Ollie
From September 1, 1941, Jewish children were no longer allowed to attend public schools. Lotte then joined a small class with five Jewish girls that had been founded by Mrs. Souget, a teacher and the mother of Esther, who was also in the class. Renate, Lia, and Olga (Olly) were also in that class. Lotte and Olly became very good friends in the short time they knew each other.

Esther and Olly survived the war. Olly explained that the friendship began because she and Lotte were being bullied. Olly did not attend the same school as the others. Lotte had attended a Montessori school but spoke with a slight accent, just like Olly. Lotte and Olly formed a united front against the other girls in the class.

Bullying
I remember all of that so well, I can still feel it! Those are important years, of course. This is naturally very intense at that age. We weren't allowed to go to school anymore, we weren't allowed to do this and that, and then suddenly you end up in a class in an atmosphere that is against you, or was against me. And then I think, yes, I must have been a crazy kid or I had crazy clothes, or this was crazy or that was crazy. But that wasn't it at all. Now, at 82, I understand that I was the odd one out. That is what made Lotte and me become friends.
I don't know exactly what it was, but those girls bullied us. Or they had little secrets, you know, and giggling fits where we didn't know what they were about. Things like that.

Olly commemorates Lotte I
In the Westerbork museum, I went to a separate room where I looked through the big book containing the names of all our family and the dates they were deported from Westerbork. And where they went, and when they died. And they also made a copy for me of the page where the Sigmund family is listed. Because—and you understand this—Lotte has actually stayed with me my entire life, in one way or another. I am not the tearful type to think every day, "Oh, poor Lotte, that’s not it." But she is still there!
I once heard a very beautiful sermon at our synagogue by a rabbi, who is no longer alive either, who said: "As long as you think of them, they are still there."
If no one thinks of them anymore, then they are gone forever.
And I had the idea for myself: I am the only one in the world who still thinks of them.

Olly commemorates Lotte II
I think she was in Westerbork because they didn't go to Auschwitz from Amsterdam; nobody knew that at all. They went to the east to work. The name Auschwitz didn't exist at all yet. We were always being misled. We also had backpacks ready with warm clothes, because you had to dress warmly there to work.
They went straight from the train, across the platform, into the gas chamber.

Olly talks about going into hiding I
We supposedly went to Amsterdam. We went just around the corner... First, the moving van came to pick up furniture and whatever else was in our house. And with a wink of—"just hold onto it for a moment until we know where we're going"—and that man had stored it somewhere; half of it had been stolen after the war. But okay. As for the furniture, my mother had filled empty crates with gravel because we had already hidden so many goods out of hiding, because she was afraid the neighborhood would say, "Well, those Jews over there don't have much either, that it was conspicuous." They say empty crates went along with a bit of junk inside.
Yes, that's why; you couldn't just go into hiding. It was simply life-threatening.

Olly talks about going into hiding II
First, we went around the corner; at—and that is a well-known name, Marjanne Philips—we went to have lunch with the Goudenket family. She was Jewish, he wasn't Jewish. She was a writer. Marjanne Philips, she was a very famous Dutch writer. I even remember the title of one of her books, 'Henri from Across the Street'. We had lunch there. And in the course of the afternoon, we left again and went to another family, where we had dinner in the evening. And in the dark, the neighbor or the neighbor's son, a minister, came to pick us up. And in the dark, we were taken to the next address. All on foot. That's how it went, so cautiously. You couldn't just go from your house to a hiding place. And everyone knew that we had been evacuated to Amsterdam. But we had never been there. So that's how you did it.

The Frank family, Anne Frank's family, spread the rumor that they were on their way to Switzerland. So the gossip went around; they had fled to Switzerland. Or it happened officially, but people thought they were in Switzerland. That wasn't true at all either.
You put up a smokescreen and no one knew you were going into hiding. Yes, that's how it went.