HIDDEN FOR A THOUSAND DAYS

 

SARA VEFFER

as told to 

RAY SONIN

 

Published 1960   THE RYERSON PRESS, TORONTO

 

CONTENTS

 

Foreword

 

PART ONE: TWILIGHT

 

PART TWO: NIGHT

 

PART THREE : SUNRISE

 

FOREWORD

 

Although this book tells of privation, endurance and danger during German occupation of Holland, it is not primarily a war book. A Great War may have been its background, but the story is of a Little War fought by a mother in defence of her family—a war in which she pitted herself with magnificent defiance against the full force of a conquering army—a war that she won with courage her only ammunition.

Sara Veffer does not consider herself a heroine. She did what she had to do as a wife and a mother, succoured and strengthened through years of hardship by an almost superhuman determination to keep her family alive and together. She refused to be beaten. She refused to be afraid. She withstood every challenge, outwitted every manoeuvre and ignored every privation through the fierce strength of her mother-love.

No, Sara Veffer does not consider herself a heroine; but, as I took down her story in an apartment in Toronto, I could not share her modest opinion. For we were continually interrupted by the telephone as members of her family called her from different parts of the city—the same members of her family for whom she had fought and won her Little War. Married and happy in Canada, they are the living tribute to her courage, and of these things are heroines made . . .

As I talked to her, I was continually reminded of pictures I have seen of Queen Victoria. Her jet-black hair is swept severely back on her head, and her face has the gentle strength of that monarch. She sits straight and steady, as if her chair were a throne, and she walks purposefully, as if each step were a decision. Her kingdom is her family and, when the conquest of Holland might have disrupted and destroyed her children and her husband, she became a ruler and guided them through to ultimate victory.

These are fanciful analogies. Most significant, however, is the resemblance of outlook. It was Queen Victoria who said, when the Boer War was going badly for Great Britain: “We do not admit the possibility of defeat.” And it was Sara Veffer who echoed those words in her heart throughout the long years in Bussum when she saved her family of eight from the Germans.

Read her story and be heartened by it, for it gives an encouraging picture of the resilience of human beings in the face of adversity and shows that when ordinary people are confronted by extraordinary circumstances they can rise to become extraordinary people. Courage, strength, fearlessness and quick-wittedness in the presence of danger are not the prerogative of soldiers; we all have those qualities. Let us hope that, in acute emergency, we could use those qualities as Sara did.

RAY SONIN

 

PART ONE:  TWILIGHT

 

Chapter l

 

The Room was twelve feet long by eleven feet wide. It was bare, it was cold; but it was a refuge, for in this room, my husband, myself and our six children hid for one thousand days two years, nine and a half months—while the Germans searched for us and failed to find us. When the war was over and our beloved Holland was free again, we tottered out from our hiding-place into fresh air and sunshine that we had almost forgotten. We were emaciated and sick, but we were all alive.

This is the story of The Room and the thousand days. It is a war story only in the sense that the Second World War swirled around us throughout our period of hiding but, at the core of the cyclone, we passively fought our own little war of independence with the twin objectives of survival and freedom. How did we win through? We were guided by fortune and sustained by faith. But there was another factor. There is no army as strong as a family, and guns, bombs and tyranny are powerless against the barricades of family love. Our experience proves that.

Looking back on my story, the same thought occurs to me over and over again. How could such things happen to me? It is not as if my upbringing or my life or my work had fitted or prepared me in any way for danger and the cloak-and-dagger perils of a world war. I am and always have been a very ordinary person. My problems have never been more than the problems that beset any mother anywhere: bearing and raising children, looking after my husband and my home, worrying over money. Holland is a peaceable and hardworking country, and in that gentle environment I was born and lived happily. We are a Jewish family, and we lived in a small town outside Amsterdam that is predominantly Roman Catholic, but never at any time was our religion mentioned or even noticed. We had many friends and we lived in complete harmony with our neighbours. Again I say that we were ordinary people. We did not stand out from the crowd, nor did we wish to do so. We asked nothing except that we live in peace. But from 1939 to 1945 that was something we could not do.

Almost without warning, we were pitchforked into an insane life of horror. Gone was the happiness of normality. Gone were the friendship and harmony we had known. Gone was the peace. And suddenly, we had to adjust yourselves mentally and physically to a new and terrible set of undreamed-of circumstances—war, conquest, concentration camps, slavery, bombs. The ordinary people had to become extraordinary people to survive. We survived.

It can happen to anybody; that is the grim truth. And, when it happens, you find a strength you did not know you had, a cunning you did not know anyone had, a courage and a faith that cast out fear. For I tell you this very sincerely: in my years of fighting for my family, the struggle was so intense, the mental adjustment so compelling and the welfare of my husband and children so important to me that I never had time to be scared. The one overriding thought in my mind was always our survival survive each day alive and together. That thought was my obsession and my salvation. I was often worried, often despondent, often unhappy, often sick at heart and sick of body, but I was never afraid.

The morning of May 10th, 1940, was warm and sunny, and at Stationsweg 34, in the little Dutch town of Bussum, a busy day was beginning, As always, my husband Jonas and I were up at the dawn with our duties so clearly defined after seventeen years of marriage as to be almost a ritual. He would wend his way downstairs to the florists’ store that we had opened in 1932 and built up, slowly and arduously, into a flourishing business. As he went, he would light his first cigar of the day for, next to his family and his flowers, Jonas Veffer loved his Dutch cigars and was seldom seen without one. Contentedly, he busied himself with the daily dressing of the window-a ceremony that gave full scope to his artistic sense and tasteful imagination. Every day his clever fingers would conjure up a new floral arrangement as the centrepiece of a display to please the eyes of the passers-by; but I know full well that, if our store had been in a dark back-alley where no one ever came by, he would still have dressed the window with all his skill. For, like me, he was intensely proud of Bloemenhuis Jonas—our store, our home and,as we thought then, our future.

As for me, my duties were less artistic, but I also enjoyed them, for I was preparing breakfast for our six children sleeping peacefully in their three bedrooms—Jacob, the eldest, born in 1924; Rachel, our only daughter, born in 1926; Meyer, 1928; Abraham, 1930; Judah, 1931; and our youngest child, Joseph, born in 1933.

We were intensely proud of our children and fiercely allied as a family. Our life had always been hard from the very day October 31st, 1923—that I, Sara Nebig, aged 21, had married my childhood sweetheart, Jonas Veffer, aged 23, in Amsterdam. Our first years together were spent peddling flowers from a stall in the open streets of Amsterdam, standing in the cold and rain for long hours and getting small returns. Then we moved twelve miles eastwards to the town of Bussum, with its broad, clean streets and fine villas. Bussum, a community of 35,000 people, is residential in character, and most people who live there work in Amsterdam and commute daily. It has no factories. You might almost call it a garden city, for trees, flowers and well tended lawns delight the eyes of residents and visitors, and its death rate is the lowest in all Holland. Clean, friendly, healthy—a lovely town. That is Bussum.

Outside the city hall there we continued to peddle our flowers, making more friends than profits, but building up a connection and a family. Then, in 1932, a friend offered to lend us the money to start a store of our own and, although borrowing money was against my husband’s principles, I persuaded him to accept the offer. So Bloemenhuis Jonas came into being and, after eight years, we had paid back our debt and were financially stable.

As I busied myself with the chores in the kitchen, I reflected—as I did every morning—on the quiet and peacefulness of the little town. Later on, people would start making their way in crowds to the railroad depot opposite, but the early morning always held for me a hallowed serenity that I treasured.

And then suddenly the peace was shattered. I heard running feet and people shouting. I heard someone banging on the door of the store downstairs, and my husband talking loudly, and there was noise and confusion.

I rushed out of the kitchen on to our balcony. Below me, Bussum was awake—not with the stir of early-morning activity, but with fear . . . and panic. Our neighbours were pouring out of their houses, talking, shouting, running in aimless confusion. I attracted the attention of Mrs. Boss, who looked after the bicycle parking-lot close by. “What is it?” I shouted. “What has happened?”

She shouted something back at me, but I could not hear her clearly because of the commotion that was going on. All I could hear was one word that struck terror into my heart like a knife—“Germans.”

I ran back into the house to make my way downstairs. The children had been awakened by the noise and were padding around me in their night-attire, sleepy and frightened. I soothed them somehow and joined my husband, who was in the centre of a crowd of anxious-looking neighbours, all talking at once.

When Jonas saw me, he took my hand in his to calm me; then he said painfully: “The Germans are in Holland.”

“The Germans?” I mouthed. “In Holland? But—but—we are not at war with Germany.”

Mr. Obdam, who kept the cigar store in our block and rated Jonas as his best customer, heard my dazed queries and gave a harsh laugh. “In this war,” he told me grimly, “the Germans do not declare war, or give you notice of their intentions.” He spread his arms expressively. “They just go!”

Little by little, from the babel, I pieced together the bitter news. The war had started the previous September, when Great Britain and France had declared war on Germany. Poland had fallen, and Russia had fought a little war of its own with Finland. Then, in March, Germany had invaded Denmark and Norway, and there was fighting in France and along the Belgian border.

Holland had mobilized. My daughter Rachel had even played the accordion at concerts given for the troops at Naarden Camp. But we were a peaceful nation with a long history of neutrality. The mobilization was just a precaution. The Germans would never invade us. And now . . . the Germans were here! It was unbelievable and too horrible to contemplate, for since 1937 we had known how Hitler and his followers had treated the Jews. And we were Jews. We had met refugees who had escaped to Holland from Nazi persecution, and we knew what to expect.

“I heard it on the radio.” Mr. Vervat, who kept the grocery store next door to us, made his voice heard above the uproar. “Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg invaded by the Germans . . . big forces . . . thousands of troops, armour, aircraft . . .”

“How can we fight them?” asked Mr. Van Welsen, the neighbourhood barber, dejectedly. “We are a small nation, and the Germans . . .”  He sighed. “It is the end of peace here, that is certain.”  At his words, the confused shouting simmered down into a painful silence. Our neighbours looked at us—at Jonas and me—and there was sympathy, tenderness and anxiety mirrored in their eyes. Mr. Obdam asked the question that was uppermost in their minds. “What is going to happen to you? What are you going to do?”

Before I had a chance to reply, a weeping figure pushed her way through the crowd and flung herself into my arms. It was my closest friend, Greta Weenen, who kept a millinery store round the corner in the next street. We had been at school together. She was Jewish too. I stood there, trying to soothe her, but what could I say? For everybody in Bussum it was bad enough that Holland had been invaded by the Germans; but we were Jews, and for us it was much worse.

We stood there, the helplessness of despair clouding my thoughts and my actions. I stroked Greta’s hair and summoned up all my strength to tell a lie. “Don’t worry,” I said, “it won’t be as bad as all that. We’ll be all right. Nothing will happen.”

But something did happen—right there and then. Into the railroad station facing us across the road a freight train came chugging heavily. We watched it as it clattered to a stop, the engine breathing out tired steam, and then we were gripped by horror and sadness as we saw through the open doors of the wagons that this was no consignment of cattle or merchandise. These were men—wounded, bloodstained men in the once-proud uniforms of the Dutch Army. They lay or stood, weary and dejected, some bandaged, some bloody, looking across at us. But there were no smiles or cheery waves and salutations, just a grim, despairing silence. And some of the men looked down, and turned away in shame and sorrow, for this was war and these were our own men, wounded and defeated.

The train moved slowly away and out of our sight, with a hiss of steam that was echoed by our gasp of anger and despair. Women were crying. I fought back my own tears. I said to Jonas: “We must go away. Now—at once—this minute.”

“But where?” he asked. “With the Germans in Holland, we are not safe wherever we go. We may as well stay here.”

“No,” I persisted. “We will go to Amsterdam, to my mother’s. In a small town we are conspicuous. Amsterdam is big and there are many Jewish people there. We will be safer. I feel it.”

“But the store . . . ” argued Jonas.

I laughed. “You think anyone will buy at a time like this? Come, I will pack. As for you, Greta, go back to, your husband Benny; take your child and get to Amsterdam.”

She nodded dumbly. She was in a state of hysteria. I shook her, then soothed her, until I made her understand what I was saying. One of the neighbours escorted her gently back to her house.

I rushed upstairs. The children were frightened, and the younger ones were crying.  Somehow I calmed them and made them help me pack our necessary belongings. They wanted to take some of their toys and personal possessions, but I had to be firm and leave everything behind but essentials. Only one memento did I take with me that, in the circumstances, was perhaps unnecessary. I ran down into the store and took from its place of honour on the wall a framed letter that was our treasured possession. It had been sent to us on September 26, 1936, from the Paleis Noordeinde at ’Gravenhage, and conveyed the thanks of Princess Juliana to Bloemenhuis Jonas for the gift of a magnificent floral arrangement we had sent her on the occasion of her engagement to Prince Bernhardt. Throughout the war the letter went everywhere with us. We still have it.

We bundled the whole family into the local taxi and went off with the good wishes of our neighbours ringing in our ears. Somehow it seemed better to be doing something—even running away—than just sitting and waiting.

Mrs. Boss shook my hand as the car began to move off, and said a few words that echoed the thoughts of all of us. “I hope nothing happens to you. Good luck!”

And Mr. Obdam, standing at the door of his cigar store, gave us a cheery wave. “I’ll keep your cigars for you, Jonas,” he called out, “as long as I am able.”

The words were oddly prophetic. Mr. Obdam did supply Jonas with his cigars as long as he was able—right up to the time when the Germans took him away to the concentration camp, after which he was never seen again.

 

Chapter 2

 

To the children, our sudden unexpected journey to Amsterdam was a treat, and they prattled happily all the way to the big city.

“We’re going to Amsterdam—to Amsterdam—to Amsterdam,” chanted Joseph, the youngest. “No school today!”

“And we’re going to see Grandma.” Abraham stuck his head out of the window and gave this information to passers-by.

“And she’ll give us pennies and candy,”  chanted Judah, the businessman of the family.

“We’ll see streetcars and buses,”  was Meyer’s contribution; and this produced a lively discussion as to why there were no streetcars or buses in Bussum. Coping with their jabber, trying to answer their excited questions and controlling them as they clambered over the packages kept Jonas and myself fully occupied—which was just as well, because the children’s excitement at the novelty of driving in a taxi and missing school helped to steady us both. Had we had time to think we should have been panic-stricken with fear of the future; as it was, only Jacob, the eldest and most serious-minded of the children, sustained the mood which had driven us from Bussum. He looked out of the window all the way, never saying a word, just staring and thinking; and the frown on his forehead and the mirrored anxiety in his brown eyes told us what he was thinking about.

Even the aircraft that zoomed over us on the journey were an exciting novelty to the rest of the children. The planes swooped so low that we could clearly see the swastika on the fuselage, but only Jonas, Jacob and I understood the significance of the dreaded insignia, and even then we did not understand it to the full, for we found out later that the planes were returning from bombing Amsterdam.

Part of the city was deserted as we drove in. Stores were closed and streets were empty save for vigilant knots of armed soldiers and policemen standing at intersections. But as we went further through the city we were caught in among hurrying crowds—people fleeing out of Amsterdam, fleeing out of Holland. We found that these fear-stricken people, wheeling or pushing their pathetic belongings, were making for the port of Ymuiden to try to get aboard ships that would take them to England. This was war, this was fear—this blind, resigned trudging along the roads in a helpless herd to get away. Some of them had horse-carts, others had heaped their belongings on prams and bicycles. Women, children, old people—hundreds and hundreds of them. The first refugees.

Then we lost the crowds again as we branched off into the silent streets, silent with a tenseness that shimmered in the lazy heat of the day. The air was tense: as tense as the soldiers, as tense as the police, as tense as we were.

And in the heart of the city there were numbed people standing in helpless groups by the ruins of their houses. When the children saw this, the barrage of questions that had been fired at us throughout the journey doubled in intensity.

“What’s happened, Mama?” “Daddy, why are all those people standing there?” “Mama, why did those houses fall down?”

It was Jacob who broke his long silence to supply a quick-witted answer. “There’s been an earthquake,” he said.

“What’s an earthquake?” asked Joseph.

“It’s—well, it’s when the ground moves.”

“Why does the ground move?” asked Meyer.

“Because—because. . . oh, I don’t know.”

“Then how do you know it’s an earthquake?” challenged Abraham, and the argument that ensued kept everybody’s mind fully occupied until we reached my mother’s house in Weesperstraat.

II

Jewish families are always closely knit, and even more so in a small country like Holland where they live near to one another and can always assemble in strength at a time of emergency. That is what my family did that night. No rallying call had gone out, no proclamations posted, but the Nebig family came running to their natural meeting-place, their mother’s apartment on the second floor of the house in Weesperstraat.

Only my brother Judah, who lived at Antwerp in Belgium, was absent. The rest converged on the house throughout the day: my brothers Abraham, Moritz and Samuel, and my sisters Deborah, Marianna and Rebecca. And what did we do when we all met? Did we devise purposeful plans to enable us all to get to safety? Did we decide on a family strategy? No. We just wept in each other’s arms when we met, and then we talked round and round in circles, far into the night, while the children slept on the floor.

None of the adults slept that night; we didn’t even eat. We compared rumours, we argued, we conjectured, we told the others what we knew, and what we didn’t know we imagined. And that was the worst part of it; for what we imagined made us start crying again; and it still makes me start crying all these years afterwards, for most of what we imagined came true.

Outside, Amsterdam was in the grip of an uneasy quiet, broken by the sound of rifle fire as skirmishes broke out. German paratroopers dressed in Dutch military uniforms had been dropped inside the city, and fifth columnists were helping them. Those fifth columnists—Dutch traitors—had opened the way to the German invasion of Holland by seizing the water installations on the River Waal, which were to have flooded the whole countryside and so prevented the Germans from breaking through. That was the master plan of defence—flooding the terrain to bog down the movement of German armour and men. But the Dutch had reckoned without the traitors in their midst. The moment the Germans were near the Dutch border, the fifth columnists struck. They overpowered the soldiers guarding the waterworks and so were able to ensure a safe passage for the Germans as they poured in.

We heard stories of this and other happenings outside, but the country was so much in the grip of rumours and rumour-mongers that we did not know what to believe. For instance,there were rumours about the Queen; and on May 13th these rumours crystallized into fact, and fear swept the country.

For on that day, big headlines—inspired by the Germans—told us that Queen Wilhelmina had “deserted her people”  and had fled to London. It is now history, of course, that our beloved Queen took the only possible course that would prevent the Royal Family from falling into German hands and so undermining forever the united strength and loyalty of the whole country. This we now know and understand; but on that black day when the news broke in the way that the Germans wanted it to break the emphasis was entirely on “desertion” and “running away” and “not standing by her people”, and the propaganda was deadly in its effect, all the more so because the Dutch are fiercely proud of their Royal Family and are in many respects the most truly patriotic people in the world.

So it was with a heavy heart that we learned of the Queen’s departure, and the news that followed the next seemed almost inevitable in the circumstances. Rotterdam was heavily, mercilessly bombed. Paratroopers had landed and captured the stricken city. Holland ceased fighting. We were a conquered nation.

We heard the news over the radio on the afternoon of May 14th. The children were playing noisily in a corner of my mother’s small living-room, while the adults tried to concentrate on the grim news that was being broadcast.

The announcement, when it came, was received with stunned silence; then talking, weeping and lamentation broke out with redoubled strength. To be under the yoke of the Germans was bad enough Dutch family, but for a Jewish Dutch family.

. . . The words “concentration camp” zigzagged through the uproar like shafts of forked lightning, and sobs and groans and shouts were the thunder.

In all this commotion I was the only one who remained calm. It seemed as if the news that had thrown the rest of my family into such a panic had had the odd effect of steadying my own nerves, and I even went so far as to scoff when my sister Marianna wailed, “We must hide!”

“Hide!” I sneered. “Where are we going to hide? In cellars or attics, maybe? You think the Germans won’t find us? If they want us, they’ll find us.”

“So what are we supposed to do?” countered my brother Moritz. “Must we just sit here and wait for them to take us? Is that what you want?”

“Don’t be a fool,” I said angrily. “We must go back to our homes—all of us. At once.”

This suggestion was far from well received. The fact that the family was together symbolized unity and strength; to split up seemed a weakening of our defences. I listened to their loud arguments with composure. When I know I am right I am as stubborn as a mule, and this was one of those occasions.

“All right, all right,” I interrupted the clamour. “You can all do what you like, but I tell you what I am going to do. I am going back to Bussum.”

“You must be mad!” My husband Jonas told me angrily. He is a small man, only five feet four inches tall, stocky and strong; but when he is angry he seems to grow taller, while his fair hair bristles with the force of his emotions. “Didn’t you yourself tell us we would be safer in Amsterdam?”

I put my hand gently on his shoulder, but he brushed me off. “Jonas,” I said quietly, “that was when there was fighting. The fighting is now over. You think the Germans will get organized by tomorrow? You think they have nothing else to do but worry about the Jews? They have a whole nation to look after; it will take time before they are ready for us. So let us go home. It is better there.”

“Such arguments she gives me!” Jonas turned round and appealed to the audience. “She knows what the Germans will do. She has it all fixed. First, she says we must come to Amsterdam; then, she says we must back to Bussum. Maybe she’s worried about the flowers yet.”

“I am,” I told him angrily. “Very worried.”

Everybody now jumped into the fray to tell me how foolish I was, but I paid them no attention. We had a large consignment of beautiful and exotic orchids in the store at Bussum, and I could not bear to think of them rotting away. It was not only my business sense that actuated this mental concern; it was something stronger than that. Those orchids represented normality for me, and normality seemed vitally important in this atmosphere of near-panic.

But how could you explain such inner feelings to frightened people? I did not attempt it. My mind was made up, and they all knew that I could not be argued out of a decision I felt to be right. I told Jonas I was taking our eldest son, Jacob, back with me to help with the store, and it was arranged that when I reached Bussum and sorted out the situation I would telephone the family and we could make further arrangements.

As were waiting for the taxi, my sister Marianna was still pursuing her solo theme. “We must hide, we must hide.” This must have made more of an impression than I realized on my sixteen-year-old son. On the way back to Bussum he brought up the subject.

“Mama, why did Auntie keep saying we must hide? Did she mean we should hide away so the Germans can’t find us?”

“I don’t know what she means,” I answered. “Hiding! Whoever heard of such a thing?”

He looked out of the window and thought awhile. “Mama,” he asked quietly, “would you ever hide?”

“Of course not,” I replied. “In life you must face up to things; not run away from them. That is why I am going back to Bussum. That is why I would never hide.”

Even as I spoke the words, I felt myself flushing and my face became red and hot, as if I had made a faux pas, as if I had said something silly and embarrassing, as if I was being laughed at.

As indeed I was.

