Mr. Monday and other tales of Jewish Amsterdam

MARKEN ALLEY

xlvery time I walk through Marken Alley nowadays, I am amazed that the few houses that are still there are standing so close together. In my youth the alley where I grew up formed a small gully in the massive block of Amsterdam houses. It was gloomy nearly all day there. Only around three o'clock in the afternoon, when the sun shone on the cobblestones, bright lights and sharp shadows were cast on the pavement, and that occurred only during a few summer weeks.

You can see that there were more houses in those days. They were pulled down later and no new ones were added. Now the alley is like a set of teeth out of which the dentist has pulled a tooth here, a molar there, and over there another tooth, whether it hurt or not. My parents' house is gone too, and maybe that's the reason why it's so difficult for me to recognise the old alley Somehow I have the feeling that I've dreamed it all, that it is a phantom street.

The houses haven't subsided from old age. People have lent a helping hand. In the icy cold winter of 1944 when the inhabitants of Amsterdam were without fuel, they pulled out the floors of the houses which the Jews had left behind, empty. Later, they stole the beams, the doors, the window frames. And after that, even the joists from the roof.