Even late in my mother’s life when she lived in an assisted-living facility, she’d look out the window, point at the trees, and smile as she noticed the emergence of spring and her favorite color: “young green.” My mother was a talented artist and some of my favorite artworks of hers are of joyful bouquets of flowers. They were yet another important lesson from my mother—an act of defiance not to allow Adolf Hitler and hate and prejudice to have the last word and prevail over the joy of being alive. I imagine my favorite pastel drawing—a wild bouquet of flowers my mother created late in life—whenever I find myself worrying about the latest newspaper headlines during the night.
Pastel drawing by Al's mother. Courtesy of Alfred Münzer
I first learned to appreciate spring when I was about eight, sometime in late March or early April 1950. That was when my mother and I were among the very first visitors to Keukenhof, the now-famous tourist destination in the Netherlands that shows off the country’s horticultural heritage. It especially honors the tulip, which, like windmills and wooden shoes, is at the heart of the country’s identity. I was excited to board a tourist bus for the first time in my life early on a Sunday morning. I enjoyed taking in the sights of the Dutch countryside from my window seat as we traveled from The Hague to Lisse.
To me, the visit to Keukenhof was one more adventure in the array of activities my mother always planned for me on the one day of the week she did not have to tend to her cosmetics store. To her, however, and perhaps to everyone in the Netherlands, the opening of Keukenhof probably represented much more than a celebration of spring. It was likely a reaffirmation of life after the dark days of a winter that had spanned not months, but years. Those years had claimed the lives of some of the people dearest to my mother—my father, Simche, my sisters, Eefje (Eva) and Lia (Liane), and my Uncle Emiel—like it had upended the lives and hopes of countless other families in the Netherlands.
It was a beautiful sunny day and I quickly fell under the spell of the multicolored fields of tulips and hyacinths as far as the eye could see. I had seen tulip fields on our trips to visit friends in Rijnsburg. But in my young eyes, this was special because there were so many other people—more people than I had ever been with—oohing and aahing at the sights.
It was some time later that I learned the role the modest tulip had played in the history of my native country. The tulip isn’t indigenous to the Netherlands. It actually hails from Central Asia. I found out in school that it was popularized in the country by a botanist in Leiden, Carolus Clusius, in the late 1500s. Careful breeding brought about an ever-greater array of colors and varieties. In the 1600s, tulips even temporarily became a major source of financial speculation. Was it any wonder that the opening of Keukenhof—like the Rotterdam Ahoy exhibit my mother and I had visited a month later, celebrating the rebuilding of that bombed-out city—represented the end of wartime deprivations and the restoration of the Netherlands’ national pride?
Another almost incredible example of the deeply spiritual, life-affirming effect that the emergence of spring had on my mother dates back to early 1945. That was when, she told me, she was moved on a transport between concentration camps in an overcrowded cattle car. She said she was able to peek through some cracks to view the passing countryside and take in the lush green of the emerging spring. It kindled her imagination and gave her hope for an end to her ordeal and hope for a better world. She even convinced herself that—since they were likely to have few resources once the nightmare of war was over—a cattle car might not be a bad way to travel with the family, so they might together enjoy the view of the countryside that had inspired her.
Fifty years after my mother and I attended the opening of Keukenhof, I was finally able to relive the experience with my partner Joel. He and I had been to the Netherlands many times to visit members of the family who had rescued me as a child, but never early enough in the year to enjoy Keukenhof. Then, in 2021, we were invited—actually commanded—to join a reunion of the Madna family celebrating the 70th birthday of Wanny Madna, Papa Madna’s oldest son from his second marriage. We arrived in The Hague on April 26 and set off early the next day for Keukenhof. It was a short train ride to Leiden, much like the ones I had undertaken countless times with my mother on our visits to Rijnsburg, followed by a bus to Lisse.
We had planned well and arrived before the hordes of tourists invaded the park. We were rewarded with acres of carefully laid out gardens displaying varieties and colors of tulips beyond any I could ever have imagined. But my favorite, I must admit, was and still is the simple yellow tulip. It’s the flower I asked my mother to bring me when I was laid up in the hospital for eight weeks after a ruptured appendix. Even now, Joel knows that a bunch of yellow tulips will cheer me up whenever I am a little down.
Recently, we spotted crocuses emerging through the snow on our walks through Brookside Gardens. We could tell that spring and tulips would not be far behind. If my mother were alive, I know she’d smile at the victory of the humble crocus over the cold and darkness of winter. She’d convince us that, likewise, eventually the good in people will overcome the pandemic of antisemitism and other forms of hate now gripping the world.
Joel Wind and Alfred Münzer at Keukenhof in 2021. Courtesy of Alfred Münzer
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