Mount Pleasant Magazine 6.4

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world. I tell kids to try to be nice to each other. If you have
a disagreement with someone, talk it out, give each other a
hug and say ‘now we’re friends.’”
Adkins resides in what should be a spacious apart-
ment at The Palms, but virtually all the space in the three
cluttered rooms is taken up by mementos of her past.
Much of it has nothing to do with World War II Europe
– relics of her life in the United
States include posters and photos
featuring icons of the 1960s
and 1970s, among them John
Lennon, Martin Luther King Jr.,
the Beatles, the Rolling Stones
and Crosby, Stills and Nash. A
self-proclaimed hippie, she wears
a peace symbol around her neck
and has multi-colored hair: blue,
green, red – whatever suits her
fancy at the time. She has tattoos
and wears a stud in her nose.
She has been a governess and she
worked on a cruise ship, and she
once hitchhiked from Montreal
to San Francisco.
Born in Bussum, Holland,
Adkins was separated from her parents as a 4-year-old.
She lived in the woods for a while, then in a home where
a Christian family was hiding Jewish children from the
Nazis. A nun later took her in, but her lot in life didn’t
improve much. She lived in a filthy, rat-infested closet and
ate only tulip bulbs and grass. She said on her birthday, the
nun gave her a small piece of sugar beet. She was beaten
and mistreated in other ways, but things got worse for the
young girl when the nun turned her over to her brother, a
piano teacher. He kept Adkins in his attic, sexually abused
her and eventually turned her over to the Nazis, who
shipped her off to the Westerbork concentration camp. She
spent time at Amersfoort, another camp. On a train on the
way to Auschwitz, some adults, apparently cognizant of
the fate that awaited those who
made it to the infamous death
camp, pushed her out of the
cattle car’s small window. Nuns
found her and took her in.
Though most of her family
perished in the Holocaust, after
the war, Adkins was reunited
with her parents. She married an
American solider, though that
didn’t last. Her second husband,
Roscoe Adkins, served in Viet-
nam and died from the effects of
agent orange. He was, accord-
ing to Adkins, “the best man I
ever met.” Her son committed
suicide, and, not long after, her
grief-stricken mother passed
away as well.
Though the walls of her apartment are covered with
memories of her life in the United States, her only memen-
to from her childhood is Anneke Pop, the doll her grand-
father gave her when she was 3. She lost the doll in one
of the concentration camps, and twice more, and, at one
point, gave up hope that she would ever be reunited with
Adkins’ apartment is cluttered with mementos from the
1960s and 1970s.
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