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Settela: Het meisje heeft haar naam terug
Dutch
155 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 3, 2022
I found this gripping, and quite thought-provoking. Originally published in Dutch in 1995, it had to wait 10 years for a translation, and so far as I know it hasn’t been widely read in English. I believe it should be.
Aad Wagenaar is a Dutch journalist. He has published a number of books, his first in 1970 when he was just 30 (it was about the bombing of Rotterdam). In 1992 he was rained-in while on holiday in France and watched a documentary about the Holocaust on TF1. For the umpteenth time, he saw the image of a little girl filmed peering from a cattle truck as she was deported from Westerbork, the Dutch transit camp from which about 100,000 Jewish people (including Anne Frank) were sent to the concentration camps.
Wagenaar had seen the clip many times before. The girl’s face had become emblematic, and most Dutch people had seen her more than once. In 1990, for an exhibition, the memorial centre at Westerbork had asked 12 artists to produce exhibits inspired by the photo, and the catalogue noted that she was “...the personification of over 100,000 Jews. ...Only a few thousand were known to have returned. Did the girl in the photo…? We do not know.” She also appeared in Alain Resnais’s 1956 documentary Nuit et Bruillard. She was famous – but it suddenly occurred to Wagenaar that no-one knew who she was, or seemed to have tried to find out. In December 1992 he decided that he would do so himself.
Wagenaar knew that if he could find out the exact date the scene was shot, he would be able to find the passenger lists in the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, the State Institute for War Documentation. He would then pick out the girls under 16-17, leaving him with perhaps 50-60 names. The problem was that 93 trains left Westerbork for the East between 1942 and 1945, carrying about 100,000 Jews, of whom fewer than 5,000 survived the war. How he narrowed it down is a fascinating detective story in itself. In the end, however, he found the date and realised that it was the one train that had carried not only Jews, in third-class carriages, but also 245 Romani people, in cattle-trucks bound for Auschwitz. The girl was peering out of a cattle-truck. She was not Jewish; she was a Romani (Wagenaar uses the word Gypsy).
Further persistence led him to Crasa Wagner, one of only 30 of the Romani deportees on the transport to return. He finds her on a caravan site in Spijkenisse, near Rotterdam. She tells him:
...I was with the girl in the wagon. I sat on the floor behind her… Her mother cried out that she must get away from the door. Because we could hear the doors being bolted shut on the outside. “Get away from there,” her mother cried, “otherwise your head will get stuck!”
Half a century after her death, a 10-year-old girl suddenly came back to life – along with her name: Settela Steinbach.
There is a lot in this book; in particular, Wagenaar’s detective hunt, and his eventual meeting with other survivors who knew the family. He is able to find out a great deal. This includes the girl’s approximate date of death in Auschwitz, the names of her siblings – she had nine – and the fate of the rest of the family (there is no good news there). He also finds out where she was born, and what her father did; he was a musician, and apparently a good one.
Wagenaar refers to the family as Gypsies but that word should be used with caution; it’s probably fine in English but its translation as used in the original book, zigeuner, does have negative connotations in Europe. Continental Gypsies are more properly called Romani (not Roma; that word excludes Sinti people, an important Romani group who historically lived in Northern Europe. Settela’s family were Sinti.) But maybe Wagenaar did not need to reflect these distinctions in order to tell his story, and there is no sign of anti-Romani prejudice in the book; rather the opposite – when, late in the book, Wagenaar actually meets the Sinti survivors and their families, it is clear that he likes them and is interested in their stories.
A more important point may be that Wagenaar says very little about the Gypsy holocaust as a whole, but it is a crucial part of Settela’s story. The English translation does have a short but informative afterword by the British-born scholar Ian Hancock, a distinguished linguist and himself of Romani background. Professor Hancock gives an historical overview of oppression of Romani people in Europe, and the Nazi decision to eliminate them. What neither Wagenaar nor Hancock do is give the numbers.
But Hancock has done so elsewhere. The usually-accepted total of Romani murdered is roughly 200,000 to 500,000, but Hancock and others have argued that it may have been much higher, maybe 1.5 million. Reasons for possible undercounting include their being lumped together with Jewish people, or having been killed not in concentration camps but by the Einsatzgruppen, the SS death squads that murdered people in the field. Neither does Wagenaar say anything about modern prejudice against Romani people, although there is plenty of that, especially in Eastern Europe. Given that Settela is quite a powerful story, all this context could be important.
Or was Wagenaar right in a way to leave it out? It certainly made his story simpler, with its concentration on the story of one little girl. And maybe the reader can work out the background for themselves. In any case, one senses that the search, and the girl, meant a lot to Wagenaar. I certainly felt the impact of the story. Especially when, sitting in Crasa Wagner’s trailer in Spijkenisse, he hears her tell him that his search is finally over:
...“Settela!” she cried. “That was her name. Settela!...” Settela Steinbach – it was Monday afternoon 7th February 1994, five to four. The girl had got her name back.
I had to stop reading for a moment then.
Aad Wagenaar is a Dutch journalist. He has published a number of books, his first in 1970 when he was just 30 (it was about the bombing of Rotterdam). In 1992 he was rained-in while on holiday in France and watched a documentary about the Holocaust on TF1. For the umpteenth time, he saw the image of a little girl filmed peering from a cattle truck as she was deported from Westerbork, the Dutch transit camp from which about 100,000 Jewish people (including Anne Frank) were sent to the concentration camps.
