My life as a subhuman

"you  should only  connect to people you  know and want to interact with "

                                                                                             Gather network  

I came to a foreign country to marry a man  i hardly knew..

On August 10 , 1995 i had met a man in the famous Temple pub in Dublin , Ireland,

we  later went dancing  and in the romantic mood we had exchanged phone numbers and addresses.

Later on i kept thinking about him throughout my trip .

I came back to Israel and started the new school year,

i had forgotten a camera with him and it had arrived in the post, i called to thank him, he suggested we meet again somewhere in the middle,

We finally agreed on Cyprus, the island of love where Aphrodite, the Godess of love was born according to legends.

 We spent 10 days there on autumn school vacation  and after two days we had discussed  our summer plans, and he said: 

"would you like to get married?"

I thought that would be very romantic, yes, i said in that same kind of mood, i would.

He bought us silver and green rings and i went back to Israel with the news i was engaged.

I was 31 years old and had wanted a child badly for some time, so i started on the project and by the time he had come over on Christmas vacation to Israel there was a plan, to have a child together.

He had agreed to have a child with me and also to marry that spring.

The child had been created immediately and so by the time he had gone back to Switzerland that January i was pregnant with our first child.

The winter of 1996 was a difficult one, with terror attacks happening for the first time in Israel, i was feeling uncomfortable as i had to take a bus to the central bus station every morning and buses were exploding on a weekly basis.

That spring i flew over to Switzerland to get married, four months pregnant with my first child.

As  only religious weddings take place in Israel i could not marry him as he was a Christian and i was Jewish , so we got married in city hall in Zurich.

I wore a white dress but wanted something simple, not much of a fuss..i was just getting over morning sickness, i had had to stop over on the way to work and throw up many times..but he had insisted and started crying when i argued  i  did not want a party that night after the wedding , he  said "you are ruining my wedding"..

We had a lovely party though i was tired and i went back to Israel to finish my year teaching English as a second language.

He came for a weekend that May to help me pack, he went to the beach in Tel Aviv near my apartment and got sun burned , so instead of helping me pack he layed sun burned while i put sun creams on his badly burned back.

I had to do all the packing and moving on my own with the help of my brother.

As soon as the school year ended i packed up my bags and left my stable position as a teacher and Israel, my apartment, family and friends.

I knew no one in Switzerland.

When i arrived we did not discuss money  matters, i first paid for everything then the money ran out and he started to give me some sums for shopping  ,

we travelled to Holland when i was 8 months pregnant on a night train , he took me all over Holland, by train and bus.

I was not feeling so well travelling on the train but i did not complain, not even when our hotel reservations did not work out and we had to walk around for hours looking for a hotel.

When we got back he had gone back to teaching and i stayed home .

On the weekends he would sleep late and i got a bit bored but was looking foreward to the baby.

When i had my contractions in late Septembers towards my due date, he walked me to the hospital , that was down the road, and left me so he could go back to teaching that day..i sat there waiting for the contractions to increase, then i called him in school from a pay phone, he said he had to help a pupil , finally he arrived ..

It was a long birth, around 24 hours, and he was there by my side, as i did not understand the German of the midwife.

I called him at home at night when i got lonely, he hung up and said he was busy.

My mother came over to help. 

After my mother left things seemed fine, he adored the baby girl and helped take care of her.

She was a delightful baby, the center of our lives.

We had gone on vacation when she was three months old to the mountains, he had skiied and i sat at a traditional Swiss cafe' and drank ovalmatine and waited for him.

One day he took the baby in a carrier and we walked together by the ski slopes, i asked him to walk another way as i was afraid the skiiers would collide with us, he walked away fast from me, claiming i was fussing and had disappeared into the crowd in big steps.

I had gone to the room and waited, he was no where in sight, i had been breastfeeding and began to worry, just as i called the local authorities , he had walked in, angry that i fussed..

Then at home slowly the honey moon phase was definitely over, he had taken the baby more and more, till one night he slammed the bedroom door and claimed i was not a good enough mother, he had shut me out of the bed room for the night.

I was very upset and had gone to the local police station , they spoke to him about letting me have the baby back,  i was still breastfeeding her.

Later on i got pregnant with another child, i was lonely and i enjoyed having my baby and he was sometimes nice, very nice to me.

One day when i was about 5 months pregnant with the son he always wanted to have so he could play soccer with him , we had a disagreement over something, i forgot what, he had slapped my face hard, i was very upset , his best friend  , his best man from the wedding came over, he  said to me, "YOu look beautiful when you cry", i remember that sentence..i was not amused.

