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Dutch Holocaust survivor Rob Sealtiel
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The hidden truth
By Schelly Talalay Dardashti
(May 1) - Rob Sealtiel's childhood ended in 1947, when at age 7, he left the family that had hidden and protected him during the Holocaust.
Born in 1940, just a few months before Germany invaded the Netherlands, the Amsterdam-born 2-year-old had been placed in a suitcase, and spirited out of the Hollandische Schouwburg (the pre-War Jewish Theater) by the Resistance to a nursery across the street.
ROB'S father David was first deported to Westerbork, then to Auschwitz and later to Sobibor, where he perished.
His mother, Clara, and Rob's infant brother, Joseph, hid for three years in an Utrecht attic.
Rob was hidden - literally - by a Protestant family in northern Frie sland (a northern Province of the Netherlands) because his dark hair would have stood out among the general population's blonde heads.
For five years, he never left the house, which, unfortunately for him, was flanked by the office of the commander of Holland's largest prison, Leeuwarden and a heavily-guarded milk factory.
Behind the house was a busy canal, bustling with barges transporting food and milk.
The railway tracks, in front of the house, were guarded by German soldiers to prevent sabotage.
For five years, Rob's outside world was what he could see through the shiny brass mail slot of the dark green front door.
"I knew the names of every kid on the street, as they played in front of our home and called to each other," says Rob.
For five years, no one knew he was there.
ROB was frequently "buried alive." When soldiers knocked, Rob was placed under the floorboards (sometimes for hours - as many as 24) on the dirt, and told not to make a sound. His view was through a small grate.
That wasn't too bad, he recalls.
More traumatic experiences happened during warm weather when he would play in the high-walled, heavily foliaged backyard, where a hollow decorative barrel - a planter with flowers on top - was sunk halfway into the ground. The top portion (with flowers) fit tightly on the bottom half.
When the soldiers came, the top was removed, he was put inside, and the top replaced. In the summer, it was stifling with no fresh air.
When it rained ("and it rains a lot in Holland"), the barrel would fill with water. He could be sitting for hours on his knees in the dark, while the water rose.
ROB'S sole comfort was the family that hid him; they were loving, nurturing and tried to raise him as normally as possible, given the circumstances.
"I had 10 angels around me," Rob recalls. "I consider myself normal. I was raised by the woman I thought was my mother, who loved me very much and whom I respected." Rob claims he was terribly spoiled:
"I couldn't do anything wrong. I was treated like one of their own, and my experiences were more than wonderful. They were terrific people."
IN 1947, when WWII finally ended, people were dancing in the streets and his mother was crying. Very disturbed, he asked her what was wrong. She told him she was not his real mother, and that she would now be coming for him.
ON his father's side, 183 family members had perished in the Holocaust.
On his mother's side, about 300.
Only she, her mother, and Rob's 3-year-old brother, returned.
"When she came out of hiding, she was mentally destroyed," says Rob. "She was faced with a very obnoxious 7-year-old who didn't know her or accept her and didn't want to."
Clara did the best she could - everything considered.
She took the boys to Amsterdam, where they attended a Jewish school specially set up for hidden children and camp survivors.
Ironically, pupils were picked up at various stops by a "school bus," a captured German army truck, the same sort of vehicle that took away Holland's Jews.
THE school's traumatized teachers, and some pupils, had survived Auschwitz, Sobibor and other camps. Some pupils had been hidden by Christian families.
According to Rob, they couldn't talk to anyone about their experiences.
"What could I say to the kid next to me? His experiences were the same as mine," says Rob. There was no counseling of any kind. "Who could counsel who?"
Rob recalls that at age 10 he wanted to find out whom he could refer to as "his" family.
"I remember a classmate talking about going to a birthday party at a cousin's home. These were foreign words: What was a birthday party? What was an uncle or a cousin?" he says.
Classmates spoke about grandparents - "I didn't know what it meant to have any family at all. Who were my cousins, my grandparents?"
"I wanted to know, and started asking. No one answered me - not my mother, not the school."
AMSTERDAM'S Spanish Portuguese Synagogue made loans to survivors so they could obtain the necessities of life, with only one condition: the children had to attend synagogue every Shabbat and all holidays.
"I was confronted with something I never knew, Judaism and tradition," said Rob, who was raised a Protestant during his five hidden years.
It was very intense.
"Important" older men helped him study, taught him prayers and traditions.
At the first seder held in Amsterdam after the war, Rob was the first child to say Ma Nishtana [Four Questions].
"The men of the synagogue studied with me, practicing and helping me, and all the time, tears were streaming down their faces - and I didn't know why.
"Danny Kaye, the American star, came to Holland after the war, and visited our school. Out of all the children, he chose a few - I was one.
"He sat me on his lap. He handed out presents and asked us to sing. I sang 'Happy Birthday,' the only English song I knew."
HE began asking in the synagogue about the Sealtiel family.
