Advanced Search

Learn About The Holocaust

Special Collections

My Saved Research

Login

Register

Help

Skip to main content

Print

Oral history interview with Jan Zwartendyk

Oral History | Digitized | RG Number: RG-50.494.0014

Search this record's additional resources, such as finding aids, documents, or transcripts.

No results match this search term.
Check spelling and try again.

results are loading

0 results found for “keyward”

    Oral history interview with Jan Zwartendyk
    Transcript
    So I think we're rolling.
    Rolling?
    All right.
    Can you tell me what the atmosphere
    was like in Kovno or Kaunas?
    Oh, Kaunas in July 1940 was a tense and ominous place.
    The Soviet army had moved in there only a month
    before, a fascinating spectacle for me as an 11-year-old.
    I spent quite a few days watching all that.
    And commerce had stopped.
    The banks had closed.
    The army was everywhere.
    I can still smell that army, really, in the background.
    When I close my eyes, I can smell
    leather and sweat and dust.
    It was very typical.
    The city itself was really in panic.
    No one knew what was going to happen the next day.
    Uncertainty everywhere.
    Great.
    And when did your father take on the role of ambassador
    in Lithuania for the Dutch?
    My father was honorary Dutch consul for only six weeks
    in the summer of 1940.
    He was appointed by the ambassador who
    had asked him to please take this job on in addition
    to his real work, and didn't expect that anything
    would be required from it.
    Little did he know how that would change in the last week
    that he was consul, the last week of July.
    Okay what changed?
    What happened?
    I remember that he came home for dinner very late,
    10:00 o'clock, and was--
    Sorry, if i could just start over again.
    --executions in that sports stadium.
    Did I mention it to you?
    No.
    Where we lived?
    On the same street that where we lived,
    there was a sports stadium.
    And there was shooting there all the time,
    and apparently those were executions.
    The Russians came in there with a long blacklist of people
    they wanted to take care of.
    That's great.
    We all set?
    Rolling?
    Yes.
    OK.
    So could you once again tell me what
    the conditions were like when the Soviets came into Kovno?
    Well, Kaunas was a very tense and very ominous
    place in the summer of 1940.
    The Russians, the Soviets, I should say,
    had just come in, marched in in the middle of June
    unexpectedly.
    To me, a very fascinating spectacle as an 11-year-old.
    I spent many days watching all that
    and taking in their smells of leather
    and horses and dust and sweat.
    And I loved it but not many other people did.
    There was no commerce anymore.
    The banks had closed.
    There were executions in a sports
    stadium along our street.
    There was shooting on a daily basis.
    Apparently, people were being executed
    that were on the blacklist of the secret police,
    the Soviet secret police.
    The owner of the house we lived in
    was a Lithuanian professor of history.
    He, all of a sudden, was taken away by the Russians
    to go to Siberia with very few hours notice, he and his wife
    and his five-year-old girl.
    Very tearful scene.
    I remember that well.
    What was your family doing in Lithuania at that time?
    Who was your father working for, and then
    what happened that changed?
    My father was sent to Lithuania as director of Philips,
    Philips Electronics it is now.
    They manufactured mostly radios at that time.
    And there was a factory in Kaunas
    where radios were put together with, I guess,
    the electrical parts from Holland and the rest
    was made there.
    And there were various representatives
    all over Lithuania for that, so that was his job.
    He was there since December 1938.
    OK.
    And then when did he get involved in a diplomatic role?
    My father's diplomatic role, or so-called diplomatic role,
    started in the middle of June of 1940, so just
    about that day, I think, before the Soviets marched in.
    OK.
    Could you tell me that again, and then
    incorporate in that-- tell me the whole story of what
    he thought he was going to be doing
    and what he ended up doing?
    OK.
    Starting where?
    What he expected when he took the job.
    So, again, the Phillips business?
    Right.
    OK.
    My father was in commerce as director of Philips,
    a Dutch company, very large electronics company.
    They were manufacturing radios especially, as they still do.
    And he had representatives all over the country.
    There was a factory in Kaunas.
    So that was his job there.
    And in June 1940, the ambassador of Holland, who lived in Riga,
    asked him, if you could take on, on the side, the job
    of honorary consul, which he reluctantly accepted because he
    had enough to do as it was.
    He didn't need that.
    He didn't know anything about the diplomatic service.
    And the ambassador said, don't worry about it.
    Pick up the phone if you have a question.
    Nothing much is going to happen.
    Until things did happen all of a sudden,
    in the last week of July.
    What happened in the last week of July?
    In the last week of July, I remember
    that he came home late from work, about 10:00 o'clock,
