Foreword.
Ever since I was old enough to think about these kinds of things I have wondered what might have happened to the wartime playmate that my older sister Petra and I had during the war.
Growing up in Amsterdam and Rotterdam after the war, a picture of Betty and sister Petra floated around the house.
Over the years I learned, via bits and pieces of information, that Betty (a Jewish girl) had passed as our older sister.
Mam and Piet (my father) were forced to give her up.
When, many years later I would question Mam about the girl in the picture Mam would always clam up and I grew up believing that Betty did not survive the war.
And then the Internet came along and with just a few searches and keystrokes I found out a slew of information. As I became involved in tracing Betty’s family, wartime memories came to the forefront of my brain again and I thought it prudent to compile all the information in one place.
I shot off E-mails to Jerusalem and Amsterdam and received answers that caused more Google searches.
The searches enabled me to sort out several facts that allowed me to put the following together in a matter of days.
On the banks of the Wabash, October 2014
Rogier Donker