A selection of sound clips in which Clara, a nom de guerre (*1917, Zuidhoek, Oud-Charlois) talks about the books she read in the 1930s on Nazi Germany, including: Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1925), Die Moorsoldaten by Wolfgang Langhoff (1935) and Zehn Millionen Kinder by Erika Mann. Clara: “Still, it was theory to some extent, until practice forced itself on me in a crazy way.” Her aunt, the captain of a barge on the Rhine, tells her in 1937 about pogroms she witnessed in the Ruhr region. This specific moment in public space (tram 2), combined with the books she reads, prepare her for the years to come.
On May 10, 1940, when the German Wehrmacht annexed Charlois via Waalhaven Airport, Clara naturally joined the resistance. After four years of resistance work, she was betrayed and arrested in Amsterdam, along with twenty-eight others, at the national identity card forgery center. She survived the Ravensbrück and Dachau concentration camps, but twenty-one of her comrades did not. Clara returned to Rotterdam in 1945.