Mr. Monday and other tales of Jewish Amsterdam

THE BUILDING 66

had never experienced before. Sleep in tents, just like soldiers, but of your own free will!

Half the neighbourhood stood at the station when the group left. First a photo was taken. I happened to come across it again recently The boys wear sailor hats that we used to call "ice wafers of a quarter". The girls giggle under straw hats with broad rims.

Nowadays when you walk around the old district, you see ruins everywhere. The old buildings have been demolished or have been put to other uses. The quarter is desolate. The people are gone.

The other day I visited the old building of the diamond workers union again. The lane is now called "Dr. Henri Polak Lane".

The high doorstep.

The revolving door.

But the porter s lodge is empty. Where is Lezeman?

On the hollow-sounding staircase the clamour of shuffling feet and loud voices can be heard. Many offices are established in the building now. Subtenants, they are, nowadays the Union needs only a couple of messy rooms to house its staff. Those few rooms are all that remain of what used to be Our Building.

"We are no more than a shadow of what we used to be," a union staff member told me sadly. "Sixteen hundred members, including the apprentices, that's all we have left. The rest are gone."

In the hall stands the bronze effigy of Henri Polak. The library has disappeared, carried away. By the Germans or their helpers, what does it matter? Completely destroyed.