III

Though I felt quite certain I was doing the right thing in going back to Bussum, my resolution wavered when we caught sight of our first Germans. They were riding motorcycles, and looking frighteningly forbidding in their grey-green uniforms, swastika insignia and tin helmets; but they paid us no attention. When we reached Bussum and saw more of them strutting about the clean, broad streets of this lovely little town, anxiety welled up again in my throat; but—just as I had forecast to my husband—they had other things on their mind, and they left us severely alone.

My neighbours came out to welcome us back, and they assured us there had been no trouble. So I tended the orchids, opened up the store again, and even did a little business.

After two days, I telephoned Jonas in Amsterdam.

“What is happening?” he asked me anxiously.

“It is quiet,” I told him. “The German soldiers are in the town, but they are not doing anything to the people. They are organizing their own quarters. They have commandeered the big villas and the schools.”

“The schools?” he repeated.

“Yes. All the schools are now barracks for the soldiers.”

“So the children cannot go to school?” As he said these words, I could hear excited yelps and cheers from the youngsters listening to his end of the conversation. To children, a holiday is a holiday no matter in what circumstances, and I envied them their one-way thinking.

“We should come back?” Jonas went on.

“At once,” I answered. “For as long as we are allowed, let us go on working in our own store and living in our own home.”

“Very well. We return this afternoon.”

Thus, in the calm before the storm, the Veffer family were all reunited in Bussum, the town we were not to leave for seven years, the town where we existed and endured and suffered, the town washed by our tears and hallowed by our prayers.

Chapter 3

When I tell you that in those early days it was not the Germans we feared as much as our own Dutch people, that statement will be logical only to those of my readers who have had the misfortune to live in an occupied country. They will know the full and ugly meaning of the word “traitor.”

Holland, like all the other countries conquered by the Germans, had its own crop of homegrown Fascists—the NSB, who aped their German heroes and lorded it over their neighbours and erstwhile friends. Known during the war as quislings, because of the infamous Scandinavian traitor, they revelled in their new-found power, strutted around the town as if they owned it (which was not so far from the truth, for their allegiance to the Germans was inspired by motives as much mercenary as sadistic and political) and threatened and bullied us all with vicious enjoyment.

Head of the NSB movement in Holland was a paunchy man who looked very much like Mussolini. His name was Mussert, and he had been active with his pro-German, anti-Jewish propaganda for many years before the war. It was generally expected (chiefly by Mussert and his followers) that the Germans would appoint him to govern Holland on their behalf after they had subdued the country, and it was a bitter disappointment to the NSB movement as a whole when they brought in Seyss-Inquhart from Austria to take charge. This was a snub to Mussert by his German masters. When I heard of it I was very glad; but Jonas shook his head anxiously.

“The devil we know . . .” he mused. “Mussert is at least a Dutchman. He would have strutted about and threatened and made like a big windbag, but I believe he would not have harmed his own people, Jew or Gentile. But this Seyss-Inquhart—I have heard about him. He is ruthless. A real dyed-in-the-wool Nazi. What does he care about the lives or property of the Dutch people? Nothing! Mussert would have been bad, I have no doubt, but he would have been much better than this chap.”

I thought of Jonas’s words a few days later when Mussert, who lived near Bussum, led a parade of his followers through the town. He strutted at the head of his jackbooted columns while bands played and marchers gave the Nazi salute and roared, “Hou zee! Hou zee!”, their own equivalent of “Heil, Hitler!” What struck fear into my heart, as I watched the scene from behind the drapes in my living-room, was that the quislings were not only grown men. Boys were marching in the columns, wearing the black uniforms of the NSB and proudly sharing in doubtful glory of the occasion.

And what was even worse was when my own sons were affected by the glamour, and loudly envied those of their school friends who were marching in such an exciting parade, clad in such important-looking uniforms.

At this period, it was impossible for Jonas and me to explain to the younger children the significance of what was going on. To them, a parade was a parade, and they neither knew nor cared who was parading—and why. The music, the uniforms and the marching men constituted glamour and excitement for them, and their joy knew no bounds when, a little while afterwards, the Germans themselves staged a parade through the town.

This was in keeping with the propaganda tactics they had inaugurated in Norway and Denmark—to enter the towns as “friends,” not conquerors, with music and glitter as their chief stock-in-trade. The band played merry music, the soldiers marched with precision but with smiles for the gaping children, the troops on horseback added more appeal to the spectacle,  and the motorcycles and armoured cars bringing up the rear completed a sight that was eye-catching to the children  and heart-stopping to us.

The would-be friendly attitude of the Germans recoiled on their own heads. The children did not fear them; they just ‘thought they were silly; and they set out to bait them with the mischievous thoroughness that only children can devise and accomplish.

My son Abraham, I afterwards found out, was the ringleader in a series of escapades that provided many happy hours for the children of the town and a great deal of annoyance to the German soldiers. All I knew at the time was that my sons were out playing with their friends; it is just as well that I knew no more, for this is what they did…

The railroad station opposite us was a supply depot of food and all kinds of equipment for the Germans. These would arrive by train, be dumped on the platforms and subsequently removed to the various barracks that had been established in different parts of the town.

One item that arrived by train, however, was left permanently on the platforms—the hay for the horses. This came in bales which were stacked on top of each other in long lines, to be drawn from as needed; and these huge piles of hay excited the imagination and brought out the ingenuity of ten-year-old Abraham Veffer.

Leading flocks of children from the neighbourhood, he boldly went into the railroad station and played on the hay, climbing up and down the stacks. The Germans, who had been ordered to treat the populace with kid gloves at the outset, watched tolerantly and smiled as they saw the antics of the children; but what they did not realize was that Abraham and his willing helpers were removing bales from different parts of the stacks and so concocting an inner maze of tunnels that wound through the heart of the hay. When the German soldiers finally grasped the significance of the children’s daily manoeuvres and saw the youngsters disappearing into the inside of the stacks, they followed them—which was just what Abraham’s mischievous saboteurs wanted.

“You see, Mama”, Abraham proudly explained to me afterwards, “we knew how to find our way through the tunnels—we’d built them, hadn’t we? But the Germans got lost in the maze. And you know what else we did?” I did not dare ask. “When we knew the Germans were following us, we went right through the maze and out the other side, then we closed up the way out,see? So the Germans were in there for hours, and they couldn’t get out. It was funny!” I remember how he laughed at the thought, and I remember how Jonas and I didn’t join in the laughter.

After that the Germans forbade children to play in the precincts of the railway depot. But Abraham and his little friends had their revenge: they crept in and set fire to the hay.

Fortunately for them and all of us, this was in the very early days, when the Germans had their orders to befriend rather than antagonize the local population, so no punishments were meted out. Not that the Germans ever knew for sure who had set the hay alight; but later on that would not have stopped them from penalizing the whole community.

It was just as well for my peace of mind that school started up again shortly afterwards. The Germans found other accommodation, moved out of the schools, and the children were off the streets, catching up on their education.

For the first and only time, the Germans and I felt the same way about something. I was relieved, and so were they.

II

 

One Sunday afternoon, I was serving lunch to the family a little later than usual. The children had been complaining that they were hungry. In fact, they told me pointedly, they had already seen their friends pass the house on their way to Sunday School, whereas usually we had long finished eating before the Sunday School started.

I had a good excuse, however. Before the war a Dutch maid had once made croquettes as a meal for us, and we had liked them so much that when she left I asked her to let me have the recipe, which she did. So on this Sunday I was trying my hand for the first time at croquettes.  They took me a little longer than I had intended, but they seemed well worth the extra trouble, for as I carried them from the kitchen into the dining-room excited “oohs” and “aahs” arose from the children as they smelt and saw what I had prepared for them.

I was holding the tray, and Rachel was just about to serve her father with his plate, when suddenly a piercing whistle stung my ears and an explosion rocked the house. The tray went up in the air, the croquettes flew in all directions, plates hurtled off the table and crashed on the floor; and as I stood there stunned there came another whistle and explosion, and then another and another and another, each of them lessening in volume, until the last of the five explosions was away in the distance. An allied plane had dropped a salvo of bombs over Bussum; it was our first real contact with the war.

As we stood there numbed and shaking, our faces green, we heard shouting in the street as people poured out of their houses. I rushed out on the balcony.

“What has happened?” I called out.

A man hurrying by looked up. “The school’s been hit!” he shouted back.

Jonas and Jacob at once rushed out to see if they could help, and I waited, breathing a silent prayer for the safety of the children who were gathered there for the Sunday School.

My prayer had already been answered, for the bomb had missed the school and the children were safe. It fell on the principal’s house next door, killing his wife as she lay in her bath. The only other casualty in Bussum was a man who stuck his head out of the window to see where the first bomb had landed. The second bomb blew his head off.

We have never eaten croquettes from that day to this.

III

 

The bombing was the only serious incident of 1940, and it was not until the following year that our troubles really started with the German policy of vicious discrimination against the Jews.

One of our most frequent visitors and greatest friends those days was Rabbi Van Gelder, minister of the local synagogue and a brave and God-fearing man. In appearance he was entirely different from the conventional conception of a Jewish rabbi. He was not swarthy and bearded; he did not even look markedly Jewish. A small thin man with a sensitive lined face that was oddly and incongruously freckled, he had black hair close cropped in a style that would now be called a crew-cut. He was young too—in his thirties—and he was nervous in his manner and in his way of speaking. But he had no nerves when his work and his faith were concerned. A fine man indeed!

He would come into the store every day to chat about the situation with myself and Jonas, and although nothing serious had so far happened we were all too realistic to believe that the lull would last long. We knew how the Germans regarded the Jews. We could only wait.

Our waiting ended on the Tuesday night when Rabbi Van Gelder knocked at our door after the store had closed.  Jonas went down and admitted him. They came upstairs.

“It’s the rabbi,” called Jonas on their way up.

“Come in and welcome,” I called back warmly. “I’ll put some tea on.” I moved towards the kitchen, but stopped short as the men came into view. One look at the rabbi’s face told me that he was the bearer of bad news. He was pale and even more tense than usual.

“What is it?” I asked.

The rabbi took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. “We—we had better sit down. Yes, we must sit down. There is much to talk about—much.” His phrases were more staccato than ever, and his whole body moved restlessly as he spoke.

“The Germans?” I queried. He nodded jerkily. “Yes—yes. They have given us orders. For the Jewish people. It is not good. But it could be worse. Yes, it could be worse.”

“Tell us what has happened,” said Jonas as we sat down. “It had to come; we have been lucky so far.”

“Please God you will still be lucky,” commented the rabbi. “I am not happy—not at all happy—about the news I bring you. But it must be done.” He spread his hands expressively. “These are hard times. We must be brave—yes, brave. The Germans are now starting on us—on the Jews. We have expected that. It will get worse, but then it will get better. And when it gets worse, then remember this and take courage.” A light illuminated his tired eyes. “The Jews have always danced on the graves of their persecutors.” .

Jonas was getting impatient. He liked the rabbi very much, but the thin man’s nervousness and jerky nonstop movements heightened his own anxiety. “When the dancing comes, we will dance,” he commented. “For the moment, our persecutors are doing the dancing. What have you come to tell us?” The rabbi got down to business. “The Germans have ordered us to form a Joodserid (Jewish Committee),” he told us. “That is what they do in every town; they give orders to the Joodserid and the Joodserid has to pass them on to the Jewish community. And—and we are responsible for seeing that those orders are carried out—distasteful as they may be.”

“Who are the Joodserid in Bussum?” asked Jonas.

“Myself and the officials of the synagogue,” came the answer, and we nodded approvingly. These were men we knew and could trust. “What orders have they been given by the Germans?” I asked.

“First . . .” the rabbi swallowed nervously, “Jews must give up their radio sets. . .”

“Radio sets?” repeated Jonas. “That is not so bad. Who wants radio sets when all the radio gives you is a lot of German lies?”

The rabbi completed his sentence. “And you must also give up your bicycles.” “No, surely not!” Jonas stood up, his eyes wide and angry. “We need our bicycles—for our work and our pleasure. We do our deliveries of the flowers by bicycle . . . we go everywhere by bicycle. . .” He spluttered into silence.

I took up the argument where he had left off. “What do the (Germans think this is—Amsterdam, with buses and streetcars? Bicycles! That’s how we get about. On bicycles. We need them. They are like our legs.”

Rabbi Van Gelder gave a wry smile. “The Germans know that; they know that bicycles are a necessity to everybody in Holland. That is why they have taken our bicycles away. They told me—from now on, Jews can walk.”

There was a silence. “When do they want our radios and bicycles?” I asked.

“Now, tonight,” was the answer. “I have to send someone round to collect them.”

Jonas shrugged his shoulders. “In the concentration camps,” he said grimly, “they don’t have radios and bicycles either, so maybe we are lucky . . . if . . . if that is the worst they are doing to us.”

“It isn’t.” The rabbi’s voice was low and sad, and he was not looking at us but at Jacob, the only one of the children who was not yet in bed. Jacob had been studying his schoolbooks in the corner when the rabbi came in. He had been listening to the conversation, but he had said nothing.

The rabbi stood up and walked over to Jacob, putting his arm fondly on the boy’s shoulder. “You must be strong, Jacob,” he said, his voice low and kind. “The news that I have will affect you more than anyone.” He swallowed nervously, and I saw his knuckles go white as he gripped my son’s arm. When he spoke at last, his voice was so quiet and hoarse that we could not at first understand what he said. But Jacob understood. He went pale and stood up, a cry of disbelief rising in his throat.

“What is it? What is it?” I rushed over to him.

On the boy’s face was a look of agony. “Mama,” he gasped, “they will not let me go to school!”

“What?”

There were tears in the rabbi’s eyes as he turned towards me. “It is true,” he said slowly. “From today—now, this minute—Jewish children will not be allowed in the schools. That is the order.”

I could not believe it. “This is wicked,” my voice was trembling. “Do you mean to say our children will not get any education at all?”

He answered with a slow nod.

An anguished wail came from Jacob as he ran towards me. I pillowed his head in my arms and soothed him as he began to cry. “You go to bed,” I told him gently, “while we talk this over. Don’t worry, darling. Mama will think of something.”

He went out of the room, his shoulders shaking, and the moment the door closed, I began to talk, quickly and fiercely.

“They can’t do this to me,” I raved. “Jacob is a brilliant student; you know that, Rabbi. He has set his heart on being a doctor, and he will be a doctor, too. But how can he be a doctor if he can’t go to school and learn? For the other children, it is bad enough; but they are young, they will think it is just a holiday; but for Jacob it is terrible. What can we do, Rabbi? What can we do?”

He came over to me and took my hand sympathetically. “At the moment, Mrs. Veffer, we can do nothing. The Germans give the orders. We can only obey them.” “I will go to the Germans,” I burst out. “I will beg them .”

Jonas gave a harsh laugh. “You think they will listen?” he asked. His quiet voice pulled me up with a jerk. “Yes, you are right,” I agreed. Then I thought of something else. “I know what we will do.” The words came rapidly as my thoughts raced. “We will send the children out of town to some school where they are not known. Nobody will know they are Jewish. They don’t look Jewish; we will say they are not Jewish. Then they can learn.”

The rabbi sighed: “I wish it was as easy as that.”

When he came into the room, he had been carrying a little attaché case. He walked over to it now, opened it, took out a paper parcel and put it on the table as we watched. He untied the string slowly, and we saw that the parcel contained a number of pieces of material with the two interlaced triangles of the Star of David patterned on them. In the centre of the yellow star was the word Jood (Jew) in prominent black lettering.

“The Mogen Dovid?” queried Jonas, in surprise. “What are these for?”

“From now on,” answered the rabbi uncomfortably, “all Jews must wear them everywhere.”

“You mean we must pin them on our clothes?” I asked.

He shook his head. “They must be sewn firmly on every dress, coat or suit that you or Jonas or your children wear. That is the order.”

We said nothing. We just looked at the stars. We knew what they meant now. We were a marked race. Everywhere we went we would be recognized as Jews—and treated accordingly. Now I understood why the rabbi realized the impossibility of sending our children to a school out of town. The stars would tell the world they were Jews, and Jews could not go to school anywhere.

He gave us a number of the stars, sufficient for all our clothes, and then shamefacedly handed Jonas a plaque which, he told us, had to be put up in our store. It announced that ours was a Jewish store, and ordered people not to patronize it. Nor was that the end of the indignities, for we were also told that Jews would no longer be allowed in public places: theatres, movies, restaurants, sports arenas.

As we said good-night to the rabbi and watched him make his sad way into the street, we looked at the stars and knew quite clearly what they represented—the end of our freedom.

 

Chapter 4

 

From the moment we were ordered to wear our distinguishing stars we knew no more peace. We were labelled. We were targets. We were shunned. Even our friends kept away from us, not because they were anti-Semitic but because we were dangerous. We were a well-known family in Bussum and everybody knew us, but it was unwise to be seen talking to us. The star was a barrier now. It was unwise, too, to buy flowers from a Jewish store or to let your child be seen talking to a Jewish child. It was not forbidden, but it was unwise. And, from our point of view, it became so that we did not dare leave the house and venture into the streets. We were no longer safe. We were Jews.

This I found out on the very day after the rabbi had called on us. I had spent many miserable hours sewing the stars on to our clothing and, with the yellow insignia prominent on the lapel of my coat, I went out to do some shopping downtown.

I had just left the store and was walking along Stationsweg when a German soldier came towards me. By this time we had grown so accustomed to the presence of Germans in the streets that I took no notice of him, and I expected that he would show the same lack of interest in me. But I had forgotten the star.

As soon as his eyes lit on it, his expression changed. “You Jewish swine!” he roared. “Get off the sidewalk!”

I stood stunned at the fury of his words, and before I could gather my wits to get out of his way he rushed forward, grabbed me roughly by the shoulders and threw me heavily into the roadway.

“Jews are not allowed on the sidewalk!” he yelled at me, as I lay sprawled and dazed.

My husband, looking out of the store window, had seen the incident, and in a blind rage rushed out into the street. A man of great strength for all his small stature, Jonas would have killed the German with his bare hands on the spot; but, fortunately for all of us, our good neighbour Mrs. Boss saw him start running and thrust herself in his path, holding him forcibly as he struggled to break away. “For God’s sake get back into the house!” she shouted at him fiercely. “Let him go! If you touch him, you know what will happen.”

By the time Jonas had struggled loose the German had gone on his way, and when I tottered weakly back into the house the first thing I did was to thank Mrs. Boss for her good sense and courage. If Jonas had laid a hand on the German his own life and the lives of his whole family would have been forfeit.

I was in such a state of shock that the first thing Jonas did was to help me round the corner to the doctor who had attended our family for years. By this time Jewish families were no longer allowed to have a telephone, so it was impossible to call the doctor; we had to go to him.

We knew of old that the doctor had Fascist leanings, but this did not intrude on our relationship. He was a good doctor, and we respected his medical skill as much as we detested his political affiliations.

But when we reached the doctor’s office, Jonas opened the door for me and then, looking around inside, closed it again quickly before I could enter.

“Come away,” he said quietly. “This place is not for us.”

“What’s the matter? What is it?” I asked him weakly.

“The surgery is full of Fascists,” he answered. “NSB men. We can no longer use that doctor. We will find someone else.”

Tenderly he took me home, made me lie down, and then hurried out to find another doctor. He remembered that one of our best customers at the store was Dr. Martens, medical director of the Catholic Hospital, and it was to him that he went for help.

Dr. Martens came back with Jonas, gave me a sedative, and then came to see me frequently after that until I was completely recovered.

They say that out of evil comes good, and looking back on this part of my story I can certainly confirm the truth of the adage. For the evil German soldier led us coincidentally to Dr. Martens, a man who was to risk his own life over and over again for all of us in the grim days that lay ahead.

The stigma of the star was bad for all of us; but we faced up to the indignity, which was more than some other Jewish people could do. To our horror we heard stories every day of Jewish families which had committed suicide en masse rather than go through the ordeals portended by the stars. Some unhappy people could not face the horrors of the future.  We heard of friends of ours who had preferred to take this way out. The news made us sad and sick, but the thought of following their terrible example never occurred to us. Things were bad and we knew they would get worse, but with God’s help we were going to see them through.

First of the family to suffer from wearing the star was twelve-year-old Meyer. Ever since he could walk he had been an ardent follower of the neighbourhood soccer team. He was a good player, too, and he had looked forward to the day when he would be able to play for Bussum. It was his ambition. Jonas and I are also great sports fans, and every Sunday for years our favourite relaxation had been to go with Meyer to watch the Bussum team play its soccer games.

On this Sunday—the first Sunday after the rabbi handed us our stars—Meyer went off as usual to see his beloved team play. But he came home early, fighting back his tears.

“They wouldn’t let me into the ground,” he sobbed.

Jonas looked at him. His face was angry, and his blue eyes were blazing with indignation. “Why not?” he snapped.

“There was a Fascist inspector of police standing by the gate,” explained Meyer, his voice choking. “He saw my star and—and he threw me out. He said—he said—“ the poor boy’s mouth was working as he struggled to control himself—“he said: Jews are not allowed to watch soccer games.”

He broke down, and over the head of the weeping boy I looked across at Jonas. What senselessness was this, that a twelve-year-old boy, the same twelve-year-old boy who had gone to the soccer game every Sunday for years, should now be denied the right to enter the ground because he was a Jew? Under my breath I cursed the Germans and their quisling jackals.

Then it was the turn of Jonas himself to feel the full effect of wearing a star. It started one night when a surprise visitor descended upon us. It was younger brother, Abraham, who had cycled through the darkness from Amsterdam to bring Jonas some bad news. Their father was gravely ill and was dying.

Don’t ask me how Abraham procured a bicycle forbidden to the Jews and evaded the Germans on his ride from Amsterdam. I don’t know; I was too worried to enquire. All I know is that Abraham wasn’t wearing his star; that no doubt helped him accomplish the journey. Had he been caught, it would have made his offence and punishment all the worse.

As soon as Abraham had given us the bad news and rushed through a quick meal that I prepared for him, he disappeared into the night on his way back to Amsterdam, and it was arranged that Jonas should follow him there by the first train in the morning. .

I saw my husband catch the train next day, and I saw him return in very quick time, but I did not see what happened in the intervening hours.

“I suppose I should have taken off my star before I went,” Jonas told me later, “but you know me. In some things—physical things—I am brave but, when it comes to breaking the law, I am not strong. I do what I am told, even when the law is a bad one. So if a Jew must wear a star, I wear a star; that’s all there is to it.

“The journey to Amsterdam? It is quick. Nothing happens. Nobody talks to me. Nobody bothers me. I am worried about my father; I do not think of anything else.

“We get to Amsterdam. The train stops. I get out. You know the station at Amsterdam? You walk down the length of the train to the gates, and then you go out. So I am walking along, and the conductor is standing there, watching the people get on, because the train goes right back to Amersfoort, stopping at Bussum on the way. It is a local train; it does the journey many times there and back every day. The conductor knows me, he waves to me. I give him a weak smile—much I feel like smiling, believe me—when suddenly I feel a heavy hand on my shoulder and somebody pulls me round so roughly I nearly fall over. Then another hand pushes me. I stagger. I am pulled forward. I look up. Two German soldiers have me by the arms. They are big men and they are fierce and frightening.

