Identity card without J

Identity card without J
4 MAY 2023
Dufay Cafe
Amsterdam
This call was expected, and father had collected everything for the trip at home in Hillegersberg, near Rotterdam. He had also reserved a suitcase for Rachel Roos, usually called “Didi”, the nineteen-year-old fiancée of eldest son Marcel (22 in 1942). But Martha, the maid of the Hertz family, had strongly advised against cooperating with the plans of the occupying forces and to go into hiding. Her family in the Veluwe wanted to help with that. So when the call comes, all members of the family set out for different hiding places. The young architect Marcel Hertz sets off for Bennekom, not knowing when he will see his beloved Didi again.
And so begins a great story from the Second World War in the Netherlands, which mainly took place in the Veluwe.
The protagonists are Didi Roos and Marcel Hertz, two young lovers who were separated by the war, but that could not break their bond. The incredible thing about the story of Didi Roos is that she was all in one: she was persecuted and went into hiding, but she also became a resistance fighter, decorated by both the British and the Americans with the highest military honor for bravery in battle against Nazi Germany. Under the torture of the Sicherheitsdienst, she did not reveal a single resistance name and thus saved the resistance in the Veluwe. She only survived because she was not recognized as a Jew by the Germans thanks to the identity card without J. The occupier only saw her as a resistance fighter. The bitterness of history was that, imprisoned with other resistance fighters, noticed the virulent anti-Semitism of what should be her own people, the people who, like her, fought against the Nazis. She could only notice this because those people didn't know she was a Jew.
Ruud van Megen, one of the Netherlands' most awarded playwrights and screenwriters, wanted to use this text to erect a monument to Didi Roos, who deserves to be known by many more people in the Netherlands. Marcel Hertz kept a diary during the war, which was made available from Israel. This diary is the main basis for the performance, which takes the form of a monologue from within. For van Megen this is a familiar theatrical form, which he has previously used in “The Egyptian Skater”, played by Sabri Saad el-Hamus, Hans Dagelet and Jacob Derwig, and “The Orator”, for which Victor Löw played a Louis d' Or received nomination.