]) I smuggled messages and letters, both from outside to
inside and vice versa. While I was doing so an Unterscharfuhrer caught
me.
It resulted in 6 weeks of dark cell and 2 months of
punishment squad for me. [Either was often
lethal.]
-
During the landing in Normandy I was in the cell in the so called
cell-barracks.
Unforgettable is the squeezing of a large number of women in such a
small cell, the cell door was literally pressed shut.
-
Then there is the story of "vagabond" who had to pay his betrayal of
hundreds of the best with his life ...
and yet so many more stories.
-
I am thinking of counting the shots in the evening silence, that we
could hear from the execution site and then a short time of a tangible
silence ...
-
After
dolle dinsdag [Dutch:
Frantic Tuesday - September 5, 1944, when both the Dutch and the Germans
thought for a day that the war in Holland would be over within days, and
some Germans and Dutch collaborators panicked] followed transport
to Sachsenhausen. [German concentration
camp near Berlin; the place were the SS got their education as SS].
Standing squeezed together in a closed freight car.
During this horrible transport I took the lead in the car. As one half
squeezed even closer together, the other half could lay down a little,
on top of one another.
This we changed every 2 hours.
How we got the empty tin can for vegetables I do not know, but we
organized a "pissing guard" (the can went from hand to hand and was then
emptied by the guard).
In that situation, one night we were in a yard in Duisburg which was
heavily bombed that moment. In
the daytime it was very hot. During the three days journey we were
allowed once to get one bucket of water per freightcar.
-
It almost took my life when I strongly insisted on discipline to ensure
a fair distribution.
But it did succeed.
Sachsenhausen .... los ... los ... eraus ihr hünde
.... [German: Go...go... out you dogs...]
After registration in the schreibstube [German:
Writing shop: every political prisoner was meticulously registered in
German concentration camps] the next day followed a transport on
foot to the outcamp Heinkel (production of small bombers). [Heinkel
was also the name of the firm that made the bombers thus named. An
outcamp was part of the camp outside the main camp.]
We were chased along with rifle butts and spat on by spectators along
the route, including children.
-
The "reception" was held in an unused hangar where large wooden cribs
lined up three stories high.
There was much dysentery.
-
On the initiative of Dr Steyn a small room using straw
was created to treat dysentery.
Again I became sanitäter there.
-
Especially the last period is like a nightmare.
-
It conjures up images of piles and pits full of dead bodies or rather
skeletons. Again and again
I was involved for weeks on end unloading wagons in trains of kilometers
length filled with dead and half dead, in the harsh cold of January
and Febr.
This was due to the evacuation of Auschwitz and Grosz-Rosen because of
the advances of Russian armies. [Grosz-Rosen
like Auschwitz was a concentration camp, also with a horrible
reputation.]
-
During a
nightly attempt by the SS to transport the remaining prisoners of both
camps away from these armies with the intention to annihilate them (the
so-called death march). I managed to hide myself with some Dutchmen
including Dr Hupscher.
This was possible because of the great confusion among the SS and
because there are also remained hundreds of seriously ill in the Revier
[German: hospital].
-
Day after the grenades and rockets whistled over the camp.
-
The
circle around Berlin was getting closer.
The still remaining SS-men also were afraid, because we suddenly
discovered that they were gone.
We were free ....
-
Already before that, chaos threatened the camp.
In collaboration with others, we could manage this in the right
direction.
For
there was a view especially among the remaining Poles that everyone
should simply take what he wanted.
We had to stop this because nobody could say what was the position of
the armies and when we would be liberated.
Therefore we had to make a decision for the hundreds that remained how
we should ration what food we still had, of course in a better way than
the SS had done.
-
The
scenes when the first groups of scouts entered the camp followed by army
units are indescribable.
-
The cabinets in which some supplies were left were broken open.
Crawling and stumbling in their own excrement, sick people tried to
appropriate it.
Until a Russian medical team took over the care for them, this again
caused many unnecessary deaths.
-
I considered myself then discharged from my duty especially after we
were threatened by some Poles, and then left the camp with two
fellow-prisoners.
-
It was as if the world rejoiced.
Radiant spring weather and budding green everywhere.
We sucked it into us and replenished ourselves with edible things
we found in abandoned farm houses.
-
We slowly
regained energy.
We saw scorched earth until Frankfurt a / d Oder. |
-
After the battle of Berlin, we stayed for a long time in Potsdam [close
to Berlin], where I had to be hospitalized with paratyphoid
fever.
