In Search of Van der Waerden: Amsterdam, Year 1945

Following the war’s last “three months, distant from all culture and barbarism” in the Austrian Alps, the Van der Waerdens are liberated by the American Armed Forces. Bartel is not thrilled about the hardships of their liberation, as he describes it on July 1, 1945, in a letter to Otto Neugebauer from the camp for displaced persons at the town of Sittard in the southernmost Dutch province of Limburg: