Let's Talk

It was the winter of 1966/1967. I was on a parachute training course. It was like a holiday, no marching or running for a few weeks.

One paratrooper company in the country had to be on alert every Shabbat. That meant keeping your boots on even when sleeping, keeping near to your sleeping quarters at all times, no showers and being ready to travel in full gear in 20 minutes.

That Shabbat was our turn.
We were lounging about on our beds. Someone came in, started banging on the wall and shouted alert, alert.

At that moment you switch to automatic pilot. You do not talk or think, you just start getting your gear ready the way you have been taught. Check your weapon, check your ammunition and move.
Even though there were no hitches, I doubt we were in the waiting trucks within 20 minutes. 

Anyway, we had to wait for the heavy weapons.

The trucks set off towards the Lebanese border. Someone had planted a mine on a football field on our side. Our company had been given orders to carry out a retaliatory raid.

At first, nobody was talking. We sat there in silence trying to get our minds back to normal.
I lit up a cigarette, a kibbutz cigarette called Nadiv that was more straw than tobacco.
I could take as many packs as I wanted from the kibbutz shop.

There were two religious Yemenite soldiers sitting to my left. The one next to me asked me to stop smoking.
He said it was bad enough for them they were riding on Shabbat. My smoking made things worse.
I said sorry, and explained I was smoking to calm my nerves.

He replied he could understand that and it was okay by him if I continued smoking.
I said no, I would stop because I realized how important it was for him.
And our discussion went on for a few minutes like that.

I cannot remember if I stopped or continued smoking, but that is not important.

The personal responsibility of the mayor

Social distancing is the holy grail of the Dutch coronavirus policy. Everywhere you are reminded to keep 1.5 meters distance.
Nice nurses tell me in adverts that just clapping for healthcare workers is not enough. They tell me I have to follow the rules of social distancing as well.

On June 1 the "intelligent lockdown" in the Netherlands was lifted. It was time to get the country back on its feet, but, the government told us, do not forget the "new normal".
What is that you ask?
Surely you have guessed what it is: social distancing.

Shops, pubs, restaurants, museums, cinemas, you name it, they have spent small or large fortunes on preparing their premises for the new normal.
For them it is not only social distancing, they are also only allowed a maximum number of customers or visitors at the same time.
If organizations do not comply with the rules they face steep fines.

How are they going to survive with more outlay to comply with the new normal and less income from customers and visitors?
Museums are projecting a 90% reduction in visitors this year.
How are they going to make ends meet? There will be layoffs but who will be fired and when?
Yes, unsure times for a lot of people I know.

Still most people accept the situation as necessary and there are no exceptions. Even the prime minister did not visit his dying mother who was in lockdown.

But then, the prime minister is not from a left-wing political party.
The mayor of Amsterdam is and she makes exceptions.
On June 1 some 5,000 people demonstrated on Dam Square against police violence in the US. Supporters from her Green-Left party and other similar parties.
It is not a big square and there was no social distancing. Demonstrations of that size are forbidden.
But she allowed it to take place because it was "too important" to stop. She also said it was the personal responsibility of the demonstrators.

The demonstration with all the chants and no social distancing was a conducive environment for spreading the coronavirus.
After the demonstration the demonstrators went on their way. There is no tracking and tracing in the Netherlands.

Infected demonstrators will infect other people who had nothing to do with the demonstration. Some will become ill and some will die. No, that is not the personal responsibility of the victims.
That is the personal responsibility of the mayor.

Insulting people to their face

On May 5, 1945 the German occupational forces in the Netherlands surrendered. Since then May 5 has been celebrated by the Dutch as Liberation Day.

May 4 is Remembrance Day.
On this day the Dutch victims of the Second World War (more than half were Jews) are remembered with commemorations. In the evening a remembrance ceremony is held on Dam Square in Amsterdam with the king and queen and other Dutch dignitaries in attendance.
They stand or sit in a cordoned off area in the middle, surrounded by some 20,000 spectators who have come to either show their respects or see the dignitaries.

At 20:00 a two-minute silence is observed to honour the fallen.
In 2010 a man started to scream during the two-minute silence. This resulted in a general panic; the spectators thought it was a terrorist attack. People tried to flee in all directions and 63 were wounded.

The man who had caused all the commotion was arrested. He became known as the “Dam shouter”.
He was a nonentity, an intellectually and emotionally challenged hater who used to spend his days roaming the streets of Amsterdam provoking and insulting people. His idea of humour was a sneer.
This was the only way he could get attention.

He enjoyed his notoriety and even published an autobiography in 2016. Eventually he became yesterday’s news.
Why did he not take to social media?
After all, social media is full of nonentities who crave attention by provoking, insulting and sneering.
I think because keyboard hating did not give him any kicks.
He was old-fashioned, he liked to insult people to their face.

The economy über alles virus

Local and national authorities in the Netherlands collaborated in the persecution and deportation of Dutch Jews during the Second World War.

The local police rounded the Jews up and the national railways transported them to a transit camp and later to the German border. 
There was not one case of sabotage.

