Ode to Fannij Adelaar-van Genderingen | Who were you?

Dear Annie,

Actually, I don't know if you were that sweet, I just assume you were. I never knew you and can find almost nothing about you and know very little about you. But maybe that's why I think you deserve an ode. So that you didn't and don't disappear invisibly in time.

I know that you were born on 12 May 1888 as Fannij van Genderingen and that you grew up in Zutphen. Hopefully you had a happy childhood there. Your father Eleazar (his name is spelt in different ways in archives) was a cigar manufacturer there and married to your mother Mietje. You had a 9-year-old older brother, Fabian or Fé. You never knew your little brother Louis, who was born 3.5 years before you, because he died very young.

In February 1907, at the age of 18, you were deregistered from Zutphen and left for Amsterdam. So young still. What were you going to do there? Your parents stayed in Zutphen. Did you have family in Amsterdam where you could stay or friends of your parents, or did you go out into the wide world and big city all by yourself? Were you going to study there or work perhaps?

You called yourself Annie instead of Fannij. From when you did that I don't know, but in any case you were using that name as early as early 1918. Was that because you just thought it was a nicer or more modern name, or did you thereby abandon your Jewish background or religion? Perhaps the latter, because in the population register your faith was crossed out. In the end, much later it didn't matter whether you felt Jewish or not. The Nazi regime used straightforward selection methods without feeling.

On Valentine's Day 1918, you married Alexander Maurits Adelaar, nickname Alex, a shoe shopkeeper by profession. Was there such a thing as Valentine's Day back then, or was 14 February still just another date, not the day of love, and is it a coincidence that that was your wedding date? Was it the best day of your life? Did you wear the dress of your dreams and what did it look like? Did you receive a bridal bouquet with your favourite flowers and what flowers were they? Were you happy? And surrounded by family and friends who celebrated this day with you? Did you go on a honeymoon? Or could there be no such thing because of World War I?

Did you dream of a long and happy marriage and growing old together? Was Alex your great love? Did you perhaps envision a house full of children in the future?

In any case, things turned out differently. You did not have children. And in 1927, less than 10 years after your marriage, Alex was admitted to Jewish psychiatric hospital Het Apeldoornsche Bosch, where many years later he and the other patients and staff were deported by the Germans and murdered in Auschwitz on 25 January 1943.

You were murdered not very much later, on 13 March 1943, in Sobibor.

I would like to give you a face, but I have no photo of you and no idea what you looked like.

Were you tall or short? I suspect small, because I've read that your brother was. Were you slim or chubby, did you wear glasses or not, did you like nice clothes and did you have them or did you not have the money for them and were you thrifty with the garments you had and perhaps handy with needle and thread yourself?

Somewhere in my internet search, I came across that you were an office clerk. I wonder where that was, but will probably never know. I assume it was out of necessity, as you had to support yourself since your husband was hospitalised. Did you enjoy doing your job? Or was it hard on you? Hopefully you had pleasant colleagues and a friendly boss. But always you came home after work to a house without your husband and without children. Did you often cry there in solitude or did you take life as it came and bear it without complaining? Or who knows, maybe you had girlfriends and had a lot of fun with them, went for tea at the Americain or to the theatre, visited exhibitions or took trips out of town.

The only address in Amsterdam where you lived that is known to me is Christiaan de Wetstraat 6 house. I don't think you lived there alone, possibly you lived in with others. Would there still be something inside that reminds you of you? Probably not. Is this the house from which you entered your final destination? Did you go out of it to report yourself or were you picked up and brutally taken away? Is there a stolperstein with your name somewhere? Would the house, the stones still remember that you were once there? Do they whisper your name during the night? Your name then scattered across the city by the wind.