Yehudit Shendar
■ Just before Holocaust Remembrance Day 2012, in the wake of the national “Gathering the Fragments” campaign, Iris First (née Coezijn) came to the Museum of Holocaust Art at Yad Vashem.
She was carrying a book, and inside it an age-worn sheet of paper.“I waited a long, long time, before deciding on this moment,” explained an emotional First, pointing at the image in the caricature drawing. “I kept it to myself for years and years, hiding it from the children up on the top bookshelf…
This is my father, this is totally my father.” The caricature is more than a piece of Holocaust art to be added to the Museum collection. Its uniqueness is embodied in the spine-tingling fact that the drawing, as well as the man who carried it on him, survived Auschwitz. Neatly folded, it was tucked inside the prisoner’s clothing until he was forced on a death march and up to his later liberation. Upon making aliyah, the former prisoner held on to the drawing and kept it safe. Who was that prisoner, and what was his story?
Amsterdam, February 21, 1947. Jozef Coezijn, native of the city, born in 1923, delivered a statement to Dr. Simon Goldestijn at the National Institute for War Documentation. Just two years after liberation, Coezijn reported in a dry and factual manner his experiences during the Holocaust. Here are some brief excerpts from his testimony: “I was sent to Budy, some eight kilometers from Auschwitz. There I worked at an agricultural camp. We were 500-600 people. We got beaten a lot. My brother was one of those who died from all the beatings. I stayed over half a year at Budy, and then I was transferred back to Auschwitz… I was put into a Kommando digging gravel, and stayed there for about 2-3 weeks… We were then subjected to a medical check-up, and I was sent to Golleschau. That was a cement factory. We were 1,200 men. I remained there for over a year-and-a-half.
They needed strong guys. Although thin, I was healthy and looked okay. We were forced to hew rocks out of mountain slopes and load them onto wagons. The work was impossibly difficult… I stayed there until the Russians approached in October 1944. We set off on a march. After marching 90 kilometers in two days, we boarded a train. We were told that we were going to Dachau. En route, the train was attacked by planes, and I jumped off together with a friend of mine, a guy from France…One morning, there was a knock at the door, and of course we thought that the Nazis had come – but it was the Americans. I took the train to Namen near Dodinne, where we got off and were returned to our motherland.”
The horrifying fate that befell the Jews of Holland during the Holocaust is exemplified in all its gravity in the story of the Coezijn family. Jozef’s fourteen siblings, aged 6-26, along with their 50-year-old father, were all murdered.
Jozef (Jopi, as his friends called him) was cast into the proverbial “pit" – the Golleschau Camp, infamous for its unparalleled cruelty amid the 40-some satellite camps of Auschwitz – and survived. During his three years of imprisonment and bone-crushing forced labor, he stood strong as a young and healthy man, of pleasant temperament. His friends said he was the “joker” in their midst, and his sense of humor gave a boost to everyone. That is exactly how he is depicted in the caricature. A prewar photograph of him further sharpens the amazing likeness that the anonymous artist was able to capture with his pencil. With shaking legs, he approaches the guard asking to “go out for a bit” – i.e., to the latrine marked by the WC sign denoting its location nearby. The aeroplane hovering in the skies gives some indication to the fact that the drawing dates sometime towards the end of the war, when Allied forces converged upon the factories in Buna, seeking to cripple the German military industry.
Jopi immigrated to Israel, married an Israeliborn girl of Moroccan descent, and refused to talk to his children about his traumatic past. “He never told me,” says Iris. “Before this piece of paper crumbles into pieces, I brought it here – so that people may see, so they might know.”
The author is Senior Art Curator and Deputy Director of the Museums Division.
Bron tekst: Yad Vashem Magazine 68 / 2013 pagina 14, zie tevens de bron voor de caricatuur en een foto van Jozef