Who Am I?

On 8 May 1945, a few days after the end of the war, the Minister of Justice published the War Foster Children Decree. The National Committee for War Foster Children (the OKP) was made responsible for the Jewish foster children. About 4000 Jewish children were registered wit this committee, including approcimately 1370 orphans. I was one of them. I owe my life to the people from the Resistance. I think the fact that the OKP was also led by people from the Resistance was not professional. They did not have sufficient expertise to look after the interests of these Jewish orphans when it came to establish their identity. The Jewish members were the minority on this committee, due to which the OKP too often advised the Dutch District Court to elave the guardianship of Jewish orphans with the non-Jewish families where they had lived in hiding. When I receive my OKP file at the end of 1980, I concluded that my identity was determined in a careless, maybe even lazy, manner. Solely on the basis of the picture (1946) on the front of this book. The picture was compared with a number of family photos from the period 1920-1940. On 30 April 1946, the OKP writes the following to my foster parents: "Your foster child Gerrit has been identified. His real name is Louis Godschalk. Louis was called Loekie by his parents. I return this picture of Gerrit, all three ladies have recognised their nephew Godschalk." On this basis, the District Court of Amsterdam ruled on 22 July 1948: Whereas the Court does not consider the Jewish indication sufficiently strong to justify the transfer of the minor to a Jewish environment in this case; Whereas the Court, therefore, agrees with the proposal of the National Committee for War Foster Children (OKP). RULING: Appoints as guardian of the minor aforementioned; Feike Rienstra. This identification procedure would nowadays be completely inadequate and implausible. This is one side of the story of my life, the other side concerns my search for what it means to be Jewish.