“One of them says: ‘You dirty Jew, what are you doing here?’ I try to answer, but I am so frightened I cannot speak. I try to make words; nothing comes. The Germans push me again, and then hit me on the head. The other one shouts: ‘Answer, when you’re spoken to—or you know what will happen.’ Then the first one laughs and says: ‘If you want to go by train, we’ll put you on a train—to a concentration camp.’ They both think this is a big joke, and they push and hit me some more, and one of them says: ‘If you want to go anywhere, you walk.’

“I am so frightened now, I can hardly stand. I was smoking a pipe when I came out of the train, but it fell out of my mouth and rolled on to the track. So they shout at me, and every time I try to speak they shout some more, and then they hit me and hit me because they say I am not speaking.

“I am near to fainting. I do not know what to do. They laugh at me, they hurt me, they shout at me. This is good sport for them. Then, when everything is beginning to swim in front of my eyes, and I can hardly see, I hear a new voice. I look up, and there is a German officer. He says: ‘What is going on? What is all the fuss about?’ One of the soldiers tells him that I am a Jew and I am on the train, and Jews should walk.

“The officer looks at me. ‘How old are you?’ he asks me. I tell him: ‘Forty-one.’ One of the soldiers says, ‘He is lying. He is younger than that. We could use him in the labour camps.’ The officer says: ‘Let me see your identity card, Jew.’ My hands are trembling so much I can hardly bring it out of my pocket, and the Germans are all laughing while I fumble. One of the soldiers grabs me and takes the card out of my pocket, then they all look at it, the card with the big black ‘J’ printed right over it.

“I feel like I am the prisoner in the dock and they are the judges. Only seconds pass, but it is like hours. Then the officer closes the card, pushes it back at me and says: ‘He is too old; he couldn’t work hard enough. We only want men under forty. Let the swine go.’

“He walks away, but the soldiers have not finished with me yet. They are not going to let me go, that I can see. They are going to try to provoke me into starting a fight or doing something silly. They come towards me and begin to call me names and abuse me. Then I hear a voice behind me shouting: ‘Quick, get back on the train!’ It is the conductor. He has been watching the scene, and he has been holding the train up specially. As I turn round and scramble on my knees into a carriage, he blows his whistle, waves his green flag and the train moves slowly off—back to Bussum and safety. I do not dare look round, but I can still hear the German soldiers shouting as we leave the station.”

When he returned home Jonas was in such a state of shock that Dr. Martens had to keep him under sedation for several days. We never saw that train-conductor again, but we shall always bless his quick-witted friendliness. Had he not held up the train as he did, and had he not shouted to Jonas to board it, we all know for sure that those German Jew-baiters would have found an excuse to take my husband into custody. And do you have to be told what happened to Jews whom the Germans took “into custody”?

We heard plenty on that grim subject from members of the Joodserid who came to visit us. They told us that the Germans in Amsterdam were raiding Jewish homes and picking Jewish people up on the streets to herd them all into ghettos. The object of the ghettos was to serve as a collecting centre for the labour camps, where all Jewish men between the ages of sixteen and forty were being pressed into slave-service. There were even rumours at one time that the Jewish people from Bussum and other small towns were to be sent to the Amsterdam ghettos, but fortunately nothing happened.

In this atmosphere of uncertainty and fear the Joodserid relayed to us a message they had received from Amsterdam: my husband’s father had died. How can I express the grief and anxiety that overwhelmed Jonas at this news? His four brothers were all under forty years of age, and he knew that none of them would dare venture out into the open to risk being picked up by the Germans. So who would attend his father’s funeral? Who would say the prayers at the graveside? For a Jewish father to be buried without the presence of any of his sons was unthinkable, and my poor husband racked his brains and worried himself sick.

Finally he decided to travel to Amsterdam and attend the funeral. In view of what had happened on his last trip to Amsterdam, this decision required courage of the highest order, but Jonas was spurred on by a filial affection that transcended all other considerations. He told the story in these words: “After what had happened on the railway station at Amsterdam, I had been so frightened that I was afraid to leave the house. So now I was going back to Amsterdam again. If you are Jewish and an eldest son, you will understand why I had to go; if you are not Jewish, please believe me that it is something more than duty. It is a sacred and a solemn pledge.

“This time nothing happened at the station. My knees were knocking as I walked off the train, and I think that if anybody had spoken to me I would have fainted. But so far I was safe. I took a taxi and went to my father’s house at Nw Uilenburgerstraat. The street was blocked off by a line of soldiers, and as I watched I saw them grabbing passers-by and putting them into trucks. The Germans were raiding the street. As I leaned out of the taxi a man passing by saw the star on my coat and said: ‘Go back. They’re looking for Jews. You’re in danger.’ So I told the taxi-driver to take me to the Jewish cemetery. There l waited for hours, praying that the funeral director would be allowed to bring the body there. My prayers were answered. The burial took place. Nobody was there at the graveside of my father but me. Out of his seven children, only I stood by his coffin. All the way back to Bussum, I cried.”

Now the tension was mounting and the anxiety increasing, As the Germans took more and more Jews into slave-labour and the concentration camps, we knew it was only a question of time before they turned their attention to Bussum. We lived in mounting fear.

And it was at this time that I made the first of the strange decisions that were to affect the lives of my whole family.

Rabbi Van Gelder called on us late one evening. He was nervous and restless, as always, but it was soon apparent that he was not tense but excited. His feet were hardly inside our living-room door when he started to speak.

“I have good news for you,” he said quickly. “You are going away.”

“Away?” I echoed. “Where?”

“To England. To freedom. You will be safe there.”

My husband was so excited he sat down on a chair with a thud, as if his legs had turned weak. “This is wonderful,” he gasped. “How are we going? What has happened? Quick—tell me!”

The rabbi smiled at his eagerness. “Listen carefully,” he enjoined us. “You know the underground movement?” We nodded. We had heard of it, but at that time we had had no experience of its operations. All we knew was that brave, loyal Dutch people were risking their lives in the fight against the Germans. Who they were, and what they did, we did not know.

“Well,” he went on, “they have been in touch with the outside, and there is a ship standing by at Ymuiden, ready to take off Jewish families for England. Some other families from Bussum are already on their way. I want you to collect your children and as little luggage as possible, and go—tonight.”

My husband was elated at the news. He jumped up, woke the sleeping children, and told them what had happened. He grabbed sleepy Rachel round the waist and they danced round the room while the other children rubbed their eyes and then began to chatter like little monkeys.

In this scene of frenzied excitement I felt cold. As if from a distance, I listened to the rabbi giving us our instructions—how someone was coming to the house whom we were to follow; how we would be taken to Ymuiden, and what we should do when we got there.  I heard his voice dimly, as though the ears that were listening were not mine. There was an inner voice that had all my attention; it did not speak words, just transmitted an emotion; and that emotion was of blind, unreasoning fear.

I jumped to my feet. I spoke words and I knew what I was saying, but they did not come of my own volition. It was as if somebody else was talking through my mouth. I said loudly: “Go back to bed, children. We are staying here.”

One moment there was noise; the next, silence. They all turned to look at me, their jaws dropping in disbelief. Then they all began to plead and expostulate. Jonas silenced them. He came towards me.

“What is this, Sara?” he said coldly. “Did I hear you right?”

Again the inner voice replied. “Yes. We are not going.”

“But why not? What makes you say such a thing? You know we are in danger here. Soon the Germans will be picking us up.” The rabbi nodded approvingly at Jonas’s words. “And here you have a chance to escape,” he added. “The ship is all ready to take you to England, where the Queen has gone. You will be safe there. You must go.”

I looked at him very searchingly. “Are you going, Rabbi?” I asked him.

He shook his head.

“Why not?” I persisted.

“My place is here,” he answered simply.

“So is ours,” I told him firmly. “Don’t ask me what reasons I have, because I do not know them, but all I do know is that it is right to stay here, and it is wrong to go.”

And from this stand nothing would shake me. They argued with me for hours; the children cried and pleaded; but I refused to give way or yield in the slightest. I knew with an instinct greater than all reason, deeper than all logic, that what I was doing was right, and I was adamant.

When I have a strong instinctive feeling to do something, I do it. I cannot explain why, and I will continue to do it even when my reason tells me I am doing the wrong thing. On this night I was sure, certain, I was positive. I would not budge; and the rabbi at last went away sadly.

Jonas and the children did not forgive me for many days; they felt that l had denied them the chance of safety and freedom through sheer obstinacy. I was not worried; I knew I had done the right thing.

And they knew it, too, when the rabbi called some weeks later and broke the news to us that the ship that sailed from Ymuiden for England had been torpedoed in the North Sea, and that all those aboard her had been drowned.

As I said before, it was not I who made the decision, it was not I who spoke; and when we thanked God for this, the first of our deliverances, we were thanking the One who had put the words in my mouth and given me the strength to stand by them.

 

Chapter 5

The war was now well into its second year, but we knew nothing of the history that was being made in the world around us. Our radios had been confiscated, our telephones disconnected, and our newspapers were printing nothing but the most blatant pro-German propaganda, so we were virtually cut off from any sources of constant or reliable news. All we ever heard were rumours, most of them grim and most of them true.

We heard all about the Germans raiding Jewish houses in Amsterdam and picking up eligible Jewish men for slave-labour. Frequent rumours suggested that they would shortly be starting the same operations in Bussum; but fortunately nothing came of it.

Food was getting scarce and rations were being severely cut; that was not a rumour, it was a fact. Food produced in Holland was being sent to Germany or finding its way into the Black Market; the people were getting less and less of it. From Amsterdam we heard that Jewish houses were being looted, first by the Germans for their furnishings and other contents, and then by the populace for the wood. Fuel was getting scarce and wood was becoming precious. The beams of a house, the boards and the ceiling-struts— these were all being pulled out and taken away to feed the fires.

For the moment, though, we were safe in Bussum. Reasonably safe, that is. Now that the novelty of the stars had worn off, we found ourselves being warily accepted back into the life of the small community. Our business was not good; but what business flourished in such times? Somehow we made a bare living. People still came into our store occasionally to buy flowers, and we hid all the money we made. Our money in the bank had long ago been taken over by the Germans. All we had was the cash we kept and hid.

As I say, we were reasonably safe in Bussum. But what of our families in Amsterdam? We heard nothing from them for a long time. The news that filtered out to us was general, not specific, and nobody could tell us if our relatives were well or even alive.

The anxiety and uncertainty were so great that there was only one thing I could docwood was becoming precious. The beams of a house, the boards and the ceiling-struts—these were all being pulled out and taken away to feed the fires.

For the moment, though, we were safe in Bussum. Reasonably safe, that is. Now that the novelty of the stars had worn off, we found ourselves being warily accepted back into the life of the small community. Our business was not good; but what business flourished in such times? Somehow we made a bare living. People still came into our store occasionally to buy flowers, and we hid all the money we made. Our money in the bank had long ago been taken over by the Germans. All we had was the cash we kept and hid.

As I say, we were reasonably safe in Bussum. But what of our families in Amsterdam? We heard nothing from them for a long time. The news that filtered out to us was general, not specific, and nobody could tell us if our relatives were well or even alive.

The anxiety and uncertainty were so great that there was only one thing I could do—go to Amsterdam to find out for myself how my people and those of Jonas were faring. I write this paragraph calmly and factually, but consider what it implies. More and more restrictions were being placed on travelling, and Jews in the street were in danger. To go to Amsterdam at this time was to face peril. But what else could I do? I had to know what was happening. If things were bad there, maybe I could help.

Although I ignored the danger, I did not discount it, so I took the precaution of removing my star. My appearance is dark and Dutch. I am not particularly Jewish-looking; and, even though I well knew the consequences of being caught without my star, I felt the risk was worth taking.

How right I was!

My first call was at the apartment of my sister-in-law and brother-in-law. They lived just round the corner from the home of Jonas’s late father. As my brother-in-law was only twenty-eight and a strong, fit man, I felt that he was in the greatest danger of being taken away by the Germans, so I went to him first.

They gave me a warm and tearful welcome. They were worried out of their wits, and asked me what they should do. “You must come away with me—at once,” I told them. “You mean—to Bussum?” They both spoke together. “Yes. It is safer there than here. They will pick you up for sure if you stay.”

They agreed dolefully but explained that they had been afraid to put their noses out of the door.

“I understand,” I said. “But you don’t have to worry. Let us go now, and when I have put you on the train I will come back and gather together the rest of the family. But you must hurry.”

“I will go and pack some things,” said my sister-in-law and rushed “As little as possible,” I called after her. “I can come back for more later.”

In a few moments they were ready. She went down the stairs first. I followed her. My brother-in-law followed behind me; We went down one flight of stairs, and were just turning to go down the second flight leading to the street when I heard. a muttered exclamation from behind me. I looked around.

“What are you stopping for?” I asked him.

“I’ve forgotten something,” he told me quickly. just go back for it. I won’t be a moment.” “What is _so important?” I asked him angrily. “We have little time. We must hurry.”

“Butter.” His voice came down to me as he ran up the stairs. He leaned over the banisters and explained. “Today we got a pound of butter. It is like gold. I will get it.” My sister-in-law and I made our way down to the street. It was deserted. I did not like the look of it. I told her to run to the railroad depot and wait for us there; we would follow. She protested at first, but I was in no mood for argument; I made her go. And then, as she disappeared round the corner, I saw a sight that froze my blood. Into the street marched a group of German soldiers. They halted, broke ranks‘ and began to run into the houses on both sides. They were searching for Jews . . . and my brother-in-law was still inside.go to Amsterdam to find out for myself how my people and those of Jonas were faring. I write this paragraph calmly and factually, but consider what it implies. More and more restrictions were being placed on travelling, and Jews in the street were in danger. To go to Amsterdam at this time was to face peril. But what else could I do? I had to know what was happening. If things were bad there, maybe I could help.

Although I ignored the danger, I did not discount it, so I took the precaution of removing my star. My appearance is dark and Dutch. I am not particularly Jewish-looking; and, even though I well knew the consequences of being caught without my star, I felt the risk was worth taking. .

How right I was!

My first call was at the apartment of my sister-in-law and brother-in-law. They lived just round the corner from the home of Jonas’s late father. As my brother-in-law was only twenty-eight and a strong, fit man, I felt that he was in the greatest danger of being taken away by the Germans, so I went to him first.

They gave me a warm and tearful welcome. They were worried out of their wits, and asked me what they should do.

“You must come away with me—at once,” I told them.

“You mean—to Bussum?” They both spoke together.

“Yes. It is safer there than here. They will pick you up for sure if you stay.”

They agreed dolefully but explained that they had been afraid to put their noses out of the door.

“I understand,” I said. “But you don’t have to worry. Let us go now, and when I have put you on the train I will come back and gather together the rest of the family. But you must hurry.”

“I will go and pack some things,” said my sister-in-law and rushed off.

“As little as possible,” I called after her. “I can come back for more later.”

In a few moments they were ready. She went down the stairs first. I followed her. My brother-in-law followed behind me. We went down one flight of stairs, and were just turning to go down the second flight leading to the street when I heard a muttered exclamation from behind me. I looked around.

“What are you stopping for?” I asked him.

“I’ve forgotten something,” he told me quickly. “I’ll just go back for it. I won’t be a moment.”

“What is so important?” I asked him angrily. “We have little time. We must hurry.”

“Butter.” His voice came down to me as he ran up the stairs. He leaned over the banisters and explained. “Today we got a pound of butter. It is like gold. I will get it.”

My sister-in-law and I made our way down to the street. It was deserted. I did not like the look of it. I told her to run to the railroad depot and wait for us there; we would follow. She protested at first, but I was in no mood for argument; I made her go.

And then, as she disappeared round the corner, I saw a sight that froze my blood. Into the street marched a group of German soldiers. They halted, broke ranks and began to run into the houses on both sides. They were searching for Jews . . . and my brother-in-law was still inside.

I stood turned to stone. I could not move. I did not know what to do. As in a nightmare, I saw a German soldier stare at me from across the road and then come over to me.

“What are you doing here?” he asked gruffly. “This street is closed.”

I forced myself to speak. “I—I did not know,” I said, my throat dry and hoarse. “I am a stranger here.”

“Where do you live?” he asked me.

“Bussum,” I replied, and before he could ask for my identity card and so find out that I was Jewish I fumbled in my purse with trembling fingers and took out the return half of my train-ticket. That seemed to satisfy him.

“Get off the street,” he commanded. “This is no street for you. Only Jews live here.”

The German soldiers were by now spread all over the road, and were moving in and out of the houses, dragging frightened men with them. It was a terrible sight.

The German talking to me seemed to be in charge of the grim operations, for he called a soldier over and told him to guide me out of the street.

I thanked him but told him it was not necessary. I felt that if I were able to move about I might stand some slender chance of helping my trapped relative to escape but with a German soldier at my side it would be hopeless. But the Germans took no notice of what I said; the soldier grabbed me by the arm and began to lead me away.

As I walked slowly, my feet dragging and my knees shaking, I kept looking backwards over my shoulder to see what was happening. And then the moment I was dreading arrived. I saw two soldiers come out of his house with my brother-in-law between them. They were pulling him and he was struggling. I saw one of them hit him across the face and he stopped struggling. Then they dragged him over to a wall and made him line up with the other men standing there. They made them all turn round and face the wall, their hands high above their heads. I saw all this through my tears.

We never saw him again.

A life thrown away for a pound of butter.

Bad news now followed thick and fast. Two of my own brothers were picked up by the Germans in Amsterdam—Samuel, the youngest of the family, aged only twenty-four, and Abraham, the thirty-two-year-old. I thought I would go out of my mind when the Joodserid passed on this news to me. My brothers. The war was coming much closer to us now.

My thoughts immediately turned to my mother. Somebody would have to tell her, and stay with her in her distress. I went to Amsterdam again.

My mother was a changed woman when I came to see her. Formerly stout, dark and active, she had shrunk and grown very old with tragic suddenness. Nobody had told her what had happened to Samuel and Abraham, but she knew that there was something wrong, for the two boys used to visit her every day without exception, and now their visits had ceased.

I tried to be strong as I assured her that they had only been taken away temporarily for questioning and would soon be released, but the lie stuck in my throat. That she did not believe me was obvious, but she said nothing. She just sat, shrivelled and pale, in a seat by the window, looking out on to the street, waiting for the sight of her sons. My heart cried out to her in her sorrow, but there was little I could do to comfort her. When I spoke to her, she did not answer or even show any sign that she had heard me. She would not eat and she would not go to bed. All day and all night she maintained her despairing vigil, while I watched her and fought back my tears of grief and helplessness.

It was impossible to leave her alone in that state, so I stayed on a few days, vainly trying to coax her to talk, to eat, to sleep. She never looked at me. She never looked away from the window. Her eyes were blank and dulled. Her face never changed its set, tense expression. Her body never relaxed.

I did not dare admit even to myself what was happening to my mother, but there came a night when I could hide the realization no longer.

I had fallen asleep out of sheer exhaustion on the sofa, when my sleep was shattered by piercing screams. I leaped up trembling, my fatigued mind swirling under the shock and, as I fought to steady myself, I realized that my mother was not in her chair. She was not in the room. The screams were coming from the bathroom along the passage, and it was she who was screaming.

I dragged myself to the bathroom on legs that would hardly carry me, and the sight that greeted me is engraved on my mind forever.

My mother lay on the floor, writhing in agony, screaming and moaning. Her face was contorted in ghastly suffering. By her side lay a bottle of disinfectant. It was almost empty.

I do not remember running for the doctor, but I am told that I screamed as I ran.

When I came back with him, he forced an antidote down her throat, gave her an injection to ease the pain of the poison, and worked over her with a speed and a skill that were almost superhuman. Then, when he was satisfied that he had counteracted the deadly effects of the disinfectant, he talked to me.

“I suppose you know what has happened?” he asked in a quiet voice.

I could only nod.

“Your mother’s mind has gone. She is mentally deranged. What has caused this?”

I told him about my two brothers, and I saw him clench his jaw grimly as he listened. Under his breath, he muttered: “Those Germans!” The words in themselves were harmless enough, but the way he said them was a curse.

“We shall have to take her away immediately,” he went on, kindly.

“You mean . . . to a . . . a . . .?” I could not get the words out.

He finished the sentence for me. “To an institution for the insane. There is the Jewish Mental Home at Utrecht. They can look after her there. She will be taken good care of.”

That same night they took her to Utrecht, and somehow I made my way like an automaton back to Bussum.

Later I went out to visit her at Utrecht. To hide my star during the journey I carried a big bouquet of flowers which I kept pressed to my bosom, and when the train drew into Bussum Station I was about to enter a compartment when a German officer stopped me.

“You cannot go in there,” he told me gruffly. “It is reserved for Jews going to the concentration camp.”

I began to walk along to the next compartment, when a cold feeling down my spine made me glance back. There were German guards looking out of the window of the reserved carriage, and behind them I caught a shadowy glimpse of two haggard faces staring at me. I choked back a cry. In that instant, in that suspended moment of time that held the emotions of eternity, I recognized my two brothers Samuel and Abraham. They were pale and thin. They had grown beards. Their expression was sad and still and hopeless. My brothers! On their way to a concentration camp.

They saw me. For that split second, they saw me, and our eyes met and our hearts mingled. Then the Germans moved in front of them, and they were gone from my sight . . . forever.

I left the train and stood on the platform as it steamed out, hoping and praying that I might see them again. But in vain.

When on the next day I had recovered sufficiently to complete my journey to Utrecht, my mother did not know me. She did not know anybody. The strain of her suffering had snapped the last slender link of her sanity. She was completely deranged.

Hoping against hope that she might ultimately recognize me, I travelled to Utrecht again a few weeks later, but the institution was closed. The Germans had an efficiently simple way of dealing with the mentally ill. They killed them all.

 

Chapter 6

 

When the store-bell tinkled on that day in January, 1942, I not realize that the door was opening on destiny. All I knew at the time was that Jonas was away, that I was busy in the kitchen with my household chores, and that a customer needed attention in the shop downstairs. As I came down the steps, I saw the figures of two German officers. All I could do was pray that they had come to the store on no more serious mission than that of buying flowers.

I walked down and stood silently in front of them. If they needed attention I would serve them, but I did not have to talk to them. I stood facing the big window on to the street; they stood with their back to it; and as I waited for them to start talking the smaller of the two Germans grabbed me by the shoulders and swung me round so that my back was to the street.

