The images etched into the beautiful windows are a reminder of the Jewish world that once thrived in Holland.
Decorated with traditional symbols of the Jewish New Year, these beautifully restored works of art were created almost 90 years ago by architect Abraham van Oosten. While paying homage to the decimated Jewish community of Assen, Holland, they also reflect the tragic fate of the van Oosten family.
Abraham van Oosten began working on the stained-glass windows for his local synagogue in Assen, northeastern Netherlands, at the beginning of the 1930s. The windows were completed and installed in 1932, as attested to by the inscription engraved upon them. After van Oosten died in 1937, his wife Heintje and their three children, Gonda, Leo and Johanna, remained in Assen.
In 1940, the Germans occupied Holland and imposed anti-Jewish legislation throughout the country. Leo van Oosten was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where he was murdered. Two years later, in October 1942, the Jews of Assen were deported to the Westerbork transit camp, among them Heintje and her daughters, Gonda and Johanna.
In Westerbork, Gonda met and married Asher Gerlich, a Zionist pioneer. In 1944, they were deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, while Heintje and Johanna were sent to Auschwitz, where they, too, were murdered. Despite the terrible conditions in Bergen-Belsen, Gonda and Asher managed to survive. In April 1945, just prior to the end of the war, the Germans sent a large group of prisoners, including the young couple, by train to an unknown destination. Soviet troops stopped this "Lost Train" at Troebitz in Germany, and released the prisoners.
The sole survivor of the van Oosten family, Gonda changed her first name to Tamar and together with Asher, immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1946. The couple, with the new surname Ben Gera, joined a group of young Palmach pioneers and established Kibbutz Bet Keshet in the Lower Galilee. They had seven children.
Most of the Jews of Assen did not survive the Holocaust. A few returned, but they were not able to reestablish a Jewish community and the synagogue was never reopened.
In 1974, Tamar Ben Gera learned that the former synagogue in her hometown, which had since been sold to the local Protestant community and converted into a church, was to undergo renovations. She decided to save the stained-glass windows her father had designed, and bring them to Israel. In a complicated logistic operation, a number of the decorative windows were dismantled and sent to Israel, where they were installed in the renovated dining hall of Kibbutz Beit Keshet.
Over the years and with the changes that took place in the kibbutz, the dining room ceased to function. After the death of Tamar Ben Gera in 2015, her family members visited a number of memorial sites in Israel to examine the possibility of removing the stained-glass windows from the dining room, preserving them and presenting them to the general public. Yad Vashem responded to the complex challenge and thus began the operation of copying the s windows, which included removing them from the kibbutz building and transferring them to Yad Vashem's Artifacts Collection, where they underwent lengthy and professional care that included preservation and fixation to ensure their durability and integrity.
In 2018, the colorful, impressive and moving windows were displayed in the exhibition "They Say There Is a Land: Longings for Eretz Israel during the Holocaust," presented in Yad Vashem on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel. After the exhibition closed, the decision was made to display the windows in the Yad Vashem Synagogue.
In July 2021, the windows were hung next to the central Torah Ark in the Synagogue, and a poignant circle was closed – the windows that were originally created to decorate a synagogue in the city of Assen in the Netherlands, returned to another synagogue – this time in the World Holocaust Remembrance Center. "It seems that the niches on both sides of the Ark in our synagogue were built unknowingly in preparation for the reception of these very windows over 15 years later," said Vivian Uria, Director of Yad Vashem's Museums Division.
"When placed in the Synagogue, these beautiful artifacts serve as a testimony both to the experiences of the Van Oosten family during the Holocaust and to the fate of the Dutch Jewish community that prospered until it was practically wiped out by the Nazis and their accomplices."
New Catalogue of Synagogue Exhibits
Thanks to the generous support of Barry and Marilyn Rubenstein, Yad Vashem has produced a catalogue of the different items of Judaica displayed in its Synagogue, which will enable visitors to gain information on them during their visit, as well as serve as a memento of the lasting impression the items left on them. Containing all the details of the displays in the Synagogue, including Torah arks (or their facades), Torah ark coverings (parochet), Judaica artifacts and Torah scrolls – the catalogue expands and deepens the visitor's knowledge of the exhibits, some of which contain fascinating stories of their acquisition and personal stories of the owners that are not told in the Synagogue displays. In addition to information on the artifacts on display, the catalogue also provides information on the Jewish communities represented in the Synagogue, which serve as a symbol and a tribute to all of the Jewish communities destroyed during the Shoah.
Barry and Marilyn Rubenstein, who supported the original building of the Yad Vashem Synagogue, have also generously aided the fitting of a customized installation to allow for easier treatment of the priceless items on display. In recent months, thanks to this new system, Museum staff were able to thoroughly clean the display cases and remove the Judaica items safely for preservation treatment in the Conservation Laboratory.
This article originally appeared in the "Yad Vashem Jerusalem Magazine," volume 96.