    very agitated.
    OK [INAUDIBLE] can you say, in the last week of July in 1940--
    1940.
    --my father-- I just need to know that you're
    talking about your father.
    In the last week of July 1940, my father
    came home late from work very agitated
    and told us about Jews who were besieging his office, begging
    him for visas to Curacao.
    That's a small island in the Caribbean,
    which was then a Dutch colony.
    And obviously, he was stunned by how desperate
    these people were.
    They literally begged him to give them this visa.
    There was no need for that.
    He was going to give it to them anyway.
    There was such a push around his door
    to get in that one man's arm was broken.
    And why did they want--
    can you tell me the whole story of why
    did they want these visas to go to Curacao?
    It was obvious to my father how desperate
    these people had to be when you think about what they were
    really hanging their hopes on, which
    was to go to Curacao in the Caribbean, which meant having
    to go Eastward the wrong direction, twice as
    far as going West, which was impossible.
    They would have to cross all of the Asian continent, all
    of Siberia by train, all the way to the Pacific coast.
    That's a distance of about from here to Rio de Janeiro.
    Incredible.
    They had to hope they wouldn't get
    yanked off the train in Siberia for some reason or other.
    That was a realistic fear.
    Then they had to get a ship to Japan,
    hope that Japan would let them travel through,
    and find further ships across the Pacific somehow.
    They had no idea how.
    They also had no idea who would pay for that most of them
    didn't have that much money.
    Most of them were Polish refugees.
    Could you tell me the story of who came up with the idea,
    using Gutwirth [? and ?] [INAUDIBLE]??
    That whole thing about Mrs. Lewin?
    Yes.
    Well, lay down her story, but tell her story quickly.
    But, I mean, I'm interested in Gutwirth, in a sense,
    spreading the word, and then your father being [INAUDIBLE]..
    Yeah.
    The way that the idea of the Curacao visa came about
    was actually quite unusual.
    There were some Dutch people among these refugees.
    One of them was a student, a yeshiva student,
    by the name of Nathan Gutwirth, who was of] Dutch nationality.
    He had gotten to know my father earlier,
    and he thought that perhaps he might go to Curacao, because it
    was close to the United States where he had family
    and it might be a good jumping off point
    quite a bit closer to the States than Lithuania was.
    And my father told him, you can go.
    You're Dutch.
    This is a Dutch colony.
    And he went back with that idea, thought about it a while,
    and talked to his friends about it who were not Dutch.
    And he asked my father, could you
    help with a visa for some of my friends
    who are Lithuanian or Polish?
    Well, that was something my father didn't really
    know about, so he got in contact with de Decker,
    the ambassador in Riga, as did Gutwirth just to be sure.
    So de Decker was brought into it,
    and de Decker came up with the idea
    that he could provide a text that
    was, in fact, a declaration, saying only a half truth.
    And a half truth was, you do not need a visa as an alien
    to enter Curacao and other Dutch colonies in the West Indies.
    Now that was true, but the other half
    was that you do need permission from the local governor
    to enter, and that's not easy to get.
    But de Decker took it upon himself
    to just provide half of that, to the half that
    said you don't need a visa.
    And that was, of course, as good as a visa.
    With that, they could go to the Japanese consul
    and say, look, I want to go to Curacao.
    And you see here?
    It says you don't need a visa.
    The Dutch consul said so, has written it.
    So the Japanese ambassador, Japanese consul, accepted that.
    Whether he believed it or not, doesn't really
    make any difference.
    He had legal cover to give them a transit visa
    to go via Japan so-called to Curacao.
    So the whole thing was a bit of a ruse.
    It was a ploy, or as one of the refugees said,
    it was an elegant deception.
    Great.
    OK.
    Could you tell me about your father's relationship
    with Sugihara, and any communications they had,
    and how many visas did he write, and--
    Yeah, let me see.
    There's another thought there.
    Given the fact that the enterprise
    of trying to go to Curacao was so complicated and so unreal,
    how easy it would have been for my father to say,
    this is insane.
    This will never work.
    Why should I stick my neck out for such a pipe dream?
    But he didn't.
    He thought he should provide them the chance
    and give them hope above all.
    And so we furiously wrote these so-called Curacao visas.
    I'm sorry, but that light just flickered.
    Yeah.
    And how was the--
    We just got a little siren, but it wasn't [INAUDIBLE]..
    OK.
    The light just went--
    Yeah?
    Yeah.
    All right, we're rolling.
    OK, I'm sorry.
    Start over?
    Yes, please.
    Given how complicated the whole plan was
    that these refugees were entertaining of trying
    to go to Curacao, how easy it would
    have been for my father to say, this is completely insane.
