In his latest book – Injury Time from 2012 – Van Thijn looked back on his life. The PvdA’s injury time lasted a long time: from the summer of 1943 to be precise. Then the names of him and his mother were called out in camp Westerbork. But thanks to a ruse by his father, the family did not have to go to the concentration camps in Eastern Europe.
However, he had to go into hiding as a 10-year-old boy. Hidden in a kitchen cupboard, he heard soldiers’ boots on the stairs. He was betrayed and arrested. But because the war was coming to an end, he again avoided transport from Westerbork to the Auschwitz extermination camp. ,,I wasn’t allowed to exist, but I do exist’, said Van Thijn later.
In 1983 the PvdA member was appointed mayor of Amsterdam. The country was in a deep economic crisis, unemployment rose to record highs and the capital was scarred by violent squatters’ riots, degeneration and crime. Junks and dealers ruled in parts of the city. ‘Good luck, little boy,’ his predecessor Wim Polak wished him.
After an El Al plane crashed into two Bijlmerflats on 4 October 1992, Van Thijn could be found in the crisis center under Amsterdam’s city hall for almost three consecutive weeks. The disaster “gritted him terribly,” he later said.
After his mayoralty, Van Thijn became a member of the Liberal Jewish Community in Amsterdam. He felt “part of an age-old tradition,” he said, but he never became religious. Van Thijn: “An almighty God who has allowed Auschwitz is either not almighty or is no good.”
An almighty God who has allowed Auschwitz is either not almighty or no good
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source https://pledgetimes.com/ed-van-thijn-lived-in-injury-time-for-almost-eighty-years/
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