-
After my recovery I ended up in prison again, this time with the
Russians suspected of conspiracy, as they called it.
-
I was locked up in a basement with notorious Nazis.
I have horrific memories of this. Also about
the
transports on the streets, between two armed Soviet soldiers ...
the looks of understanding or winks of the bastards ... [The
bastards: I take it my father refers to either the Nazis or the German
civilian onlookers in the streets.]
-
After weeks I was rehabilitated with apology and all, but my health had
been dealt a serious blow.
This is why I only returned to our country in the middle of September.
-
Since then I have done what we all are obliged to do for
our dead, and do the best I can to prevent that our children
befall
a similar disaster.
-
I am anxious about this, it persecutes me and keeps me trapped in my
dreams.
I toss and turn in my sleep, so my wife Coby or I often sleep on the
sofa bed in the living room. [My father
dreamt every night he was in a concentration camp.]
-
I am also overly irritable, alas also against my children.
-
Whether it comes from my attempts to evade or suppress this, I often am
rude, followed with crying spells. [As a
matter of fact, I myself never saw my father cry except when my younger
brother drowned in 1959.]
-
All I have to do is too much for me and if I start working I start
sweating.
-
And precisely that feeling of being no longer capable of being what I
nearly always have been, a support and counsellor for others, breaks one
down further as it were.
-
With almost
all the employers I have worked for I'm known as a good artisan.
They
just can't stand it if you insist that you get properly paid for working
by the hour. [After the war, until about
1960, my father was in fact a well-known trade unionist and communist
strike leader. He also was indeed a highly qualified housepainter, and
an intellectually gifted man. In this point he is formulating things
diplomatically.]
-
What I never had before I have got lately
namely a hatred of my work.
I was no longer able to do a decent job.
Made mistakes, get irritable, get involved in quarrels.
Moreover, my growing forgetfulness can make me very angry. For example,
I may be looking nervously
for something I have in my hand.
-
When I got home I drop in bed like a log, often with pain in my back.
My being tired or nervous is immediately felt in my back because,
according to Dr. Koolsbergen, I have a mild hernia, for which I
repeatedly had to stay on my back for a prolonged time. [One
of my earliest conscious memories of my father is when I was two or
three and he had to lay down on the wooden floor of a bed without a
mattress for several weeks to try to get rid of his back pains.]
-
I walk then as if I've shat in my pants. [Indeed,
he did have trouble walking with back pains.]
-
Recently I fell from a concrete staircase, and got a mild concussion.
-
After recovering, I have fallen several times from my work bench.
This also happened the day I've gone home overwrought. I
flung
my tools around as before and kicked them into a corner.
And then I had to cry again.
-
Now that I am no longer bound for some time (possibly due to the
medication) I have slowed down, but am no less tired.
I sleep a lot, in the afternoon after some housework, while in the
morning I wake up from a kind of unconsciousness. [Probably
induced by heavy sleeping pills.]
-
I can sit silently for hours even though there may follow angry
outbursts or harsh words.
I am much troubled that I cannot find the right tone towards my eldest
son.
The relationship with my wife Coby is better, mainly due to the
appreciation for her work [she gave free
legal advice, especially about rents and landlords] and what she
often has to put up with from me.
Our
physical contact is virtually nil.
-
I rather want to end this essay now.
It took me almost two weeks.
I had to force myself to do it over and again. [Normally
my father could express himself very well and easily in speech and
writing. He also read, spoke and understood German very well.]
Original text of my father: 1966 (copyright)
My translation: 2010 (copyright)
Documentation:
My story - ME in
Amsterdam
The whole story is on my site in Dutch:
ME in Amsterdam.
Together with explanatory files and documentary proofs it takes nearly
20 MB on my site, including
medical
documentation about ME. Nearly all of the documents in the main
directory of
ME in Amsterdam have been known to the municipality,
mayors and aldermen of Amsterdam since 1995 at the latest, when they
received an earlier version on disk with paper copies of all sent
letters, complaints and claims, and idem to the board of directors and
legal department of the University of Amsterdam. The mayors of
Amsterdam have been aware of my texts and my case since 1989 and until
2009.
The reasons why I was repeatedly removed from the
University of Amsterdam, where I have also led a student party to
protest the bad and politicized education, are here:
39 Questions about the qualities
of education
and government
in the Netherlands and in more detail, also in part in English,
here: Spiegeloog-columns
- columns I was asked to write for the monthly of the faculty of
psychology, in which I articulate my 'outspoken ideas' about the
University of Amsterdam for which I was removed and forbidden to take
the M.A. philosophy.