“What is the meaning of this?” I burst out angrily, shaking myself free, and then my annoyance caught in my throat and was succeeded by varying emotions of doubt, disbelief, stupefaction and finally amazement so strong that my knees went weak and I almost fell. For I recognized the German. It could not be, and yet . . . and yet it was. Standing there tall and fierce, in the uniform of a German officer, was my brother Judah.

I did not know what to do. Did the other man know who he really was, or would I be sending him to certain death if I acknowledged him? I stood there stunned, and into Judah’s eyes there came that twinkle that I knew so well right back to the time when we played together as children. But he did not relax his expression, for passers-by might look into the store—and a smiling German in a shop was suspicious enough be reported.

Speaking quietly and almost without moving his lips, Judah said: “Keep calm, Sara; it’s me—your brother Judah. I got this uniform in Belgium. Pretend to serve us with some flowers and I will talk to you.”

My hands were trembling as I made up a bunch of ill-assorted blooms—any blooms, the nearest blooms. I didn’t know what I was doing.

Judah went on talking quietly. “Listen carefully,” he said. “We cannot stay here long. Are you all right?”

I managed to answer, “Yes. We are all right . . . but . . . but we are worried. Should we go upstairs and talk?”

“No,” he answered quickly. “That’s all they want here—to see you taking German officers upstairs. For God’s sake try to act naturally.”

I pulled myself together and busied myself with the flowers. “How did you get the uniform?” I asked under my breath. “How did you get here?”

“Don’t ask any questions,” my brother answered. “We are all in danger, and I dare not spend too much time here. Tell me about the family—quickly.”

I told him about our mother and our brothers. His eyes clouded, but his face showed no other emotion. Dark, tall and strong-looking, he kept up the role he was playing.

He made no comment on the sad news I gave him, although I knew him well enough to know that he was crying inside. He said: “I have come to bring you a friend.” His eyes flickered towards his companion, a blond good-looking man, even taller than Judah, and very erect and Germanic in build and carriage. “Do not be afraid. He will help you.”

“A German will help me?” I burst out.

For a quick moment, the blond man smiled. He spoke to me in Dutch, and I knew at once that no German could ever speak Dutch like that. This man was a native Dutchman. “My name is Ver Heyen,” he said rapidly. “I work for the Dutch underground. The Germans think I am a quisling; so much the better. I will help you. Do not be afraid. In the dark I will come to you and we will work everything out together.”

As the questions formed on my lips, Judah broke in. “You can trust him as you would trust me,” he told me. “We must go now. Give us the flowers. I will give you some money; you will need it.”

I wrapped up the flowers and handed them to him, and he pressed a number of guilders into my hand, enough money to pay for the flowers fifty times over. Then they clicked their heels and went out. As they passed me, Judah made a quick gesture with his hand. He pressed my shoulder. It was the only mark of tenderness he dared allow himself.

The following night Ver Heyen called on us under cover of darkness. A curfew was now in operation for the town, and no citizen was allowed on the streets after eight o’clock at night, but Ver Heyen’s uniform permitted him to walk about anywhere at any time. From then on, he became our friend and ally.

About my brother Judah he could not tell us too much. He had met him through the underground, whom Judah had contacted when he left his home in Antwerp to come to me. How my brother obtained his German uniform, and what dangers he endured every moment that he wore it—these were matters that Ver Heyen could not tell us about, for he did not know. What is more, Judah has never opened his mouth on this subject from that day to this. As a boy and a young man Judah was always fearless and mischievous; it was natural that he should grow up the same way.

The first thing Ver Heyen told us was that pressure was being applied on Jews in all directions by the Germans. “You must be prepared for more and more unpleasantness,” he said grimly. “That is why I am here—to help you in whatever may happen.”

Jonas asked him sadly: “What exactly is going on in this mad world?” Ver Heyen raised his eyebrows in a query, and Jonas explained. “We have lived in this town for many years. We are friends with everybody. We have done no harm to anybody, and yet—just because we are are Jews—we are being made to suffer. Why do the Germans do that? It seems so unnecessary, so useless. They have a war to fight; let them get on with it. Why waste their time and their energy fighting another war against the Jews? I don’t understand it.”

“You know what Hitler thinks of the Jews,” answered Ver Heyen sadly. “He has an insane obsession about them. He thinks they are the cause of all the trouble in this world. You know why you can’t understand it? Because it is just not understandable to sane people, that’s why.”

“So what is he going to do with us all?” asked Jonas.

“This is the plan. First of all, the ghettos He has herded all the Jews he can find into special places so he can lay his hands on them when he wants them. Then, he has collected all the Jewish men between the ages of sixteen and forty and sent them to Poland and other places where they can work in the slave labour camps. Now the supply is running out, so he is taking all Jewish men of any age. That is why you and your family are in growing danger.”

“But the children,” I interjected fearfully. “They are young. Surely the Germans would not harm the children?”

“We must be realistic,” came the answer. “You have a family of five boys, each one of them a potential father, destined to bring more Jewish children into the world. That is the way Hitler looks at it. That is why families are being taken to the concentration camps and put in gas-chambers—yes, gas-chambers. He wants the Jews done away with, not only this generation but the generations to come. Hitler is mad, and he has infected the German nation with his madness. That is all there is to it.”

We thought this over. “You think we are in for more trouble?” I asked him.

He nodded. “You know the saying, ‘Things will get worse before they get better’? Well, you must be prepared. That is all we can do at the moment. Be prepared for anything.”

His warning was well-founded, for on the following morning, when my husband went down to open the store, he found that the window had been disfigured by a huge, white-painted Star of David, with the word JOOD in big letters. He called me down, and together we went outside. There on the sidewalk the same star and word had been crudely daubed in white paint.

We began to clean up the mess, when Dutch quislings swaggered up smiling in their black uniforms. They were an oddly-assorted couple—Simono, a seventeen-year-old tall dark-haired lout, and Moses, a middle-aged bald-headed man. They went everywhere together, and were as unpopular with the rest of the townspeople as they were with us.

When they saw my husband busy with his mop, they stopped him. “You leave that notice alone,” shouted Moses. “Nobody must enter a Jew’s store, so we have put you out of business.” They both laughed at this. Jonas argued with them, and a silent crowd began to collect. In the middle of the shouting, a policeman bustled his way on to the scene, listened to what the quislings and Jonas had to say, and then gave his decision: “There is no order that says Jewish stores must be disfigured. You can clean the paint off.”

Before my husband and I again got busy with our mops, a local photographer took a picture of the bedaubed window, and we have it to this day.

The quislings made no secret of their annoyance at the policeman’s ruling, and walked about shouting insults and threats at us. The policeman (whom we knew from before the war) stayed by while the cleaning-up operations were in progress, just to make sure that the quislings did not stop us or molest us in any way. This annoyed them both even more, but what annoyed them most of all was the way that their action recoiled on their own shoulders.

The branding of our store was supposed to keep the townspeople away from us, but it had exactly the opposite effect. The townspeople took this as a golden opportunity to let the quislings know exactly what they thought of them, and they expressed their fierce disapproval of the daubing in the way that they knew would infuriate Simono, Moses and their fellows most: they descended on our store and bought up every flower, every vase and every decoration we had to sell. It was the best day’s business we ever did in all our many years as florists, and I was never more proud of my Dutch neighbours than I was on that day when they cocked a snook at the quislings and supported the Jews to the limit. It was a heartwarming experience, and I shall never forget the consternation and anger on the faces of Simono and Moses as they saw lines and lines of people patronizing the “forbidden” store.

But the quislings did not give up easily. Next morning, Simono strutted into the store soon as Jonas had opened up. Jonas and I came down together, and when I saw the young hooligan I had to restrain myself from setting on him and scratching his smug face.

“Hey, Jew,” he shouted when he saw us. “What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to carry on business any more. Close the store at once!”

I went right up to the boy and held my face close to his. My expression must have frightened him, for he backed away. It was just as well he did. I was mad with rage.

“Get out of here,” I snapped at him. “You have no right to tell us what to do. We take orders from the Germans, not from their boot-lickers.”

I thought he would hit me, but Jonas came up quickly and stood by me. The boy turned on his heel and went out angrily, but we both knew that he would be back, and that next time we would not get off so easily.

That night we told our friend Ver Heyen about the incidents of the day. We all realized that such freedom as we had would soon be taken from us. For the first time in two years the word “hiding” came into our conversation as a tangible possibility. So far, with that unreasonable optimism that keeps human beings alive, we had thought of it as something “that could never happen to us”. We had heard that Jewish people had gone into hiding, but “we were different”. Now we were the same as everybody else, frightened for our lives.

“The acute danger has not yet reached Bussum,” Ver Heyen told us. “It will come here, and we must be prepared for it. At the moment, though, the real trouble spot is Amsterdam. The Germans are concentrating their activities against the Jews in that city, and no one is safe. You have members of your family there?”

Jonas and I nodded.

“Then we must bring them to Bussum. This is my plan.”

Ver Heyen leaned forward and spoke crisply. He was a brave man with an air of authority that enabled him to keep up his dangerous pretence with the Germans, and we knew we could trust him to the hilt. “I have my eye on a big villa just out of town here. My wife and I are going to rent it, and we will hide your relatives there.”

In the midst of our anxiety, I could not resist smiling. Could a more foolproof hiding-place ever be thought of for a Jewish family than the house of a German

Then a more sobering thought struck me. “How are we going to get them out of Amsterdam?” I asked anxiously. “We are not allowed to travel on trains any more, and we would have to search in Amsterdam, because we do not know where some of them are now living.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Ver Heyen assured me. “You think I am the only person in Holland who is working for the Jews and against the Germans? The underground has a network throughout the country. We will pass the message on to Amsterdam, and they will look for your relatives. Then, when they have found them, they will pass the message back to Bussum, and the local underground workers will take it from there.”

It seemed too good to be true, but Ver Heyen was quite serious and quite confident.

‘‘What about us, though?” I asked him. “Are we safe to stay here? Or shall we go into hiding, too?”

“At the moment,” he answered, “the Germans are not bothering about Bussum, so you can stay where you are. But that situation is likely to change at anytime, and I can only hope that it will be possible to give you some advance warning. You are a big family, and it is difficult to move all of you, so I am going to suggest that we hide three of your children.”

It was like putting a knife in my heart when he spoke those words. “How do you mean?” I asked him anxiously.

“There are two doctors in this town who are ready to help,” he explained. “One of them is the doctor who is looking after you, Dr. Martens. As you know, he is the Medical Director of the Majjella Stigting [Catholic Hospital] and he is a good friend of yours. The other is Dr. Boon, of the Diaconesse [Protestant Hospital]. You know him too, I believe?”

We did. Dr. Boon was a good customer of ours. He was not Jewish himself, but he was married to a Jewish woman, and a very friendly and pleasant man in his early thirties.

“I have spoken to both of them,” went on Ver Heyen, “and this is what they have agreed to do. Between them, they will take three of your boys into their hospitals.”

“How is that possible?” asked Jonas. “They are not sick.”

“Everything is possible in these times,” said our friend with a grin. “Of course, your boys are not sick—but they will be, according to the records.”

“False entries?” I asked.

“Exactly. False names, false ailments. The doctors will do this.”

“Can we visit them?”

“That can be arranged. But only at night. It will mean defying the curfew. But that is up to you.”

So our three youngest boys were smuggled into hospital—Joseph and Judah into the Catholic Hospital, and Abraham into the Protestant institution. It was a wrench to part with them, but we all knew that it was a necessary safety measure, and when they were gone I must confess that it was a relief to all of us. Now Jonas and I had only three children with us—Jacob, Rachel and Meyer—to worry about; the other three were safe and being well looked after.

True to his word, that marvellous man Ver Heyen rented the villa he had told us about. It was a spacious house in Willemslaan, big enough for many people. And on our behalf the underground workers began rounding up our relatives in Amsterdam and bringing them to Bussum. Only a pathetic handful remained—two of Jonas’s sisters, my brother-in-law Levi, and my six-year-old nephew Loeki.

This news struck horror into our hearts; but additional information brought us a little relief later on, when we learned that my brother Judah—still impersonating a German officer—had smuggled some of our other relatives to his home in Antwerp, where they were safe. This accounted for two of my sisters, Rebecca and Marianna; Marianna’s husband, Joseph, who was my husband’s brother, and their two children, Mourits and Jacob, aged one year and five years respectively.

Then, still later, we learned that Dora, the wife of my young brother Samuel (whom I had last seen in the train on his way to the concentration camp) was still alive in Amsterdam with her six-months-old baby, Rachel. So they were brought out and added to the contingent hiding in Ver Heyen’s house, which also ultimately included my sister Deborah, her husband Herman, and their little son Harry.

Thanks to the amazing underground organization, all these people were issued with ration cards bearing false names and with money, They did not dare venture outside, but they could have food bought and brought into them.

As for us, we continued to live as normal a life as we could. Food was now getting scarce for the whole community, and Jewish people were facing a particularly trying time because a new German edict only allowed them to do their shopping after five o’clock in the afternoon. There was little enough food in the stores at any time, and most of it had gone before five p.m.

Despite these trials, we had more peace of mind than we had had for several months. Three of our children and our remaining relatives were safe. That was something to thank God for in those times.

Defying the curfew, we visited our two youngest children at the Catholic Hospital, but we were warned not to try to visit Abraham as the Germans were very active around the Protestant Hospital. We also made frequent nocturnal visits to the house at Willemslaan, and I shall never forget the ironic scene that greeted us every time the front door was opened for us. There, in the house harbouring so many Jewish refugees, we were greeted by an enormous picture of Adolf Hitler in the hallway; and, just to heighten the desired affect, a German greatcoat hung permanently on the coat-rack.

That wonderful man, Ver Heyen, pursued his Scarlet Pimpernel way without fear or respite. He never seemed to tire, and he never seemed to worry. He called us regularly, bringing us news, discussing our problems with us, and sharing our burdens. He seemed to live a charmed life. But one hot summer’s night in 1942 his luck ran out; and I shall never forget how it happened.

Although we had had no bombing on Bussum since that first raid when the bombs so nearly hit the packed Sunday School, we had become quite used to the sounds of aircraft overhead. German planes passed over the town continuously. I have no idea if they were fighters or bombers, or where they were going to or coming from. I never looked at them; I just heard them.

On this particular night the noise they made was deafening. It sounded as if very heavy aircraft was going somewhere in large numbers, and we could hardly hear ourselves speak as they droned above us and the house vibrated.

This was the moment that Ver Heyen chose to call on us. We were not expecting him that night, and we did not hear his special knock. All we heard, in a sudden lull, was the sound of German voices raised outside. We switched off the light and parted the black-out curtains, and I looked out cautiously. It was a moonlit night, and to my horror I could see Ver Heyen standing in the street outside being shouted at by a German officer. I could discern gold braid on the officer’s cap and uniform, and I realized he was high-ranking. He was angry and he was shouting.

“You did not salute me,” he barked angrily.

“I apologize. I did not hear you,” answered Ver Heyen, standing to attention. “The aircraft are very loud.”

“That is no excuse,” thundered the other man. “You are supposed to salute a superior officer and you did not do so. Follow me.”

With a heavy heart we watched them marching away.

“This means trouble,” said Jonas. “Poor Ver Heyen. Is there anything we can do?”

I thought furiously. “You know the Germans and all their silly dignity,” I told him. “They will punish Ver Heyen for not saluting; that’s for sure. And we can do nothing about it. But his wife—she should be warned. I will go there now.”

After curfew time though it was, it was safer for a woman to be on the streets than a man, so I hurried across town to the Ver Heyen’s villa, where I broke the news to his wife. She still had a telephone (a luxury denied all Jewish people), and she at once called German headquarters on the pretext that her husband had not yet arrived home for his dinner, and she wondered whether he was working late on duty. The reply given her was that he had been sent to a disciplinary camp, and try as she would she could get no further explanation out of them.

We all lay low for the next few days, and at last we received a visit from Dr. Boon of the Protestant Hospital. He told us that he had had a telephone call from Ver Heyen saying he had escaped from the camp and was on his way to our house. This news gave us great concern, not for ourselves, for the Germans were not likely to search for him in our house, but for his own house, where our relatives were hiding. As soon as the news broke that Ver Heyen had escaped, the Germans would at once make a point of searching his villa, for that was the most logical place for him to go. And if they searched his villa they would not find Ver Heyen, but they would find all our relatives.

Dr. Boon said he had contacted the underground and they would help us get the family away from Willemslaan. He suggested they come to our place temporarily, while arrangements were made for different hiding-places. This was perfectly agreeable to us, but the big problem remained—how to get them across town to our house. To move by day was out of the question; and at night the curfew was on. While Jonas and I were prepared to defy the curfew from time to time, we could hardly take the chance of shepherding eight people through Bussum when nobody at all was supposed to be on the streets. We should be caught for certain.

The only solution was to wait until the curfew was lifted at four o’clock in the morning. I cannot attempt to describe to you our frustration and impatience as the hours of the night slowly passed away, for we did not dare think what might be happening while we were waiting. Perhaps the Germans were already searching Ver Heyen’s villa; perhaps our families were already on their way to the concentration camp.

Four o’clock came at last, and Jonas, the doctor and I crept cautiously into the dark street. We had a twenty minutes’ walk to the Ver Heyen’s house, and our appearance there created panic. Only Mrs. Ver Heyen—a woman made of the same, brave material as her husband—was calm, although she was deeply distressed and racked with anxiety. Our relatives, who knew nothing of what had been going on, were almost hysterical with fear. We had awakened them suddenly in the middle of the

night, and it took us all our time to calm them. Somehow we managed to restore order and led them all back safely to our house.

As Jonas put it afterwards: “When we were coming back, I wasn’t afraid that the Germans would hear their footsteps. It was the noise of their chattering teeth and knocking knees that worried me!” He was only joking, but the joke was not so far from the truth.

Only one member of the family refused to come with us. This was my sister-in-law Dora. I really think, in fairness to her, that the capture by the Germans of her husband, had numbed her mind and prevented her from thinking clearly, for she was coldly adamant in her refusal to leave the Ver Heyens’ house with us, and announced that she was returning to Amsterdam. Next day I went out to plead with her, but she would not listen to me. She was going back to Amsterdam, and she was leaving her six-months-old baby in Bussum. Where? Well, she knew that the hospitals were sheltering three of my children, so they might as well shelter hers too. Thanks to our good friend Dr. Martens, the baby was taken into the Catholic Hospital, and Dora went back to Amsterdam.

But under the stress of her own private grief she had given little thought to anything else, and had taken no care to cover her tracks. However charitable one tries to be in one’s assessment of her actions, it is hard to find an excuse for a mother who, in such circumstances, leaves behind her the telltale identity card of her baby. That is what Dora did.

When the Germans searched the villa—only a few days after we had taken our people out—they found the “J” stamped card. What could poor Mrs. Ver Heyen say about it? She could only tell the truth—that she had been looking after a child of Jewish parents. It was but part of the truth, for she said nothing about all the other Jewish people she had been hiding, but it was bad enough. Where was the baby now? In the Catholic Hospital. We later learned from Dr. Martens that the Germans had taken the baby away. Another closed chapter. The baby has never been heard of since.

Thanks to the underground, arrangements were quickly made to disperse the families hiding with us. They found room for them in various houses in Bussum and the outlying districts; and they found one particular home—a large house not far from our store—which we ourselves could use as a hiding-place if it ever became necessary for us to do so. This house was owned by a widow, Mrs. Beneker, and her adult son Philip, and stood in Jacobus Verhoeflaan. Jonas’s two sisters were transferred there, and Mrs. Beneker was informed by the underground that, if the worst came to the worst, the Veffer family might descend upon her at a moment’s notice.

Then the blow fell.

We had been warned by sympathetic Dutch police that the German drive for men was being intensified, and that Jonas and our eldest son were in ever-increasing danger, but we could only wait. Our hiding-place was in readiness. As soon as acute danger threatened, we would go away; for the moment, there was nothing we could do.

Maybe we should have gone into hiding straight away at the first warning. It certainly seemed as if we had left our plans too late when, one morning, a deputation of Dutch Nazis marched noisily into the store.

I was in the living quarters upstairs when I heard the door of the store open. The sound of heavy boots was unmistakable, and the mutter of gruff official voices struck fear into my heart. I tiptoed quietly down the stairs and cautiously peeped over the banisters. There they were, in black uniforms with red ties and polished jackboots, the hated NSB. They were milling around Jonas, swamping and overwhelming him although they did not touch him. I recognized the leader, a man named Brauer, and with him were three henchmen and an embarrassed Bussum policeman to whom we had often given cups of coffee when he called in on his beat. Brauer was doing the talking. His three assistants were standing around looking tough. The policeman looked as if he wished he were anywhere else.

I was proud of Jonas. Small as he is, he seemed to gain height as he faced them, his pale face gleaming with the hate that he made no effort to hide. His head was thrown back, his chin thrust out, as he took an official-looking document that Brauer handed to him.

“What’s this?” he asked. The way he spat out the words made it seem as if it were beneath his dignity to read a Nazi-inspired document. Brauer answered: “It’s an official order. We’ve come to take you.”

“Where?” asked Jonas.

“To the ghetto at Amsterdam. You’ve got to get out of here.”

One of the other NSB men grinned as added: “And good riddance to you and all Jews.”

“When do we go?” Jonas asked.

“Now,” answered Brauer gleefully.  “The lot of you.” He turned to one of his assistants. “You go upstairs and collect theligh family.”

Jonas moved with lightning speed. He wriggled through the group, darted across the store to the foot of the stairs and stood there with outstretched arms. “Over my dead body!” he shouted. “Don’t you dare touch my family!”

The Nazis began to move threateningly toward him, but our friend the policeman swept them aside and went over to Jonas. He spoke to him kindly.

“There is nothing you can do about it, I’m afraid,” he said. “An order is an order, and you will have to go.”

“But my wife is sick,” shouted Jonas. “She is lying in bed upstairs. How can you move her? It would kill her.”

The way he raised is voice told me he was sending me a message. I knew at once what he had in mind, and I raced quickly up the stairs to our bedroom, threw off my clothes and darted into bed. Minutes later, I heard heavy feet clumping up the stairs. The door of the bedroom was thrown open. Brauer and his men looked inside. I did my part by groaning and writhing. My action must have been good, for I heard Brauer give a disappointed snort as he said to Jonas: “Very will, then.  We will take you and the children.”

“But who will look after my wife?” asked Jonas. “I have to mind the store. The children take care of the home and my wife. We cannot be separated.”

As Brauer stood in indecision, the policeman said: “He is right. She needs her family around her.”

The Nazi shrugged his shoulders. “I will go outside and telephone for instructions. You three—” his henchmen clicked to attention “—there is a Jew-woman round the corner. Go and get her and wait for me there.  I will attend to this lot myself.”

They stomped down the stairs, and as soon as I heard their footsteps fade I was out of bed and drawing on my clothes.

“Greta,” I mumbled as I dressed. “Jonas, they’re going for Greta  I must warn her.”

