Ode to Johanna Berndina de Vos | In part thanks to you, my family survived

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To Johanna Berndina (Anne) de Vos (1894-1977),                                                                    

Linnaeusdwarsstraat 26 I.                                                                                                            

Amsterdam East

Dear Anne,

My name is J. S. I am writing to you from a world you will hardly recognize, but in which your deeds, your name, and the lives you saved still whisper through the illuminated streets of Amsterdam. My name tells you nothing at all, and does it matter? I am only 23 years old, a Jewish student of history at the University of Amsterdam. As I write this, I pause for a moment in front of your former cottage in the shabby Linnaeusdwarsstraat 26, popularly known as “the hibsekrib. Your old house where in 1943 you hid no less than eight Jewish people in hiding in that small dark street, the house looks shabby in 2024. Eight lives of Jacques, Moses, Branca, Kitty, Godschalk, Herman, Salomon and Regina.  Lives that had been destroyed without you by the cruelty of the German occupiers. 

'We are very grateful to her for saving our lives, mine and my two children's lives. The other people she had in hiding, too, fortunately all came through thanks to Mrs. de Vos.'

So testified hiding star Branca in 1961, years later on paper.' Black Anne, as those around you called you-your dark eyes, your pitch-black hair, you were a woman who radiated strength and possessed courage that seemed almost supernatural. But beyond all the mystery, you were “just” a human being, a single woman, shaped by struggle and loss, over the years. Through love, poverty and danger, through hope and despair. Anne, tell me anyway, as I walk back in my mind to Amsterdam's Govert Flinckstraat. To the brothel where you stayed at number 225 in the 1910s and 1920s, where you spent your days as a 'public woman' in those turbulent times. Who were you then? How did you end up in this world where you sometimes dressed up as a man along with girlfriends... How did you get there? Was it choice or fate that brought you there? And how was your relationship with Levie Whale, my great-grandfather's cousin, your pimp who left his own wife Martha and children for you and thus became your great love and life partner? The man with whom you shared love and suffering, who spent several years in prison, sometimes for theft, sometimes for drunkenness.  How endless your grief must have been when he was finally betrayed in 1943. Your great love Levie, who was murdered just a week later in the gas chambers of Sobibor. Could you ever forget, process the pain of his loss? Or did it weigh like a chain around your neck until the last days of your life? Did you think about him again in the 1970s? In your little room in the retirement home on De Lairessestraat? 

Years after your death, I met your dear grandchildren. Together we stood in front of the same little house on Linnaeusdwarsstraat. Stories were told. Over a cup of coffee, they spoke of you with respect, and with pride. As a young teenager, as a survivor of one of the people in hiding at the time, I applied for the Yad Vashem “Righteous Among the Nations” award for you, which was actually awarded in 2021. Your oldest granddaughter of whom you were so proud accepted the award for you. For you Anne. Posthumously, but no less well deserved. Finally you were honored as a resistance woman. Your name, your courage and deeds are thus forever recognized. Also in Israel. Your name adorns the wall of Dutch resistance fighters in a beautiful park in Jerusalem. But was it recognition that you longed for? Or was it simply enough for you to simply do good in life, silently, without tribute?

What moved you to save your fellow Jews. Was it perhaps in revenge for Levie's betrayal? When I see my eyes I see how you went on the infamous bicycle with wooden tires, peddling for miles to Emmen, to Wieringermeer, to Ouderkerk to get food for all eight people in hiding. When the frost froze both your thumbs on arrival in Drenthe, you seemed to have had enough. If only I had stayed in Mokum,' you cried. But still you persevered. Where did you find the strength? How did you combine this with the stomach bleeding you suffered in 1944?

And then there was your own father, Anne? Who was your real father? We both know it wasn't Jacobus de Vos in any case. Did you ever know? Was it the shadow that kept haunting your life? Amsterdam lives thanks to women like you, women who quietly, without pomp and circumstance, made the city a little more human, even in the midst of all the inhumanity. The dark shadow of Amsterdam shaped you. Johanna Berndina de Vos (1894-1977), Black Anne, in the eyes of many a stranger, a woman with an “unfavorable” past, someone who stood “at the edge of society. But in the darkness of those days, you were the light that illuminated many lives. Who helped care for children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of eight Jewish lives.

You were Heroic Determined & Merciful, as an Amsterdammer should be. Thanks in part to you, my family survived.

Thank you for everything.

J.S.