My own strong guess is that the main reason neither the
mayors not the board of directors want to enter into any communication
with me is that I have the background I have - I am the son and
grandson of Amsterdam heroes of the resistance; my father was a
well-known Amsterdam communist; my father was knighted for organizing
the National Dutch Exhibition about WW II; and I can write and know my
subjects.
My own strong guess is that the main reason they think
they can get away with it is that I am ill; that I risk my life in
Amsterdam if this gets wide publicity - and the municipal police will
not protect me, as they have repeatedly affirmed to me ('if you don't
like it in Amsterdam, you can fuck off elsewhere', 'we only come when
the dead bodies are already on the floor', and more); that the same
Chief of Order and Security that let me be threatened and gassed by
Amsterdam drugsmafiosi is still Chief of Order and Security,
while Dutch Labour's strong men control Amsterdam and the University of
Amsterdam since 1945 for the most part and have nearly all top
positions (mayor, most aldermen, board of directors of UvA) within
their power and remit.
And I am just one human individual without allegiance
to any powerful group in Holland, while it also is most easy to have
someone murdered in Amsterdam ever since Van Thijn became mayor, and
none of the many murders involving drugs in some way are ever solved in
Amsterdam.
This is quoted from
February-Strike:
What I learned about it from Van Thijn and Cohen - and let it be
noted that my father and grandfather were arrested because of it, by
the Amsterdam municipal police, and then handed over to the SS, while
mayors Van Thijn and Cohen for many years have done little with less
passion and dedication than speech about The Ideals Of The February
Strike and about how enormously committed they themselves were to The
Ideals Of The February Strike, indeed to the extent that Van Thijn
repeated daily, if he got the chance, to the media that he 'personally
governed Amsterdam In The Name Of The Ideals Of The February Strike' -
so that the world should know precisely in what name and precisely for what ideals
he had me
gassed by Amsterdam drugsmafiosi he preferred to protect rather than do
his duty as mayor and chief of police.
The following text is also known, since quite a few
years, to mayor and aldermen of the City of Amsterdam, the city of The
Ideals Of The February Strike (that is quite special, because it is the
only time in any country occupied by the nazis that a considerable part
of the working population dared strike to protest the nazi razzias on
Jews).
|
My father
survived almost 4 years of German concentration
camps as condemned 'political terrorist', and
could start a familt in which I was born as eldest son, and could
work for 20 years as a housepainter, after which he received a
resistance pension. He organised with the Sachsenhausen-comité
during the last 20 years of his life exhibitions about the
resistance, the concentration camps, and the dangers of the revival
of fascism, that in the end produced the so called National
Resistance Exhibition, that was shown many times in many places,
including the Royal Palace in Amsterdam and the Dom Church in
Utrecht, for which my father, briefly before his death, was
knighted in the city hall of Amsterdam.
I myself survived almost 4 years, as
non-admitted invalid with
ME,
continuous noise, threats
with murder, and being gassed, which only barely did not kill
me, while living above a coffeeshop for dealing
soft drugs that did most of its business dealing hard drugs,
with the permit to deal illegal drugs signed by mayor Van Thijn in
the shopwindow, and in
the same year as I was gassed have been removed for the
third time from the
Municipal University, because of "your outspoken ideas", and
have since that year, that was followed by 3 more years of terror,
threats and noise that made it impossible to sleep, pain all the
time and my
already ill health has been totally ruined.
I have now been complaining about this for
20 years and never get answered: Everyone in the
bureaucracies and leaderships of the city and University of
Amsterdam is effectively personally unaccountable and personally
irresponsible for anything they choose to do or leave undone - and
I have not been able to start a family, have lived in the direst
poverty, have not gotten any help beyond minimal and minimized
dole. The only answers I have gotten, both from the city's mayor
and the university's director, is that I will not get any answer
because my usage of language, that they claim to be so "grievous
and/or offensive", without giving any proof or documentation,
that it totally relieves Amsterdam's mayors or aldermen of the duty
to maintain the Dutch laws,
indeed
just like the tolerated ("gedoogde") dealing in soft and hard drugs
from the bottom floor of the house where I lived, the
dealers of which threatened to kill me in these terms: "We will
kill you if you do anything we don't like". The Amsterdam
municipal police refused to file any complaint I desired to make,
and the mayor of Amsterdam with the director of the municipal
medical service ("GGD") refused to provide me with a little help
for money to enable me to get the Ph.D. in spite of agreeing that I
must be intellectually brilliant and
in spite of the fact
a prominent Amsterdam professor (who since emigrated from the
Netherlands to the US) pleaded my case and my intellectual
brilliance with them in writing. He too did not even receive a
reply from either of Amsterdam's leading personalities.
