“They were supposed to still stay in (the) contained area because of the revolutionary Indonesians. They survived 41 months of starving and then you faced the other danger of perhaps as your truck was going down to the ships, the rescue ships, that…

“When we heard that we were free, the girls (Tonneke and Monica) and I went to a kind of motel in Ambarawa. I made sure that we had lots of fruit, tomatoes and liver. Tonneke was my nurse when malaria got to me. She wrapped me up, gave me things to…

“Their mother died and so, when these children (Monica and Tonneke) were left motherless then someone fostered them, and they were sort of offered to my mother and my grandmother…So my grandmother said ‘well sure we’ll take them’ because that means…

“She had a younger brother five years younger and his name was Hans. They were going back and forth between Indonesia and the Netherlands, she and her brother, because my grandmother and grandfather felt they needed what they called 'a proper…

“My grandfather found a Polish Jew who, for a hefty sum, was helping transport peoples’ home effects; furniture, linens, silverware, whatever, out of the country and he was able to – he told my grandfather to pack up some trunks and be prepared –…

"We were stacked in the hull of the ship. We were just stood up in there with no bathroom facilities, no nothing. A little food once a day, if you were fortunate enough to get some food, if not, you waited until the next day. We were packed in…

“Then I was [on] a train there— a hundred men to a box car. The doors all closed and when were arrived 3 or 4 days later, twenty-five or 30 men in each box car had died. Upon arriving at the camp in 1942, we were told by the Japanese that we were…

"I believe they [Carl, Selma, and Ilse Simon] only were there [at Westerbork] a night or two before they were sent to Poland, to Sobibor concentration camp. And on the 21st of May, they were asphyxiated. And my mother and her sisters did not find…

"And then they went on with 1000 children on that transport. They had a very harrowing experience. And they got to the border of Holland and Germany. And the soldiers there-- the German soldiers-- they boarded the train. And they harassed…

“Steering a city through troublesome times is just like piloting a ship through stormy waters. You don’t know what you are going to run into but you are going to be ready for anything. You may have to go through obstacles instead of around them. Or…