Ode to Wiesje van der Starre | Wiesje added threads to the fabric of Amsterdam

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My mother's name was Wiesje. Actually Wijntje, but everyone called her Wiesje. She was born in Amsterdam in 1928. I bring an ode to her to make her visible, and in a way palpable. More than she was during her life. 
I write about her in order to give her her own “place” as an Amsterdam woman whose “fabric" contained bits of the city.

Wiesje was Jewish, the child of a non-Jewish father and a Jewish mother. She and her entire family survived the war. How exactly, we don't know, we can only speculate. Because...Wiesje was mostly silent about that war. What her life was like before and during the war we only know through some anecdotal stories, in which there was a lot of laughter and Amsterdam Yiddish words. Like patschekuge, which in my family means something like “mashing your food.
It wasn't until 2009 that we, as descendants, learned the great tragedy that took place in her Jewish family. Through the estate of a distant second cousin with no heirs, we gained insight into our family tree and all those people who were no longer there. The vast majority murdered by the Nazis.... Wiesje lost about 35 close relatives in those five war years. And maybe with it her abbility to talk about this? 

Wiesje was 'rasamsterdammer', born on the Weesperstraat in the old Jewish neighborhood, opposite the current 'namen monument'. Many of her relatives also lived in this neighborhood. Wiesje went to elementary school and later to the housekeeping school, and continued to attend school there when she had already moved with her parents and brothers to the Dapper neighborhood.  After housekeeping school, Wiesje went straight to work as a seamstress. Since then, she earned her own money.  

Household school brought out her talent for working with needle and thread, in the broadest sense of the word. Not only did she appear to have golden hands that could make anything with that needle and thread. She also had a great aesthetic sense that translated to her fingertips. She could take great pleasure in feeling a fabric that fell soft and supple, thus adding beauty to a garment. And the memory of her visible pleasure that a check in the fabric of a jacket continued from the front over the sleeve still brings a smile to my lips, especially when I think of the light sigh, which she heaved. A light sigh accompanied by a small smack...as if she could taste the beauty of such craftsmanship.  

She transmitted this sense of the beauty of materials and appreciation for the tailor's craft to me. I too experience a tactile pleasure at the touch of a beautiful fabric and can tell through her eyes when a garment is beautifully made.  

Twice a year it was my lucky day. I would go with Wiesje in search of fabrics and often matching buttons for the new season's wardrobe she made for me. The patterns had already been selected, my wishes discussed. I wore the clothes she made with pride. Not only because I often received compliments on them, but because I felt enveloped in those beautiful fabrics that she had lovingly managed to transform into robes royal to me. (Not to mention the numerous sweaters and cardigans she knitted, sometimes crocheted, for me, my sister and her children). 

We are not the only ones for whom she made clothes. During her working life, she always ran a clothing workshop. She made the “showroom” models; the seamstresses she employed took care of the production. At the end of her career, she did it alone. During the 1960s/70s she worked for Anco, an Amsterdam clothing company located on the Keizersgracht 144. Many Amsterdam women must have walked around in clothes made by her.  

I find that a very moving idea. I imagine how she added threads to the fabric of Amsterdam. And also how she must have been visible in Amsterdam in that way.  Wiesje van der Starre who had the fabric of (Jewish) Amsterdam in her, strengthened that fabric, without realizing it herself. That is why she deserves this tribute. Perhaps you can think of her the next time you pass the fabric of a favorite garment through your fingers....