Haunting Letters Recall Jewish Teen's Stay in Nazi Labor Camp

In 1997, a Dutch demolition expert found two bundles of long-hidden mail in the bathroom ceiling of a home in East Amsterdam.

There were 86 letters, one postcard and a telegram, all written over a five-month period in 1942 by the Jewish teen Philip ('Flip'') Slier to his parents in Amsterdam. He was sent, like many other healthy young men, to the forced labor camp Moolengoot in Nazi-occupied Holland.

Flip's missives are now published for the first time in a haunting new volume called 'Hidden Letters.' The book is extensively illustrated and annotated with over 300 photographs, maps and other historical material to provide full context for the experiences of Flip and his family.

Entrusted by the demolitions expert to the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, Flip's letters eventually made their way in 1999 to Flip's first cousin Deborah Slier. A New York-based children's book publisher, she grew up in South Africa and never knew Flip, who was 18 when he went to Moolengoot. Slier, now 76, was amazed when she got the call.

'I thought, "I need to do these letters in English, I need to publish them,"' Slier told me during an interview at Bloomberg's New York headquarters. 'And, as I read them, I realized that I knew virtually nothing about Holland during the war and so set about to find out what had happened.'

The book is annotated by Slier and her husband, Ian Shine, 75, a physician and author. It's translated from Dutch into English by Marion van Binsbergen-Pritchard.

Windbreaker, Clogs

Flip's first letter is dated Saturday, April 25, 1942: 'Have arrived in the camp. Fairly comfortable. Reasonable bed, 3 blankets. Clean. Good atmosphere, decent people. We have very little freedom.' As in many of the letters, he asks his family to send basic provisions: a windbreaker, clogs ('urgently needed') and a camp knife.'

About 80 percent of Holland's Jewish population, some 100,000 people, were killed during the Nazi occupation, Slier would learn in the course of her research.

Flip's character emerges little by little from the letters. 'He is a generous and kind and thoughtful person. I don't know many 18-year-olds who would write almost daily to their parents. He's concerned about them,' Slier said.

Frequently, he seeks to quell their fears about his health and safety: 'Please don't worry about me being here. I don't,' he writes at the end of his May 24th letter. But as the weeks and months go on, and the war shows no sign of ending, he writes of fellow inmates escaping and his own plans to do so if they close Moolengoot and ship the men off to the death camps. He worries, too, that the Germans will soon take his father.

'I am glad Pa has not left yet,' he writes on Aug. 2, 1942. 'As long as there is hope there's life.'

Helpful Farmers

Flip struggles to remain upbeat, even as conditions grow worse at the camp.

'I think it never occurred to Flip that he wouldn't survive,' said Slier. 'He talks about escaping to Switzerland. In fact, he runs away from the camp.'

After hiding out with one of the farm families, Flip sneaks back to Amsterdam with false papers and dyes his hair. He works surreptitiously in a restaurant, but he never makes it to Switzerland.
'He was arrested for not wearing his yellow star,' Slier said. 'We know that he must have fought when we was arrested because his arrest papers say he had a wound on his mouth.'

The letters, like a good novel, are hard to put down. I found myself secretly hoping, against all logic, that Flip and his family and friends would survive. Flip's last letter home is Sept. 14, 1942. 'Today I got work in another place. I now have to walk almost an hour in the morning and then cut sods of turf. Dirty rotten work. It is getting to me more and more.'

Flip's Arrest

After his arrest, Flip was sent to the death camp Sobibor in Poland, where he most likely perished. Most people were gassed within several hours of their arrival. Flip's circle of family and friends fared no better: At least 20 of them died in Auschwitz during September 1942. Flip's letters will invariably be compared with Anne Frank's diary. Yet they are very different, Slier noted.

'Anne Frank is essentially the story of one girl confined to an apartment and doesn't tell what's happening to the rest of Holland. What happened to Flip and his family and the documentation, I think, gives a picture of Holland during the war. Lots of Dutch people besides Jews died.'

Slier and Shine have dedicated the book to 'all victims of genocide.'

'Hidden Letters,' is published by Star Bright Books (193 pages, $35).

Bloomberg