Jonas stopped me gently but firmly. “Not you,” he said quietly. “If anybody sees you in the streets after I have said you are ill. . . .”

I realized he was right. “But we have so little time. Somebody must run round to her.”

“I will get Jacob.” Jonas hurried downstairs to where Jacob and Rachel had been keeping out of sight. I heard him giving the boy his instructions, and I heard Jacob flying out of the house and across the back yard, the short cut to Greta Weenen’s millinery store round the corner.

He was gone about twenty minutes, and when he came back he looked sad and near tears.

“What happened?” I asked him anxiously.

He shook his head. “They took her away,” he answered.

“But didn’t you warn her?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t you tell her to go into bed and say she was sick, like I told you?” asked Jonas.

“I did. Really, I did. But she wouldn’t get into bed.”

“Why not?”

“She said it wasn’t necessary. She had papers that said she was ill. She said when she showed them the papers they would leave her alone. She didn’t have to get into bed. That’s what she said.”

“And what happened?”

“They looked at the papers but they said that if she could walk around she could go to Amsterdam. So they took her away.”

Jonas and I stared at one another in shocked horror. Poor Greta! Why didn’t she follow our instructions? Poor stupid Greta, to think that the Nazis would take note of a piece of paper saying she was ill. The ghastly tragedy of it all was that Greta really was ill, and yet she had been taken away and I, the impostor, was still free.

But not for long. As we sat there brooding, we heard the telltale boots downstairs. The Nazis were back. I jumped into bed in my clothes, drawing the blankets up to my chin and pretending to be asleep. The boots clattered up the stairs, and the door of the bedroom was flung open. Brauer stood there. He said to Jonas: “They want to know for sure that she is sick.”

“Can’t you see for yourself?” answered Jonas.

Brauer shrugged his shoulders. “I am not a doctor,” he said. “If she can be moved, we will take her to Amsterdam. If she is too ill, then we will let her die here. But the family must go.”

Jonas began to shout, to expostulate. I lay huddled under the bedclothes trembling, praying for a miracle. And, sure enough, the miracle happened—in the guise of a short, bald, middle-aged man who walked through the door and peered at the scene through his glasses. The voice of Dr. Martens asked: “What is going on here?”

Jonas told him, the words tumbling over themselves out of his mouth. “The Germans have ordered us to the ghetto at Amsterdam,” he babbled. “But I have told them that my wife is sick and cannot travel. And they have said that she can stay here, but the family must go. But she needs the family to look after her, doesn’t she, Dr. Martens?”

The doctor was a shrewd, quick-thinking man, and his mental alertness had been sharpened by the dangers of the work he was doing against the Nazis. He took in the situation at a glance, sorted out Jonas’s tumbling words without batting an eyelid, and then turned to the quislings. “Mrs. Veffer is in a very bad state of health,” he told them sternly. “She is suffering from—” he said, reeling off a long and impressive list of Latin words that he afterwards told me were completely meaningless. “She is my patient, and she cannot be moved.”

“So we’ll let her stay,” said Brauer in a surly voice, “if you produce proof to the authorities.”

“That I can do,” said Dr. Martens unhesitatingly.

“But the family must go,” added Brauer.

The doctor glared at him. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped. “Do you think this woman can look after herself in her present state of health? She needs attention all the time. Who is going to feed and tend her if her family goes? It is absolutely necessary that they stay.”

His air of quiet authority made an impression on the NSB men. They withdrew into a corner of the room and held a whispered conference. I heard one of them say, “We’ve got lots of time.” They came back; Brauer pronounced their findings.

“If you produce proof of her serious illness, Doctor,” he told us, “I will recommend that the family stays with her.”

When they had gone away, the doctor said briskly: “Well, we have staved off disaster for a little time, but now we have to make our story stick.”

I came up from under the bedclothes and he greeted me with a kind smile. I said, “They want proof, doctor.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “So we must give them proof. What we have to do is to make you ill.”

“How can you do that?” I asked anxiously.

He smiled at my frightened expression. “Don’t be alarmed; it isn’t as bad as it sounds. To start with, I want you to come to the hospital right away. But don’t walk. Run.”

“Run to the hospital?” I repeated.

He nodded. “Run all the way. As fast you can. Never mind how out of breath you get. The worse you feel, the better it will be. Don’t rest on the way. Just keep running.”

“But it will take me a good half-hour,” I pointed out in bewilderment.

He rubbed his hands together gleefully. “So much the better.”

Jonas was listening to all this with an expression of frank amazement. “What’s the idea?” he burst out. “Sara never runs anywhere. Why should she run to the hospital?”

“So that we can take an immediate x-ray of her heart,” explained the Doctor. “If she runs all the way to the hospital, it will agitate her heart so much that, when we show the x-ray to the Germans, it will look as if she is very ill. Now do you understand?”

We understood, but Jonas was still doubtful. “‘Won’t the running harm her?”

“Not unduly,” came the calm answer. “She is a strong woman. It will make her out of breath, but nothing more. You see, when she comes to the hospital the X-ray will make it look as if she is almost dying.”

But there was one flaw in the plan, which surprised the Doctor as much as it surprised me. I ran to the hospital, as he had instructed, and arrived there, panting and breathless. My heart was banging like a drum, and when the doctor greeted me at the hospital and saw my distressed condition he muttered: “Excellent!” and whipped me off to the x-ray table. But I was much stronger than we both thought, for the x-ray did not make my heart look sufficiently affected. Despite all the unaccustomed exercise, the X-ray showed the heart of a woman in good health—and good health was something I didn’t want at that moment!

The doctor was not beaten, however. He thought rapidly and then made up his mind. A quick consultation with his x-ray assistant brought him a set of plates that he examined carefully; then he scrawled something on them and expressed himself as quite satisfied.

What he had done was to obtain the x-rays of a woman in the hospital who was dying. He put my name on the plates and told me, “Even the Germans will have to admit that you’re in very bad shape.”

That is exactly what they did. When the x-rays were shown to the German officials, they gave permission for me to remain in Bussum and for my family to stay and look after me.

What words can one use to pay tribute to a man like Dr. Martens, who willingly and unselfishly risked his life in the cause of humanity? In the murk and gloom of war his actions glowed like a star, bringing back our hope and renewing our faith. Bravery in the heat of battle is one thing, but cold-blooded courage in which a man knowingly stakes his life for his principles and ideals—that is the quintessence of heroism. And Dr. Martens, the little Catholic doctor who defied the Germans and helped the Jews, was a true hero.

Thanks to him we were able to remain in Bussum. We all knew that ours was a hollow freedom and would not last for long, but at least in our own town we could do something to save ourselves. To be taken to Amsterdam by the Germans would have meant the end of our resistance. In their hands we should have been powerless.

So far, acute danger had mercifully been avoided, but we did not even pretend to ourselves that our good fortune could last much longer. And we were neither surprised nor distressed when, at seven o’clock on a Friday evening in September, 1942, our friends of the Dutch police rushed into the house and warned us that we were to be picked up by the Germans that very night.

This was the signal we had been waiting for; this was the contingency we had been guarding against. Our bare necessities were packed and standing by; our hiding-place, the home of Mrs. Beneker in Jacobus Verhoeflaan, was ready for us. We made our way there. We went into hiding.

 

1. Chapter 7

 

There was plenty of room in Mrs. Beneker’s house for all of us, and although we were in hiding we were reasonably comfortable. As soon as we were installed, Jonas asked Philip, the young man of the house, to take a message to the store. The message was: “Ask Bob to come and see me immediately.”

So far, I have not mentioned Bob in this narrative. He came to us before the war when we advertised in the local paper for an errand-boy. A slim, fair-haired Dutch boy in his teens, he appealed to us as soon as he entered our premises.

We took him on. We were not sorry. He soon proved himself to be a willing worker. He liked his duties, he liked flowers and he liked us.

As he grew older, Jonas took him more and more into the business, teaching him designing and the arrangement of flowers, and training him to be his assistant.

When war broke out he was a tower of strength to us. He worked hard and uncomplainingly, sharing with us the ever-increasing difficulties and showing deep concern for our mounting personal problems. When our bicycles were taken away, he still found ways and means of delivering the flowers to all parts of the town. Nothing was too much trouble for him, and he could always be relied upon to help us in all the emergencies that arose. He was not  Jewish, and therefore he had more freedom than we did.  But his sympathies were with the Jewish people.

This was the boy to whom Jonas turned on the night that we went into hiding. We always thought of him as a “boy”,  but he was now a young man of twenty-one. It was typical of our relationship that when Jonas sent him a message to come immediately Bob was with us in a matter of minutes.

He came into our room, greeted us respectfully, as he always did, and asked anxiously: “What has happened? Is anything wrong?”

We told him of the tip we had had that we were going to be picked up that night, and that this was the final end of our freedom. From now on, we were in hiding from the Germans.

He listened to our story with a frown on his face, and immediately asked: “What do you want me to do? What can I do to help?”

Jonas and I had already worked out the answers. “I want you to open up the store in the morning, just as if nothing had happened,” my husband told him. “I expect the Germans will come in and ask where we are. All you have to tell them is that you haven’t the faintest idea. Then, if they allow it and they don’t interfere with you, keep the business going. Have you got the nerve to do that?”

Bob nodded.

“Good boy. Now, I will help you all I can from here. I will go over the list of customers with you, tell you about all the orders we have in hand, discuss the stock and things like that, and if any problems arise—well, you know where I am! Is that clear?”

It was.

“So you will run the business for me from now on,” continued Jonas. “I know I can trust you, and I know you will do a good job.”

“I will do my very best, I promise you,” said Bob earnestly.

“Any profits that the store makes, we will share equally, Bob. That will give us the money to live on while we are in hiding. Take out your salary and expenses every week, and the rest we share. Is that agreed?”

“Certainly,” said Bob. “You can trust me to look after everything. I will help you in every way possible.”

“Thank you.” Jonas was touched by the young man’s concern and sincerity. “Let us shake hands on our bargain.”

Solemnly they shook hands; and then they began to discuss the intricacies of the flower business—Jonas advising, instructing, explaining and, in effect, teaching, while Bob took notes.

When he ultimately left, he assured us he would call on us every week and bring us our share of the store’s profits.

But when he came back to see us a week later, he was crest-fallen and worried. “The Germans are making it very difficult for me,” he told Jonas. “I am afraid to open up the store. I shall have to leave it closed, and find something else to do.”

This was bad news for us as it cut off our only possible source of income for the future; but worse news was to follow, for only a little while later we learned that Bob had reopened the store under his own name. We never saw him again until the end of the war.

People are funny, they say; but this story of one of our own Dutch people is something we have never laughed about.

 

Two members of the underground movement were deputed to look after us during our hiding; and here again I must pay tribute to some wonderful people. They were an oddly assorted couple: a burly, rough-spoken but very good-hearted furniture remover named Kuypers, and a middle-aged, gentle housewife, whose name was Mrs. Van Weeren, but whom we always referred to as “Auntie Fifi.” They were both brave, resourceful and unsparing in their efforts to help us.

I feel that so far I have mentioned members of the underground in a casual way, as if they were part and parcel of our way of wartime life, without stressing their bravery and patriotism. The strange truth is that our association with them, in a narrow, confined area, gave us no indication of the work they did in the world outside, and gave no indication of the strength and subtlety of their organization. All we knew was that whenever we needed help in an emergency the underground would come to our aid. We asked no questions about how they operated, and would have received no answers had we asked them. The less we knew, the better for all of us. We came into direct contact with only two members of the underground throughout the war, and it was hard for us to conceive that these two mild and innocent people were members of a secret, death-defying organization fighting the mighty strength of Germany.  When I talk of the underground in terms of a gentle housewife who came to see us and brought us forged ration cards, that is how we saw the movement. Only afterwards did we learn of pitched battles and dead heroes who made those cards possible for people like us.

So we settled down to the first stage of our long period in hiding.

One of our earliest visitors was one of the most surprising—my brother Judah, still in his German officer’s uniform, and still darting backwards and forwards between Holland and Belgium in an ope and daring manner. I accepted his exploits as I accepted those of the underground. I marvelled and feared, but I asked no questions. It was enough that I saw him.

He had good news for me: two more of my sisters, Janni and Beppi, were safe at his Antwerp home with their families. Then he asked where our three youngest boys were. I told him they were safe in hospitals.

“That is good news,” he said. “At least being taken good care of. You have the other three here with you?”

“Yes.” They were asleep when he came.

He thought awhile. “Sara,” he said, “it is going to be difficult enough for you and Jonas. Wouldn’t it be easier without the children?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Let me take them back with me—to Belgium. They will be safe there, and we live well. We have plenty of room; they will be well cared for. Let them go. It will relieve you of the responsibility. What do you say?”

Jonas thought it was an excellent suggestion. Thinking only of the children’s welfare, he felt that they would be better living in Belgium than hiding in Holland. But once again that strange instinct of mine came to my aid as I was deliberating on my brother’s suggestion. Certainly, from every logical point of view, we should let the children go. We would be more mobile without them in case of emergency, and I trusted my brother so completely that I had no worry at all about putting them in his care.

That was the logical angle. The illogical angle was the one that stood out, however. It warned me not to let them go. It was that strange inner voice again, the one that had told me not to take the ill-fated ship to England. I thanked Judah for his offer, and said that we could not accept it. Nor did I pay any heed to the ensuing argument; once again I instinctively knew I was making the right decision.

Some months later, we heard that Judah and his entire family in Belgium had been arrested by the Germans and sent to the dreaded Auschwitz concentration camp.

Like my two sisters-in-law, who were already “in residence” at Mrs. Beneker’s when we arrived, we did not leave the house at all.  We knew the Germans were looking for us, after finding us gone from our store, and we could not take the risk of going out into the open  Our only contact with our children in the hospitals was through the underground, who visited Jacob and Judah regularly on my behalf, and through Mrs. Beneker’s son Philip, who paid Abraham a weekly visit at the Protestant Hospital.

One night towards the end of 1942 a message came to the house from the matron of the Protestant Hospital. Gentile houses were still allowed to have telephones, and this was a great blessing to us as it kept us in contact with the outside world. The call from the hospital was for Philip Beneker, and the matron told him that, as it was a chilly night, it would be advisable for him to postpone his regular visit on that evening.

This was our code. The seemingly innocent message meant that there was danger.

As soon as I heard what she had said, I started to get into my coat. “I am going out,” I told Jonas. “I must go to the hospital. I am worried about Abraham.”

Jonas rushed over to me and stopped me forcibly. “Are you mad?” he shouted. “Don’t you realize that this could be a trap? The Germans want you to go out, they want you to go to the hospital; then they can pick you up and find out where we all are. “If you really want to help Abraham, stay here.”

It was my turn to argue now, but I calmed down, for I realized that Jonas was perfectly right. I would put the whole family in danger if I went out now. But what were we to do?

Philip Beneker came to our aid. “I will go anyway,” he told me. “They can do me no harm. I will find out what has happened.”

I paced the floor in anguish while he was away, worrying and wondering. I knew that something was wrong; I felt it. Abraham was in danger, and I, his mother, was powerless to help.

When Philip returned after an absence of an hour, one look at his face told me that all my fears had been well founded. He was as pale as a ghost, and his hands were shaking. I could not bring myself to ask the questions; he count not bring himself to tell me the answers.

Finally he managed to stammer out the bad news. The Germans had swooped on the hospital and taken Abraham away. Where? Nobody knew. One of the nurses had been given permission to travel with the boy, but she had been sent back after they arrived in Amsterdam. Abraham had disappeared.

As I listened to Philip speaking, his face and his voice seemed to recede further and further away down a long black tunnel. For the first time in my life, I fainted.

When they revived me, we began to make frantic preparations for the emergency that now faced us. It was obvious what had happened. The Germans meant to find us, and they were using young Abraham to help them. He knew where we were; they would find ways and means of making him disclose our hiding-place. We were all in grave danger.

The first and obvious move was to change our hiding-place without delay. Mrs. Beneker telephoned Dr. Boon at the hospital and gave him a guarded message. Within ten minutes, our two friends of the underground—Kuypers and Auntie Fifi—were with us. Dr. Boon had contacted them, and as always they were ready to help.

They were quickly able to arrange accommodation for my two sisters-in-law, and managed to get my other children place with a Dutch family whom we knew. But for myself and Jonas there was no place available.

It was by then ten o’clock at night. I made up my mind suddenly and said to my husband: “Let us go out. We’ll be safer in the street. It is dark there. We’ll find ourselves a place.”

We went out into the darkness. We walked the streets. This was the night of our deep humiliation, a night I shall never forget. We knocked on doors—the doors of our friends. We were greeted by frightened faces and excuses, halting, lame excuses. No, they could not take us in. They were sorry, they would like to—but . . . the Germans; it was too dangerous. They saw us out with relief, and we heard the bolts snapping behind us as if to shut out the memory of our presence.

In the darkness we stumbled past our store in Stationsweg. It was a miserable moment. This had been our house and now it stood locked against us. The whole town was locked against us.  Our feet dragged along, and the weary shuffling was the only sound that disturbed the forbidding, unfriendly silence.

How many houses we tried that night I forget. As the hours went by, it seemed as if we had visited every house in Bussum, and everywhere we received the same answer—“No.” Our very presence was a source of fear. Some people had no room; others were honest enough to tell us that they were too scared to take us in for fear of what the Germans might do to them if we were discovered. But the others found excuses.

Like the policeman we met on his beat. He was a friend of ours. We knew him well. We appealed to him. “Please let us stay in your house just for this one night. Tomorrow we will go.” The night covered his embarrassment as he told us it was “not allowed.” We could have laughed at the foolishness of his reply; of course it was “not allowed.” It was “not allowed” for us to tramp the streets trying to find shelter. It was “not allowed” for us to live. We were Jews and everything was “not allowed” for Jews. Wearily we retraced our steps to Dr. Boon’s house, and there further bad news greeted us. The Germans had discovered that Abraham had been confined in the hospital with false papers. They had taken Dr. Boon away for questioning.

It was now midnight. We walked the streets crying. Everything was going wrong. We had no place to go. Our son was in the hands of the Germans. The doctor who had befriended us was in danger because of his kindness to our son. We were not allowed on the streets, but where could we go? It was a nightmare.

In an agony of mind and body, we went back to the house where my sisters-in-law had been accommodated, and asked them if we could just sit there throughout the night, so that next day we could find out more about Abraham. There was very little room in the house, but they agreed, and we sat up for the rest of the night, waiting and praying.

Early in the morning I telephoned the hospital. They had no more information.

Hours went by. We were desperate. The waiting was unbearable. Then Dr. Martens telephoned us. He had some news. Some of it was bad. The Germans had taken Abraham to the headquarters of the Gestapo in Amsterdam and intended to send him on to a concentration camp. Some of the news was good. Owing to recent bombing by the British, all railroads leading out of Amsterdam were blocked. Until the tracks were cleared, nobody could be sent through to the concentration camps. So my son had been temporarily placed in a Jewish orphanage in Amsterdam.

Now a new problem arose. How were we going to get him out of Amsterdam? Obviously, despite all risks, I had to go there. As we were debating ways and means, my husband clapped his hand to his forehead. His eyes were alight.

“I know where he is,” he exclaimed excitedly. “At this moment. I can see him. Our boy Abraham is with Levi at his house.”

Levi, Jonas’ brother, was the only Jew allowed to remain and work in Amsterdam. He ran a wholesale fruit and vegetable business, and was in charge of supplying the Jewish institutions. But Abraham was being detained by the Germans. He would not be allowed out to visit his uncle. The idea was preposterous. I did not hesitate to tell Jonas so, but all he answered was: “It is a vision. I saw it clearly. He is with Levi.”

That night, I dressed myself completely in black and went to Amsterdam. It was the most dangerous journey I have ever undertaken. The Germans were looking for me, and in any case I was not allowed to travel by train. One false step and the lives of all of us would have been forfeit.

The carriages were blacked out, and I was grateful for the darkness, particularly as I recognized the voices of some of my travelling companions. They were quislings whom I knew. And they knew me, too. Opposite me, during the journey, a man struck a match to light a cigarette. As the match flared into brightness, I saw his face and he saw mine. It was someone I knew but, thank God, he was not a quisling. Immediately he blew out the match, and said nothing. Nobody else had spotted me. I reached Amsterdam safely.

Not daring to take a street-car or a taxi, I had to walk. It took forty-five minutes to reach Levi’s house. My brother-in-law himself opened the door. When he saw me standing there his jaw dropped, his eyes opened wide, and he looked as if he had seen a ghost. Then, recovering himself, he pulled me inside quickly.

“Sara,” he said angrily, “are you crazy? Don’t you know how dangerous it is for you to come here? You could get us all killed!”

He helped me off with my coat and sat me down in a chair. I was trembling all over. “I am sorry, Levi,” I told him, “but I had to come. Jonas and I—we are frantic with worry. It is Abraham. The Germans have taken him away from Bussum, and we have learned that he is in Amsterdam. But Jonas had a vision that he was with you . . . in this house, so . . . so I came here.”

“Jonas was right,” said Levi in amazement; and I could hardly believe my ears. “Abraham was with me here, in this house, all this afternoon.”

I grabbed his arm. “Quick, tell me. Is he all right? Is he well?”

“He is fine,” he assured me. “The Germans have been trying to make him tell them where you are hiding, but he hasn’t told them anything. Don’t worry, he is well and fit.”

I burst into tears of relief, and inwardly mumbled an apology to Jonas for the things I had said about his “crazy vision.”

Levi went on to explain that, during the course of his work, he had visited the Jewish Orphanage with fruit and vegetables that day, and had been told that his nephew was there. They gave him permission to take Abraham out for a few hours. Just before my arrival, he had taken the boy back to the orphanage.

I stood up. “I must go and see him right away,” I announced.

Levi pulled me back into the chair. “At this time of night?” he asked. “They’re all asleep there. You start causing a commotion by waking them up, and the Germans will be on to you in a minute.”

“But I can’t wait.”

“You’ll have to,” he told me brusquely. “Nothing can happen to the boy tonight. Take it easy and relax.”

It was easy for him to give advice, but not so easy for me to follow it. He tried to get me to eat a meal, but I couldn’t touch any food. He tried to get me to sleep, but it was hopeless. Although Abraham had been away from us for six months now, it seemed to me that time was now against me. I had to hurry to get him; it was urgent; I couldn’t wait; I had to go there immediately, for my son was in danger—these were the thoughts that raced through my brain all that night. By the time morning came I was exhausted with worry.

As soon as it was light I made the twenty-minute walk to Die Weeshuisin, the Jewish orphanage in Zwanenburgerstraat. Just round the corner from that building was the house in which I was born and spent my childhood; what terrible changes the passing of the years had brought!

