FRIDAY 30 SEPTEMBER 2005                        -Feature-

Innocence lost

Author Gordon Sander discusses his latest book, a tale of The Frank Family that Survived the Second World War in the Netherlands.

AMSTERDAM | On 1 September, Gordon Sander, whose 1992 book Serling was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, gave a heart-rending synopsis of his latest book, The Frank Family that Survived (2004) on the top floor of Waterstone’s, the English bookshop on the Kalverstraat.

By Albert Ouimet

Equipped with a slidescreen and a voice that might call thousands to action, Sander narrated, in 10 sketches, the story of a family that was dear to him: his own. The audience of about 30 listened in awe and

silence to what the American historian/journalist-cum-novelist had to say. Why the attention to the book? As he says himself, “because the times I describe, and the experiences my circle of friends lived through (or didn’t) demand it.” He adds, “my primary concern as an artist is to be true to the experience, in all its freaky-wowness (so to speak) and the only way to do that, I believe, is via fiction.” Although referring to C-Town Blues, a serialized novel on which he is still working and publishing, Sander does give a glimpse on his approach to a segment of history which The Frank Family that Survived attempts to recreate.

A sense of perspective

Sander’s family had emigrated to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, from Breitenheim, Germany. Since the book is the story of his own family, which started in Germany, immigrated to Holland a few years before

the German invasion and ended up, happily for those who survived, in the United States, it becomes in part autobiographical. To be sure, the excerpts he read on 1 September in terms so clear as to be replete with mind-gobbling images rendered so familiar in the movies made of the war (see Schindler’s List and The Pianist for examples) attested to the fact that people, namely the Jews, did suffer a great deal during the occupation and walked with their heads turned round in case they were being followed. Sander does not exaggerate. Truth does ring out with every syllable, he speaks because it comes from the heart. Sadly enough, the tale he has begun to sketch is not finished yet. It could be, safely said that the Jews, along with other ethnic groups, regardless of their nationality, are still being persecuted in various parts of the world for whatever reason.

In 10 'snippets,' Sander gives an account of what happened to his family, namely his grandmother Flory, his mother Dorrit and her sister Sybil, who, thanks to Annie van der Sluijs, his mother’s former Dutch teacher, dared board the train at Amsterdam’s Centraal Station without the dreaded yellow stars Jews were forced to wear, and traveled to The Hague on 14 July 1942. It is “unclear,” he says, “what the penalty would be” had they caught Van der Sluijs, one abetting Jews. It should be realized that after having found a place “to go into hiding,” the family was forced to “think the unthinkable.” There were 140,000 Jews in the Netherlands before the war, among whom a mere 20,000 had gone into hiding. Grandfather Myrtil Frank realized that there would be “no turning back,” that the women “would have to take the initial plunge alone” since he would come later, thereby making the group of women less conspicuous to authorities. But the women were “scared out of their minds,” he says, as they made their way to the Centraal Station. People like Annie van der Sluijs who dared help the Jews escape the wrath of the Nazis were, on the whole, like their Polish counterparts, a “little naive, inert,” but could show signs of “extreme courage.” In any case, his grandfather would come later, on his own. Once on the train, it was possible that at any moment, a German guard might walk into their train cabin and ask for identification papers.

Sander‘s family, the Franks, Jews from Germany, did know of the existence of the other Amsterdam Frank family, who, with the exception of father Otto, were exterminated in Nazi concentration camps. What is interesting is that Sander barely mentioned this other Frank family during his lucid presentation at Waterstone’s. The reason for this ‘omission’ became rather apparent as a reminder that the two family sagas are as different as night and day, as tragedy and hope. He does recall that as the four women made their way from the Ferdinand Boistraat in Amsterdam, up the Vijzelstraat, past the Muntplein with its tower and then up to the station, they “passed the place where Otto Frank had gone into hiding”. Sander reflects that it is at this point that both families “destinies diverged."

The Hague

When they finally reached #14 Pieter van den Zandestraat, which Annie had made available to them, the women realized that they only had the bare necessities to survive. Looking through the front window,

“the environment seemed disoriented,” recounts Sander. It was just a 300 square foot apartment with just the essentials. There was only a minimal amount of water to clean yourself with. Once Myrtil, his grandfather, had finally joined his family and their friends, he “tried to make light of the situation.” For such was his character. He took on the function of art dealer which he was later to pursue in America.

By December 1942, the family had spent six months in hiding. They had gotten “used to many things,” says Sander. In fact, by then “most of Dutch Jewry had been captured,” encamped or sent off to the East. What was most disconcerting was that the “Germans were still winning.” His grandmother Flory had to admit that “now there is no hope.” There were still droplets of communication between his mother Dorrit and her beloved Edgar Reich, such as a package she received from the resistance that month which contained a photo of Edgar who had been incarcerated since February at Westerbork. By then she knew of course that he was “gone.” The family managed after the liberation of the country by the Canadian army in May 1945 to prepare for another, and final, emigration. In August 1947, their parents saw the two girls, Dorrit and Sybil, off to America (Manhattan) via Antwerp. Myrtil continued as an art dealer in The Hague. The parents followed two years later.

It is interesting that Sander’s first base when he began a. career as a reporter about 30 years later was The Hague. Sander says he has always possessed an “inherited love for Holland and the Dutch, and for Dutch

history,” for that matter. His mother Dorrit married Kurt Sander, a naturalized German Jew and decorated U.S. army officer, in 1949 and he himself was born in 1951. After studying at Cornell Univesity, Sander did some journalistic writing for the New York Times Magazine and other publications. Based in London until recently, he has also contributed to the Financial Times. He was most recently a writer-in-residence at Risley College, Cornell University.

Gordon Sander first drew attention to his literary potential with the publication of his ‘unauthorized’ biography of legendary television personality and Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling: Serling: The Rise and Twilight of TeIevision’s Last Angry Man (1992). The biography was published by E.P. Dutton and was nominated for the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. A review of this book by Carlin Romano for the Albany Times Union of 21 February 1993 begins with Serling’s now-famous intro, “You are traveling through another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead. Your next stop? The Twilight Zone.” Sander's feeling for language and the dramatic can be readily seen in his second book. The Frank Family that Survived. He has not only an eye for detail in the chronological peregrinations of a Jewish family trying to avoid annihilation in occupied Holland in the 1940s. He also adds, by his choice of words, the sense of pathos which people in the 21st century living in a 'peaceful' Europe might find difficult to appreciate.

The book is based On a BBC4 radio series with the same title, which Sander wrote and which received much acclaim. It was inevitable that a book should be the product of this labor of love.

Sander has had the opportunity of visiting Hollangi on a number of occasions over the years, including the house in The Hague where his family had been in hiding for so many months. What is most surprising and perhaps appropriate is that the niece of Annie van der Sluijs, the woman who made the journey with Flory, Dorrit, and Sybil back in 1942, was in the audience that evening of 1 September at Waterstone’s. She identified herself to Sander, who is somewhat hard of hearing but who understood who she was. Asked what his favorite leisure reading was when not writing, Sander looked up and admitted, perhaps thinking back on the good old days of the 1920s, before there was any hint of war and the total destruction which would ensue, The Great Gatsby. A romantic to the core who, by coming to Amsterdam and later planning to go to The Hague, had finally come home to pay his respects, loyalty and above all his love for the Dutch people. Perhaps he also wanted to write a postscript to Anne Frank's story, of what might have happened had this young Jewish girl lived.