Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Simon Maroko - February 19 & 26, 1986

When the--sure--when the NSB um, marched through the Jewish, Jewish section of Amsterdam.

I, myself, have no direct witness or recollection of this. But I do remember that there was a Dutch uh, saying, ???, which is, which is a rhyme. It means that Code who was a member of the NSB was killed by a Jew. So I knew that there had been some action and some Jews had um, responded to that. But this was all done, and it was not in our street. It was done in the Jewish neighborhood we lived let's say, a little bit outside the center of the Jewish neighborhood.

Do you remember the general strike?

I was at that time a student at University of Amsterdam and I was in one of the laboratories. It could have been something like uh, organic chemistry some afternoon. And I heard shots of a machine gun like nature. I had no idea where it was. Later on I found out that there had been some action against Dutch and that there was a strike.

Did it have any effect on uh, on you or your family? The strike?

I do not think so. We were--continued to live our life and, uh... Yes, I, I don't know precisely if it was in 1942 or so, but my older sister was married and one of her brothers-in-law was taken by the Germans and I think at the last moment uh, he succeeded in not having to go. But others went and uh, their ashes came back from Mauthausen. The parents were asked to uh, pay money for the ashes when no one had any uh, hundred percent knowledge that this was really their ashes or just any ashes at all.