Op zoek naar Hans Goudsmit. 6: Youth in Amsterdam

English, see below


Deze voorlopig laatste aflevering over de jeugd van Hans Goudsmit is in het Engels geschreven ten behoeve van zijn familie in de Verenigde Staten.


Hans’ parents Simon and Sophia had married in Kampen on 18 May 1916. In that city they had two sons, Abraham, named after his paternal grandfather and born in 1917, and Henry (Hans) in 1921. Sophia's maiden name was Gosler - and it was not the first (and not the last) time that a Goudsmit married a Gosler girl. In these days marriage between relatives was not uncommon in Jewish families. The boys’ grandparents Abraham (born 1858) and Aaltje Henriëtte (1859) were both Goudsmits; they had married in Kampen on 8 November 1883. Their son Asser Goudsmit had married Rachel Gosler in November 1914. And on 28 July 1942 Simon & Sophia’s second son Henry (Hans) Goudsmit married his niece Roosje (Roby) Gosler. But let us start with the beginning.

The Butcherstore from Kampen

In 1923, Hans was two years old, his brother Aby was six, the Goudsmits moved from Kampen to Amsterdam. The settled at Oude Schans 36 in the Jewish quarter. Here father Simon opened his butcher store and named it ‘De Kamper Vleeschhouerij’, the Butcherstore from Kampen. Like many Jewish butcher stores at the time, it was not a kosher store. Simon was also engaged in the meat wholesale business. The family’s living quarters were located behind the store. From that store the lively boat traffic from the harbor to and fro the Amsterdam canals could be viewed. In 1931 the youngest of the three boys, Asser, was born here. The family had a Jewish servant maid.

Sint Antoniesluis 1930s; Oude Schans left background

The Jewish quarter was not a ghetto, far from it. About half its inhabitants were Jewish. It was comparable to the Lower East Side of New York, where Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe had settled. The Goudsmits belonged to the great majority of the Jewish inhabitants here, the Ashkenazi. Sephardi Jews were a small minority; they originated from the Spanish and Portugese Jews who had settled in Amsterdam in the 17th Century and had built their grand synagogue, the ‘Snoge’. Poverty in this area of Amsterdam was wide-spread. The short documentary ‘Sjabbos; Friday evening’ gives a wonderful impression of life in the immediate vicinity of the Goudsmit butchery. The painter Rembrandt had settled here in 1639. The film was shot in 1932 when Hans Goudsmit was eleven years old. The 11-minutes movie starts to the sound of the bells of Zuidertoren (Southern Tower, the protestant church in the area) and shows scenes from street life and the Friday afternoon start of the shabbat, when shops, businesses and diamond works close (A Jewish day starts at nightfall on Friday and ends 24 hours later). It closes with scenes from the Ashkenazi and Sephardi synagogues. The film can be accessed here.

Jewish family life

Many years after the Holocaust Asser testified that he had never experienced any antisemitism in his home town. Father Simon and mother Sophia ran an observant Jewish household. On Friday evening after dark, at the festive dinner table father would read from his prayer book and the family would sing religious songs. The rituals and dishes accompanying Pesakh and other Jewish high and holy days were observed. In the 1920s father Simon used to buy an ad in the September issue of the Jewish weekly newspaper NIW, wishing his clientele shana tova, a good new year. At Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) the whole family would go to shul (the synagogue) – but for the rest of the year the parents rarely would. During the Sukkot festival week, the family would have a Sukkah (temporary hut) in which they would have their meals. The boys had to follow Jewish lessons on Wednesday afternoons and Sundays, in preparation for their bar mitzwa at age 13. Aby read his Tora parasha on 21 June 1930 and Hans on 17 March 1934. The Goudsmits most likely visited one of the Ashkenazi synagogues in the vicinity, probably the Uilenburger shul, some three minutes on foot from their front door.

Grandfather Abraham used to spend the Spring and Summer with his son and grandsons in Amsterdam. Grandmother Aaltje had died in Kampen in 1919, four years before Simon and his family moved away. The Winter season grandfather stayed with Hans’ aunt in the South of the country. In his interview Asser tells us that at 6AM every morning grandpa Abraham donned his tefillin (phylacteries) and prayer shawl and said his prayers.

From what we know, all sons helped out in the butcher business. Both Aby and Hans were registered as butchers and of Asser we have a charming picture, taken when he was seven years old, in butchers’ attire next to – presumably – the family car in front of the house at Oude Schans.

The German occupation of Holland ended all of this. It started in May 1940. Two years later all Jews had to start wearing a 'Jew badge' (Jodenster, Star of David) on their clothing and in July 1942 deportations to the extermination camps started. One of the addresses in Amsterdam where Jew badges could be bought (they had to be paid for!) was Oude Schans 74, a short walk down the street from the Goudsmit residence. Here they will have obtained badges for the whole family at four cents each. The rest is history... 

Memorial sites:
Henry (Hans) Goudsmit is buried in the village center of Menaldum / Menaam in Friesland at the cemetery of the protestant church. Parts 1-5 of this blog report (in Dutch) on his life between 1942 and 1944.
His wife Roosje (Roby) died on 10 June 2006 and is buried at the Jewish cemetery Muiderberg under the name of her second marriage, Mesritz-Gosler (field F, row 005, grave 001)
Hans’ father Simon Goudsmit died in Amsterdam on 22 December 1974 and is buried at the Jewish cemetery Diemen (field D, row 005, grave 063)
Hans’ mother Sophia Goudsmit-Gosler died in Amsterdam on 13 December 1975 and is buried at the Jewish cemetery Diemen (field D, row 005, grave 064)
Abraham (Aby) Goudsmit, Hans’ elder brother, was deported on 21 September 1943 and perished presumably on 1 April 1944 somewhere in Poland. His wife Lyda Dichne died in Bergen-Belsen camp on 31 March 1945. Their daughter Sophia Elizabeth (Fily) had been born in Amsterdam on 9 February 1943; she survived the Holocaust and moved to Canada. 
Hans’ younger brother Asser survived the Holocaust and moved to Canada, later to the USA.

Sources
Interviews with Asser Goudsmit, 17 February 1982 and 27 February 1983
Bianca Stigter, De bezette stad. Plattegrond van Amsterdam 1940-1945. Amsterdam, Athenaeum 2005