The Safekeep

Hares form a central motif in the text, illustrating The Nature of Home. Isabel’s house is filled with tableware and other objects decorated with hares, all of which she holds dearly and is perpetually anxious about being stolen. At first, Isabel and her siblings assume that hares were their mother’s favorite animal and that this was the reason for their appearance throughout the house. However, when it is revealed that the home and its decorations once belonged to Eva’s family, whose last name means “hare” in Dutch, their significance comes into clearer focus. With this revelation, Isabel’s possessiveness over the hares, and her fears about them being stolen by strangers, is rendered entirely ironic: She belongs, in fact, to a family that stole them from their original owners. As such, they come to represent the stolen property and, on a deeper level, the stolen identity of Dutch Jews at the hands of their gentile neighbors.

The pattern on the dishware is likely the traditional Three Hares pattern, which originated in early medieval China before traveling along the Silk Road to Western Asia and then Europe. In the Jewish tradition, the Three Hares appear as decoration in several historical synagogues, most notably Early Modern synagogues from the German towns of Horb and Schwäbisch Hall and the Polish town of Chodorow (in modern-day Ukraine). It is likely that they appeared elsewhere in European Jewish art prior to World War II but that the Nazis destroyed these examples in their campaign of cultural erasure. Van der Wouden’s invocation of this symbol, therefore, evokes cultural resilience in the face of physical destruction. Just as the smashed plate is found buried in the garden after years, European Jews persevere across the continent despite the Nazis’ attempts to eradicate and erase them.