Annie M.G. Schmidt: I've always thought: 'We've been liberated! What more could you want? We've been freed from those rotmoffen. We're finally ourselves again, we can be ourselves again.' But underneath that, this terrible shame. In that you-- this collective shame that you allowed it to happen. Ischa: That you-- Annie M.G. Schmidt: That you allowed it to happen! Ischa, let me finish. Ischa: Yes. Annie M.G. Schmidt: And still I think this: that you allowed it. That... that so many people were taken from your own society, from your own country. Were just taken away. Why? Because they were called Jan or Piet, or had a different skin color, or something else. That you allowed it. I still can't... understand it, and I still can't bear it. I still think it crazy. Ischa: Yes it is-- You said earlier 'I'm still ashamed', and then you smiled for a moment and said 'Well, no, I'm not ashamed anymore'. But I think that you-- that you find it to be stranger. Annie M.G. Schmidt: I do think it stranger, yes. Especially because there are young people today who ask how that was possible, because they say-- because they are more in the history of it-- how could you have let this happen? You. You were there, why did you let it happen?
Dutch Children's book author Annie M.G. Schmidt on passivity in times of conflict and war. Translated freely from the Ischa Meijer conducted interview from November 3, 1992
