In his book ‘At Life and Welfare’, writer Frank Vermeer (74) takes the readers into the world of his ancestors. And that world largely takes place in Assen.
The book about 150 years of Jewish family history was presented on Thursday. In the book he has conversations with, among others, his great-grandparents, whom he never knew. “I don’t find writing down facts satisfactory,” he says in Radio Drenthe program Cassata. “This is much more playful and I was able to bring myself into it. As you write, you shape those parents and grandparents a bit. They get closer to you. An emotional bond is created.”
He speaks in his own garden with his great-grandmother Rosalie Vos-Boasson, and great-uncle Louis Levy talks about his development as a gay man. They tell about their lives in the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century in the Jewish communities in Hamburg, Middelburg and Assen. When Hitler comes to power, the years of ‘life and well-being’ will come to an end. Grandfather Isidor Vos, wholesaler in Assen and politically active for many years, talks about the impending thirties and the painful war years that ended in Sobibor.
“I started recording war history,” says Vermeer. But that did not immediately satisfy him. “There were many decades before and after the war with a normal life. I also wanted to write that life down.”
Jan Vermeer and Rosalie Vos, the author’s parents, form a ‘privilegierte Mischehe’. That means a ‘privileged mixed marriage’ and means that the Jewish partner would not be deported. His mother is Jewish, his father is not. The chance of survival is even greater if the couple has a child. Their daughter was born in 1943, but she died shortly afterwards. “That was terrible. What could be worse for a parent?”
In addition, the extra protection for Rosalie has expired. A solution is found through connections of his father.
The book ‘Bij Leven en Welfare’ is a mixture of non-fiction and fiction. Listen to the entire conversation with him about the book below.