Contemporary Witness Accounts

Sixty-one years after the end of the Second World War, a German translation of Mirjam Bolle's journal in letters has just been published. Written by one of the few Dutch Jews who survived the Holocaust, the journal offers an insider's unique perspective on the events as they unfolded – and is a stark portrayal of the dilemmas facing the Jewish authorities.

Mirjam Bolle was just 25 years old when she started her journal. Her fiancé Leo Bolle, five years older than her, had emigrated to Palestine in 1938. Although Mirjam had also applied for an exit visa, her hopes of joining Leo in Palestine were crushed when the German occupation of the Netherlands began on 10 May 1940.

Unable to leave, Mirjam Bolle found work as a secretary to the Jewish Council in Amsterdam, which the Nazis designated to act as the intermediary between the Jewish community and the German authorities. Her position meant that she was better informed than others about the details of the Nazis' plans for the Jewish community – plans which directly affected Mirjam herself. Her journal, which takes the form of letters – never sent – to her fiancé from Amsterdam, Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen, is thus a chronicle of the fate of Dutch Jewry. In June 1944, Mirjam Bolle narrowly escaped deportation to the gas chambers when she became one of just 222 Dutch Jews who were exchanged for Germans interned on British territory. This saved her life and meant that she could finally leave for Palestine.

The fact that Mirjam Bolle survived and managed to preserve her journal for future generations is nothing short of a miracle. In all, 102,000 Jews from Holland were sent to the death camps; only 5000 survived. Almost 80% of the Dutch Jewish population perished – one of the highest figures of all Nazi-occupied countries, far exceeding France (around 25%) and Belgium (around 40%), for example. For this reason too, Mirjam Bolle's chronicle has unique significance.

Writing not to lose hope

Mirjam Bolle's journal begins with the German invasion of Holland. Besides the historical information which her journal contains, it is her insider's perspective and the acuity with which she recounts the events as they unfold that lend her narrative an intensity which historical accounts and academic analyses of the same subject necessarily lack. Day after day, she describes what is happening to the Jewish community, and yet the act of recording creates distance, as if she were standing outside the events that she describes.

Jean Amery once said that people with strong religious or political convictions were better able to survive the horrors of the concentration camps – because they had something to believe in. In Mirjam's case, love seems to have given her the will to survive. Shining through all her letters is the hope that she will emerge into a new life beyond the evil that she has witnessed.

Although her motive for writing the letters was intensely personal, her journal is an historical record of great poignancy. She is aware, as she is writing, that the letters will never reach her fiancé. Indeed, later – even after Mirjam escaped the horrors that befell the Dutch Jews – her husband could not, or would not, read her journal. For Mirjam, the act of writing was fundamental to her survival. But for her husband, denial seems to have performed the same function. The letters lay unread and forgotten for more than sixty years.

Often, the publication of personal letters seems to be a violation of privacy, an indiscretion. But in this case, the very opposite is true: today's reader is the right recipient of the letters.

It is hard to credit that these letters were written by a young woman who was just 25 years old. They are full of sharp personal observations which capture the horrors of life under occupation. Yet Mirjam Bolle insists that her reports can only hint at what really happened.

Some letters focus especially on a single theme: the anti-Jewish laws, registration, attempts to "go underground", house searches, or the black market. She describes minor events which are symbolic of the larger picture. Drunken police officers who use house searches as an opportunity to pilfer from the victims are documented with a keen eye – as are the individual officers who show surprising humanity, a sign that they disapprove of the coercive measures they are supposed to carry out. The author is restrained, never accusing, never lamenting her own situation. She makes no generalisations. She describes the systematic terror, the raids and house searches, but she also celebrates the successful escapes from impending arrest which saved a handful of lives. She pays tribute to the courageous acts of resistance by ordinary Dutch people – but she also chronicles the acts of denunciation which allowed some people to profit from others' misfortune.

The role of the Jewish Committee

Mirjam devotes an entire chapter to the activities of the Jewish Committee in Amsterdam, which was set up by the Nazis as the intermediary for their repressive measures. In the Committee, Jews themselves were responsible for compiling the deportation lists, and as the secretary, Mirjam Bolle had to type up and send out the lists. She is well aware of the Committee's complicity and her journal chronicles her changing attitude – from her initial hope that the Committee could delay the deportations and enable Jews to escape their fate, to the appalled realisation that a Jewish institution was contributing to the extermination of the Jews. She describes how the Council's issuance of exemptions, the Sperre system – the allocation of documents granting temporary exemption from deportations – and the special passes divided the Jewish community and exposed Committee members to accusations that they were exploiting their position. Two of the Committee's chairmen, Abraham Asscher and David Cohen – who both survived the Holocaust – were later barred from participating in any form of Jewish communal activity as a result of the role they played in the deportation of the Jews.

What dominates the letters is the terror of deportation, with all the unknown horrors that this entails. It is obvious that even well-informed people like Mirjam Bolle had no idea what was really happening in the death camps in the east. Auschwitz is mentioned just three times: in the last few pages of her journal, Mirjam Bolle writes from Bergen-Belsen: "Yesterday, someone – no one knows who – wrote on one of the beds: "The last Jews went to Auschwitz to be gassed (death)". Horrible. No one knows exactly what it means. Maybe we will find out soon enough. May God protect us."

Literature Mirjam Bolle: Ich weiß, dieser Brief wird dich nie erreichen. Tagebuchbriefe aus Amsterdam, Westerbork und Bergen-Belsen. Eichborn-Verlag, Berlin 2006