From the beginning she was present, has experiences everything, all is engraved in her memories.
“The Dam was filling up with people, party-time, liberation. The Germans had to go. Everybody was on the streets, calling and shouting. We called: ‘Away with you, disappear, the war is over’. I was in the front. Many Germans, even SS-ers, were armed. They got over-reacted. Nobody had in mind that they realy would shoot. The doors of the Grote Club were opened; they put up a tripod with an automatic gun on top of it. They shot a fan of fire, bullets. Because we were so in front, the bullets flew over us. That’s why I shouted: ‘Not backwards, but forwards’. We ran to the Palace, behind the pillars. Over and over again we pulled a lot of people between the pillars to hide. Compleatly pilled up, it took ages. Contributors of the Red Cross came out of nowhere from all directions, even a van. It looked like they were arrounded by a shield and nt got hit, while there were shots allover. They worked structured, far before the people were brought into the Nieuwe Kerk.
Then it became quit. It was a battlefield, people were everywhere; I see a pram with a screaming baby, the mother is laying further on, dead? Nearby is a barrel organ.
Much later a boy shows up., BS-er, I know him from the NJN (Dutch youth union for nature studies) ‘What are you doing with a gun?’ I asked him. It was a wooden gun, a fake-gun”.
She doubt it if there was a ice cream-stall .“That period, there was nothing left; maybe he sold some waffles, but ice cream, no. Also no other stalls, such as flowers. The people had nothing left.”
Mrs. Dolly van Emden-Smit was during the war, together with her father, active in saving Jew Amsterdam citizens. She participated in the most dangerous situations. As a child in her age from 14-19 years old, it left a very deep impression. She won’t stay still in the past, but go forwards. When the Netherlands chose to pay with the Euro, she knew that it was okay. ‘If Germany also use the Euro, then there will never be a war again’.
source: Dolly van Emden-Smit (*1926)