Wagenaar had seen the clip many times before. The girl’s face had become emblematic, and most Dutch people had seen her more than once. In 1990, for an exhibition, the memorial centre at Westerbork had asked 12 artists to produce exhibits inspired by the photo, and the catalogue noted that she was “...the personification of over 100,000 Jews. ...Only a few thousand were known to have returned. Did the girl in the photo…? We do not know.” She also appeared in Alain Resnais’s 1956 documentary Nuit et Bruillard. She was famous – but it suddenly occurred to Wagenaar that no-one knew who she was, or seemed to have tried to find out. In December 1992 he decided that he would do so himself.
Wagenaar knew that if he could find out the exact date the scene was shot, he would be able to find the passenger lists in the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, the State Institute for War Documentation. He would then pick out the girls under 16-17, leaving him with perhaps 50-60 names. The problem was that 93 trains left Westerbork for the East between 1942 and 1945, carrying about 100,000 Jews, of whom fewer than 5,000 survived the war. How he narrowed it down is a fascinating detective story in itself. In the end, however, he found the date and realised that it was the one train that had carried not only Jews, in third-class carriages, but also 245 Romani people, in cattle-trucks bound for Auschwitz. The girl was peering out of a cattle-truck. She was not Jewish; she was a Romani (Wagenaar uses the word Gypsy).
Further persistence led him to Crasa Wagner, one of only 30 of the Romani deportees on the transport to return. He finds her on a caravan site in Spijkenisse, near Rotterdam. She tells him:
...I was with the girl in the wagon. I sat on the floor behind her… Her mother cried out that she must get away from the door. Because we could hear the doors being bolted shut on the outside. “Get away from there,” her mother cried, “otherwise your head will get stuck!”
Half a century after her death, a 10-year-old girl suddenly came back to life – along with her name: Settela Steinbach.
There is a lot in this book; in particular, Wagenaar’s detective hunt, and his eventual meeting with other survivors who knew the family. He is able to find out a great deal. This includes the girl’s approximate date of death in Auschwitz, the names of her siblings – she had nine – and the fate of the rest of the family (there is no good news there). He also finds out where she was born, and what her father did; he was a musician, and apparently a good one.
Wagenaar refers to the family as Gypsies but that word should be used with caution; it’s probably fine in English but its translation as used in the original book, zigeuner, does have negative connotations in Europe. Continental Gypsies are more properly called Romani (not Roma; that word excludes Sinti people, an important Romani group who historically lived in Northern Europe. Settela’s family were Sinti.) But maybe Wagenaar did not need to reflect these distinctions in order to tell his story, and there is no sign of anti-Romani prejudice in the book; rather the opposite – when, late in the book, Wagenaar actually meets the Sinti survivors and their families, it is clear that he likes them and is interested in their stories.
A more important point may be that Wagenaar says very little about the Gypsy holocaust as a whole, but it is a crucial part of Settela’s story. The English translation does have a short but informative afterword by the British-born scholar Ian Hancock, a distinguished linguist and himself of Romani background. Professor Hancock gives an historical overview of oppression of Romani people in Europe, and the Nazi decision to eliminate them. What neither Wagenaar nor Hancock do is give the numbers.
But Hancock has done so elsewhere. The usually-accepted total of Romani murdered is roughly 200,000 to 500,000, but Hancock and others have argued that it may have been much higher, maybe 1.5 million. Reasons for possible undercounting include their being lumped together with Jewish people, or having been killed not in concentration camps but by the Einsatzgruppen, the SS death squads that murdered people in the field. Neither does Wagenaar say anything about modern prejudice against Romani people, although there is plenty of that, especially in Eastern Europe. Given that Settela is quite a powerful story, all this context could be important.
Or was Wagenaar right in a way to leave it out? It certainly made his story simpler, with its concentration on the story of one little girl. And maybe the reader can work out the background for themselves. In any case, one senses that the search, and the girl, meant a lot to Wagenaar. I certainly felt the impact of the story. Especially when, sitting in Crasa Wagner’s trailer in Spijkenisse, he hears her tell him that his search is finally over:
...“Settela!” she cried. “That was her name. Settela!...” Settela Steinbach – it was Monday afternoon 7th February 1994, five to four. The girl had got her name back.
I had to stop reading for a moment then.
December 15, 2024
The books's cover shows a well-known Holocaust image: that of young girl peering
out of the door of a railroad cattle car/goods wagon as the door is closing. Unknown to her, the train is bound for Auschwitz, where she will be murdered. This girl's identity and history remained unknown until the author discovered it and restored it to her. This book is the story of the author's investigation.
out of the door of a railroad cattle car/goods wagon as the door is closing. Unknown to her, the train is bound for Auschwitz, where she will be murdered. This girl's identity and history remained unknown until the author discovered it and restored it to her. This book is the story of the author's investigation.
April 6, 2025
Prachtig, een testament van rehumanisering
April 2, 2025
Excellent book. Identifies the young girl shown in the iconic Holocaust photo and restores her story.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews