Two Holocaust missions in Amsterdam for Anne

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In 2015, during a visit to Amsterdam’s Anne Frank House, a Sydney Jewish Museum’s curatorial volunteer, Anne Slade, was asked by the then International Project Manager at the House, Levien Rouw, to undertake the task of locating people who had written to Otto Frank, Anne’s father, following the publication of the Diary of Anne Frank.

Dorien van Dijk-Visser presents Liesbeth Prins’ birth medallion to Anne Slade on behalf of the Sydney Jewish Museum, in front of the memorial bricks for the Prins family

Otto Frank had received thousands of letters, mostly from young girls, and he had scrupulously responded to every one of them, in some cases involving multiple contacts over decades.

Otto Frank kept every letter he had received, now held in the Anne Frank House archives. The only problem was that Otto Frank did not keep copies of his responses. Levien had the names and asked if Anne would accept the project of locating the letter writers to see if they had kept his responses and if they would consider donating them to the Anne Frank House.  Anne successfully located five correspondents, two of whom did have all their correspondence (now going back over half a century), one of whom had on-going correspondence with Otto’s widow. Anne presented the letters to Levien, who was in Sydney for the Anne Frank exhibition, at a moving ceremony in the Sydney Jewish Museum.

Levien Rouw returned the letters to Anne Slade, asking her to deliver the letters personally to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.

And she did, completing the circle of correspondence and perpetuating a vital component of Anne Frank’s continuing story.

When Sydney Jewish Museum’s head curator, Roslyn Sugarman, learnt that Anne Slade was planning to attend an International Museums Conference in Amsterdam, she gave her another diary-linked mission to carry out in Amsterdam.

In 2005, Carla Moore-Kogel donated two diaries filled with photographs and anecdotes relating to the short life of her cousin Liesbeth (Liesje) Prins. Carla discovered the diaries in a drawer after her father, Max Kogel, died in 1965.  The diaries are not written “about” Liesje, but more “to” her, as a conversation. Suze records what her baby ate (“With the tomato puree, we are still at odds”), what she weighed (“Your weight is now 4190 gr, not too much for a three-month-old baby. But you are not such a skinny little frog anymore as you were in the beginning”); it describes her personality (“When you are in a good mood you make such nice cooing sounds in your cradle. It almost seems like you are singing”). She documents the first time Liesje rolled from her back to her tummy; her first words spoken at age one and a half, a drawing of a cat at age three. The entry on March 20, 1938, relates to Dorien van Dijk-Visser’s mother and translates: “You are now almost three months old and I believe a smart little thing.  When you are lying on your back, you heave yourself up, and on your tummy, you lift your head.   Lying on the dressing table you like to look at the wall hanging which hangs on the wall, which Tante Non Visser has made for you.”

The Nazis murdered Liesje Prins on October 22, 1943, when she was only five, along with her parents, Nico and Suze.

In September 2022, Sydney Jewish Museum’s head curator, Roslyn Sugarman, wrote about the diaries “The unfinished baby books of Liesbeth Prins”, when  publishing them online. (https://sydneyjewishmuseum.com.au/news/unfinished-baby-books/)

Michael Heemskerk, who lives in Holland and is not Jewish read the item online and mentioned it to his aunt, Dorien van Dijk-Visser. She told him that her family were friends of the Prins family and had hidden Liesje when Liesje’s parents were transported to the Staats Schouburg, the concentration centre for Amsterdam’s Jews, before they were sent to Westerbork and on to Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and other Nazi extermination venues. Dorien told Michael that she had Liesje’s birth medallion, inscribed “Liesbeth Prins 25 Dec 1937 A’dam”. The medallion was left in their house when Liesje needed to be relocated because the Nazi SS moved in over the road from the Visser family. Liesje’s next refuge was with a family who was betrayed, and Liesje ended up united with her parents in the Staats Schouburg, Westerbork, then Auschwitz, where they were all murdered.

Michael Heemskerk and his aunt Dorien van Dijk-Visser hold Liesbeth’s birth medallion on her memorial brick

Dorien van Dijk-Visser told her nephew that she wanted to donate the medallion to the Sydney Jewish Museum to be united with the diaries.

Roslyn Sugarman asked Anne if she would meet Michael and his aunt to receive the medallion so that it could be displayed with the diaries at the entrance to the Children’s Memorial at the Sydney Jewish Museum.

The meeting and presentation took place at the Daniel Liebeskind-designed Namens Monument in Amsterdam’s Jewish Quarter on Sunday, November 5. Dorien van Dijk-Visser, the then little girl who played with Liesje at the first hiding place, brought the medallion and presented it to Anne Slade for the Sydney Jewish Museum. The weather was appropriately ominous – heavy rain and wind, which cleared for the time the group was at the memorial.

They met in front of Liesbeth (Liesje) Prins’s name brick – Michael Heemskerk, Dorien van Dijk-Visser, Margriet Salomons, Liesje’s cousin, who survived, having been hidden, and Saskia Moore, daughter of Carla Moore-Kogel, who donated the diaries to the Sydney Jewish Museum. In an emotional half hour, during which the Heemskerks and the Prinses, who had never met before, exchanged tales of their experiences and memories in front of the Prins family tiles. Dorien ceremoniously presented the medallion, beautifully boxed and beribboned to Anne in an emotional moment, accompanied by tears from all there.

On her return home, Anne said: “It was an emotional and meaningful experience holding the little medallion that Liesje probably wore on her wrist or as a necklace. This piece of jewellery is all that remains of her short life. It was particularly poignant taking place at the memorial with the names of 105,000 Dutch Jewish victims of Nazi antisemitism just four weeks after the horrific and unimaginable antisemitic attack by Hamas on Israeli Jews on October 7, 2023.”  She added, “I wish to acknowledge Carla Moore Kogel, who donated the diaries to the Sydney Jewish Museum; Roslyn Sugarman for writing the article about the diaries, which caught Michael Heemskerk’s attention and led to his coordination of the handover event in Amsterdam; and especially Michael’s aunt, Dorien van Dijk-Visser, who had saved Liesje’s medallion and decided to donate it to the Sydney Jewish Museum.

Alan Slade, Anne’s husband, was asked by Roslyn Sugarman to record the event for the Sydney Jewish Museum. He is the son of community stalwarts Danny and Chelly Slade, both deceased, who escaped their native Amsterdam just before the outbreak of WWII. The Slade/Zurel families, including Alan’s grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, whom he never had the opportunity to meet, occupy several columns in the memorial.