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September 1, 1995. Sieg Maandag sits at a long wooden dining table under the tall ceiling of his family's apartment on the Pieter de Hoochstraat, near the Museumplein in Amsterdam. He tells his story to Roos Elkerbout, an interviewer for the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation archives. Smiling, he answers questions about his early childhood in Amsterdam. He makes small jokes, playing with words as he reminisces about growing up. But he also indicates danger
from the start, as he remembers a scary scene from his early life which made him scream for his mother.
Sieg's face brightens again as he tells the interviewer how his first teacher taught the class to behave. But his voice drops as he starts to talk about the war. His family was taken on a frightening journey to a theater that was used as a holding place in the center of Amsterdam, and then to Camps Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen, where he, his father, his mother, and his sister were incarcerated along with others from Amsterdam's diamond industry. Representing some of the most powerful businesspeople in Amsterdam, these diamond Jews had originally been promised exemption from deportation, only to find themselves duped by the Nazis, who wanted their precious stones. Sieg relates moments of terror: leaving his childhood home accompanied by the Gestapo, watching his grandmother being taken on transport, seeing his father struggle under the weight of heavy milk cans in Camp Westerbork in the northeastern part of the Netherlands, and saying goodbye as his parents were taken away.
Even as his story grows grim, this artist and family man remains a curious and incredulous witness. He seems to want to learn more about what happened as he recounts events to the interviewer, the camera, and to himself. When he speaks about how he and his sister spent five cold, hungry months without their parents in Bergen-Belsen with 52 other Dutch Jewish diamond children, he still finds something positive to say