Benjamin Mouwes was walking with his soul under his arm when he met Fajga Szmulewicz again. After he left quite late, she was left with ringing ears and head spinning. “That was August 15, 1991 and we stayed together until death do us part.” On July 1, Benjamin was buried at the Nieuwe Ooster in Amsterdam, aged 74.
As Bennie, he grew up upstairs and in the business (the four children helped out) that father Isaac started in 1946 in the Utrechtsestraat: Mouwes Koshere Delicatessen. Mother Judith was also behind the counter. ‘For the Jewish housewife with international taste’, the range included gefilte fish, butter cake, matzos, horseradish, ginger boluses. With hechsher (certificate) from a rabbinate.
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Fajga: ‘The handful of kosher Jews after the war had to have at least one shop.’ It became a meeting point for post-war and a connection to pre-war Jewish Amsterdam. On Saturday it read: ‘Mouwes is enjoying the Sabbath rest. (C)open on Sunday.’ Fajga: ‘The children were infused with Yiddishkeit. Strictly Jewish upbringing: kosher cuisine, shul, Jewish schools and Jewish youth association.’
At university, Benjamin had little contact with other Jewish students. ‘He knew that world. Once in rooms, he slowly slipped out of kosher Jewish life. Never from Judaism, that was in his marrow.’ He did a year in economics and switched to psychology, specializing in ethology and animal behaviour. As a boy he was already indispensable from Artis, he helped with feeding. On the street, dogs were judged: ‘Runs like a mop!’ He himself attracted attention with a dingo on a leash. He did his graduation project in Israel, about wolves in the Negev.
The Montycoats
In the eighteen years that spanned his studies, he made his living as a driver for the Amsterdam shop; on Sunday he was in the branch in The Hague. His thesis could wait, the eternal student plunged into full life. ‘Pubs, Club Mazzo, pop concerts, parties, smoking weed, what not.’ He had a band, The Montycoats, who sang and wrote lyrics for their single.
He decided to commit himself to a nature project in Israel: transferring onagers, wild donkeys, to the Negev. After his return in the late 1980s, there was no work for an ethologist here. ‘So the shop again’, after Isaac’s death led by brother Chai and about to move to Buitenveldert, a neighborhood with a growing Jewish population. “Chasing my clients to the new Jewish ghetto,” Chai said in the New Israeli Weekly.
Retrained Benjamin could go to the International Institute of Social History. He did archival research for a database with representative life histories from the last two centuries. Employee Marja Koster: ‘With his charm and enormous smile, Ben was able to gain access to inaccessible depots. He regularly retrieved material that had been thought to be lost.’ Fajga: ‘With his characteristic enthusiasm and boundless energy, he improved search methods en passant.’
Swieneparredies
After his retirement he remained a volunteer and became a board member of Het Swieneparredies in Groningen, which wants to bring the pig back ‘among the people’. He took Yiddish language lessons and did the layout of Grine Medinea magazine on Yiddish language and literature.
In recognition of 26 years of commitment to a safe playing environment, the board member of playground association De Waag, also ‘neighbourhood mayor’, received the Andreaspenning. In March, on his 74th birthday and with a thunderous surprise party in ‘his’ playground. He had been ill for some time. He was last there on 22 June. Fajga: ‘He held an audience, but had to be carried home.’