In a city and a country in
which these things are possible, I do not want to live, and do not
want to pay taxes: I want to emigrate.
Because
my
health presumably has been totally and forever ruined during my
four years of utter misery, pain, sleeplessness, murderthreats, and
continued danger of being gassed again, I am legally and morally
entitled to large compensations for damages.
But in Holland, since I
personally went with a written complaint and claim for damages, to
mayor Ed van Thijn of Amsterdam, whose career owes a lot to the
exhibitions that my father got knighted for in Amsterdam's
City Hall, with a description of the threats and of being gassed,
at the time while I still lived above the murderously inclined
drugsdealers protected by Van Thijn and the Amsterdam bureaucracy
and municipal police, and while the threats continued, I
simply have not received any answer to any of my complaints,
whichever way I write, however politely I modulate them, whoever I
pose them to.
I posed them to 3 Amsterdam
mayors, over 20 Amsterdam aldermen, over 40 Amsterdam council
members, 2 of Amsterdam Ombudsmen, 3 of Holland's National
Ombudsmen, 1 advocate-general of Amsterdam, also part-time
professor of Human Rights in the University of Amsterdam, 3
Amsterdam district attorneys, 2 commissioners of police, 3
inspectors of police, several journalists, the foundation that
pensioned my father, the Dutch Institute for War Documentation, the
Amsterdam Court, the Amsterdam Resistance Exhibition's leaders and
Committee of Recommendation, and hundreds upon hundreds of
Amsterdam bureaucrats: Nobody answered, nobody even came to see
what was in fact the case - I was and am a non-person of no
human value or with any human rights whatsoever, and
the same Chief
Order and Security Officer of Amsterdam that left me to being
gassed, threatened with murder, annd kept out of sleep, is still
and ever since Chief Order and Security Officer of
Amsterdam, while every year since then the Amsterdam drugsmafia has
earned untold fortunes, and committed many murders, although the
Chief Security Officer of Amsterdam and mayor Cohen of Amsterdam
proudly appeared in front of the TV-cameras of the media in 2002 to
declare that they had together personally prevented the murders of
no less than 17 Amsterdam drugsdealers. In 2007 the same Chief
Order and Security Officer of Amsterdam received the prize for
being Holland's best bureaucrat from the hands of His Royal
Highness Prince William-Alexander of The Netherlands.
So... these are the Dutch
national values and ideals my father and grandfather went into
resistance for; these are Dutch national values and ideals my
mother risked her life for in the resistance as sub-chief supplies
for Jews in hiding in Noordbrabant, where the future mayor of
Amsterdam Ed van Thijn, who proudly had me gassed, threatened and
tortured in Amsterdam, for the sake of illegal drugsdealers he
desired to maintain the rights and practices of, over my dead body
if necessary, was hidden as a young boy at the time:
ME + me : Why my family was in The Dutch Resistance in
WW II a.k.a.
Dutch Norms And Values
a.k.a.
If you ain't
Dutch, you ain't much
a.k.a.
A Real Dutch Treat
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ME and Human Rights
I have cited my human rights already in 1988 and 1989 to
the municipal police, to mayor Ed van Thijn, and to Amsterdam bureaucrats
speaking for Amsterdam aldermen, and in writing in 1989 and 1992: See
Mensenrechten (Dutch).
To no avail: That is
Why my family was in The Dutch
Resistance in WW II . Here they are in English, quoted from
January 19 of this year:
Universele Verklaring van
de Rechten van de Mens + Note (there also in Dutch).
There are legal and philosophical considerations here:
Voer voor
advocaten en filosofen (Dutch: Fodder or lawyers and
philosophers), from which I quote John Stuart Mill:
To have a right, then,
is, I conceive, to have
something which society
ought to defend me in the
possession of. (..) If
that expression does not
seem to convey a
sufficient feeling of the
strength of the
obligation, nor to account
for the peculiar energy of
the feeling, it is because
there goes to the
composition of the
sentiment, not a rational
only, but also an animal
element, the thirst for
retaliation; and this
thirst derives its
intensity, as well as its
moral justification, from
the extraordinarily
important and impressive
kind of utility which is
concerned.
