To Karen, Michael, James, Tjarda, Derk and Theta.
In memory of your Oma.
Eva Taylor is the daughter of Sabine Zuur and Peter Tazelaar, a major Dutch resistance fighter and spy. She was born in Utrecht but has lived in Cheshire, England, ever since she was eighteen.
Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum collection
A drawing of Sabine Zuur by fellow prisoner Aat Breur in Ravensbrück concentration camp, Winter 1944.
When I visit my mother in the care home, she no longer has any idea who I am, but she is always delighted to see me. When I tell her I am her daughter, her face lights up, and she says, with wonder, “I did not know I had a daughter, but you are so lovely.” She is by now in her early nineties, almost deaf and blind. Once every six weeks or so, I travel from England to Holland to visit her, and this short conversation is repeated endlessly during my visits. She is happy I am there, whoever I am.
She is settled in the home where she now lives and particularly enjoys the musical afternoons once a week. She always loved dancing, and in her confused state, it seems to be the only thing that she has not forgotten. As soon as the music starts, she jumps up and dances elegantly through the room with a happy smile on her face.
It reminds me of when we danced together when I was a child. During our evening meal, the radio often played nice music, and when she heard a favorite song, she would pull us out of our chairs to dance around together.
I often try and remind her of things in the past, but it’s only when I go back a long way and talk about her brothers, who died decades ago, that she starts remembering. I sometimes ask her if she remembers the war and little bits come back to her. She tells them to me in a conspiratorial way, like a child who has been naughty.
Although she often talked about the war when I was young, it was always about food, about friends she lost, but never about life in the camps. This is probably because I never wanted to know about it, and perhaps she also could not bear to recall those memories. The horrors have no meaning when you are a child. But now, when it is too late, I am interested.
In her descent into Alzheimer’s, she has become a loving, caring, kind person. A mother I suddenly love very much. Not at all the mother I knew as a child, and it made me realize how life’s events really can shape you into a totally different person. I’d like to think that as her mind leaves this world, her personality seems to revert back to the child and young woman I have read so much about.
When she died in 2012, I found boxes and boxes of letters, photos and documents, mainly about her time in the war. I think I knew her well enough to appreciate that she hoped I would be interested in all this information. In enclosed notes, there were pleas not to just throw it all away.
Her story of the camps is similar to thousands of others, yet different. Some stories are well-documented, but for the many who died without leaving a trace, there are no stories to pass on. And those who found it too painful to tell their stories themselves are now often having them revealed through their children and grandchildren.
Sabine’s story is but one very small piece in this horrendous period of history, but it is still important to pass it on to future generations, especially her own family.
It is only by reading through all her documentation that I begin to understand her peculiarities, and also discover the person she might have been if war had not intervened.
This is the story of Sabine’s war.