Holocaust Testimony: Nicole David

I was born in Antwerp in September 1936, the only daughter of Chawa Matzner and Munisch Schneider, my parents having moved to Belgium from Poland in the 1920s. When Belgium was invaded on 10 May 1940, the same day as Holland, we joined the long line of refugees, Jews and non-Jews, in the flight to France, in the belief that the French army could protect us. We found ourselves on the road to Dunkirk, amidst intense bombing during the British army’s retreat to England. My father decided to go inland, and we stayed for a few weeks in a small village near Dunkirk.

My first language was German, as my parents were born near Cracow in the part of Poland that belonged to the Austro-Hungarian empire and schooling there was in German. Shortly after our arrival in the village in France, German soldiers arrived. They were delighted to hear me speaking German when I was playing with another child. They came over to talk and bring us chocolate. The next day, they came with a doll. My father started talking with them, and they told him that their Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, would lead them to a quick victory over Europe because their army was the strongest. Their discipline was such that if they received orders to shoot us children, to whom they had just brought chocolate and dolls, they would do so. My father called me in, and told me that from then on I was not allowed to speak German. Though I was only three years old, I was made aware of the danger we were in. The memory of that incident remained with me for the rest of the war.

We soon went back to Antwerp and moved to Profondeville near Namur in the Walloon part of Belgium at the end of 1940. For the first two years, there were various laws restricting the freedom and movement of Jews. We were not allowed to run our own businesses, to be treated by non-Jewish doctors, attend non-Jewish schools. Cinemas, theatres or parks were out of bounds. Antisemitic decrees were in place and getting tougher. I wasn’t even supposed to go to school, but a nun let me go to Kindergarten. One day, we were told, “Christ is everywhere.” I was a bright, inquisitive child. I asked, How do we know that if we can’t see him?” That afternoon the nun called my mother and said, “You’d better take her out of here, she doesn’t sound anything like a Catholic child.”

In May 1942, Jews had to wear the yellow star which they had to buy. Although I was exempt from this regulation as I was not six years old, I do remember coming home from a walk to find my mother very agitated. Two German soldiers were inspecting my parents’ overcoats and jackets to ensure that the star was correctly sewn on them.

The trains taking Jews to death camps (generally Auschwitz in the case of Belgium) started on 4 August 1942. The last train left Mechelen on 31 July 1944. Less than one month before the liberation of Belgium, the Germans were still making detailed plans to deport Jews. Of the 25,124 Jews and 351 Gypsies taken to the camps, only five per cent of adults and one per cent of children survived.

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