At the enquiry desk I asked to see the matron in charge. What was my business? What did I wish to see her about? It was personal, private and important. To be cautious in our speech and not give anything away was by now so ingrained in me that even among my own Jewish people I would not dare risk saying any more than was vitally necessary.

My anxiety and determination must have instilled some authority into my manner, for I was quickly ushered into the matron’s room. She was a big grey-haired woman dressed all in black, with tired sad eyes, and she was as cautious as I was. When I told her that I was Abraham’s mother, and had come to collect him and take him home, she said very carefully: “Abraham? I do not think we have anyone named Abraham with us at the moment.”

A light dawned as I grasped the meaning of her words. “Don’t you see,” I babbled eagerly, “it’s the Germans he’s afraid of. We are in hiding and they are trying to find us. Abraham knows that, so he has been protecting us by denying our existence. You understand? He has lied to you and to the Germans; he is afraid to trust anybody.”

The matron looked doubtful. “But he is only twelve,” she pointed out. “He would have to be an exceptional child to make up such a story and stick to it all the time.”

“He is an exceptional child,” I told her proudly. She sat at her desk thinking over my words, her hand tapping restlessly. “Please,” I persisted, “bring him down. Let us meet each other. Then you will know if I am his mother.”

She agreed, and went away up a long flight of stairs. I stood there with my eyes riveted to the door at the top of the stairs through which she passed from my view. She was gone several minutes; then the door opened again. My heart stopped. She came out—alone. In agony I watched her walk slowly down the stairs and up to where I was standing.

“I have spoken to him,” she said sadly, “but he persists that he has no mother.”

“Of course he will say that,” I burst out fiercely: “He doesn’t trust anybody; you can see that. He thinks that if he discloses that his mother and father are alive, he will he helping the Germans to find them. Bring him down. Let him see me. That is all I ask you. Please—I beg you.”

Without a word she went back up the stairs, and in a few minutes she reappeared—and my son was following her. He was dressed in navy-blue trousers with a dark shirt. He was walking with his head down. I called out: “Abraham!” He looked up. A tremendous smile spread across his face, he gave a shriek of joy, and then he was running, running down the long stairway straight into my arms, where we cried and cried. And the matron cried too.

Between his sobs, my son muttered a sentence that was the sweetest compliment I have ever been paid. He said: “I knew you would come and get me, Mama. I knew it all the time. I wasn’t afraid. I knew you would come, Mama.”

When the frenzied excitement subsided the Matron and I had a long talk.

“I can hardly believe it,” she kept on muttering, shaking her head. “A boy so young being able to fool the Germans—and to fool me, too. He should be an actor.”

We laughed at that, but that was the last laugh we had in our long conversation, for she told me sad and terrible things.

“Every night,” she said, with a pale-faced calmness that was more poignantly tragic than floods of tears, “the Germans come and take away four of the oldest boys. They are sent to a concentration camp. What happens to them there—” she spreads her hands expressively. “There are eighty-four Jewish boys in this orphanage. Four by four, they will all be taken sooner or later.  And or this orphanage. And as for us, the staff and myself, we just wait . . . for the inevitable. Now,” she went on briskly, “you are anxious to take Abraham away with you.”

“Of course.”

“We must think this over. It is not easy, but we will arrange it somehow.”

“Can’t I take him now?” I asked.

She shook her head. “The Germans check up on us every evening. If one boy is missing, the rest of the boys (as well as the staff)  are in grave danger. The Germans will take it out on all of us, that is certain. So we must be very careful. But I tell you what I will do. You go away and come back this afternoon. By that time, I will have talked it over with the director and the rest of my staff. We will find a way. Don’t you worry.”

With that I had to be content. I went back to Levi’s house and watched the clock.

That afternoon a change had come over the matron. Her eyes were filled with tears as she talked to me, and her whole body was trembling in anguish. She managed to tell me that they had had word that the Germans intended to close down the orphanage and send everybody to a concentration camp within the next few days. In such circumstances the presence of one boy more or less hardly mattered. They were all going to suffer the penalty anyway, so Abraham could go.

But there was still one snag. That afternoon, a party for the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah was being given in the orphanage for all the boys. The German Gestapo would be present.

“If you take Abraham away now,” the matron explained, “and they spot his disappearance at the party, they will be able to search for you in the light, and they will be sure to pick you up before you can get back into hiding. So the only thing to do is to let the boy attend the party and then, when night falls, you can go. It will be safe then.”

So there was to be further delay; but I realized the wisdom of the matron’s words, and my heart was sad and bitter at the thought of the fate that was to overtake her and the boys in her charge.

Somehow the day passed, and when it was dark I made my third call at the orphanage. Abraham was ready, and the matron wept bitterly as she let him go. “I wish every boy here had a mother like you,” she told me sadly, “so they could come and take them away.”

What could I say to console her in her grief? We clung to each other in a long farewell, and then we were out in the danger of the night. The train journey back to Bussum seemed endless, _but even worse was the walk through the deserted streets to our place of hiding. I told Abraham not to talk, but just to follow me and keep his head down. Every step was a prayer.

When we at last reached the house, the scenes of excitement that greeted our safe return are indescribable. While I was away, Jonas had somehow managed to bring Jacob and Rachel out from their hiding-place, so part of our family were reunited on the sacred Feast of the Lights. And even though seventeen people were hiding in that tiny attic, we all rejoiced as if the end of the war had come. Abraham was back with us! It was a great and wonderful moment.

 

8

To bring this narrative into sequence, I will now give you Abraham’s own story of his adventures. When we brought him back to Bussum we only knew the bare outline of the events arising out of his detention by the Germans; here, in his own words, is how he filled in the details for us:

“Dr. Boon took me into the Protestant Hospital in June, 1942. I was put in a private room, and it was explained to me that I was supposed to be very ill, so if any outsider came in for any reason at all I was to act that way. The nurses and hospital staff were, of course, all in on the secret, and they were very kind to me. I had a good time. It was lonely and boring, but they fed me well and talked to me whenever they could.

“Then one day Dr. Boon came in and told me that it would be suspicious if I stayed by myself any longer. The Germans would wonder who this patient was who was so sick that he had to remain in his room all the time. Once they began asking questions and checking my state of health with my forged medical papers, there would be trouble.

“So I was put into the juvenile ward. There were boys and girls in here, and that was very pleasant because I had more people to talk to. But at the end of November a girl was put into the ward whom I knew. We had gone to the same school, but she didn’t like me and I didn’t like her. At school we called her a sneak; that’s the sort of girl she was. Also, I remembered hearing that her family was Fascist, so that made me like her even less. We didn’t talk, and I didn’t pay much attention to her.

“Then, a little while after this girl was admitted into the ward, her grandmother came to visit her. I could see them from my bed. They were whispering with their heads close together, and they kept looking across at me and then turning their eyes away. I suppose I should have guessed that something was going on and told Dr. Boon about it, but I never gave it any thought.

“On the night of December 3rd, 1942, I was in bed and just about to fall asleep after a busy day. The children in the ward were to put on a play for the coming St Nicholas holiday, and I had been pressed into service to help make the costumes. It was hard work, but I was good at it, and I enjoyed it. ‘

“With the exception of a small blue emergency light, the ward was in darkness. I was just falling asleep when I heard a sound that woke me with a start. In the hallway outside some men were marching, and I knew they were Germans. I could hear their metal-shod boots clank on the stone floor and then stop by the door of the ward. The door opened. Through half-closed eyes, I could just make out the shadowy figures of two German soldiers, and I knew, as positively as if they had shouted it out, that they had come for me.

“While they were still standing by the door, the ward-sister came silently over to my bed and bent over me. In a tense whisper, she said urgently: ‘Don’t make a sound; pretend to be asleep.’ Then she went back to the Germans and they all came over together to my bed, where I could feel them looking at me. The ward-sister said to them: ‘He’s sleeping now. Leave him till tomorrow.’ This the Germans agreed to do, and as they were going out I heard one of them say to the other disgustedly: ‘He’s only a kid; I thought we were going to pick up a man.’

“After they went away, the ward nurse came over to me. Her name was Francesca, and I liked her. She was my favourite of all the nurses. I asked her anxiously what was happening and she told me not to worry. ‘But I don’t want to go the Germans,’ I told her, and began to cry. She soothed me and promised me that, wherever they took me, she would go with me.

“Early next morning, I was lying in bed working on the costumes for the  St Nicholas play, and my hands were covered with paste as I stuck various ornaments on to the material. The Germans came in again and walked over to me. They were about to say something when one of them noticed my hands. He gave a start of surprise and called over the ward-sister. I heard him say: ‘What’s wrong with this boy’s hands? They’re all white.’

“The nurse looked at me very intently as the German spoke. I realized afterwards that she was trying to give me a message, but at the time I did not understand. If I had said nothing, she would have told the Germans that my white hands were due to a serious skin disease, and they would have left me in the hospital. But, unthinkingly, I spoiled her plan by telling the Germans that the white on my hands was only the paste I had been using.

“After that, I was told to dress and was examined by a German doctor. He did not say anything but, from his expression, he didn’t find much wrong with me. He sent me back to the ward where I was told to pack my clothes. As I was doing so, a German came in and walked over to me. He even helped me with my kit, and he spoke to me very kindly. He said: ‘I am going to take you with me. You will be perfectly safe, and I would like to tell your parents where you are going, so that they can contact you. Where can I find them?’

“He spoke so pleasantly that I was almost deceived, but not for long. Ever since the start of the war, my parents had discussed openly with the children their plans for hiding. We all knew the dangers we were up against, and it had been instilled into all of us that on no account should we ever give any information about the whereabouts of the family. No matter how innocent the questions might appear to be, we were to say nothing.

“That schooling stood me in good stead now. I knew at once what the German wanted to find out. Philip Beneker had visited me frequently and had told me that my parents were hiding at his mother’s house, so I realized that the Germans had been looking for them and couldn’t find them. Now they were trying to get to my parents through me. They were going to be unlucky, I told myself.

“In answer to the German’s questions, I said with complete naturalness that I had not seen my parents for nearly six months, and I went on to say that I thought he had come to take me to them.

“This answer annoyed him for he jumped up and barked at the nurse to get me downstairs. I had dressed in a hurry when they came for me, and I wore only a pair of lightweight dark-blue jeans and a dark shirt. Nurse Francesca wanted to dress me in something warmer, but they were impatient and refused permission. However, she managed to obtain a packet of sandwiches which she pressed into my hand and then, true to her promise, she insisted on coming with me wherever the Germans were taking me.

“When we got outside, the only transportation the Germans had was two bicycles. One of them ordered me to sit on the crossbar, and that’s how I made my way to Bussum Station.

“Arriving there, the two German soldiers put their bikes into the bicycle park outside the station, just opposite our house. I looked across the road, and was amazed to find that the florist’s store now had a different name over it. I recognized the name, too, and I recognized the man standing by the door and watching me. It was my father’s assistant. He had known me for many years, but he made no sign of recognition and, without really understanding what had happened, I felt inside me that he was now somebody I didn’t want to talk to.

“On the journey to Amsterdam, Nurse Francesca kept soothing me and assuring me that ‘everything would be fine’, but the two German soldiers persistently questioned me about my home and my parents, trying to trap me into making a mistake. When I was getting tired, I realized that I might say something dangerous without being able to help myself, so I sought refuge in tears. I began to cry, and I kept it up until we reached Amsterdam. I found it a good way of shutting them up, so from then on, whenever I did not know what to say, I began to cry.

“Arriving at Amsterdam, the Germans turned to Nurse Francesca and said: ‘This is as far as you go, nurse.’ She protested angrily, and I joined in with more tears (real ones, this time) but one of the Germans said: ‘I’m only carrying out my orders, nurse. We have been told to send you back when we get to Amsterdam and, now that we’ve got to Amsterdam, you must return where you came from. That’s an order.’ She went away, very upset, and they put me in a car and took me to the Gestapo Headquarters.

“This was a big building, with uniformed Germans running about in all directions and making a lot of noise, and I was very frightened. We walked into a room with a big counter, and one of the soldiers told me to wait there while he went behind the counter and started talking to another man.

“While I was waiting, a large brown dog padded up to me. He looked friendly and nice, but he was very thin and hungry. I still had my packet of sandwiches with me, but I was far too scared to be hungry, so I took out one of the sandwiches and began feeding the dog with it. This infuriated the German soldier. As soon as he saw what I had done, he walked round from behind the counter and slapped my face viciously. ‘How dare you give the food of a Jew to a dog?’ he shouted. I began to cry and the dog began to yelp and, in the commotion, a woman in a German uniform walked over to me, and led me gently to a small room leading out of the main office.

“There she gave me a chocolate bar and spoke to me  Dutch. So far all the conversations had been in German. but this was not a strange language to me as, up to the beginning of the war, we had a German maid and she used to speak to us in German. I understood the language quite well, but I was still glad to hear Dutch spoken again.

“But I was not so glad when I realized what she was saying. ‘Don’t cry,’ she soothed me. ‘There is nothing to be frightened about. Let me telephone your mother for you, and then she’ll come and collect you. Wouldn’t that be nice? Tell me where she is and I will call her.’

“So we were back where we started again, and I was at once on my guard. I answered: ‘I have not seen my parents for months. Please, couldn’t you find them for me?’

“‘That is just what we are trying to do,’ she answered grimly. ‘What is their address?’

“I gave her our original address in Stationsweg. Apart from the evidence of my own eyes, which told me that our store had been taken over, I knew from Philip Beneker that my family were in hiding, so there was no danger in giving them this address. It was the address they would expect me to know.

“My replies infuriated the woman. She rapped more questions at me, but I wouldn’t tell her anything; I just played dumb and, finally, she went to the door and called in a very important looking man in civilian clothes. In German, she asked him: ‘Is there any transport available to a camp?’

“The man answered: ‘No. The tracks are blocked out of Amsterdam—all that bombing we had. We won’t be able to get anybody to the camps for at least a week.’

“The woman shrugged her shoulders helplessly. ‘I don’t know what to make of this boy,’ she said. “He’s either very dumb or very smart. You look after him; you may be able to get more out of him.’

“With that, she turned away and the civilian took me outside into a car. As we were driving along, he said: ‘I am taking you back to my house for tonight, and tomorrow we’ll put you in a Jewish orphanage. Your parents will be able to visit you there so, if you just tell me where they are, I will let them know.’ When I hesitated, he added: ‘You can trust me. I am a too.’

“I thought to myself: ‘If you’re a Jew, why are you so friendly with the Germans?’ But all I told him was the same as I had told the Germans all along—I did not know where my parents were. If they were still alive, their address was at Stationsweg. He persisted in his questions, but I persisted in my answers and he got nothing out of me.

“I was by now so suspicious of everybody that, when he took me next morning to the Jewish Orphanage and the matron asked me if I had any parents, I answered ‘No’. I did not trust anybody. I knew that the Germans were using me to try to locate my parents, and I would die first rather than disclose anything. Apart from that, I was comforted all the way through by the certain knowledge that somehow my mother would come and get me. I had no doubt at all about this. I just knew.

“Conditions in the orphanage were very tense. There were eighty-four boys there when I arrived, and we were all under constant German guard. After supper every night, four of the oldest boys would be whisked away, and we knew that our own turn would come one day. The boys used to cry whenever the Germans came in for their quartet of victims, and everybody was scared and unhappy.

“But the staff were wonderful. They must have felt just as scared as we did, but they did not let us see it for a moment. They did their best to soothe us and keep us occupied and interested so that our minds would not dwell on our ultimate fate. However much I admired them, though, I still would not trust them when they asked me questions. Every day, the matron would tackle me. ‘Tell me where your parents are,’ she begged me. ‘Once I know, I can contact them and they can get you out of here.’ But all I answered was: ‘I have no pa-rents.’ It seemed the safest thing to say.

“Then came Saturday morning. I was in the synagogue in the upper part of the orphanage when the matron came in. Although I liked her very much as a brave and fine woman, I was instantly on my guard; so” when she said to me: ‘Abraham, there is a lady downstairs who claims to be your mother,’ I answered shortly: ‘That is impossible. I have no mother.

“As soon as she spoke, I knew unquestionably that the lady downstairs was my mother and that she had come for me just as I always knew she would come for me. But the mere fact that my mother was there might mean that she herself was in danger; I cried out inside me with relief and joy, I did not even then dare to disclose anything that might incriminate her.

“So I persisted in my story. I said: ‘I have no mother.’

“The matron was puzzled. I could see that she believed the story she had been told by ‘the lady downstairs’ and yet here was I denying it. She did not know what to do. Then she said: ‘Peep out of this door. You will be able to see her without her seeing you. Tell me if you recognize her.’

“I did as she suggested and, as I say, I knew even before I looked that the figure below me would be the one I wanted to see more than anyone else in the world. Yes, it was my mother. Tears came into my eyes as I saw her, but even then I did not know who was listening or how dangerous any revelation might be at that stage. So, choking back my tears, I said as firmly as I could: ‘I am sorry, but that is not my mother.’

“‘You are quite sure?’ asked the matron.

‘Positive,’ I replied.

“She went down the stairs again while I waited in an agony of indecision. What I had done was what I thought was for the best, but would I be sending my mother away? It was a frightening moment.

“I heard the matron coming back up the stairs. She said: ‘Abraham, the lady asks me would you go downstairs and talk to her?’

“I still stuck to my story. ‘It won’t do any good,’ I said, ‘but I’ll come.’

“At the top of the stairs, I looked down and my mother looked up. She smiled at me and she called out: ‘Don’t be frightened, Abraham. Everything is all right. You can tell them.’

“It was all I wanted to know. I screamed out one word: ‘Mother!’ and then I raced headlong down the stairs into her arms.”

II

So the Veffer family were together again—in a tiny, overcrowded attic with many other people. Our two boys, Joseph and Judah, were still safe at the Catholic Hospital, but the rest of us were together. We thanked God that He had spared us all so far.

The acute problem now was to find new accommodation. We could not stay where we were; there was nowhere to sleep or even stretch ourselves out. Every inch of a tiny room was filled with seventeen people. It was an impossible situation.

As always our guardian angels—the underground—came to our rescue. Auntie Fifi found a place for my sons Jacob and Meyer with a Dutch widow of German descent. This woman fraternized with the Germans and took food from them, but she allowed my two boys to hide in her attic.

That left Jonas, myself and two of our children, Rachel and Abraham. Where to go? As always, that was the problem. We did not dare be seen on the streets during the day, so with our hearts in our mouths we waited for the night, and then, under cover of the darkness, we ventured out and made our weary way round the town, looking for a friendly door that would open for us.

How we came to find it was an inspiration of Rachel’s. Nobody would take us in. It was the same old story—too scared. How could I blame them? I was unhappy but I could not be bitter, because I realized just what it would mean to people to take us in. Still, we had to find somewhere to hide permanently. We talked it over.

“Try to think,” I urged the family, as we sat cramped and crushed in the little room. “Is there somebody we haven’t tried?”

“We have money,” said Jonas thoughtfully. “Perhaps a family that is poor might take us in. If they need the money badly enough, perhaps it would stop them being scared. You know what I mean?”

We cogitated. Whom did we know? Whom hadn’t we tried?

I saw a light come into Rachel’s blue eyes. Her round face creased into an excited smile. She said: “I have an idea.”

We leaned forward excitedly.

“Do you remember my school friend, Annie Makkinje?”

“Of course,” I said. “You used to bring her home. She had meals with us. Nice girl.”

“Yes,” agreed Rachel. “It’s those meals that made me think of her. Remember how she used to say she never had meals like that at her home?”

I nodded. “Have you ever been to her house?” I asked.

“No,” answered Rachel. “I’ve passed it many times. It’s opposite the canal in Vaartigweg. A small house. They haven’t got much money, I know that.”

“And you think . . . ?” I left the eager question suspended.

“Well, I can try,” answered Rachel. “If they need money, perhaps I can persuade them.”

The next morning, Rachel went off to see the Makkinjes. Being blonde-haired, she was reasonably safe in the street in daylight. The Germans had a fixed impression that Jews had to be dark-haired. A blonde could not be Jewish, as far as they were concerned. She returned after an hour. She was very excited. “I talked to them,” she told us quickly, “and they can do with the money. Mrs. Makkinje is going to talk it over with her husband. They will let us know tomorrow.”

The hours dragged by, as hours can drag only when one wants them to hurry. Early next morning Rachel went out again. We could hardly contain ourselves as we heard come running back up the stairs.

She burst into the overcrowded room. “It’s all right,” she told us. “We can go there.”

We laughed and cried and hugged her. It was a great moment. That night we started out with our few belongings in bags and parcels—four people in search of shelter.

We came to the house at 28 Vaartigweg—a house that was to be inseparably associated with our story.

The door was opened for us by Annie’s father, Gerrit Makkinje, a big, jovial, kindly, easy-going man. He pulled us in quickly, and took us into the small living-room. Then he called his wife. She was a very different type of person—red-haired, strongly built, with a pointed nose and sharp blue eyes. Her name was Jetske. We talked, and she did most of the talking.

“We have only one room that we can spare,” she told us. “It is a little room upstairs. It was Annie’s bedroom, but we can make other arrangements.” She looked at me with grim frankness. “I must tell you this: I am scared to take you in because, if the Germans find out—” she drew her forefinger across her throat. “But we are a poor family. My husband’s business is bad, and we need money. So if you can pay . . .”

Jonas did the right thing at the right moment. He took a roll of notes from his pocket and began to peel them off. “How much do you want for the room?” he asked practically.

She thought quickly, and it was at once obvious that she was boss of the household, for her husband made no attempt to advise or guide her. “It will cost you forty guilders a week,” she said at length.

That was a lot of money, but we were in no position to bargain. We were only too grateful to accept, and there and then Jonas counted out forty guilders and handed the money to her.

Mrs. Makkinje took it with a nod of thanks. “I’ll take you upstairs,” she said.

We followed her up one flight of stairs to a room leading off from the first landing. She flung open the door and switched on the light. As we walked inside, the cold penetrated through our clothes and crept into our bodies. It was freezing. There was no heat of any kind. The room looked small, uncomfortable and uninviting, but we hardly noticed its defects. To us it represented a haven, a refuge. In here we could hide away. We had shelter at last.

The door closed behind us. We stood uncertainly, huddled together, the children close beside me.

Jonas put his arm consolingly round my shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he said, reassuringly. “We will not be here very long.

Little did we realize that the war would not be over for nearly three years and that, for all that time, we should never venture out into the open again.

For this was The Room.

 

PART TWO:  NIGHT

9

Come with me round The Room. Learn to know it, as we were to know it for the days, months, and years ahead. Take a look at it first from the outside. It is one of the rooms in an ordinary house in an ordinary street, no different from any other in the row, and with an air of conventional innocence that was to be our safeguard. There is nothing about the house that would make a passer-by look at it twice; it merges unobtrusively into its stolid, genteel surroundings —undistinguished, unpretentious, unimaginative.

