Disquieting Pictures

A small black-and-white photograph has suddenly taken on a heartbreaking new significance. It came from one of the two flip-top boxes where my mother kept photos that helped her fill me in on the story of my family before it was ripped apart by the Nazis. 

The picture shows my sisters, Eefje and Lia, participating in a Catholic procession. Eva and Liane were my sister’s formal, official names but their Dutch childhood nicknames were Eefje and Lia. The procession is led by a boy who is five or six. He wears a cassock and an alb and carries a long staff—probably topped by a brass cross, not visible in the picture. To his right is a serious-looking girl of about the same age carrying what might be long-stemmed flowers. Eefje follows closely behind the little boy. She wears a short, frilly, summery white dress and what appears to be a garland on her head. She holds a bouquet of flowers. But what is most striking is Eefje’s serious, downcast gaze. Immediately behind Eefje is Lia wearing a similar white dress and two bows in her hair. She is also holding a bouquet. She does not share Eefje’s downcast gaze and seems to look straight at the photographer. She is two-and-a-half years younger than Eefje and might have less of an understanding of the significance of their participation in the event. The bouquets, I am told, were to be deposited as gifts on the altar.  

Years ago, when my mother and I looked at this photograph, she would not dwell long on it. She would just sigh, gently shake her head, and briefly close her eyes as if conjuring my sisters back to life. I came to believe that the picture might have been taken after Jewish children had been banned from public schools and my sisters had been enrolled in a Catholic school. This might have been the first step, I thought, to providing them with a new Catholic identity. 

Thanks to Trees Krans, a woman I befriended during the COVID-19 pandemic and who is the informal archivist of the Elandstraatkerk—a Catholic church a few blocks from my childhood home in the Netherlands—I can now put a place and a likely date to the photograph. A friend of Trees, who was the same age as Eefje and may have even been a classmate, agreed that it was taken at the Maria School affiliated with the Elandstraatkerk on the Feast of the Sacred Heart, celebrated on the first Friday after the second Sunday after Pentecost. This event was and still is celebrated with a procession of schoolchildren. In 1942, in the midst of the ravages of war, Pope Pius XII dedicated the Feast to the Sacred Heart of Mary instead of Christ and moved the Feast to August 22. In 1943, according to the Catholic calendar, it would have been celebrated on June 16. 

Which date is correct? On August 22, 1942, Lia would have been almost four, and Eefje would have just turned six. But if the photograph had instead been taken in 1943, Eefje would have been almost seven, and Lia would have been four and a half. Sadly, the photograph does not bear a date, and neither date was propitious for the Jewish population of the Netherlands—or the Münzer family. 

By August 1942, Jews, including my father, had already been summoned to report for labor duty in Germany. He avoided reporting by undergoing a hernia operation and then went into hiding in the Ramaerkliniek, a psychiatric hospital where he pretended to be a patient. By that point, my parents had already been working on arrangements for my sisters and me. My sisters were to be cared for by our neighbors, the devout Catholic sisters Jo and Ko van Leeuwen, while the parish priest, Father Lodders, looked for a more permanent refuge for them. Shortly thereafter, I was left with a close friend, Annie Madna, who lived across the street, while she looked for a more permanent place where I could be hidden. I was only nine months old. My mother eventually joined my father in the psychiatric hospital, working as a nurse’s assistant. Clearly, that August was a painful period of transition for the Münzer family and countless other Jewish families. 

By June 16, 1943, the worst had happened to my parents. They had been arrested by Nazi authorities on December 31, 1942, and then taken to and imprisoned in the Westerbork and Vught camps. My sisters, however, according to records of the Elandstraatkerk, were baptized by Father Lodders on January 18, 1943, with Jo and Ko van Leeuwen as witnesses. And I remained safe with Tolé Madna, the three Madna children, and their nanny, Mima Saïna, as arranged by Annie Madna.

There is another photo that seems to have been taken later on the day of the Catholic procession. It shows Eefje precariously balanced on the back of a chair on a balcony—still in the same white dress, the garland now askew on her head—seemingly in a dour, maybe rebellious mood. In the background stands her doll’s baby carriage. I have compared the furniture on this balcony with the furniture in a picture taken on the balcony that belonged to my family, and I am fairly certain this picture was taken at the van Leeuwen sisters’ home next door to ours. Of the many dozens of photos I have of Eefje, these are the only ones where she is not smiling. 

Was the photo of the procession taken in August 1942 or June 1943? Unfortunately, the Maria School cannot provide an answer. The school and its archives burnt down in 2006. 

In August 1942, there were still the remnants of a cohesive Münzer family, but by June 1943 all bonds had been cruelly severed. Whether the photo was taken in August 1942 or June 1943 makes little difference to the history of the Holocaust. But it matters to me—Eefje and Lia’s brother and the keeper of their memory. Lia looks more like she’s four and a half than three and a half in the photo. And Eefje is more likely to be turning seven than six. It is also much more likely that my sisters would only have been allowed to participate in the procession after they had been baptized, which favors 1943.

I would like to think that Eefje and Lia felt safe with Tante Jo and Tante Ko—as they may have referred to the Van Leeuwen sisters then, like I did many years later—and that Eefje was unaware of the danger she and Lia faced. Eefje’s bearing in the photographs, however, sadly tells me otherwise. Yes, it is possible that Eefje merely did not like the dress she was forced to wear or that she did not enjoy being in the procession. But knowing all the stories my mother told me about Eefje and the many times she cited her as an example for me to follow when I was her age, it is not unlikely that Eefje knew exactly what was happening in the world around her. She might even have learned that her parents had been deported.

As Eefje and Lia’s brother, I still want to cling to my belief and source of comfort that, however fragile their new Catholic identities, my sisters still felt safe. 

In October 1943, Eefje and Lia were taken to what Father Lodders assumed was a safer refuge—the home of Rosalia Schermer-Mazurowski and her husband, Johannes Schermer. On February 6, 1944, my sisters were betrayed by Johannes Schermer and arrested by Dirk Vas, a willing Dutch Nazi collaborator. Five days later, on February 11, 1944, Eefje and Lia were killed in Auschwitz.

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