A Holocaust survivor named Dr. Hans Vischjager resides in Negombo, a seaside Catholic town in Buddhist Sri Lanka. As a child of Dutch Sephardic descent, he was hidden during the Holocaust. Walking into Vischjager’s home today, one first notices a wooden sign in Hebrew and English, saying, “Shalom” that sits alongside Sri Lankan furniture, Catholic icons, and what is unmistakably an Australian boomerang.
He was born in Holland in 1942, during World War II and the Holocaust. Despite the ongoing war, Hans Vischjager’s parents, Joseph Vischjager and Hillechien (Hilda) Levit, had decided to get married, thinking that having a child would spare them from the Nazis. They were wrong.
When they realized that being deported was futile, his mother gave Hans away to the Dutch resistance, and he was subsequently raised by a Christian woman named Johanna De Keizer (whom he affectionately called Mama De Keizer) in Leiden with her son, Adrie De Keizer. Being blonde, it was easy for Vischjager to pass as a non-Jew. Today, Vischjager describes his time with his foster family as “fond memories.”
Shortly after the war, De Keizer took Vischjager to an Amsterdam hospital, where she pointed at someone in bed behind a window and said to Vischjager, “That woman is your mother. I am not. I only looked after you.” Vischjager remembers that his mother “looked like a skeleton”; what he didn’t know then was that she had lost a lot of weight having survived Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. Back then, 3-year-old Hans was devastated and in shock.
Six months later, Vischjager’s biological mother, who had since physically recovered, came to the De Keizers’ home to take him back. She looked for a birthmark on his right foot to confirm that he was, in fact, her son. “I was screaming and shouting. I didn’t want to go but I didn’t have a choice,” Vischjager recalls.
His mother was devastated that Hans didn’t want to be with her, as her memory of him was the only incentive that helped her stay alive during the Holocaust. In her autobiographical testimony, she constantly mentions how the knowledge of Hans’ survival alone kept her going in the camps. “She stayed alive because she knew I was alive,” Vischjager relays.
Vischjager’s biological father separated from his mother after the war. His mother subsequently married her cousin, Isaac Cohen, with whom she had a son and daughter later. Vischjager’s father migrated to Australia in 1946. Very few of their relatives survived the war.
After the war, Vischjager grew up in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. He encountered racism and said that “people blamed the Jews for the war.” In 1956, the Hungarian Revolution began and, fearing yet another war, his family moved to the United States. Vischjager and his mother, stepfather and two half-siblings settled in Pomona, California.
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Hans Vischjager with his stepfather Isaac Cohen and mother Hilda Levit
(Photo: Courtesy)
Despite a calmer environment, Vischjager had a strained relationship with his mother as she continued to deal with a lot of trauma from her time in the camps. He also missed Momma De Keizer greatly and would often run away, causing his mother to call the police when they quarreled. According to Vischjager, the “US police were not understanding like the Dutch police were” when she called them. In fact, they were “very harsh.”
He ultimately made amends with his estranged mother
Vischjager recalls one particularly strained instance, when he was in court, where the judge said to him: “You are incorrigible.” to which he quipped, “No, my mother is incorrigible.” He was then sent to a juvenile hall, Junipero Sierra Boys Club, for the rest of his schooling.
In 1960, Vischjager joined the US Army, and in 1970, he immigrated to Israel. He lived on Kibbutz Givat Haim where he met a German woman named Julia who had a Sri Lankan pen pal named Bernadette Gunawardane who lived in the UK. He started corresponding with her. After she sent him a picture of herself, their correspondence grew until he eventually went to London to meet her.
To help Vischjager recognize her in London, she told him she would be wearing a sari. He recalls that there had been many women in dressed in saris at the airport that day. Fortunately, Gunawardane noticed Vischjager. In 1973, they got married and went on to have two children and seven grandchildren.
The couple lived in the UK for many years. “I narrowly missed the Korean War, Vietnam, and the Yom Kippur War,” he says.
Gunawardane was a nurse and encouraged Vischjager to go into the medical field. He eventually obtained a Ph.D. in psychotherapy and became a practicing psychotherapist. Vischjager says that enjoyed his profession because he was able to “help others.” As Gunawardane is Catholic, their home has always featured Jewish and Catholic memorabilia. Vischjager has some Hebrew books in his private library collection.
In 1999, the couple moved to Sri Lanka. A year later, he came out with a book titled Psychotherapy Today that attracted the attention of then-Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who invited him to his residence at Temple Trees. Vischjager recalls the former prime minister asking him, “How do you like Sri Lanka?” He complained to the prime minister that he could not work while on a spousal visa and had to pay 20,000 rupees every year to stay in the country. Six months later, Vischjager received a full refund in the mail. Wickremesinghe would later become Sri Lankan president between 2022 and 2024.
Vischjager, who describes himself as apolitical, says that he doesn’t care who is in power “as long as they leave me alone.” He has never met other Holocaust survivors who lived in Sri Lanka, including the two most well-known: Siegmund Feniger, who became the Buddhist monk Nyanaponika Thera, and famed poetess Anne Ranasinghe.
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Hans Vischjager with his wife Bernadette Gunawardane-Vischjager
(Photo: The Media Line)
In 2015, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) was able to get Vischjager monetary compensation for how the Holocaust negatively impacted his life.
Vischjager says that he eventually made amends with his mother, after later understanding what she had endured during the Holocaust. He says that met his father twice: when he came to Vischjager’s wedding in 1973 and another time on a trip to Australia. He continued to be in touch with Mama De Keizer until she passed away.
Today, 83-year-old Hans Vischjager enjoys his life in Sri Lanka. “I like it more than when I first came.” He mentioned that the local Sri Lankan kids call him “sudu siya” (literally “white grandpa”) and “uncle,” part of the local tradition of refraining from addressing elders by their first name. But no matter what he is called, Vischjager emphasizes, “I will always be a Jew.”
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