The interest involved
is that of security,
to every one's feelings
the most vital of all
interests. All other
earthly benefits are
needed by one person, not
needed by another; and
many of them can, if
necessary, be cheerfully
foregone, or replaced by
something else; but
security no human being
can possibly do without;
on it we depend for all
our immunity from evil,
and for the whole value of
all and every good,
beyond the passing moment;
since nothing but the
gratification of the
instant could be of any
worth to us, if we could
be deprived of anything
the next instant by
whoever was momentarily
stronger than ourselves.
But not in Amsterdam, since Van Thijn has been mayor
there. If you want to skip directly to my Note and
forego reading what is not maintained in Amsterdam: Note.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly
of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights the full text of which appears in the following pages.
Following this historic act the Assembly called upon all Member countries
to publicize the text of the Declaration and "to cause it to be
disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and
other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political
status of countries or territories.
PREAMBLE
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and
inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of
freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in
barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent
of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief
and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration
of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse,
as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human
rights should be protected by the rule of law,
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations
between nations,
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed
their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the
human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to
promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation
with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and
observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the
greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL
DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for
all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every
organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive
by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms
and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their
universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples
of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their
jurisdiction.
Article 1.
- All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They
are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another
in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2.
- Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this
Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex,
language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin,
property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made
on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of
the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be
independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of
sovereignty.
Article 3.
- Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 4.
- No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave
trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Article 5.
- No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment or punishment.
Article 6.
- Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before
the law.
Article 7.
- All are equal before the law and are entitled without any
discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal
protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and
against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 8.
- Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent
national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him
by the constitution or by law.
Article 9.
- No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 10.
- Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by
an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights
and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
Article 11.
- (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed
innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which
he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
- (2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any
act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national
or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a
heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time
the penal offence was committed.
Article 12.
- No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy,
family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and
reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against
such interference or attacks.
Article 13.
- (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within
the borders of each state.
- (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own,
and to return to his country.
Article 14.
- (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries
asylum from persecution.
- (2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions
genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the
purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 15.
- (1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
- (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied
the right to change his nationality.
Article 16.
- (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race,
nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family.
They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at
its dissolution.
- (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent
of the intending spouses.
- (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society
and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Article 17.
- (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in
association with others.
- (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
Article 18.
- Everyone has the right to freedom of
thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change
his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with
others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in
teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Article 19.
- Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this
right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek,
receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless
of frontiers.
Article 20.
- (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and
association.
- (2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
Article 21.
- (1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his
country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
- (2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his
country.
- (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of
government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections
which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret
vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
Article 22.
- Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and
is entitled to realization, through national effort and international
co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each
State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his
dignity and the free development of his personality.
Article 23.
- (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to
just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against
unemployment.
- (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay
for equal work.
- (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable
remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of
human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social
protection.
- (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the
protection of his interests.
Article 24.
- Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable
limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.
Article 25.
- (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the
health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food,
clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the
right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability,
widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his
control.
- (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and
assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy
the same social protection.
Article 26.
- (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at
least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall
be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made
generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to
all on the basis of merit.
- (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human
personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and
fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and
friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall
further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
- (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that
shall be given to their children.
Article 27.
- (1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life
of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement
and its benefits.
- (2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material
interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production
of which he is the author.
Article 28.
- Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the
rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
Article 29.
- (1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and
full development of his personality is possible.
- (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be
subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the
purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and
freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality,
public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
- (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to
the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 30.
- Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any
State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform
any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set
forth herein.
Note
I will argue later - but see
ME in Amsterdam if you
read Dutch - that most of the rights that I nominally have in Holland in
terms of the above Declaration, that is part of the Dutch law, have
been denied to me
(1) because I have ME since January 1, 1979
and
(2) because I have protested
against the decline of education and civilization in Holland since I
remigrated thereto in 1977 (from Norway) - in which I have been found to
be quite right by the Parliamentary Commission Dijsselbloem of 2008 and
(3) because I have had the courage to
protest against the being threatened with murder and violence and being
gassed by the drugsdealers the mayor of Amsterdam Ed van Thijn had given
permission to deal drugs from the house where I tried to survive with
ME.
