Yesterday we published this story about a US/Dutch football star murdered by the Nazis:

The horrific execution of Dutch/American soccer star Eddy Hamel. Lest We Forget.

We are so privileged to have wonderful, wise readers like Liz of Vic, who lived in Holland during this horrible time.

Liz has shared this story with us, and I commend it to you.

Thank you Liz.

Lest We Forget.

Michael,

I know of a family Hamel, a Jacob Hamel composed children's songs before and during WWW2, made up names were used in the songs, Hanneke and Tanneke were running in the rain, was
the first line of one of the songs, I used to play them on the piano and all of us singing. I know there were three music-books with these songs, about a dozen songs in each book.
The songs could also be heard on the radio, on the AVRO, which had their own children's
choir called the AVRO singertjes, (anything ending with je in Dutch meant small) i.e.
children.

The radio stations were in the town of Hilversum. (still there to this day).

I also know that most Jews were in Amsrterdam, we lived in Rotterdam and there were Jews in this city as well, but not as prominent as in Amsterdam, the textile industry was mostly represented by the Jews in those years.

We had one Jewish family in our home during the first months of the war and they lived with us for some months, but they had to hide when anybody came, also could not sit in front of the windows.
My mother then was having another baby and it became to difficult for her to have these extra people, they were taken by the underground to a place in Belgium, where they lived the whole five years of the war and although having had some hair-raising occasions, they lived through the wr and retuned to their original home.

There was another couple who lived in our street, next to my piano-teacher, the Silberbergs, they never returned, my sister and I went to find the camp they were at, which was Auschwitz, where their name was. This was of course years later.We saw them when they were arrested, just at lunchtime, when we were coming home from school, they were a beautiful couple and were put in the back of a German Truck.

I will never forget that happening.