Fourteen years after the death of her Jewish mother, presenter Dieuwertje Blok found her war diary. With her debut Draggy lightness Blok pays a warm tribute to the woman who gave her life.
A profession in the spotlight - Dieuwertje Blok is no stranger to it. Her grandmother Saartje, who grew up as the daughter of fishmongers in Amsterdam's Joden Houttuinen, had bigger dreams than a job as a fishmonger or hosiery knitter: she longed for the stage. With her comic talent and beautiful voice, she built a meritorious career under the stage name Stella Fontaine. Emancipated she was too; Stella and her husband Sam Gazan kept it to one child, and when she went on tour, she would leave her little daughter Hennie with her husband for extended periods. This Hennie, who started spelling her name as Henny after visiting England, is the mother of Dieuwertje Blok and the woman around whom it revolves in Draggy lightness. And Henny also took to the stage, as a singer and cabaret performer.
Lightness, cheerfulness, that is a characteristic of the female line in her family, Blok's book reveals. And what a blessing, because of the entire family, only Stella, Sam, Henny and a cousin survived World War II; all the uncles and aunts and their families were murdered in concentration camps. Extraordinary that her family never succumbed to that heavy burden.
A treasure among household goods
In portions, parts of this history surfaced among the household effects after Henny's death. First, Dieuwertje and her sisters found a few LPs, then a stack of notepads and finally, years later, a diary. A find that "felt like the discovery of a great treasure".
Henny begins her account in 1939, when she is still 16, and it ends in early 1942, just before Stella, Sam and Henny go into hiding separately. Surely that war must have left traces? Blok wonders before she starts reading. But to her surprise, before the war occasionally begins to seep in gently, it is above all a normal teenage diary. 'It's a lot about boys, stupid girlfriends, bosom buddies, how to escape the watchful eye of her father in particular. Sometimes while reading I think: gee mama, didn't you read newspapers, didn't that impending war affect you? Then I realise she was just a 16-year-old girl. At that age, I was also writing about nothing but boys, unattainable men, girlfriends and love. For me, a year like that, 1939, is fraught because I know the history, but for her it had yet to be written.'
Year of freedom
For Henny Gazan, 1939 was a year of great freedom. She didn't take her education very seriously, but she took to going out and flirting all the more. As often as she could, she went dancing at the Lloyd Hotel, where Jewish refugees were housed. There were also regular parties at home. Many of the diary entries she wrote in the middle of the night. Indeed, these are mostly about which boys she likes, which boys like her, which boys her friends like, and who gets each other or not, or may get each other. At one moment a friend is a heart friend, at the next almost an enemy.
The war plays only a subtle role; as time progresses, there is talk between the lines about embezzlements, the increased difficulty of finding a job, NSB members in the area, and later acquaintances fleeing to America or England. But Henny doesn't write about the war, because she doesn't want to "fill up sheets about boats being torpedoed, people being killed and cities being destroyed". A boy Henny knew well died in Auschwitz in 1942, Dieuwertje Blok discovered during her research.
Because of the jumble of names of people who mean little to the reader, the diary sometimes feels rather private. But the very fact that war is virtually absent is also special. Even in those ghastly times, for many (young) people, the lust for life won out over fear and thoughts of doom - how beautiful and hopeful is that?
Fortunately, the many horrors during the war years did not crush everyone's cheerfulness and humour. Henny and her husband Dick gave their three daughters an open, tolerant, friendly and responsible attitude to life. But above all: confidence and lightness. 'I myself never see bears on the road, have an unbridled faith that everything will work out and that if something goes wrong, it will be solved in the end,' Blok writes. 'It was her way of life and, for me, a gift.'
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