    This will never work.
    Why should I stick my neck out for a pipe dream like that?
    But he didn't say that.
    He decided he should give them a chance,
    and he should give them hope above all.
    And he furiously wrote these so-called Curacao visas
    for nine days.
    He wrote all together something like 2,350 as far as we know,
    perhaps some more.
    And then the Russians commandeered his office,
    and that was the end of it.
    Did Sugihara--
    What was your question again?
    Did Sugihara ever call him and tell him to slow down, or--
    Yeah.
    My father told later on that Sugihara, the Japanese consul,
    had called him several times to ask him to slow down,
    because he couldn't keep up with the crowd,
    that he was writing his visas too quickly.
    He had not met my father.
    As far as I know, they never met,
    and I have no reason to believe they did.
    Sorry.
    I lost my thought there.
    There was something else I wanted to say.
    Yeah.
    He was doing it with brushes, brushstrokes [INAUDIBLE]??
    Well, no that-- apparently, there's
    no evidence that he did.
    There's never-- never been one found
    that was done with a brush though I
    think that was my father's assumption that he said that.
    He didn't speak English very well, so he may have said,
    too fast, too slow.
    And he thought, well, yeah.
    This guy is working with a brush.
    No so, apparently.
    But--
    [INAUDIBLE]
    There's something else that--
    it's really unlikely that one consul will ask
    another to slow down like that.
    That it is more likely that Sugihara
    wanted to check and see whether these visas were for real,
    or whether the refugees had made them themselves.
    That's what I think.
    Theory, but not sure you need that.
    No.
    No.
    So that's the reason that he called them.
    Otherwise, I don't think that-- there was no planning
    beforehand between those two.
    Did your father think that any of these people
    were ever going to go to Curacao,
    or that this crazy plan would work?
    Or was he really just offering these very desperate people
    a ray of hope?
    I think my father was offering these people a ray of hope
    while he himself did not think they
    had a very good chance of making it.
    There were so many counts against them there.
    He, himself, mentioned a number of times
    that he didn't think that the financial part of it
    alone would work, because the Soviets insisted
    on being paid in dollars.
    And it was illegal to own dollars in Lithuania,
    and the banks were closed.
    So how were they going to get dollars?
    That alone was enough to sink it.
    As it turned out, the Jewish community in the United States
    sent the money, so it worked out.
    All of these things worked out miraculously,
    but they were not to be expected realistically
    at that time at all.
    So my father never thought that many would make it, if any.
    And, in fact, he never knew for decades
    whether anyone made it and hadn't really
    expected to hear from the whole affair at all anymore,
    until in the '60s there were some sounds from Los Angeles
    that there were some survivors out there, much
    to his surprise.
    And he had to write out a little story for the Foreign Affairs
    department, who were told about this and said, what's this?
    Never heard of it.
    Have nothing in our files about this.
    So-- I lost where i was going.
    You were doing great.
    I forgot what I was gonna say.
    What your father expected when he took the job
    and what it ended up being?
    Before, you told me that your father--
    it was kind of a courtesy, and he
    didn't expect it to take up any of his time [INAUDIBLE]..
    You want more about that?
    Yeah.
    Well, if you could just tell me that story.
    Tell [? that one ?] again.
    At the beginning of my father's so-called career
    as honorary consul, he had understood that it was simply
    a job someone should do.
    And he took it on the basis of that,
    that it was an obligation he thought he couldn't refuse.
    But there would be no work involved,
    and it was just to extend some Dutchman's visa.
    There were maybe 10 or 11 Dutch families in Lithuania,
    mostly in Kaunas.
    So he might do something useful for them,
    and that was the expectation of the job.
    When all these Polish refugees showed up
    and there was this pandemonium and writing
    of visas, 2,350 of them, it ended up in total madness,
    really.
    He was completely exhausted after that period.
    He worked from early morning--
    I think he left at 5:00 in the morning, came home at 10:00.
    It was all day long, and these people
    were standing there all night.
    I don't know how many there were at the same time, but hundreds.
    Did you ever visit or--
    the consul?
    I have a vague recollection of going to my father's office,
    as I often did, to get a ride back home.
    His office was downtown on the Main Street there,
    and the consulate was his office, same office.
    So I remember vaguely getting to that place
    and seeing this mob of people and figuring, forget it,
    I'll never get to him, and went back home.
    But I don't have any clear recollection, really,
    of the place and of the crowd.
    OK.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    So could you tell me why--
