Mink Van Rijsdijk
Author: Mink Van Rijsdijk
Publisher: Makor Jewish Community Library
Place of publication: Caulfield South, VIC
Year of Publication: 2005
Location of Book: Lamm Jewish Library, Melbourne Holocaust Museum, Sydney Jewish Museum, State Library of Victoria and other public libraries
Cities/town/camps: The Netherlands: Amsterdam, The Hague, Limberg, Friesland
Note: those cities/towns/camps underlined are those which are most central to the narrative
Genre: Memoir
Key events/experiences: hidden child; survival in hiding
Originally written in Dutch and published in the Netherlands by van Buuren Publishing House in 1997, The Shoes of a Foundling is the English translation of Roosje Drukker’s heart-rending story, as told to Mink van Rijsdijk. In 2002, the English translation by Anneke van Deurse-Verhave was published in Melbourne. The memoir charts Roosje’s life as a hidden Jewish child, her troubled Jewish identity and her journey to discover peace as a child survivor of the Holocaust. Though it is Roosje’s narrative, the memoir is the product of the labour of two families - one Jewish, the other Dutch - sparked by a pair of brown shoes housed in an exhibition at the Amsterdam Historical Museum (explained in more detail below).
Pages 1-16 by Julie Meadows, director of the Makor Jewish Library’s “Write Your Story Program”, discusses the publication of Roosje’s memoir in Australia and details of Roosje’s discovery as a ‘foundling’ in Amsterdam – an infant abandoned by her parents to be cared for by strangers. Pages 17-40 recount Roosje’s life under her new identity, “Irma van Schinkel”, and her eventual reunification with mother Fietje Drukker and older sister Carla after the war. Pages 41-64 describe Roosje’s struggle to adapt to life as a Jewish child after her return to the family home. The remainder of the memoir covers the girls’ adolescent years and romantic relationships (pages 65-84), their new families, as well as Roosje’s lingering anxieties and emotional difficulties concerning her wartime experiences and confused identity (pages 85-124). Pages 125-155 chart Roosje’s discovery of her shoes at the Amsterdam Historical Museum and her coming to terms with the past, with final words by the author Mink van Rijsdijk and translator Anneke van Deurse-Verhave.
Late at night on 25 September 1942, a two-year old girl with blonde hair and blue-eyes, was discovered alone and in tears on the doorstep of apartment no.9 Koniginneweg in Amsterdam. Unable to locate her relatives, the girl was relinquished to the state orphanage. Unbeknownst to state authorities, the girl was Jewish, left as a foundling through the assistance of the resistance movement. As Dutch law required any foundling to be reported to the authorities, ‘abandoning’ gentile-looking Jewish children as foundlings could provide them life-saving identity papers. In this context, Fietje Drukker-Levit, with the assistance of the Dutch resistance, including Alida and Jacobus Verhave, left her young daughter, Roosje, with strangers during the height of Jewish deportations in Amsterdam to the extermination camps. Roosje was given a new identity as Irma van Schinkel, a Catholic orphan, and lived for two years in the state orphanage before being moved to several foster homes in Friesland, in the Dutch countryside, where she survived the remainder of the war.
After the war, Fietje, who had survived in hiding with the Verhave family in Amsterdam, began searching for her two daughters. Her eldest, Carla was six-years old when she was placed in hiding with a Catholic family in Limberg, in the south of Holland. In May 1945, both Carla and Roosje were reunited with their mother and father, Max, though the family struggled to adapt to life after the war. Roosje did not recognise her family and preferred her Christian name, Irma. Amidst many emotional and financial difficulties, Fietje and Max divorced, and the girls were sent temporarily to foster care. After a brief time, the girls returned home and were given a Jewish education. Though she still harboured doubts, Roosje began accepting her Jewish identity and grew closer to her mother and sister. However, in 1967, both girls married Christian husbands. Roosje and her husband Bob had three children.
Throughout her life Roosje experienced lingering anxieties of being an imposter in her Jewish family – fearing her parents mistook her for another child. Though Roosje raised her new family as Jews, she continued to feel caught between worlds, experiencing terrible nightmares and post-natal depression. In 1981, her mother passed away. Soon thereafter Roosje finally reconnected with her wartime foster family. These emotional events spurred Roosje to seek psychiatric care. In 1989, Roosje attended the exhibition “Kept in the State Orphanage – Clothing and other Objects” in the Amsterdam Historical Museum, the very building that had once housed the state’s orphans, including Roosje herself from 1942-44. Whilst browsing the exhibition, a pair of brown lace-up boots caught her eye. Immediately, Roosje recognised them as her very own shoes from when she was a young orphan – and a hidden Jewish child. After contacting the museum she was finally able to bring home her long-lost boots, eventually confirming their authenticity. After years of doubt and anxiety, the discovery of these little shoes finally confirmed Roosje’s Jewish identity, allowing her to find a measure of peace and tell her story.
Annika Van Deurse-Verhave survived the war as a child in Amsterdam before migrating to Brisbane in 1956. Whilst on holiday in Amsterdam, she visited the same exhibition housing Roosje’s shoes. Whilst there she noticed newspaper clippings of a young foundling which she had seen at her parent’s home. She realised these must be shoes of Max and “Sophia” (Fietje) Drukker who lived with her family during the war. Van Deurse-Verhave thus began searching for the unnamed foundling, and, after a lengthy search, finally contacted Roosje Drukker. Van Deurse-Verhave then put Roosje in touch with her cousin, Mink van Rijsdijk, to help write and publish Roosje’s story.
In 1997, Roosje’s memoir was published in Dutch. Subsequently, Alida and Jacobus Verhave were recognised posthumously as Righteous Among the Nations for their rescue efforts. Back in Brisbane, Van-Deurse Verhave translated the memoir into English and, after reading an article about the Makor Jewish Community Library’s “Write Your Story Program” published in the national newspaper The Australian, contacted the director Julie Meadows to publish the English translation. Finally, in 2002, The Shoes of a Foundling was published.
In addition to the brief discussion of events during the Holocaust, The Shoes of a Foundling principally describes its aftermath, providing insight into the nature of loss and impact on the identity of a young child survivor. The memoir is not authored by Roosje Drukker but by Mink van Rijsdijk and is a product of a long series of discussions between the two. The memoir resembles a biography, though it provides a personal insight into Roosje’s psychological and emotional state. As noted, the memoir was a collaborative effort between Roosje Drukker, Mink van Rijsdijk and Annika van Deurse-Verhave, as well as the Makor Jewish Community Library.