When i was 9 months pregnant i was at the playground with my daughter when i felt contractions coming on, i went home and tried calling him, he was supposed to be away on a school meeting that night, there was no answer, i had luckily a friend who came over to be with me, then we went to the hospital, my parents in law came to take  our daughter then i went into the hospital alone, another friend came to be with me, meanwhile i kept calling his handy, there was no answer.

Finally at midnight he had arrived just as our son had been born .

He said he had tried to call home but there was no answer so he thought i was sleeping, he went drinking with his best friend after the meeting.

My mother and brother had come for the baby's relgious ceremony when the baby was a few days old but he had Jaundice so we had to postpone, 

One night he went to the baby, i had asked him to be careful, he held the baby upside down , holding him by his feet just to show me he could do whatever he wanted, the baby was crying, i  screamed for him to stop, he wouldn't , then he yelled at my brother and mother for trying to talk some sense to him, the neighbor had called the police.

Things got worse that Christmas, the baby had high fever, he was not a very healthy baby like the first one we had, and he had insisted we had to go to his parents in the next town.

We had a fight and i got upset , he called his mother and spoke to her in Dutch , suddenly my father in law arrived to take my 2 year old daughter, he walked out the door carrying her, stop! i told him but he would not, 

I ran after him carrying my baby and got in his car and said, i am not going without my daughter!

He gave her back, later my husband had asked that she spent Christmas with the daughter of his single mom sister, i agreed for two days.

He left me with the ill baby on antibiotics while he spent christmas with our daughter at his parents with his  family without phone calls or money for food.

I had to ask him for money every time i wanted to buy something , i had no idea how much he had earned till later, it was well above the average..

When my son was a few months old we had a disagreement, i got slapped hard on my face again, i left to stay with a friend overnight, she was surprised he never called to look for me, i missed my daughter that stayed with him , so i came home, there was no apology.

The arugements got more and more bitter he had threatened me, put light to my face when i was breastfeeding the baby and had basically controlled my life.

I had gone to Israel with the two young children thinking never to return but at the end i forgot the bad stuff, i went back to Switzerland not realizing things would only get worse and worse.

When my son was around a year old, all of the sudden when i was washing dishes he came behind me and hit my head very hard, i got very scared, and took my son in a stroller and ran out, he tried to block my way, a woman in the street intervened  , he told her and later the police i tried to attack him with a knife!!

At the police station i got upset , all the small incidents had built up, i was scared of the unpredictability of his deeds, the policewoman at the station had thrown me out !

There i was on the street without a wallet, and i watched in horror as he walked off with the two children , he is tall so he walked fast and soon disappeared out of sight.

I had looked for him and the children then finally went back home, he would not open the door, i stood outside tired and hungry begging him to let me in as the children stood in the window laughing not understanding what was happening..

A neighbor from upstairs saw this and had called the police, a psychiatrist came to talk to both of us,

"Am i over reacting Dr."? i had asked

"On the contrary" , the psychiatrist had said,

"I think you are not reacting enough"..

When the police had left, he had told me that he is going to take the children on the vacation he was planning whether i was coming or not, i did not want to come at this point but did not want him to take the children on his own.

I did not know i was pregnant at the time with our third child..

Vacation time went well, as all those escapes did..he of course made all the plans of where we would go ..

When i was around 8 months pregnant we had an argument over a credit card he had given me, he wanted it back and i wanted to keep it, it felt good to have some financial security and not to have to go to him everytime i wanted to buy something , he had slapped my face so hard there were finger marks for days afterwards!

I had gone to stay with  a friend for a few days taking one child, he had refused to let me speak to the other child , then finally i went back missing my child.

When the third child was born, my mother came over just before the birth, when the contractions started my husband was at home, he said we should take the bus to the hospital, my mother had insisted on taking the taxi, later on she remembers how when the baby was just two or three  days old we had gone for a small walk around the hospital grounds and my husband refused to place the two year old in a stroller, he ran in large steps and i ran after him with the baby, he would not stop walking away fast , and meanwhile the two and three year old walked across streets..

The atmosphere at home was not good, constant fighting, we had been evicted already from another apartment in 1998 when my middle son was born and again we had received letters warning us that noise level was too much.

The worst incident had occured when my middle son was 4.

It was Friday night and i was busy cooking the traditional meal while my husband had bathed my 4 year old son, suddenly i heard screaming, i went out of the kitchen to see what was happening, and there i saw my husband struggle with my son who did not want to leave the bath and take him by force, lifting him in mid air, he then threw him and had closed the door to the children's room and refused to let me in!

I stood outside frantic, worried , my son mummbled "I want my shabbat soup", my heart was breaking as i heard this and then nothing, i had managed to convince my husband after a few hours to let me in, around midnight i entered the children's  room, my son was lying unconscious on the carpet ,then my husband said," you better take him to the hospital, there is still a bus running at this time.."

I took my son to the near by hospital to emergency on my own, half carrying him while my husband stayed home with the other children who needless to say did not have much of a dinner that night,

When the x ray technician said my son's arm was broken, i swore  the marriage was over, i would leave for sure..

When i came home, my husband was very upset, what could he do? he said..

Later on we went to the head of the children's department for a talk as i told the doctor attending to my son that my husband had thrown the child and caused his arm to break,

"I have worked in the USA, " he said calmly , "Here in switzerland, we do not intervene in the family as they do in the USA", and so he gave me a telephone of a family therapist, Dr. T. , and that was that.

We had gone to therapy before, none of the therapist thought the violence was much of a problem, this time it was impossible to have a session, at the end i concluded i would like to go to Dr. T. alone , a son of a Rabbi and a kind man, i felt i could trust the man with the Yarmulka (a traditional Jewish  head covering) and i have been going to him ever since. 

My therapist would come to bail me out when i had gone to the police demanding to know why they had released my husband just after a few hours after he had viciously attacked me in 2002 and had dislocated my foot so i had to have surgery .

The policemen had laughed and said i probobly provocated my husband, later on the judge in family court said the same and gave me hardly enough to live on .

I went back to my husband, a strange and dangerous habit, partly because i was financially dependent on him, i was a full time mom to three young children and never had money more than he had given me, a therapist had finally convinced him to open a bank account for me to put money in, he gave me hardly enough to pay for food for the month we had been separated.

I was alone, my good friend disappearing just when i needed her most, and my daughter was about to start school.

I will never forget what a project it was to sneak into the apartment to get my daughter's school bag as my husband made threats and refused to let me talk on the phone to the boys while i escaped with my daugther to stay a few days at the home of a friend of mine, me on crutches  going to the doctor every other day to fix the special bandage that held my dislocated toe together..

By the time my daughter started school , my husband had moved out by emergency court order and i was once again alone.

The local  Jewish community had sent a special driver with a van to take my two children to school and kindergarden that summer...

 I had all the support of the head of the Jewish community still i went back to my husband after a few months of being alone with the children.

I suppose i has the same syndrom my small dog suffers from, 

i could not stand to be alone

Then after that we had been once again evicted because of the constant fighting,

my husband would slam the door very hard so the whole house shook waking up the young baby then toddler , he would have fits of screaming, throw objects at me, missing me sometimes by a centimeter, and once broke down the door to the apartment after i had not opened immediately.

The police came again and again , but i did not have a place at a woman's shelter for me and three children, so i stayed.

Again and again my husband would get angry at me and have fits, grabbing me, shutting me in the bedroom, disconnecting the telephone so i could not call for help, etc. etc.

I had gone to court on September 2005  in order to get a court order removing him from our home, it took three months  till  the court order arrived!!

On January 2006 my life as a human being began  when my husband had finally left home, still the scenes he made, breaking down the door, screaming  and biting me , the police had to come, there was an investigation, they made photos of the door, the bite mark, he had taken the kids for two days i had no idea where my boys were and the police would not do a thing,

that weekend a Portugese man had taken his children too , he ended up in jail , however i had been told my Dutch  teacher in the swiss school system  husband had no such fate as there was no fear he might take the children abroad, or was it because the Portugese was a working class foreigner working on a construction site??

The september incident had finally pushed the angry neighbors constantly complaining about the noise to the edge, this incident had got me and the children kicked out of yet another apartment..

 "this time you have only yourself to blame, he does not live there anymore", was all my mother in law had to say..

I had searched for apartments for six months in vain, till a kind English speaking Philippinian  man called Nelson  took pity on me

" i want to be home for christmas" i said that December , quoting that famous sentence from a christmas song,

"You  will " , he had promised me, and pulled through for me

"I know  what it is like,  my family came from the philipines to this country with three children and we had difficulty finding a place to live"

So there were some angels along the way..

We actually managed to separate offically on January 2005 and everything became more and more clear, we even got along though i am still waiting now almost a year for a court date in the criminal court for that last attack as a file had been officially opened.

my husband trained my daughter's group in soccer, we were speaking casually and i had hoped we could get along at this distance.

This summer when i had gone to Israel on vacation i had received a letter from my husband asking me to stop calling him to inform him about the children and that he had been seeing another woman for the past 6 months, was in a relationship and wanted a divorce now.

He had hoped we could be good parents now that we were no longer a couple..

When i arrived back in switzerland exhausted from the trip and a mistake of the airline that got me on a flight through  Paris instead  , i thought i had 4 days to organize the place however i got a phone call

"We are on our way"

my husband had brought the children over 4 days early

they told me he had left them alone in a big amusement park in Holland while he layed in bed talking on the phone to his girlfriend, he had yelled at them to go out on their own because why are they always with him??

why indeed? They are only in a foreign country and are 10, 9 and 7 years old!

He had refused to call me in Israel because it would be too expensive and told them, why doesn't your mother call?

I had tried however the handy did not seem to work , i could not get through..

they said he constantly made scenes , yelled, and had done his speciality, he drives very fast and yells as the car shakes and you think you are going to crash when he gets upset and it could be because the children were fighting and it also could be just because one of them rolled down the window, 

anything could set him off!!

I had begged the social services not to let him go on a trip with the children alone for two weeks, they said it is the father's right!

On March this year my middle son came home with large blue marks on his chest around his heart, he said his father punched him because he had been arguing with his brother..

My children told me that they had seen the woman before several times and today my small son who is 7 and just lost a tooth, told me his father spoke to him while on holiday about love, just between men, he said, he had a secret.

"What was the secret ?" i asked,

My son refused to say anything because his father told him it was just between men, he then told me his father was probobly going to get married  soon because his girlfriend also did not have a man and was alone with a child.

This evening i had received an e.mail from social services as a reaction to my report that my husband had left the children on their own while he chatted on the phone in the room,and that my daughter did not want to go to see her father anymore because she is scared of him, ("i am now in puberty" , she said as a reason) 

The social worker who had gotten a phone call from my children's doctor urging her to act in reaction to my son's recent attack by his father in March had simply written;

"Mrs. Blaauw

It must be difficult for you that your husband has another relationship but that is something you need to accept, your husband has visitation rights and i urge you to   

comply with the law, and not make any changes.

Furthermore we have decided your middle son should go to an after school program in his best interest, you must find one  within two weeks.

I  must remind you i have been appointed by the court to protect the children"

It seems that a social worker was under the impression my son needs more socialization so they decided he needs to go somewhere else to eat lunch and must stay at a day care center till the evening.

No one bothered to ask my son who actually loves having lunch at home with me alone and likes playing soccer after school at the school playground with his good friends, he often gets phone calls from friends asking him to come out and play,

No one once asked the children about how they feel, whether they feel safe with the father, they did not listen to them , they did not ask them questions regarding the violence they had experienced from their father , not even now when my daughter is scared to go to her father and my lawyer says the social worker needs to interview her do i get an appointment.

" Mrs Vanza is busy" i was told when i called 

"but you will receive an e. mail"

I sure did, 

and so my life as a subhuman continues, 

constant intervention in my life from the social services, though not financial assistance is what i have to look foreward to,

i guess when you marry a perfect stranger you need to find out  first whether he is more strange than perfect  but so much for irrational rash romantic decisions that ruin your life,

i think i will survive even this, my only concern is what about the children, what do they have as an ideal of a family, of relationships, of life?

Anne Frank writes in her diary about the gradual constrains on jews living in Holland, "but it is not the fault of the Dutch people", she writes when Jews had been forbidden to shop in most stores , ride the trams, and attend schools that were not for them.

Often a tendency to forgive and forget leads a good person down the wrong path and so the Jews had forgiven and forgotten endless acts of violence against them, they had had to hide and were handed over to the Nazis but still they survived,

Generations later that tendency to forgive and forget will bring about a new Jew in Europe that turns a blind eye , that refuses to see hate till it is too late.

I am such a Jew, i had refused to see the gradual build up of hate, i had hung on because this is how i was raised, not to give up, to survive no matter what, 

if only i could have walked away, if only i had the right to.

I find myself in the same situation as my mother had when she was a child, unable to leave Europe, stuck with the authorities overlooking violence to her and other Jews.

The torturer knows well who to torture just as the victim finds it impossible to walk away because there is no one that says:enough!

There is no one to speak for children at risk of violence from a parent if that parent holds a good job and has a good standing in society.

There is not one to speak for women caught up in domestic violence because their husbands have this special right reserved only for married people to use violence and take away their basic human rights because they are married.

There was no one to speak for the Jews caught up in the war in Europe, no one protested the laws forbidding them free movement out of the hell they had lived in Holland and all of western Europe.

The pope does not speak about domestic violence

Presidents and prime ministers do not have domestic violence on their agenda yet according to the UN report one out of three women in Europe suffers from violence at home in Europe.

women do not speak about domestic violence , in fact i have found the surest way to lose all your close female friends here is to tell them about  being hurt by your husband.

No one talks about the domestic violence, the court never mentions it, no one asks the children about it

and so it spreads like an epidemic , and the silent witnesses, the children grow up learning that this is reality, that they have no rights, and no ability to say:

STOP!