Zetta van der Heiden-Cohen was nine years old when the war broke out. She is of Jewish descent and had to go into hiding with her mother for a year. Unlike most of her family, mother and daughter survived the war. The memories, despite her age of 90, are clearly in her memory. The war in Ukraine makes this even more apparent.
In Schagen, Zetta and her mother manage to stay out of the hands of the Germans. With Zetta’s mother’s second husband, who was not Jewish, the two were safe. “But I’m sure that wouldn’t have been the case in Amsterdam,” said Van der Heiden.
It is not a good time for both of them, but they are only told after the liberation what the real reason was for going into hiding. “We thought that was necessary because we had to work differently in Germany,” says Zetta. And the family didn’t want that.
Almost everyone in Zetta’s family had to go to ‘work’ in Germany. Zetta had believed all along that they would eventually come back. “And that didn’t happen.” While the Netherlands is celebrating the liberation, Zetta’s mother is having a terrible time. She never got to say goodbye to her family.
commemorate
Zetta will be fourteen when she can lead a normal life again. She is finally going back to school and meeting up with friends again. “I already had the boys in my head,” she jokes. But despite her happy life, the war remains an important and painful chapter in her life. Every year on May 4, she also remembers everyone she has lost. “That should never go away,” she thinks, “but it’s still a bad day.”
Ukraine
Zetta built a nice life after the war and is very happy to this day. She can largely leave her past behind. But since the war in Ukraine, more and more memories of the past come to her mind. “I was sick to death for the first few days,” says Zetta. “Now I hardly watch anymore, at some point I can’t take it anymore.”