Fighting for Survival

Résumé du livre

Contains both a diary and memoirs of a Holocaust survivor, born in Vienna in 1920. The diary (pp. 1-57), originally written in German, covers the events of 1938; it was first published in the form of a booklet called "In die Emigration" (Vienna: J & V Edition, 1988). It was here translated by Christa Faeser. The memoirs (pp. 59-164), written in the 2000s in Dutch, cover the period 1939-45. The diary describes the Anschluss, anti-Jewish measures in Vienna, the arrest of Kampelmacher's father during the "Kristallnacht" pogrom, Kampelmacher's flight to the Netherlands in December 1938, his arrest in Amsterdam as an illegal immigrant, and his internment in the state prison of Veenhuizen. The memoirs deal with his internment in various refugee camps and in a children's home in Eindhoven. From February 1940, Kampelmacher worked at a private farm near Deventer with a Zionist youth group. With the German occupation, he moved from farm to farm until he was able to obtain false papers in 1942. In 1943 he found work at the Dutch Psychotechnic Foundation, but in 1944 had to go underground. In May 1945 Kampelmacher was liberated by the British near Utrecht. After the war he remained in the Netherlands.