No one answered. "Who would talk seriously to a 10-year-old?"
They might have been in the camps with his family, seen his relatives killed, what could they tell him?
At Rob's bar mitzva in the Spanish Portuguese Synagogue, Rabbi Rodrigues Pereira finally revealed to the congregation (and to Rob himself) that he "wasn't the first Sealtiel to stand here. He comes from a large, rich family. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather each stood here as a bar mitzva and each stood under the huppa here, where we hope Rob will also stand."
"It really, really shocked me," said Rob.
"It was the very first time anyone had mentioned the history of my family. The first time anyone had answered me. The first time I realized my father, grandfather and great-grandfather had stood in the same spot in which I was standing. The first time I realized I had a family."
AT 13, Rob began to visit archives, but he had no knowledge of proper research techniques.
Archives were then not organized to assist researchers - especially kids. He was sent to the Red Cross and many other places, all with little success.
"Only in the mid-'70s, did I finally discover the birth dates of my father, grandfather, grandmother, aunts and uncles. I was very happy."
After his mother died, Rob found a small box in a closet. Out spilled photographs: Father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. His mother had never shown the photographs to him or admitted they existed.
From that moment, Rob wanted to know more.
PROMINENT in medieval Spain, the Shealtiel (the officially recognized spelling among all branches) family's coat of arms have survived.
Among its branches were medieval scholars, Ottoman cour tiers, businessmen in America's Wild West and a general in Israel's War of Independence.
The Netherlands, Hamburg and Salonika branches maintain an ancient tradition (known in medieval times) of descent from the House of David.
Mentioned only once in the Torah, as the son of the last King of Judah, Shealtiel spent his life in exile after the Temple's destruction. His son, Zerubabel, was appointed governor of Judah (536 BCE) by the Persian King Kurosh (Cyrus), who allowed the exiled Jews of Persia to rebuild the Temple.
About 130 generations have passed since Zerubabel's return. Ar chival documents about the family have been found dating to about the year 1100 - nine centuries ago.
The family includes many artists, musicians, professionals, scientists, crafts and businesspeople. Most branches remain Jewish, although there are those who are Christian, Moslem or of no religious belief.
TODAY, Rob is one of two founders of the Shealtiel Family Association, with 1,500 members (about 400 households) in 27 countries world-wide.
Name variations abound: Saltiel, Shaltiel, Shaaltiel, Sealtiel, Chaltiel, Chartiel, Schaltiel, Saltial, Scieltiel and Seltiel, with more as yet undiscovered.
Rob organized the first family reunion in Amsterdam in 1994, attended by 150 people from around the world. The second reunion was in Salonika in 1997, with local meetings held in the UK, California and New York, France, Mexico and Israel.
Barcelona is the site for this summer, while a huge worldwide gathering is planned in Israel in 2003. A family journal is sent out four times a year.
THE family has been the subject of a three-hour movie, in Hebrew, as well as a BBC one-hour abridged English version.
While filming the movie in Salonika, Rob discovered the only surviving Shealtiel synagogue, occupied then by the Red Cross, of what had been five family synagogues for various branches. The Germans had destroyed all the other city synagogues.
While visiting the Salonika Jewish cemetery site with Greek historian Nicholas Stavroulakis, Rob scuffed at the ground with his shoe and, in astonishment, found he had uncovered the corner of a tombstone, incised with a Hebrew letter for "s." Stavroulakis, whose research focuses on Greek Jews, said it could be the corner of a Shealtiel stone.
TWO years ago, Rob became a board member of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS). He is also the co-founder of the European Federation of Jewish Genealogical Societies.
He will speak about his experiences as a hidden child at the April 30 meeting of the Jewish Family Research Association (JFRA) in Tel Aviv.
In 1998, he made aliya.
When the former textile businessman arrived, he was asked if he wanted to Hebraicize his name.
According to Rob - given the family's oral tradition, its connection to events described in the Torah and long recorded history - it was amusing when he tried to explain its Hebrew origin.
"To what?" he asks. "What is more of a Hebrew name?"
TODAY Rob volunteers with AMCHA, which offers psycho-social support to Holocaust survivors and the second generation, and attended their first-ever communal seder.
Also involved in genealogical research, Rob has discovered there is a scarcity of Sephardic genealogy sources. He believes it is important to develop for Sephardim of all origins what mainstream Jewish genealogy has achieved for Eastern European Ashkenazim.
"The Sephardic element in Jewish genealogy is just emerging, and must be encouraged around the world," emphasizes Rob.
THERE is only one reason behind Rob's genealogical passion.
"In times like these, we are not more than Moses who, when he walked in the desert, had no signs to direct him. I want to show the next generation where to go. To know where to go, one must learn where he or she has come from."n
For more information on the Shealtiel family or AMCHA, contact Rob Sealtiel, e-mail: tiigrs@attglobal.net
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