Mathilda Nelly de Vries, a Jewish student, founded a communist resistance newspaper.
This is Mathilda “Tilly” Nelly de Vries. Tilly lived on the Plantage Kerklaan in Amsterdam’s Jewish Quarter until March 1941, when she was arrested for being a member of the Anti-Fascist Students’ Committee, a communist resistance group. After her arrest she was imprisoned in the so-called “Oranjehotel”, the Scheveningen prison where the Nazis held resistance fighters, Jews, and communists during the war for interrogation and trial. A year and a half later, Tilly was murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz for being Jewish.
Tilly’s story is not unique. Of the approximately 140,000 Jews who lived in the Netherlands in 1940, more than 102,000 (75%) did not survive the horrors of the Holocaust. The Second World War almost completely erased Jewish life in Amsterdam, which had begun in the late 16th century. For 350 years, Jews were part of the city’s population, leaving both physical and cultural traces behind.
My name is Onno Warns, and I am a Jewish Amsterdammer who studied history in this city. During a walk of about an hour and a half, I will take you on a journey through time, beginning with the arrival of the first Spanish and Portuguese Jews in the neighbourhoods around today’s Waterlooplein. From the grand synagogues at Mr. Visserplein, we will walk through Uilenburg and Rapenburg, into the Plantage, and on into the 20th century. Together, we will search for the traces of vibrant Jewish life and pause at memorials dedicated to those who never returned.
Tilly was my great-aunt.