    who closed the consul, and then what did your father do?
    And you were an 11-year-old boy and you helped him do it?
    Burning the documents.
    The consulate of my father was finally
    closed around August the 3rd by the Soviets, who
    simply commandeered the place.
    They took it over.
    Private business was finished.
    And they simply took the office away from him,
    so he had no more office, and no more place to have a consulate,
    and that was the end of it.
    The Soviets had announced that they would close all consulates
    remaining, and there were very few remaining anyway
    around that time.
    And they had a deadline, I believe, of August 25th
    finally, but he didn't have an office anymore at that time.
    Now when all of that was over after the consulate was closed,
    I remember very clearly that I was
    allowed to burn all the consular documents.
    It was dangerous to keep them.
    My father couldn't take them along.
    None of this had been reported to the foreign office
    in Holland or in London.
    The Dutch government then had an exiled government in London.
    They knew nothing about it.
    So these papers-- and that was the idea, really,
    of the ambassador in Riga.
    He decided that we shouldn't keep any of this stuff around,
    burn it.
    They didn't have shredders at the time,
    so I had the job of burning all these papers
    as an 11-year-old-- this was very exciting stuff--
    in a little potbellied stove in the heat of summer.
    So all of it disappeared and it turned into ashes.
    Unfortunately, the list of these 2,350 people
    to whom my father had given these visas,
    it had destroyed the evidence of what he had done.
    Do you hear all that bass?
    I saved the-- I don't know if it was a radio.
    Did you hear it?
    No, I didn't.
    [INAUDIBLE] want to listen back?
    A truck went by.
    It was a truck going by?
    No I'm sorry.
    I didn't.
    OK.
    If you could just tell it once again and a little
    bit more compact at the end.
    When they closed the consul, my father was asked to--
    or the ambassador suggested that we destroy everything,
    and you helped out and how you did it in the heat of summer.
    Did you get that part?
    Yeah.
    I'm interested in really kind of your role.
    Yeah.
    After the consulate was closed by the Soviets
    around August the 3rd, I was asked by my father
    if I wanted to help in burning all the consular documents.
    Because the ambassador in Riga had decided that none
    of this stuff ought to be kept.
    The Russians might take it away from them,
    might take it away from us, from my father,
    and it was not a good idea to keep it.
    There were no shredders at the time,
    so I burnt it in a pot-bellied stove
    in the heat of summer, which to me as an 11-year-old was
    a very exciting thing to do.
    Were you-- do you think that your father thought that maybe
    he would get punished and sent to Siberia
    if these records were found or anything like that?
    At the time, the situation in Kaunas
    was so unpredictable, the Soviets were so unpredictable,
    that I believe my parents were quite concerned
    about the idea of Siberia.
    People were being sent to Siberia right
    and left with no discernible reason sometimes.
    And for about four to six weeks, they held up
    my father's request for permission
    to leave the country, so we couldn't leave during all
    of August when we wanted to.
    I believe he must have been very relieved
    to get out of Lithuania.
    Yes.
    Good reason to.
    Can we cut for a second?
    Just--
    Did any of these people actually make it to Curacao?
    You know, the strange thing is-- or perhaps it's not so strange.
    No one actually reached Curacao of any of these people
    that made it to Japan, and there were about 2,200 of them.
    It's not that surprising, because it was just
    a ploy to get out of Lithuania and get at least as
    far as Japan.
    And out there, they were going to try and get
    visas for other places, especially the United States.
    And half of them succeeded, and the other half
    was shipped to Shanghai during the war.
    So no one made it to Curacao, but Curacao was always
    the trick to get out and not much more.
    And would they have been allowed in if they had made it?
    Do you think the government would have let them in?
    It's-- it's--
    If they had made it Curacao.
    If any of them had shown up in Curacao in large numbers,
    I think they would have been in trouble there anyway.
    Because Curacao is a very small community,
    a very small economy.
    And unless the Jewish community there
    would have completely taken care of them,
    I don't think they would have gotten in.
    And they probably knew that and were not
    really making any serious effort to go there,
    if they even could.
    The shipping problem wasn't that simple at that time.
    Great.
    Do you think all the people used the visas,
    and if they didn't, why didn't they?
    It is clear now from the numbers of visas that were written
    and that were falsified, there were hundreds of them were
    falsified by the refugees .
    There were some very good fakes around.
    There were many more than there were
    people who used them and showed up in Japan.
    And the reason very likely is that they
    were afraid to ask the Soviets for permission
    to travel across Siberia because they didn't trust them.
    And they were afraid to be taken to Siberia instead, which
    was a very realistic fear at that time.
    And it took a lot of courage.
    Now there are people that did go to them to do it,
    and it still isn't clear why the Soviets
    were so benign to this whole enterprise.
    I think they just wanted to get rid of them.
    Excellent.
    Excellent.
    Can you just give it one more try?
    Just talk about-- even though you've done it already,
    just talk about how desperate these people
    were in the sense of hope.
    I don't think I have anything more to say than that.
    OK.
    No, there's some little episode that is sort of touching.
    Go.
    My father didn't know for decades how many of these
    people actually made it, if any.
    He heard about it for the first time in the '60s, but then
    there was a long silence and nothing--
    Excuse me.
    --further.
    I lost my audio taping.
    Tell me about your father finding out.
    My father didn't know for decades
    after the event how many people, if any, had come out
    and saved themselves with the help of his visas.
    He heard something in the 1960s but not very much.
    And then there was silence, and we couldn't find out anything.
    He died in '76, fortunately having just heard
    that at least 2,000 made it.
    He was very excited about that and very happy,
    but the details that he had always wanted to know about it
    came in a letter that was just too late
    and came in during his funeral.
    He also never met any of these survivors, not a single one,
    again.
    I did, finally, in the 90s.
    I met about 10 of them in Jerusalem and New York,
    a very emotional event, especially when they showed me
    some of his handwritten visas that he signed.
    Can you think of any other stories?
    We might as well cut.
    What role do you think luck played in all of this,
    in saving all of these people?
    I think that the whole enterprise was a whole string
    of lucky events that were--
    let's try it again.
    We can start again.
    Let's try it again, figure out which way
    I was going with that.
    Yeah, the whole escape of these people
    required the cooperation of so many people.
    It could have gone wrong anywhere along the line.
    It was a string of lucky breaks.
    The visas that were phony, the Soviets that acted benignly
    toward this, which was unexpected,
    the money that came from America.
    All of that together made it succeed,
    but it was most unusual, and the luck in there
    was a tremendous factor all along the line.
    It could have gone wrong at least in different places
    easily, and we would never have heard from them again.
    We're rolling.
    We're rolling.
    At the time that the student Nathan Gutwirth came
    to my father, his idea was really
    to ask about, to himself, the idea of going to Curacao, which
    might give him a better chance to go to the United States,
    where he had family.
    But then he thought that some of his Lithuanian and Polish
    friends at the yeshiva--
    So we don't need to re-ask that, can you start again, please?
    The yeshiva student Nathan Gutwirth went to my father
    with a request of going to Curacao,
    and he was Dutch and found out that he could go himself
    without any further ado.
    But he had some Polish and Lithuanian friends
    in the yeshiva who would like to go to Curacao, too,
    so Gutwirth asked my father on behalf of these few friends
    if my father could give them some kind of visa.
    And when my father said he would give them
    this notation about no visa being required,
    which he had from De Dekker.
    Gutwirth told that story to Zerach Warhaftig,
    who was a lawyer then in his 30s and a leader
    among the refugees.
    And Warhaftig immediately saw the opportunity there
    of combining this with the Japanese transit visa
    to get out through the Pacific area,
    and he was going around, telling everybody,
    go and get this Curacao visa.
    Go and get-- and people would say, what is this?
    And he pushed them.
    He really pushed a lot of people to go and get a Curacao visa.
    So he was a very--
    he had a very central role in having this blow up like that.
    Otherwise, it might have remained
    simply a matter of Gutwirth and a few friends getting out.
    Excellent.
    How do you explain the fact that Sugihara and your father
    didn't even know each other, and yet they were working together?
    Well, it isn't so strange that my father,
    as Dutch consul, and Sugihara, as Japanese consul,
    didn't know each other because my father had been consul only
    for a few weeks, and there was absolutely
    no diplomatic activity left in Kaunas.
    It was chaos.
    The Soviets had invaded just about the day
    my father became consul, and so after that there was nothing
    doing in the diplomatic field.
    Most of the consulates closed or had already closed.
    And so they were just a couple of single consuls sitting there
    and doing their own thing.
    He had no reason to contact him, and it was simply
    because the refugees needed the Japanese transit visa, which
    they could get on the basis of the "destination visa,"
