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Photo of the Wedding of Hermann de Leeuw and Annie Pais, Amsterdam 1941 |
Photo of Samuel Schryver and Henrietta de Leeuw in streets of Amsterdam, 1941. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC (Donated by Samuel Schryver, Montreal, Canada). |
Although I have been exposed to thousands of images of the Holocaust during the six years I have worked collecting photographs for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, none of these of images have affected my emotions as much as the two photographs printed here. I find the juxtapositions of normal life und life under Nazi rule, as depicted in these two photographs from the collection of Samuel Schryver, both fascinating and disturbing. How little these people's lifes seem to be affected by the Nazi regime. I wonder whether they realized how soon their lives would be changed.
The wedding of Annie Pais and Herman de Leeuw was one of the last such ceremonies conducted in the magnificent Sephardic synagogue in Amsterdam. The bride wore an elegant gown and the groom wore a traditional tuxedo. They also wore the yellow Star of David.
In 1941, after the Nazis occupied Amsterdam, life began to change for the Jews who lived there. They were barred from public places, forced to identify themselves by wearing the yellow star, and forbidden to be on the streets after 8:00 at night. Yet Annie Pais and Hermann de Leeuw managed to gather friends and family together to celebrate their union. The ceremony was lavish and did not lack any of the usual components of a traditional wedding, the bride even carried a beautiful bouquet.
Two of the guests at the wedding were Henrietta (Jetty) de Leeuw, sister of the groom, and her fiancé, Samuel Schryver. They appear together on an Amsterdam street corner in the second photograph. They, like the others who attended the wedding of Annie and Herman, wore the Star of David.
On May 25, 1943, Annie Pais, Herman de Leeuw, and Jetty de Leeuw were among those deported to Westerbork. From this transit camp in the Netherlands, they were sent further east, to the Sobibor camp in Poland. Samuel Schryver never again saw his fiancée. She, along with her brother, his wife, and countless others, perished in Sobibor.
Samuel Schryver was lucky. He managed to survive the war, although there were times he was nearly caught by the Nazis. Some years later, he recovered these and other photographs from Suze de Leeuw and her husband Siegfried Pekel, who survived the war in hiding with a Christian family. They too, were lucky.
These photographs bear witness to the joy of life that the Jews of Amsterdam refused to give up, even in the face of the Nazi occupation. The fullness of Jewish life and the sadness of its destruction fight each other in these photographs.
Aus: Rundbrief Fotografie N.F. 5 (1995), S. 3 (Vol. 2, No. 1).
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