The Last Jewish Wedding

The story of René’s parents during World War II: their wedding following a fortnight’s engagement period, how they went in hiding to become master forgers  ... the happiest couple on earth, surviving the onslaught by sheer guts, optimism, mazzel, and with the help of  good Samaritans.

War stories are sad stories. Tales of loss and woe. Narratives about looting,
torturing, raping, killing. History shows that human beings are able to shed
off any apparel of civilisation, culture and morality when acting as a group,
protected by the anonymity of patriotism, army uniform or party membership.
Holocaust stories depict homo sapiens at his most evil. A six million innocent
people massacre is more than mind boggling. It goes beyond what the human
brain can grasp.

The massacre took the lives of more than 100.000 Dutch Jews, three quarters
of the Jewish population. This is a sad record compared to most neighbouring
countries. The Nazis considered the Dutch a Germanic brother nation.
Unfortunately, this notion appealed to quite a few misguided Dutchmen. Thus
the Nazis were able to achieve the onslaught with the aid of Dutch officials
and informers.

Most of the Dutch Jews who survived the ordeal did not enjoy a happy homecoming. After the Allied victory, the few Jews who survived the onslaught returned ‘home’ to find strangers living in their houses, possessions gone and worst of all hardly if any family or friends alive. This booklet tells a different story. A story about a happy marriage. A story of narrow escapes. A story of strokes of luck. A survival story. A story of ingenuity. A story of two good-natured people withstanding the storm of gloom and doom ravaging the world around them by sheer bluff, courage and most of all boundless optimism. A story about a man and a woman who married two week after they met to save the bride from deportation and became the happiest couple on earth.

The is the story of Betty and Leendert van Rooij. The story of my parents. I
owe my existence to this story…

English text edited by Mark Swan (www.markswan.co.uk)