Part of the reason for my discrimination in Amsterdam is
very probably that I am the oldest son (and also the grandson) of
Amsterdam heroes of the Dutch resistance
to Nazism between 1940 and 1945, and that mayor Ed van Thijn knew both
my parents, since my father was
knighted in Amsterdam as the main organizer of the Dutch National Exhibition
about World War II and Resistance, and my mother worked in 1944 as part
of the resistance that protected Jews in hiding from the Nazis, in the
vicinity where Ed van Thijn was hiding, age 8:
Rather than receive, answer or help me when it turned out
in 1988 that I had been gassed and threatened with murder by the drugs
dealers he protected, who also kept me from sleeping, Amsterdam mayor Ed
van Thijn (and his successors Patijn and Cohen) decided to do all he (and
they) could do to prevent that I got any help I am legally entitled to,
clearly in the hope that I would suicide or otherwise die.
I was never answered, never received,
never even talked to by phone by any mayor, any alderman, any elected Amsterdam
councilmembers, or any leading bureaucrat of the city of Amsterdam ever since I
dared to protest against being threatened with murder by the drugsdealers the
mayor, aldermen and elected Amsterdam
councilmembers protect, and have protected ever since.
Part of the reason is, no doubt,
very few Dutchmen have the courage my parents
and grandparents had, while the vast majority of Dutchmen, since ages, take
all proper care to never offend such authorities as there are.
What I claim is that, in my case, at least the articles 1,
2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28
and 29 have been DELIBERATELY BROKEN in
Amsterdam by the city-government and the University of Amsterdam,
quite consciously
so, on purpose, with the deliberate purpose to silence me before my
complaints, that have for decades referred to the above articles, could come
to court.
For the proofs of these allegations see
ME in Amsterdam and in particular its
Overzicht (Survey) and
Konklusie and the summary
for lawyers:
Voer voor
advocaten en filosofen.
And those are my three documents:
It is for these reasons, mainly - apart from my being a philosopher
and a psychologist, with ME since 1.1.1979, after EBV, medically
diagnosed by G.P.s and by medical specialists on ME - that my
case with
ME in Amsterdam is
not quite the same as the cases of other people with ME, inside or
outside Amsterdam.
Please not the copyright remark.
P.S. So this is a the translation of
my father's story about German
concentration-camps in English plus the other two documents for good human
measure.
I will have to make corrections, especially in the translation of my father's
text, I suppose, though I have done as well as I could, in my circumstances, but
that has to wait till later, as does the explanation of my end in view with this
file and with yesterday's
The past year of ME + me - some that I learned
- 2.
Finally, for the moment: Please note that nothing of what
I write here and what is on my site about
ME in Amsterdam
and about the University of
Amsterdam has ever been seriously disputed by anyone ; there are witnesses for much
I write about and anyway it is a clear multifold and decades repeated
dereliction of legal duties by those paid to maintain and implement the law,
and my ideas about the University of Amsterdam were well-known and
well-published and also not seriously disputed (and since will find wide
agreement, as they also were well-received except by
incompetent professors: "Maarten
Maartensz?! We'd love to see him dead.")
Also, the bitter part about
ME in Amsterdam
andindeed
some that I learned
the past year is that other people with ME, millions in fact, have
been neglected likewise in their Human Rights for honest medical, legal and
personal help while and because they are ill, for the most part because
those responsible simply don't care, and not helping is a lot cheaper,
and/or because some are deluded by the fallacy that "ME is not a real disease
because it has no known cause", yet, and/or by pseudoscientific psychiatrists
pretending it is an ailment they can cure, for payment, by Cognitive Behavorial
Therapy ('Jedem das Seine') and Graduated Exercise Therapy ('Arbeit macht frei')
- see my
Studies in MEdical Sadism - 2:
"101 Good Reasons" and most or all of
The past year of ME + me - some that I learned
- 2.
-- October 23, 19.30: Corrected some typos, and some
terminological and other mistakes in my father's story, with help from a native
English speaker. (Remaining mistakes are mine only.)
-- October 24, 12.50: Corrected some more
typos, and added the spacing between the points that's also there in the Dutch
version.
-- October 25, 19.45: Downsized the titles of the names of the articles in
ME and Human Rights. There is also
a Dutch version of this page now, on October 25, 2010.
P.P.S. It may be I have to stop Nederlog for a while. The reason
is that I am physically not well at all. I don't know yet, but if
there is no Nederlog, now you know the reason.
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