JF Ptak Science Books
Witness from the Netherlands is a frank and concise eyewitness account from a Dutch Jew escaped to Canada, his account being published by the Canadian Jewish Congress in Montreal in 1944. 8x5",. 14pp. Provenance: the Library of Congress via a "gift from the publisher". Paper wrappers. Good condition. $500
He tells of a calm period at the beginning of the occupation by the Nazis and their efforts to ingratiate themselves with the Dutch--one of those methods was to ostensibly form an emigration policy for the Jews and having them register with the "Central Committee for Jewish Emigration". The facade did not last long, and the rest of the pamphlet is devoted to the violence after January 1941. The rest of the story is left to the reader--the pamphlet is only about 4000 words, and it is a recommended read.
The account necessarily leaves out his escape routes and the people who helped him to escape; the same is said for the "non-Jewish Hollanders" who protected him and others "from Nazi persecution".
I've scanned the document and made it available below. There looks to be no copyright restriction on the 1944 original, and I won't add one. I could not find records of the pamphlet for sale, and an internet search reveals only seven hits (somehow) for the title phrase, with only two of those being for the actual pamphlet, and both of them being library records. (I don't have the time or resources to check textual references for the work in the standard histories of the Holocaust, unfortunately.)
WorldCat/OCLC find 10 copies located in high pedigree, with only copy copy in the U.S. and only three in North America: British Library, Royal Library (Copenhagen), Konniklijke Bibliotheek, NIOD Institute for War, Genocide Studies (Amsterdam), Harvard, University of Ottawa, University of Toronto, Tel Aviv University, National Library of Israel, and the Danish National Library.
The original is for sale in the blog bookstore:
For the rest of the document see the post in the general blog: http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2016/05/rare-eyewitness-holocaust-account-1944-only-reproduction-of-the-full-document.html
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