Houses have character; this one has none. It is a two-floored windowed brick box built for the utilitarian purposes of living, eating and sleeping. It will help you exist, but it will not help you dream.

It stands in a street that suits it, a shabby street where people only walk to go somewhere else. It faces a canal of calm muddy water, with a loading-point where trucks back up to the barges. The ground is churned and dusty. There is always noise and bustle and shouting. There are warehouses along the canal-path, and they could all do with a coat of paint. So could the trucks. So could the houses.

Stand with your back to the canal, and look at 28 Vaartigweg. The house has an appendage on its right-hand side, a miniature structure like a pimple. That is the front door, and it opens straight on to the sidewalk. There is no lawn or hedge or bed to make the approach inviting. There are two windows spanning the front of the house, one on each floor. That window on the upper floor—that is the window of The Room. Move round a little, and on the right-hand side you will see that there is another, smaller window, looking out over the portico and down the street. Register that fact; it sounds unimportant, but it was vital to our safety.

A pathway, no more than four feet wide, separates this house from its identical neighbour. Register that fact, too.

On the side of the front door there is a small notice that proclaims that Gerrit Makkinje, Stonemason, lives there. It is his shingle, and at the back of the house he makes tombstones. The stones are stacked at the back, and he chips and bangs away in a little shed in the yard at the rear. How is business? Bad. Many people are dying, but their graves are being marked either by wooden crosses or by untidy humps in the ground. And when you die at the hands of the Germans, they do not erect memorial stones over your communal graves. So he is glad to have forty guilders a week coming in regularly as rent for The Room, even if there is a risk involved in harbouring us.

Come with me into the house. You enter through the gabled porch that I have described to you as a small adjunct on the right-hand side of the house. It is like a tiny house stuck on as an afterthought. Open the front door and you walk straight into a tiny hallway. On your left is the Makkinjes’ living-room; behind it, the only bathroom in the house. At the back is the kitchen.

We mount the stairs. There are two rooms on the landing, facing each other. The room on the left is where Mr. and Mrs. Makkinje sleep; it is their bedroom. The room on the right is ours. In the pointed gable of the house is a tiny attic. That is where the two Makkinje boys sleep—Jan, aged seven, and Tinus,  aged ten. The daughter of the house, Annie—Rachel’s friend sleeps downstairs on a settee.

That is the house. Now we open the door of The Room. A window faces us, set in the centre and along the opposite wall. That is the window that looks right out on the street and the canal. On the left wall is the smaller window that looks out at the side of the house, over the front-door porch and along the whole street, a much more comprehensive view than is given by the bigger window. The windows are covered by white net drapes, and black-out blinds which we draw at night.

On the right of the door and up against the wall is a tin pot-bellied stove, with a pipe that leads away into a closet behind it. Next to the stove is a little box, which we filled with hay and so kept our food warm. We are now looking at the right-hand wall from the door, and the Makkinjes have brought in for us an old-fashioned washstand, with a marble top and two enamel basins. Under the washstand is a ledge, on which we keep our pots and pans. Further along the wall is a wooden bench and, moving around under the main window, we find a table and two chairs.

On the left-hand wall is a bed, wooden and solid, with creaking springs that left indelible impressions, physical and mental, on us. The wallpaper is drab and beige-coloured, with a  white floral design. The lighting consists of a cluster of five candle-type electric light bulbs on arms; suspended from the centre of the white ceiling. The floor-covering is brown linoleum over the middle of the room; for the rest, the floorboards are stained brown.  ,

The dimensions? The wall facing us is twelve feet wide. The wall on the left of us (we are still  looking from the doorway) is a foot shorter, and the ceiling is seven feet from the floor.

So there you have it: a room twelve feet wide by eleven feet high, with a bed, three chairs, a table, bunk, wash-stand and stove. This was the home of the eight members of the Veffer family for close on three years.

Home?  Maybe I should have said prison.

II

 

The early days in The Room were reasonably comfortable. There were only the three of us at the outset—myself, Jonas and  Abraham—so there was room to move; and before the strain began to tell on all of us we received helpful co-operation from the people of the house.

In the beginning we were able to get coke for our little stove, and this served us for heating and cooking. The advantage of coke is that it smoulders and gives out heat for a long time without burning away. We complained about the smoke, not realizing that this was absolute luxury compared to the conditions we were to live in before we left that hiding-place.

Mr. Makkinje brought us up a pail of water from downstairs every morning, and refilled the pail from time to time. This was our water supply for washing and cooking.

At first the electricity supply for Bussum functioned normally, so that we were able to switch on the electric light when it grew dark. But this did not last long. The exigencies of the war resulted in a decrease of power and a rationing of the supply. Ultimately the electricity to the houses was adequate only at midday and early evening for cooking purposes, after which the Germans cut the power, diverting the supply to the factories.

In any case, even if the electricity supply had been normal throughout, we should not have dared use it as much as we should have liked, for the extra use of current might have betrayed our presence in the house. That aspect was one of which we never lost sight. Not only were we hiding from the Germans in a physical sense, but it was vitally important that there should be no apparent deviation in the normal life of the Makkinjes to make either the Germans or the neighbours suspicious. A sudden increase in the normal meter-reading of the Makkinjes’ electricity supply could disclose our presence, and this was only one of may hidden dangers that we had to guard against more and more as time went on.

At first we were allowed to use the washroom on the floor below when the Makkinjes were alone. But this concession did not last long, for the Dutch are neighbourly people, and friends of the Makkinjes had a disconcerting habit of “popping in” at odd times. The front door was always unlatched, and people just walked in when they felt like it. This became a perpetual danger to us, and there was one friendly neighbour whom we came to hate and loathe as time went by. She was Mrs. Makkinje’s great friend, who came every day regularly and her presence meant extra caution on our part, for she was a gossip and, had she realized we were hiding there, she would not have failed to blurt out the news. Her motive in doing so would have been innocent, but the result would have been disastrous.

The man of the house, Gerrit Makkinje, was a genial, friendly soul who made every effort to help us. He was a loyal Dutchman who hated the Germans, and he regarded our presence in his house as part of the war effort. Apart from that, he was glad of the company. It was soon apparent to us that the relationship between him and his wife was more strained than it should have been, for they were different types: he was happy-go-lucky and she was neurotic. But he endured it all cheerfully enough, never complaining, and just ignoring her outbursts of frustration and anger.

In the early days, he used to help us while away the evenings by coming upstairs and chatting or playing cards with us. We welcomed his presence and enjoyed his company. But his wife resented the relationship, and the visits stopped.

There was one aspect of his relationship with us, however, that his wife could not stop. He was our only contact with the outside world, and it was he whom we called on to get in touch with the underground workers who helped us. His first message on our behalf was to collect a quantity of candles that we had stored away in one of the houses we had briefly stayed at during our homelessness. We needed these candles to save electricity, and they were precious, for they were in very short supply. We had taken the precaution of removing our stock of Christmas candles from the store when we left it, and there were twenty dozen of the precious commodities waiting to be collected.

But when Mr. Makkinje called to get them for us they had gone. What happened to them we shall never know. All we can say is that only one other person in the world knew that we had taken them, and where we had deposited them. That was our erstwhile assistant in the flower store. Whether he was responsible for their disappearance we could only conjecture. What is not conjecture is that our precious store of candles had gone.

The second errand that he undertook for us was to let the underground know where we were, and as a result of his mission Auntie Fifi became a regular visitor and gave us all possible help. I will tell you more about this wonderful woman at the proper time; for the moment, suffice it to say that she was one of the unsung heroines of the war. I dread to think what would have happened to the Veffer family if we had not had her courage and resourcefulness to draw on.

Mr. Makkinje’s third errand on our behalf was, as it turned out, a sad one. Ever since my friend, Greta Weenen, had been taken to Amsterdam by the Germans, I had grieved for her. We knew that, as far as women were concerned, they were at that time being confined to the ghetto in Amsterdam so that the Germans could draw on them when they felt inclined, either to send them to concentration camps or to factories. The Amsterdam ghetto was not a prison; it was a gathering-point, and Jonas and I felt that Mr. Makkinje might be able to make contact with Greta and perhaps, by using the money we gave him as bribes, get her and her baby out of Amsterdam and over to Bussum. Although the Room was small enough, I would gladly have given Greta and the child shelter with us.

He went to Amsterdam, and he found Greta and talked to her. But she would not come back with him, even though it would have been possible for her to do so. She had no money, and she refused to be a burden on us. We were a big family, we had our own troubles, and she would not increase our difficulties by descending on us in hiding. I remembered that Greta’s parents had been quite well off, and I wondered why she was short of money. Mr. Makkinje gave me the answer. Her parents, old people, had sent a message to her that they had no money and could not help her.

So Greta Weenen and her baby—and afterwards her husband Benny—stayed in the ghetto in Amsterdam, and were taken away one day and were never heard of again.

The girl of the house, Annie Makkinje, Rachel’s school friend, knew of our presence from the outset and welcomed us. A tall thin girl with a mane of red hair, she was gentle, helpful, intelligent and friendly, and she had two specific tasks that she handled most efficiently on our behalf.

At school and in the town it was her job to keep her eyes and ears open for any gossip that might affect our welfare, and also to allay any suspicion about our whereabouts. We were a well-known family in Bussum, with many friends, and our children were popular at school, so we could hardly expect that we could disappear without anybody noticing it. We knew that questions would be asked about us, and Annie’s task was to answer them satisfactorily. This she did with great thoroughness, volunteering the information to everybody that we had escaped to Switzerland. The story spread around the town, and undoubtedly helped to keep people’s minds off us.

Her second task was a vitally important one, and she never failed in it. She brought us books to read. She belonged to two libraries—the public library and a library that was part of a general store—and she kept the voracious reading appetite of our whole family continually supplied. Looking back on those days, I feel that our insatiable thirst for books might conceivably have led to our downfall, for it was nothing for Annie to stagger home with twenty books at a time. She made visits to the two libraries every other day on our behalf, and no girl of sixteen, however intelligent and studious she might be, could ever get through the number of books that she apparently read.

The fact that she made no attempt to hide or even explain her more-than-natural interest in reading may have helped to allay suspicion, for she was never stopped or questioned, and she and our books led a charmed life. I feel now that it was the one flaw in our otherwise impregnable structure, but we were lucky. The books never gave us away and, thanks to Annie, we always had something to read.

Thus I have set the scene for you and introduced you to the cast of characters.

Now let the drama commence.

 

10

“So this is your new home!” Auntie Fifi greeted us as she came into the room. Abraham ran towards her, and she gave him a little hug before she allowed him to help her off with her  white raincoat. She sat down. She did everything with a flounce. The large beads that she always wore chattered together at the movement of her thin lithe body. The floppy Greta Garbo hat that covered her blonde hair was rakishly set, and her face was heavily made up. In appearance and manner she was more French than Dutch, and it was her pert vivacity that  gave her her name—Auntie Fifi. Abraham was the originator of the name; to him, Fifi was a typically French name, and she was typically French. The name stuck, and she did not mind; in fact, she liked it.

“How is it going here?” she asked me.

I shrugged my shoulders. “It is not home,” I told her, “but we must be thankful.”

She coughed and puckered up her nose. “How stuffy it is in here,” she said. “Is it always like this?”

Jonas nodded. “What can we do?” he asked. “The stove smokes. We must keep it on or else we freeze and cannot cook. So the smoke fills the room.”

“And if we open the window,” added Abraham eagerly, “the Germans will see the smoke in the street and they will know there is someone hiding here, and they will come in and take us away, and …”

I stopped him in mid-sentence. “You understand how it is,” I told Aunt Fifi. “We dare not give any signs to the outside world. That is why the front door is never latched downstairs. People have always walked in as they liked, so they will continue to do so. If the door was latched after all these years, people would want to know why. And, once they start asking questions . . . You see how it is?”

Aunt Fifi turned to Abraham and took his hand fondly. We all liked her, but she and Abraham had a special understanding. “And how are you getting on, young man?” she asked him kindly. “What do you do with yourself all day?”

“I think,” he answered.

She smiled. “What do you think about?”

“All sorts of things. What I’m going to do when the war is over, chiefly.”

“And what are you going to do?” she encouraged him.

“You know when my mother came and took me away from the orphanage in Amsterdam? Well, the nurses there had been kind to me. They had given me lots of nice toys. But I had to leave them behind. So, when the war is over, I’m going back to get them.”

“And that’s what you think about?”

His dark head bobbed in affirmation.

“Don’t you ever read?” she asked.

His answer was a sad one. “I can’t read.”

I explained. “When they stopped Jewish children going to school, Abraham was just starting to learn to read. Since then—well, you know what an upset there has been for him. How could he have lessons in the hospital or the orphanage?”

Aunt Fifi squeezed his hand gently. “What a tragedy it has been for all the Jewish people,” she exclaimed sadly. “You know, after you left your store, the rabbi and some others tried to start a school for Jewish children.”

“What happened?” asked Jonas.

Her voice was bitter. “What do you think happened? The Germans walked in and stopped it. No education for Jewish children; it was not allowed.”

Jonas gripped the table tensely. He said in a low voice: “Such swine will be punished. What else are they doing?”

“They are searching,” she answered gravely. “Looking high and low for Jews to send—” she saw Abraham looking at her and stopped herself, “er—away.”

“You mean—to the concentration camp?” asked Abraham innocently.

She forgot that at the orphanage the shadow of the concentration camp loomed over the boys all day and every day. What went on at these camps neither he nor we knew for sure but, whatever it was, it was bad. Later, much later, we were to find out about the gas-chambers and the mass graves and the horror that was Belsen, but it was as well that in those days of hiding we did not realize to their full extent the penalties we were facing.

“How is the war going?” asked Jonas anxiously.

“Sometimes good, sometimes bad,” came the quiet answer. “The Germans have won victories, but the allies have the e Germans have won victories, but the allies have the confidence of justice on their side.” She went on to tell us such news as she knew—local and national. We heard of Jewish friends of ours who had been found by the Germans and taken away; we heard of battles and bombing; but we heard nothing that would tell us when the war would end, and that was really what we wanted to know.

She finished up by saying: “You must be very careful. It is getting more and more dangerous outside.”

That enabled me to ask a question that I had often meant to ask her. “If it is dangerous for us, hidden away in here, how much more dangerous must it be for you, moving about in the open! Why do you do it, Auntie Fifi? You are not Jewish, and yet you risk your life to help the Jews. You know what would happen to you if you were caught?”

She gave a tight smile. “I know,” she said simply. “But somebody’s got to do it and—well, look at me!” Her hands slid through the air in the general lines of her slim form. “Whoever would think that a person looking like me would do the work I am doing?” She laughed. “Even if they caught me, I don’t think they’d believe it of me, do you?”

What could we say? The explanation had been made to cover her embarrassment, that I knew. She just happened to be a brave, loyal woman with a fierce integrity. It wouldn’t have mattered if she looked like Mata Hari; she would have still had to follow her chosen, voluntary work for her fellow-citizens.

While we were thinking this over, she changed the subject quickly. “Now,” she said practically, “what can I do for you? What do you need? Are you all right for money?”

Jonas thanked her. “We are quite all right at the moment. We have enough money to pay our rent and have food and fuel sent in. That is all we need at the moment. How long the money will last we don’t know; we can only hope our cash won’t run out before the war finishes.”

She said: “I will arrange for you to have ration cards. I will bring them with me next time I come. Then you can give them to the Makkinjes and they can buy your food for you.”

“Won’t that look suspicious?” I asked anxiously.

“We must take the chance,” she answered. “What else can we do? But do not worry too much. I have talked with the Makkinjes and we have made up our story.”

“What story?” asked Jonas.

She answered: “If anyone sees you or suspects that there are some people in this room, they are to say that they have taken in some evacuees from Rotterdam. It was badly bombed there—you know that, don’t you? And people from Rotterdam have been evacuated all over Holland, so it is a good story. As a precaution, your ration cards will be made out in the name of  some people from Rotterdam who are dead. The ration cards will support our story.”

I thought awhile, and then I made the statement that had been trembling on my lips since she first came in to see us. “Aunt Fifi,” I said quietly, “tell us the truth. We are in danger here, aren’t we?”

She answered the question with another one. “Aren’t we all?”

I nodded. “I have been thinking about it, and I feel like this. l would rather we were all in danger together than separated. I want my family around me. If we have to die, let us all die. It is better that way. Two of my children are in one place, two more in another; Rachel is somewhere else. It is not good. Let us all be together, and then we can face whatever the future has in store for us.”

Jonas agreed with my outlook, and Aunt Fifi frowned thoughtfully. “I understand how you feel,” she told us, “and I will do what I can. You must leave it to me.”

With that assurance we had to be content, and as the days went by I wondered whether the task of reuniting the Veffers had proved too much for gallant Aunt Fifi. But I should have had faith, for two weeks later she came to us again and told us that she had been to see the woman who was sheltering Meyer and Jacob. This was the house where the woman fraternized with German soldiers and, although she was loyal and well-intentioned, she was now beginning to fear that it was too dangerous to harbour Jewish boys in a home where the Germans had free access. She wanted them taken away, and Auntie Fifi was arranging it.

“In any case,” she added, enigmatically, “your boys will be pleased to get away.”

“Why?” I asked anxiously.

All she would answer was: “They will tell you themselves.”

And when, two days later, Meyer and Jacob were returned to us, we found out what she meant. For the boys had been starved. On one day, their sole sustenance had been a can of macaroni which they had tried to heat over a candle. The Germans brought plenty of food into the house, but the boys had had none of it.

It was good to have them back with us. Mrs. Makkinje had raised no objection to our having them with us, so there were now six of us in The Room. The boys slept on the floor, huddled in coats, since there were now not enough blankets to go round; and Jonas, who is a genius with his hands and could have been an architect or a carpenter or a construction engineer if he had ever had a mind to do so, built a wooden screen behind which Rachel and I undressed. We managed somehow; but there were still two more to come, and I worried about them.

Then, one night, our good friend Dr. Martens of the Catholic Hospital called on us. We greeted him excitedly, questions pouring from our lips, for any contact with the outside world was now an occasion. What’s happening? How is the war going? How are the boys? What is the news?

He smilingly put his hands over his ears, pretending to be deafened by our babble of questions. “One at a time,” he beseeched us; and when some semblance of order had been restored he sat down and began to tell what he knew.

“First of all,” he began, “I have good news of our friend Dr. Boon of the Protestant Hospital.”

“Thank God,” I breathed fervently. His fate had been very much on my conscience, for we had last heard of him when he had been taken into custody by the Germans. My son Abraham had been the unwitting cause of this disaster, after the Germans had discovered that the boy had been sheltering at the Protestant Hospital with false papers.

“Yes,” agreed Dr. Martens. “We may indeed thank God, for Dr. Boon is a good man, a fine man.”

“What happened to him?” I asked.

“He has come back,” was the answer. “They kept him in a camp for six weeks, then they let him go. Doctors are scarce, you see, and there is much sickness. The Germans decided he was too valuable to keep as a prisoner. They sent him back to the hospital.”

“And is he well?” Jonas asked the question.

Dr. Martens smiled. “Well, he is better now, of course. He was not ill-treated. He will be all right. In fact, he will be coming to see you soon. I have seen him, and he has asked about you.”

“Good. We will welcome him,” I said thankfully. “Now, tell me, doctor, how are my boys?”

The doctor took off his spectacles and polished them with his pocket handkerchief. He was frowning. “They are well,” he answered slowly, “but . . .”

I repeated the word that hung suspended in the anxious air. “But . . .?”

“But—the Germans are prying; they are snooping everywhere. All the time, they go through my records. They keep sending in patrols to search the hospital, trying to surprise me. It is most worrying. Conditions are getting very dangerous.”

“You think the boys should leave?” I asked.

He nodded slowly. “Yes, it would be best for them-and all of us. I know you have little room here, but it is safer than the hospital. If they are discovered there—well, you know what will happen. We dare not risk it any longer. It is time to take them away.”

Now the problem arose: how could we get the boys out? It was no longer safe for any of us to be seen in the streets, even at night, and although Rachel pleaded to be allowed to make the journey, Jonas was adamant in his refusal. It was too great a risk, even though her blonde hair gave her a measure of protection as compared to the dark-haired members of our family.

We talked it over with Mr. Makkinje and he admitted that he was too scared to undertake the assignment. He would always be glad to carry messages, but to cross the town with two small Jewish boys—that was too dangerous. I had an idea. I talked it over with Jonas.

“Your sister,” I said. “She is hiding at the Van Vliets. She comes from Amsterdam, so nobody knows her in Bussum. She does not look Jewish and she has a lot of nerve. What do you think, Jonas? Do you think she will do it for us?”

Jonas thought it was an idea worth trying. His sister was the madcap of the family, a woman with adventure in her heart, and we knew we could trust her not to do anything silly that might give her away. Accordingly, we sent a message to her through Mr. Makkinje and to our delight he came back with the news that she would be glad to go for the boys that very night.

We learned afterwards that she invoked the help of Philip Beneker, since she had no transport of any kind, and he came along with a bicycle which had a canvas-covered sidecar. Also, through the incredible and never-failing ingenuity of the underground, she was provided with two false identity cards in the names of Joseph and Johnny Ver Heyen.

When they reached the hospital, she gave the boys their instructions. She was their mother if anybody stopped them, and she made them memorize their names from the identity cards.

After all this cloak-and-dagger build-up, it has to be reported that the return journey was made entirely without incident. The boys were safely delivered to our house; Jonas’s sister went back into hiding at the Van Vliets, and Dr. Martens and all the Veffers breathed a mighty sigh of relief. Life is often like that, a series of frightening anticipations and uneventful realizations. Not always, though. . .

And so, in January, 1943, just one month after we took up our enforced residence in The Room, we were all reunited within its walls: my husband, myself and our six children. Never mind what the future might hold, we were together. If we died, we would all die together. For the moment, though, we did not worry about dying together; our immediate problems were concerned with living together.

Now we were crowded; now we were uncomfortable. We each took it in turns to occupy the bed for a blissful night of reasonable sleep and rest. The others huddled on the floor. Rachel slept on the slatted, hard, wooden bunk that our meagre supply of coats and blankets did little to soften. Often Jonas and I would talk sadly about the linen and furniture and household articles we had had to leave behind and give away on our flight from the store. What we could do with all those things now!

We were now using our daily supply of water for washing, cooking and laundry. Every night we took off our clothes and I washed them, hanging them up to dry while we slept. We tried to keep The Room clean, but we soon realized that we were fighting a losing battle. Try as we would, we could not prevent a layer of dirt settling on The Room. The stove had to be kept going all the time for our needs, and there were no means to stop it smoking. The smoke enveloped us and settled on our clothes and blankets and food. In these airless surroundings we lived and prayed.