Eichmann praised the Dutch effusively for the efficiency of the operation. He is reported to have said: "The transports run so smoothly that it is a pleasure to see."

The Germans paid for the collaboration. If they did not pay on time they were sent a reminder.

This is not as strange as it sounds. The deportations took place early in the war when the Germans were still trying to lure the Dutch into becoming junior partners in their new empire.

In 1941 the German occupiers established a Dutch bank known as the Limor bank. The purpose of this bank was to systematically register and then rob Jewish property (money, securities and valuables).

Money from the Limor Bank was used, among other things, to pay Dutch authorities for their collaboration in the deportation of Jews from the Netherlands.

After the end of the war, on 17 September 1945, the new Dutch Minister of Transport, Steef van Schaik, addressed a group of railway workers in Utrecht.

He praised them for their collaboration in the deportation of the Jews. He said the income was essential for the economy and more important than the lives of the Jews ("the unfortunate victims").

The sacrifice was necessary to save the economy.

We are now in the midst of the coronavirus crisis.

I was reading a Dutch article about the negative economic consequences of restrictions that had been imposed to save lives.

The writer called for the removal of these restrictions. He realized that this would lead to many more deaths.

However, the sacrifice was necessary to save the economy.

Better than the rest

In my youth, my friends and I defined ourselves literarily. We always had a copy of a personal thin paperback with us.
I remember one friend who was into James Joyce. His carrier book was “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”. He would have preferred “Ulysses”, but that was too thick and heavy to always lug around with you.
My taste was the Collected Essays of George Orwell.

We also used to trash popular television series. The kind of series my sister liked.
These were some of the ways we positioned ourselves as not being part of the low-brow herd.
No, we were not cultural snobs, we were just better than the rest.

Nowadays, some of this television trash of yesteryear is viewed fondly. The series are seen as examples of earlier British culture.

Nowadays, I always have a copy of my medicine list, not a paperback, with me.

Holocaust, a dog and a tape recorder

Holocaust survivors usually did not like dogs.
During the Holocaust, the Nazis not only used dogs to guard Jews. They were also used to attack and kill them.

Ronnie and Michaela, a Belgium couple from my garin (group), arrived at the kibbutz with a small, friendly dog. The Romanian Holocaust survivors on the kibbutz were upset about this, but it was not forbidden.

It was not a major ideological problem like Danny’s tape recorder.

Danny and Judith were a brother and sister from a rich, left-wing Swiss Jewish family.
Judith arrived first. She was a bit too fancy for the Marxist-Zionist kibbutz. It was rumoured that she trimmed her pubic hair.
I never had the inclination to find out if the rumour was true or false. My friend Tzvi from Austria said it was true.

Danny arrived later with a (big) tape recorder, which he wanted to keep for himself because he could not live without his music.
This was a direct attack on the principle of equality in our garin.
We did not even have radios and we were still living in huts. Yet he refused to give up the tape recorder.
A solution was found.
He gave the tape recorder to the kibbutz library but kept it in his room, as he was allowed to borrow it indefinitely.

A solution was also found for Ronnie and Michaela’s small dog.

Someone poisoned it or it inadvertently ate some poison.
I remember seeing them distraught in the communal dining room after the poisoning. They were crying and shouting that the kibbutz had killed their dog. They did not get much sympathy.

Ronnie and Michaela left the kibbutz, as did Judith.
Her brother Danny is still there. He is quite important nowadays; sits on the Board of a number of peace organizations.

The kibbutz must be doing well, it even has a listing on the Bloomberg site.
"The Company's line of business includes the manufacturing of synthetic resins, plastics materials, and nonvulcanizable elastomers". It has 250 employees.
According to the site of the "company", it is the largest international manufacturer of solar swimming pool heating systems, with wholly-owned subsidiaries in the USA and Germany.

The kibbutz, like the country, has changed. The Holocaust is an ever dimming memory and I do not think they worry about dogs and tape recorders any more.

Diversity and Cultural Divide

Nieuwe Zakelijkheid, translated as New Objectivity or New Pragmatism, is a Dutch style of modernist architecture that started in the 1920s and continued into the 1930s.
I have a distinct antipathy towards this form of architecture.

I live across the road to a synagogue building that is a prime example of Nieuwe Zakelijkheid. It is now used as an auction hall.
The actual synagogue is in a small annex that is not an example of any form of architecture.

Opposite the annex lives an old homosexual couple.
Their yellow roses are in bloom.
One of the men dresses like an old professor, the other like a young man from the 1950s.
The old professor type told us his partner’s legs were bad and he could not walk very far, but he wanted to keep up appearances by dressing like a young man.

Next door lives an older woman who used to be the madam of a brothel. 

Her red roses are in bloom.
She is a nice, chatty person who changes the colour of her hair every month. She once told me she had an invalid husband who she looks after, but I have never seen him.
There is always another old lady with her. I wonder if this is a sister, a friend or a lover.
I also wonder if she has a past with her homosexual neighbours.

My Dutch wife says I should stop wondering and ask her. This illustrates the cultural divide between us.
One does not ask these things, one speculates.