    so-called, for Curacao that there was a connection made.
    And I believe that Sugihara called my father simply
    because he didn't believe that this was true,
    that you could get into Curacao without a visa.
    And he was checking up on this whole thing
    to see whether it was for real.
    Great.
    Actually, I think that's--
    now, just so I'm covered, can you just tell me
    the story again of burning the papers,
    and why, and the fears that--
    the motivation for doing it and your involvement.
    Let's just try one more time.
    After the consulate of my father was closed in early August,
    the ambassador in Riga, the Dutch ambassador,
    decided that all the papers of the Dutch embassy
    and consulates should be burned for security reasons
    because he did not think you could send them out
    to the Dutch government in London at the time
    because he thought the Soviets would intercept them,
    and would take them away from them anyway,
    and it would be just hairy to have these things
    in the Soviets' hands.
    So for security reasons, he wanted to get rid of them
    and told all the consulates in the Baltics
    to burn these documents.
    My father asked me to do that in a little pot-bellied stove
    at the warehouse of Philips on a hot August afternoon, which,
    to me, as an 11-year-old, was a very exciting job.
    So with that, the evidence of what he had done
    disappeared, turned into ashes the list of all those people
    that he had issued visas to, which
    made it difficult later on to trace
    what he had actually done.
    Excellent, excellent.
    I'm glad I asked that again.
    That was great.
    What was your father's reaction to being
    called the Angel of Curacao?
    When my father first heard that the article in the Los Angeles
    Jewish newspaper called him the Angel of Curacao,
    he thought that was ridiculous, and his reaction
    was, if you're going to call anybody that,
    call De Dekker the Angel of Curacao
    because he came up with this idea of issuing
    this declaration that no visa was required,
    and without that, my father couldn't
    have written all of his visas.
    So my father was a very modest man,
    and he did not want to be in the limelight about this at all.
    He just was curious to find out how many people made it,
    but he did not want to be called upon to tell anything about it.
    How did your father respond to being
    called the Angel of Curacao?
    When my father was given the article about the Angel
    of Curacao from a Jewish newspaper in Los
    Angeles in 1963, which was the first he'd ever
    heard of anyone surviving from Lithuania,
    he was he was astounded by that, and he
    thought it was ridiculous.
    And he said that, if you're going to call anyone that,
    call De Dekker that, the ambassador in Riga who
    had come up with the text of the declaration
    that you didn't need a visa for Curacao.
    And he said, without that, I couldn't
    have written all these visas.
    So he wanted to get the attention away from himself
    because he was really very modest and rather shy
    about being in the limelight.
    He didn't want to be the center of this.
    He just wanted to know how many people had
    gotten out and survived with the help of these things,
    and after that, as far as he was concerned,
    he didn't want to have anything more to do with it.
    Excellent.
    --the nation smell.
    Just talking about that-- yeah, actually,
    put your hands up like that again, and tell me--
    yeah, tell me about your memories of the Russians
    coming in.
    Yeah, one of the most vivid direct memories I have
    is of the smell of the Soviet army marching by.
    These people had been on trucks for weeks, probably,
    and it was a combination smell of horses, and leather,
    and dust, and sweat, and it is still with me.
    It was very typical.
    They could also sing very well, beautifully.
    And you, as a 11-year-old boy, were fascinated,
    but most people were horrified?
    Of course, this was especially interesting to me
    as an 11-year-old.
    At that stage, I was fascinated by all
    of this, this military material coming by, very big.
    And these people looked so tired and were
    so covered with dust and grime from having been on the road
    forever.
    I think many of them must have come from Kazakhstan or so.
    The Russians often did that.
    They brought people into countries
    that they didn't know so they wouldn't be friendly to them.
    Try it one more time.
    Unfortunately, I didn't get you to say "when the Russians came
    into "Kaunas."
    OK, I'm going to back up a bit.
    So I need that intro.
    Yeah.
    The Russians-- no.
    Do that again.
    The Soviet army marched into Lithuania
    on June the 15th, 1940.
    I remember that very vividly, standing along the road
    and watching that spectacle, very interesting to me
    as an 11-year-old.
    And the most vivid recollection I have
    is of the smell that was a combination of leather,
    and sweat, and horses, and dust.
    It was very typical, and it was always the same.
    These people were covered with grime and dust
    on trucks, on all kinds of vehicles that they
    must have been on for weeks.
    They were sort of standing up to sleep.
    Great.
    Room tone, 30 seconds.
    Room tone.
    End room tone.

