OPINION: Remember the story of Steven and his tomatoes
Karen Pollock, CEO of Holocaust Educational Trust, recalls an extraordinary story, born of ordinariness, ahead of this week's Holocaust Memorial Day.
In 1944, a man started growing tomatoes. I don’t know if he had ever grown tomatoes before, I don’t even know that he particularly liked tomatoes – but he began growing them. A very ordinary plant, a very ordinary thing to do.
What makes it extraordinary is that he was in Westerbork, a transit camp established by the Nazis in the Netherlands. What makes it even more extraordinary is that before he was murdered, he tasked a young boy with continuing to grow his tomatoes in the event of his death. When he was deported, that boy – Steven – continued to grow tomatoes in memory of the man who grew them before him.
Steven Frank was born into a secular Jewish family in Amsterdam, the middle of three sons. He loved playing football, he was good at school, he didn’t always listen to his parents. He was ordinary.
When the Nazis occupied Holland, life changed forever for Steven’s family. His father joined the Dutch Resistance, issuing false papers to people fleeing to Switzerland, even hiding people in his home. Eventually he was betrayed and arrested.
Three of his friends pleaded for clemency but it was denied and he was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau where he was murdered. The one concession the Nazis made was to put the rest of the family – including Steven – on the so-called Barnerveld List, a group of prominent Dutch Jews who were held at a castle in Barneveld rather than being deported East, an action which delayed their arrival at the camps, and almost certainly saved their lives.
Eventually the family were sent from Barneveld to Westerbork, a transit camp, and then on to Terezin in Czechoslovakia, where Steven survived conditions that are beyond imagination – a lack of sanitation, insufficient food and regular deportations to the ‘East’ – a euphemism for murder.
Some 15,000 children passed through Terezin, and less than 150 are believed to have survived.
Eventually he and his remaining family were liberated by the Red Army. Steven and his brothers were three of the less than 150 children who are believed to have survived the camp.
Some 15,000 children passed through Terezin, and less than 150 are believed to have survived. It is almost impossible to comprehend. 1.5 million children were murdered overall during the Holocaust, 6 million Jewish people in total.
When we remember the Holocaust, it is easy to think of those affected as a nameless, faceless mass.
But in remembering the stories of ordinary people – like Steven – we remember that before the Nazis, they had lives, families, hobbies. They were real people, they were individuals, they were families, friends, communities. And just because they were Jewish, they were murdered.
That is why we tell the story of Steven, and the man before him, growing tomatoes. Because it was an extraordinary story, born of ordinariness.
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