E. H. (Dan) Kampelmacher, Fighting for Survival
Foreword by Dan Michman
Series Editor: Dr. David Silberklang; Managing Editor: Daniella Zaidman Mauer
Yad Vashem in association with The Holocaust Survivors’ Memoirs Project, 2006
188 pp., $21 (airmail included) / NIS 69

This is the story of an 18-year-old boy who left his family and fled his native Vienna to Holland. There, as an illegal refugee, Dan Kampelmacher was incarcerated in the state prison at Veenhuizen, where he wrote a diary recounting his recent experiences in both countries. The diary ends on 31 December 1938 with the question: “Where will I be next New Years Eve?”
The book continues as a memoir, relating the story of Kampelmacher’s survival during the war working on Dutch farms, acquiring forged documents from the underground, and hiding in Charlotte van Dijk’s home in Utrecht from late 1942 onward. Kampelmacher even worked for the Dutch Psychotecnic Foundation in Utrecht in 1943, where despite knowing he was Jewish, his employers did not betray him.

Real (left) and false wartime identity cards of E. H. (Dan) Kampelmacher

In his foreword, Yad Vashem Chief Historian Prof. Dan Michman writes: “As a historian of Dutch Jewry for many years, I have addressed many of the issues mentioned in this book... However, reading this book provided me with a new perspective, one that is not to be found in my studies. It is the inside look; the sense of the steadily gathering storm, as seen through the eyes of one person who—luckily—kept a diary and who—luckily—survived (with the help of non-Jews), so as to be able to tell us how it was actually to live through it all.
“Kampelmacher’s book is a prime example of the corrective to historical research that personal accounts—both diaries and memoirs—can provide. Historians tend to classify their subjects of research into categories, such as “events,” “developments,” “causes,” and so on. As a result, their work can give the reader the impression of a past with clear-cut, neatly defined categories. Reality, however, is much more complicated and multi-faceted, even chaotic. The individual who experienced the events does not fully fit into the categories later applied by scholars. Kampelmacher leads us through the complexion of flowing events, the real-life impression that categories cannot provide.”

“Dies sind meine letzten Worte…”: Briefe aus der Shoah
(Last Letters from the Shoah — German edition)
Edited by Zwi Bacharach, Yad Vashem in association with Wallstein Verlag, 2006, 336 pp., Israel only: NIS 139

“Estas son mis últimas palabras…”: Últimas cartas del Holocausto
(Last Letters from the Shoah — Spanish edition)
Edited by Zwi Bacharach, 2006, 350 pp., $39 (airmail included) / NIS 139

“These are my last words…” is a sentence found over and over again in this unique volume of letters written by those who would not survive the Holocaust. The letters, treasured by the victims’ families and friends, were uncovered over the last 60 years and ultimately collected by Yad Vashem. These last letters were sent from the ghettos, hidden in the cattle cars and train stations, and smuggled out of the concentration camps. Each short letter describes the end of a difficult journey even as it reveals the raw emotions of mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers trying desperately to tell their story before it was too late.

 

A fin que sache la jeune génération… Shoah et Mémoire à Yad Vashem
(To Bear Witness: Holocaust Remembrance at Yad Vashem — French edition)
Edited by Bella Gutterman and Avner Shalev, 2006, Yad Vashem, 300 pp., $48 (airmail included) / NIS 149

Para que lo sepan las generaciones venideras: La recordación del Holocausto en Yad Vashem
(To Bear Witness: Holocaust Remembrance at Yad Vashem — Spanish edition)
Edited by Bella Gutterman and Avner Shalev, 2006, Yad Vashem, 300 pp., $48 (airmail included) / NIS 149

Yad Vashem’s new Museum Complex was constructed to enable it to renew its mission as the world center of Holocaust remembrance, documentation, research and education in every generation. This album leads the reader through Yad Vashem’s history, and relates the story not only of the Jews but of humankind, through individual accounts, original documents, works of art, personal artifacts and thousands of photographs—some published for the first time—of a world that is no more.

 

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