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Zwartendyk, Dr. Jan
    Date
    interview:  1999 July 09

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    2 videocassettes (Betacam SP) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    Firstlight Pictures, a film production company contractor for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, conducted the interview with January Zwartendyk (né Zwartendijk) on July 9, 1999 in preparation for the exhibition, "Flight & Rescue." The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received the tapes of the interview from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Exhibitions Division in July, 1999
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:57:02
    This page:
    http:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn508246

    Additional Resources

    Transcripts (2)
    Time Coded Notes (2)

    Download & Licensing

    In-Person Research

    Contact Us

    Also in Oral history interviews of the Flight and Rescue collection

    Contains oral history interviews with twenty Holocaust survivors and witnesses recorded in preparation for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's exhibition, "Flight and Rescue," which opened May 3, 2000. The interviewees discuss their experiences of their journey from Lithuania to Shanghai, China, via Japan

    Date: 1999 June-1999 October

    Oral history interview with Yukiko Sugihara

    Oral history interview with Yukiko Sugihara

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Motl Goldberg

    Oral history interview with Motl Goldberg

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Jechil Dobekirer

    Oral history interview with Jechil Dobekirer

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Zorach Warhaftig

    Oral history interview with Zorach Warhaftig

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Susan Bluman

    Oral history interview with Susan Bluman

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ruth Segal

    Oral history interview with Ruth Segal

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Norbert Swislocki

    Oral history interview with Norbert Swislocki

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leo Hanin

    Oral history interview with Leo Hanin

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Hanni Vogelweid

    Oral history interview with Hanni Vogelweid

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Gelbfish

    Oral history interview with Benjamin Gelbfish

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Alexander Schenker

    Oral history interview with Alexander Schenker

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Victor Erlich

    Oral history interview with Victor Erlich

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Ernest Heppner

    Oral history interview with Ernest Heppner

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Leo Melamed

    Oral history interview with Leo Melamed

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Moshe Zupnik

    Oral history interview with Moshe Zupnik

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Marko Nowogrodzki

    Oral history interview with Marko Nowogrodzki

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Lucille Camhi

    Oral history interview with Lucille Camhi

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Yonia Fain

    Oral history interview with Yonia Fain

    Oral History

    Oral history interview with Meri Nowogrodzki

    Oral history interview with Meri Nowogrodzki

    Oral History

    View All 20 Items in the Collection