Ode to Rosa Manus | Let them laugh, we will get there

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Hello Rosa,

In pictures I see your friendly full face, your bright eyes behind round glasses, your wavy organized hair, the pearls in your earlobes. I see the long thin pin that holds the two front panels of your vest together and recognize that thing, because my grandmother, born like you in the late nineteenth century, also wore one like it.

The Nazis destroyed your rich active life, I don't have to tell you that, I tell it to those who came after you. Maybe they don't know your name: Rosa Manus. Citizen of the world with love for your own country and city. Yes, that can go together.

Those with their boots and barren meanderings destroyed your life because you would be dangerous, because of your sincere feminist and pacifist activities. You were supposed to be communist, moreover, but you were not. Jewish you were, although in your parents' home you did not practice Purim or Passover. Your parents practiced holding up their stands. You lived spacious and chic, at number 72 Kloveniersburgwal. According to the obviousness of your time, as a girl from the bourgeoisie, you didn't need a higher education; you would get married anyway. Women were - and all too often still are - considered the second sex, which is actually strange, because whoever devises such a silly classification should surely call the sex that gives birth to the other sex the first.

So you were not allowed to continue learning. Again, that reminds me of my own grandmother, who wasn't allowed to either. Her father didn't think it was necessary. Neither did your father. However attached you were to him, he was among the many dominant, authoritarian ones.

You knew at an early age that you did not want to live a passive, dependent life; you wanted to be able to work like your brothers. All by yourself you arranged the rent of a store on P.C. Hooftstraat where you wanted to sell fashion clothes, but to your chagrin your father put a stop to that.

In that oppressive situation you began to meet others, noticing that you were not the only one who inwardly resisted what seemed like the most normal thing in the world. I recognize that, because that's how the second feminist wave worked for me. You existed during the first, when women began to realize that they needed to have political influence, to demand the right to vote, which had only been implemented in a few states and countries. When the International World Union for Women's Suffrage chose Amsterdam for its congress in 1908, you were there, as a sort of jack-of-all-trades. You proved to be a good organizer and spoke your languages extremely well. There you met Carrie Chapman Catt, the American fighter for women's rights, more than twenty years older than you. In 1922 you went on a world tour with her for almost nine months, you remember, during which you visited many South American countries, and resonated.

In your own country and city, you also organized a few things. Always you did so with great dedication, good humor and the ability to connect people. You were president of the Amsterdam branch of the Vereeniging voor Vrouwenkiezenrecht, which later, with the pride of an achieved goal, was called the Vereeniging van Staatsburgeressen. You and others stomped out the huge exhibition “Women 1813-1913” in eight months. The City of Amsterdam refused to subsidize it, others did not want to participate because they thought it could never succeed so quickly, but it worked out. Some three hundred thousand visitors flattened the grass from the meadows where the temporary exhibition spaces stood. And yes, you were sometimes quite thwarted and mocked, but you said, “Let them laugh, we'll get there.

You played an important role in the organization of international women's congresses, such as in 1935 in Istanbul, where women of West and East could meet. The threats of the 1930s also made you an active pacifist. When the League of Nations held a major Disarmament Conference in Geneva, you were one of the driving forces that ensured that a worldwide petition for peace and against fascism was offered, signed by eight million women.

You also helped found the International Archive of the Women's Movement, which was stolen by the Nazis and resurfaced half a century later somewhere in Moscow.

You did all that unpaid, Rosa. You were living off an inheritance from your grandparents. But when you were offered a salary for organizing one of the last big international congresses, you were very happy about it, because at last you were earning your own money!

Not much changed for the generation after you. Women were still considered creatures between child and adult until 1956, and until the early 1970s the man was the head of the conjugal union. I remember that my mother was as proud as you are, when she - she was already in her sixties - had made her own money for the first time through translation. And like you, a lot of women who worked were unmarried, because marriage could mean dismissal.

The next generation questioned all those self-evidences again. And in the meantime, we must once again be wary lest the many achievements of the present time be weakened or reversed.

Your father was ultimately proud of all you had accomplished. That's how it can go with dominant fathers. First hold back, then admire.

I don't have to tell you all that.

II tell those who don't remember, because you are not the only interesting woman who was forgotten after her death.

Although, no, you are not forgotten. There must be a memorial stone for you somewhere at Zorgvlied. And you have been written about. But you are not as well known as Aletta Jacobs. Maybe you didn't stand out as much and there was still a hint of the old feeling of inferiority because you were not allowed to continue your education. My grandmother had that too. With people who were acting important she would suddenly start talking semi-decently.

You knew Aletta well and worked with her. You led the tribute committee for her seventieth birthday. And four years later she was with you and your family when she died and you assisted her in her last hours of life.

What were your last hours of life like? How profoundly lonely you must have been.

You had foreseen it. You had already seen the fate of your relatives in Germany. That their jobs were taken away, that they were plunged into poverty, that they had to flee.

'You will see,' you told a friend, 'they will come for me and they will kill me.'

And they did. They soon came. They put you in Ravensbrück in the Jodenbarak. They dragged you to an insane asylum. They gassed you. They didn't want to know who you were. They ruthlessly killed you, beautiful human being.

With affection and admiration,

Joke van Leeuwen