John Koenigsberg was born in Amsterdam, Holland [Annotator’s Note: the Netherlands] in August 1937. The war started in 1940 when the country was overrun by the Germans. They lived in the eastern part of Amsterdam. They had to leave in 1942. They had to start wearing a yellow star [Annotator’s Note: These star badges served to mark the wearer as a religious or ethnic outsider] in 1942 because they were Jewish. The SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization; abbreviated SS] showed up on their doorstep. They had come to take his grandfather away. Shortly after his grandfather was picked up, Koenigsberg and his father were walking around Amsterdam and they were also picked up by the Nazis. They were taken to a big theater in the center of Amsterdam. They were identified and then sent to various concentration camps. Both his parents worked for a local hospital. His mother was a registered nurse. His parents faked an operation on him in order to keep him safe from the Nazis. They knew someone who lived about 50 miles out of the city where he would be able to hide. It turns out that they were Dutch people associated with the Nazis. The resistance found out who they were and picked him up and sent him to southern Holland. He stayed with them for two and a half years. They told everyone he was a sickly little boy who came down south for his health. They were a poor family.

John Koenigsberg’s mother escaped to another region in Holland [Annotator’s Note: the Netherlands]. His father worked for the underground and went from place to place to help keep people hidden. He pretended to be a cousin of a Catholic family to stay hidden because he had to hide the fact that he was Jewish. At the end of the war, they ran out with their flags. He remembers getting candy from the Americans. [Annotator’s Note: Koenigsberg discusses his trips back to Holland.] They played together. [Annotator’s Note: Koenigsberg reads letters.] He vividly remembers the Americans that liberated them.

John Koenigsberg was picked up by the underground and his parents did not know where he was. After the war, his parents went looking for him. They had to go through the Red Cross [Annotator's Note: Red Cross, an international non-profit humanitarian organization] to find him. They went back to Amsterdam [Annotator’s Note: Amsterdam, the Netherlands]. He did not recognize his parents at first. They did not play in the streets during the war. They did not have running water. They bathed in a big tub in the middle of the kitchen. The family hid several other Jewish children as well. The boy who worked in the stables was Jewish and he never knew that until recently. He has been corresponding with one of the daughters from the family. [Annotator’s Note: Koenigsberg shows his Jewish star he wore before going into hiding.]

John Koenigsberg speaks at schools so people do not forget. He wants people to remember what happened and hopes it never happens again. From 1945 on, many people did not talk about the war. He went back to school and had to do a combination of the first through third grades because he missed all that. Then they moved to the United States. They had to learn English. Both his parents were born in Poland. His father served in the Polish Army. His mother immigrated legally to the Netherlands and his father immigrated illegally. They became Dutch citizens in 1948. They immigrated to the United States in 1953. [Annotator’s Note: Koenigsberg discusses movies he has watched about the Holocaust.] He will not step into eastern Europe.