Our personal cleanliness was not helped either by the inadequacies of the ersatz soap we had to use. It didn’t lather; it was gritty and hard to the touch; it imparted no freshness or cleanliness to our skin or our clothes. But it was all we had, and what we had was very little. Often, sitting thinking in the long hours of our solitude, I conjured up pictures of bubbling, foaming lather and faucets pouring out hot water, domestic scenes of which I had thought nothing in the past. Now they represented paradise.

In the early days, Mr. Makkinje would come up from downstairs to chat with us during the evening and play cards. I remember that one of his first conversations was with Jonas.

“What are we going to do if the Germans start searching the house?” he asked anxiously.

Jonas deliberated. He always thinks before he talks. “We must hide,” he said.

I broke in. “We are already hiding,” I pointed out.

He made a gesture of exasperation. “You call this hiding?” he asked sharply. “If the Germans come into the room, are we hiding?”

Gerrit Makkinje nodded his head slowly. “I see what you mean. You’ve got to have an extra hiding-place.”

“Exactly,” said Jonas. “We must leave this room bare, as if nobody occupies it. And we must all be out of sight.”

“That is asking something, isn’t it?” I said. “There are eight of us, you know, Jonas. That’s a lot of people to put out of sight.”

Jonas said nothing. He got up from his seat and started walking round The Room, looking at the walls and tapping them, conversing with the other man, who followed him. When they came to the closet behind the stove, they stopped. I watched them in fascination as they opened the door, peered about inside, tapped the walls, and discussed the situation in low voices.

I went over to them. “What goes on?” I asked. “I am going to hide, too, you know. At least, tell me what’s happening.”

Jonas explained. “You see this clothes cupboard?” I saw. “Well, you see this right-hand wall?” I nodded. “It is over the staircase, and behind this wall is a gap—not big, but it’s all right. It’s in the shape of a triangle. You follow me?” I followed. “What we propose to do is this. I will take out this wall, and I will build a door. The door will lead into this triangular gap, or cupboard, over the stairs. The door will be flush with the wall and we will close it from the inside. So, when the Germans search, we will be inside the cupboard. Inside the cupboard. Do you understand?” I will freely confess that I did not understand, but I knew Jonas’s handicrafts of old and I was perfectly prepared to leave it all to him. If he said he would build a cupboard inside the cupboard, he would build it.

The construction of the secret hiding-place took Jonas little more than one day and provided us all with a welcome break in the growing monotony of our existence. The children clustered around him, watching wide-eyed as he dexterously used the tools that Mr. Makkinje had provided. To cover the noise of his hammering, Mr. Makkinje synchronized some noisy stone-chipping outside on his supply of gravestones.

When the cupboard was finished, it was impossible to detect it. You opened the main cupboard door and there was no mark or sign on the right-hand wall to give any suggestion that the wall was in fact a door. The handle and lock had been skilfully hidden, so that only Jonas knew where they were. The door and the interior of the main cupboard had been repainted so that there was no discrepancy in appearance. It was a perfect job.

Having finished the hiding-place, Jonas took control of an operation that we called “Scramble.” We had heard the phrase used in connection with aircraft. We knew that it was the signal for the pilots to race to their machines and get into action. We borrowed the word, for it applied to us, too. We had to get into action, and Jonas taught us how.

Every day he would rehearse us in meticulous detail, and at night when Mr. Makkinje joined us, we rehearsed all over again with Mr. Makkinje taking an important role. He was the person who closed the door of the outside cupboard. For at that time the search was on for Jews; Gentiles were still immune. So it was quite in order for our friend to be present in the house. That state of affairs soon changed, but I am now talking of the early days.

The rehearsal was careful, and woe betide any of us who forgot his or her instructions. Jonas is a patient even-tempered man who seldom raises his voice, but like all good craftsmen he demands and expects perfection. He let us know in no uncertain terms what he thought of us when we did anything wrong; and we could not answer back, because he was quite right in his attitude: one mistake might mean the lives of all of us.

We would be sitting down eating or reading or talking when Jonas would take it into his head to call for a practice. He would shout “Scramble!” and immediately we all hurried to our special duties.

Rachel and I were responsible for the bedding. We would gather up the blankets and coats, and carry them into the hiding-place, dumping them on the floor and then spreading them out as much as possible. At the same time the boys would be clearing up all the other signs of our tenancy. Jacob assembled the pots and pans and carried them into hiding; Abraham was responsible for the books; Meyer for the food; and the other boys helped to carry bundles. All our belongings having been speedily taken into the hiding-place, we went in ourselves.

The triangular cupboard sloped downwards from the front. If you pressed yourself up against the door, you could almost stand upright in it, for it had a height of five feet at its tallest part. Otherwise you crouched, knelt or lay down in any position you could find, trying to adjust the contours of your body to the unyielding hardness of the tiny enclosure. There was about four feet of floor space from front to back, and the total width was only that of the door that opened into it—little more than three feet. A Black Hole of Calcutta indeed, in which three people might hide themselves with reasonable comfort. When it came to providing accommodation for eight people, however, it was a nightmare. Squashed like sardines, our legs, arms and bodies inextricably mixed in a heaving, panting mass, we sought the refuge of our hiding-place, and we were glad of it.

Getting into the hole in a speedy but orderly fashion was our daily drill. When we were all hidden, Jonas would extricate himself from the pile and walk back into the room, inspecting it with an eagle eye to make sure that nothing had been left behind, that no telltale token of our presence might give the game away to a searching German.

Satisfied that we had done our work well, he would give us the signal to emerge. The practice was over for the moment

Even though we carried out this procedure every single day, the children always treated it with the intense seriousness it deserved. In such circumstances they might have been pardoned for making a joke of the operation, or even of protesting against the constant repetition of a drill that they knew by heart. But they never did. Even in their young minds the fear of the Germans outweighed every other consideration. This hiding-place could save their lives. This hiding-place could keep them safe from the Germans. And, apart from its more serious implications, the drill gave them something active to do. It relieved the boredom. So, whenever Jonas uttered the command “Scramble!” they gave the ensuing exercise their entire respect and attention.

The presence of this hiding-place was a great morale-booster for all of us; it gave us a feeling of added security. Modest Jonas was quietly proud of his handiwork, and would often inspect it in between drills, checking on the structure. It was he who added the final refinement to our hiding drill; and, looking back on it, I am amazed to realize how we foresaw every emergency and took precautions.

On the inside of the door Jonas had set a line of protruding tacks. When we were all installed in our hiding-place, we would suspend a blanket from the line of tacks. The object? It was simple, and yet we might have died had we not thought of it.

Jonas figured that if the Germans ever searched the room they would carry out just the same investigation that he and Makkinje had undertaken prior to constructing the hiding-place. The Germans would tap all the walls for a start, just as he did. And if they tapped the door of the cupboard, the hollow sound of the wood would give us away. Hence the reason for the blanket. It added solidity to the wall, it disguised the hollowness.

The children soon settled down to their new life. They were all so glad to get back into the bosom of the family that they cheerfully endured the discomfort and boredom that confronted all of us.

And at this early stage in our adventures, I must place on record one fact that, in all the circumstances, is quite amazing. Every mother is proud of her children, but I have added cause for pride. In all the weary, dangerous and heart-breaking days that we spent in The Room, my children never quarrelled. You would have thought that this unreal existence, in such close, continual and almost unbearable proximity one to another, would have stretched their tempers and snapped their patience. But it never did.

Like all children they were moody, and they sometimes sulked. They cried a little, but not as much as you might expect, and then only to themselves, as if they did not want anyone else to see their momentary weakness. They were often sad, and there were times, as you will read, when they were frightened. All this could have contributed to a state of unbearable tension and nervous strain, culminating in arguments, quarrels and fights. But it never did.

I still marvel at the fact, yet I would not have expected anything different. All their lives my children have lived well with one another. I have never known any of them to fight, and their relationship is always surprisingly harmonious.

Jonas and I made it our business to watch keenly for any sign of tension. If for any reason one of the children raised his voice as if he was about to argue a point, I would intervene and make sure that the issue was placidly decided. Jonas for his part realized that boredom was a danger to harmony, so he occupied himself making sure that the children always had something to do.

In the winter one of the children’s favourite occupations was looking out of the window. Seated well back, so that they could not be observed from the street, they would peep in turn through a chink in the curtains and watch the passers-by, chattering like monkeys as they recognized people and school friends. This was a link with the outside world that helped keep our spirits up. It made us feel still part of the town, not cut off, shut away and buried. It gave us something to talk about, think about and sometimes even laugh about.

The worst day of the week for us was Sunday. This was the day when our children’s school friends went off for recreational purposes, carrying their soccer-boots or otherwise showing that they were out to enjoy themselves. This was the day when the children felt their lack of freedom most, and it required all the ingenuity of Jonas and myself to keep their minds away from their sadness.

When the summer came, we could no longer allow the children to pursue their window-gazing pastime. From the street our shadows would have been seen behind the curtains in the sunshine. We took the risk only cautiously, on very dull days.

Not being able to look out of the window, we became adept at recognizing sounds. Workmen who passed the house every day became “friends” of ours by reason of their distinctive steps; we heard them coming and it gave our drab, pent-up lives a pattern. There was one man who always sang, and it was always the same song: “I-Yi-Yippee-Yippee-I.” Every weekday he would pass by singing his cheery melody. It was a popular song of the moment, and the tune brightened the brief period as our unknown troubadour passed on his way.

Among the children, Meyer was our champion watcher-at-the window. He would sit for hours, his small dark face and big black eyes pressed against the curtain, studying the passing street scene, and he never tired of it. The others would go back to their reading or other pursuits, but not Meyer. While the daylight lasted, he would stay on looking into the street, his face alive with interest, reporting to us on what he saw. This pastime of his ultimately became his war-effort on our behalf, for one clay, as he sat by himself looking outside, he suddenly gave a cry. I was lying down on the bed at the time resting, but I sat up.

“What is it, Meyer?” I asked, anxiety rising in my throat.

“Mama, quick,” he called out. “Come over here—but be careful.”

I went over to him and Jonas followed me. Cautiously, Meyer lifted the curtain a crack so that we could see outside; but we only took one quick glance, then we put the curtain down and retreated, pale and shaking.

For what we had seen was enough to shatter our calm for good. There were people moving into the house next door, the house separated from us by only four feet. In our brief glance we had seen them taking their belongings out of a car—a German Army car. And we had seen our new neighbours—two German officers, with their batmen, who were taking up residence next door.

At first we felt like panicking; then calmer counsels prevailed. Now danger was at our very door. Our lives depended on our silence. One false move and we would be overheard. All our precautionary measures were doubled. Before, we had talked quietly; now we whispered. Before we had moved about on tiptoe; now we walked without shoes. Every movement was studied in relation to the new danger. When I cooked, I picked up each pan and dish slowly and gently to make sure that no telltale rattle or noise would betray our presence next door.

Now it was necessary to maintain a constant vigil, and this is where Meyer’s preoccupation with the pastime of window-gazing stood us all in good stead. We appointed him our official watchman, and every day throughout the hours of daylight he would sit with his right eye assiduously glued to a tiny hole that we had carefully cut in the curtain of the small side-window. Through this spy-hole, he could command a view of the house next door and the street beyond, and give us warning of any danger. His warnings were to save our lives more than once in the days that lay ahead. He paid for his devoted service by permanently weakening the sight of his left eye.

I took a further precaution when the Germans moved in next door. I asked Auntie Fifi to send a barber to us to dye my boys’ hair red. The reason? As I have said before, the Germans associate dark hair with Jewish people, and if we were raided and discovered my red-haired boys would stand more chance of being taken for Gentiles. It was an added precaution but, to my mind, an important one. Not that the rest of the family agreed with me; far from it. Jonas was entirely out of favour with the idea, and so were the boys, who did not relish the thought of becoming redheads. The only two members of the family who supported me were Rachel and Joseph, and their support was more mischievous than sincere, for they were the two blondes of the family and they did not have to worry about having their hair dyed!

The barber who eventually appeared was a character who gave the children something to talk about and mimic for many days to come. He was a fervent spiritualist, and he talked of nothing but ghosts and psychic phenomena. As soon as he walked into the room, he was more concerned with its “aura” than he was with our presence. He chattered away almost unintelligibly while he dyed the boys’ hair, his eyes taking on a glazed faraway look as he worked. We were afraid he would fall into a trance in the middle of the operation, but nothing so exciting happened. For all his oddity, his work was good. The boys looked like natural redheads when he had finished with them, and he left me a bottle of dye with which I maintained the new colour. They did not revert back to their natural dark hair until after the war.

An early blow to our cramped comfort was the growing scarcity of coke. The stove had to be kept going all the time, as it was our only means of heat and without it the room became bitterly and unbearably cold. It was also, of course, our only cooking facility.

As supplies of coke became increasingly difficult to get, we had to eke out our meagre supplies with wood. This smoked harshly and made us choke. When the coke ran out altogether, and nobody could get us any more, we had to use wood entirely. This was bad; the wood burned all too quickly and needed constant attention. The smoke was unbearable and the resultant dirt and grime horrifying. But what could we do?

The food situation also worsened rapidly. At first we were able to get a good supply of white beans, barley and rice to add to the tiny pieces of meat we got from time to time. Milk was available in small but regular quantities, and so was bread. It was called bread, but it was coarse, ersatz stuff that was tasteless and indigestible. You could eat it, but only just.

There is a popular Dutch gravy mixture called Hallit, which stood us in good stead in those days. I used it to make sandwiches (a use which I doubt its manufacturers ever foresaw), and these were always a delicacy, for however much I tried to introduce variety into our meals it was impossible to fashion the dull and uninteresting fare at our disposal into anything appetizing or mouth-watering.

At that time, in the early days of The Room, we did not go hungry, although the food was fairly tasteless. But the food situation worsened rapidly, and after a time even beans and rice would have been a feast. Auntie Fifi could only supply us with three ration cards for the whole family. These were made out in false names, and provided food that would have been inadequate for three people, let alone eight. The Makkinjes did our shopping for us, and each card allowed us two slices of bread a day, one potato, a quarter of a pound of butter every month, and a tiny piece of meat every Sunday. As for vegetables, the only ones available were sugar beets, the food of cattle and pigs. These are tough, sweet and unpleasant to eat. Somehow, the children managed to make do with these vegetables, but after only one attempt I had to give up the struggle; the coarse, unwholesome flavour of the beets made me sick to my stomach.

So food became a problem. We were often hungry and, as the war progressed, we were starving.

From the beginning, Jonas and I had many times talked over the necessity of keeping the children fully occupied. We realized the dangers of boredom in such close, confined surroundings, and we knew that we could all make ourselves ill if we did not keep our mind off our problems. In fact, it was far more than physical illness that we feared. We knew that people could break down mentally in these circumstances, and we determined that, whatever physical rigours we might have to undergo, we must always keep the children’s minds fully alert and busy.

So we allotted them various daily tasks, which started when we arose. In the early days of our confinement we would arise at normal times and have breakfast but, as the food situation worsened, we stayed in bed until midday, so that we could dispense with this meal.

Rachel’s job was to look after the dishes. The boys had to shake out the mattress, clean the floor, sweep and dust. I made the bed and did the cooking. Meyer took up his post at the window.

As soon as the necessary chores were completed, Jonas took control. From his seat on the hay-box by the stove, he surveyed the room like a general, watching, thinking, planning and smoking his cigars (until they ran out, when he used the husks of cocoa beans as ersatz tobacco). He never said very much, but what little he said was to the point.

He seemed to sense when one of the children was becoming bored or restless, and immediately he would whip up a game or a discussion or a suggestion for occupying their minds. He was never at a loss. Through him the children began to take an interest in a word-game that became one of their most popular pastimes, capable as it was of endless variations.

Thanks to Mr. Makkinje and Tinus, we were well supplied with pencils and paper, so Jonas would get the children seated at the table, and then order them to write down as many street names as they could think of starting with the letter “A”. With “A”  exhausted, he would move them on to “B” and so on through the alphabet.

When they tired of street names, he mixed the diet. They had to put down the names of cities beginning with a certain letter, then the names of countries, then family names. The compilation of the lists took a long time, but what did it matter? We had plenty of time to spare; the big problem was what to do with all the time that lay so heavily on our hands.

The only member of the family who took no interest in these word games was Judah. Although he was only nine years of age when we entered The Room, he was an inveterate reader. As soon as he had finished his early morning chores, his next move was a daily routine. He would stretch himself on the bed and read. All day long, you could see him with his little red head thrust into a book. He was quite happy in his world of words, and all he asked was to be left alone with his beloved books. His tastes in literature were strange for a boy so young. Dutch history was his particular passion. He devoured thick, serious-looking tomes that told the story of our country and, what is more, he understood and retained most of what he read. Jonas and I felt that he was reading such heavy material more to bolster his young egotism than because he was interested in the subject, but we were wrong. We would interrogate him and have discussions with him on historical subjects, and we were proud to realize that he knew what he was reading about.

As a relief from Dutch history, Judah would read the books that Dr. Martens and Annie brought in for Jacob. Serious, quiet Jacob spent every day yearning for the studies that he was missing, and the books he read were all mentally stimulating. I do not remember him ever reading a novel, but I do remember him reading books on psychology and philosophy, the Fourth Dimension and reincarnation, as well as the medical textbooks the good doctor provided him with.

When Jacob had finished a book, Judah would read it. Whether he understood it or not we could not tell, but these serious books certainly kept him occupied and, apparently, interested.

Meyer did not do much reading except in the evening, when his vigil at the window was no longer possible. Then he sought relaxation in cowboy books, and he finished up the war as an expert on the Wild West! Somewhere in the midst of his cowboy fare, I remember, he read the life of Dreyfus. I can’t help wondering whether he started reading this biography in the mistaken belief that Dreyfus was a gunslinger of the wild frontier; anyway, he finished the book and was absorbed by its story.

Abraham was not able to read, and showed no interest at all in being taught, even though we tried to give him lessons. He was an active boy with a quick mind, and he always seemed able to occupy himself. He would watch me doing the cooking with an interest out of all proportion to the humdrum operation; he would help with the cleaning and the dusting, not because he had to but because he liked it; and his favourite occupation was cutting up cardboard boxes and making displays. When Tinus brought in the newspapers to us, he would seize the comic section and revel in the adventures of Tom Puss and Herr Brummel, two famous Dutch strip characters. Then, when the paper had been passed round, he would cut out photographs of people, equipment and places, paste them on cardboard and get busy with his displays.

Meyer also liked cutting-out, but his speciality was footballers from the sporting pages. He compiled a scrapbook of soccer heroes, and would study them for hours, his eyes alight and his brow furrowed. Jonas and I knew what he was thinking, and it saddened us, for Meyer was the most athletic of all the boys. A good soccer player himself, he had dreamed of playing for Bussum Town F.C., and now. . .  on Sundays, particularly, all his unhappiness would well up as, through his peep-hole in the curtain, he would spy on his friends carrying their soccer gear and going off to play football. If they were not going to play soccer, they were roller-skating down the street, and this was bad, too, because Meyer was an expert roller-skater.

Then he would turn to me and ask: “When can I go out and play football again?” We tried to pacify him, but he argued with us. “The Germans won’t do anything to me; I’m only a boy. They won’t take me away.” Try to explain to a twelve-year-old boy why it is necessary to keep him in hiding; try to make him understand the insane fury of the German conquerors against all Jews, boys or men or women. How can you do that and yet not frighten the child too much? I would cry at night worrying about the sad, lost look on Meyer’s face and the deep hurt in Jacob’s eyes.

For Jacob was our major problem, even though he never grumbled or complained. He tried to catch up with his studies as best he could, but what compensation were his books for the teaching he was missing? Although he entered into our childish games, we all knew that his heart was not in them, for he was older and more serious than the rest of the children, and he stood apart. He was old enough to appreciate and understand the full danger of our position, but he was young enough to feel scared and helpless.

Jonas watched him very carefully from his vantage seat on the hay box, and always found ways of interesting him. Like his father, Jacob is a good craftsman, and Jonas encouraged him to draw and paint. With the help of a fretsaw borrowed from the Makkinjes and some wood we had been given by Philip Beneker, Jacob began to do fretwork, making charming wooden articles that, in an emergency, we thought we might sell on the outside to get money for food. Also, he began to paint tiles and varnish them. Thanks to Jonas, he was always busy, but his heart was empty. His inward suffering came out in the form of continual colds, and as I cast back my mind on the noises of The Room I remember the stockinged feet that padded carefully over the creaking boards, the hoarse whispering of our conversations and the sniffles of Jacob as he pored over his books or his painting.

Our other problem child was the youngest, ten-year-old Joseph. He was too old to be treated as a baby, yet too young to be treated as a boy, so it was impossible even to start explaining to him why we were cooped up in this little room. Every day he asked, “When can we go out?” We answered that we would go out as soon as we were allowed. “Why aren’t we allowed?” he wanted to know. “Because the Germans will catch us.” “But they won’t see me,” he assured us. “I’ll just run out for a little while, so I can see the sun. They won’t catch me. I’ll hide if I see any of them.” When we had to tell him it was not possible, he pouted and his eyes filled with tears. His face grew daily thinner and whiter under my eyes, and we could do nothing about it.

Only Jacob, the medical student, understood what was happening to Joseph. One day, picking up one of his text-books, he pointed out a certain word to Jonas and then to me. The word was “claustrophobia,” and the definition given was “a fear of enclosed spaces.” We nodded to each other. That was the cause, we agreed, but what was the cure? We talked to Dr. Martens about the boy, telling him of our concern. He promised to watch him carefully, and with that we had to be content.

The kindness of the doctor to the boy had an interesting result. Joseph busied himself for days with pencil and paper, and one day when Dr. Martens visited us the boy proudly produced the result of his efforts and presented it to him. It was a really excellent pencil sketch of the doctor, life-like not only in its contours but in the character that the boy had unerringly captured. None of us knew that Joseph had any artistic talents, but this portrait by a ten-year-old was an incredibly good piece of work, and the doctor was quite overwhelmed by it. We encouraged the boy to paint and draw, but after this one portrait he seemed to lose interest. He would sit for hours thinking, sometimes scanning the comic strips, more often brooding. A cold hand would clutch my heart as I watched his pinched face; it was all I could do to keep from throwing my arms around him, but any such demonstration would have revealed a concern that we did not dare show. Jonas and I had to keep up a front of being brave and cheerful. Not for a moment did we dare let the children realize the extent of our anxiety. Not for a moment did we dare let them know that, despite the reassuring things we told them, we felt in our hearts that our seclusion in The Room would last for a long, long time.

II

To take my mind off our secret troubles, I read avidly. Pearl Buck was my favourite author, and I devoured one after another of her books. Somehow, the Chinese setting of her work took me away from this tawdry, frightening world in which we existed; through the pages of her books, I travelled to another country—and travelling was something I could not do in any other way.

Rachel had the right temperament for The Room. Cheerful and practical, she made the best of her lot, and never seemed to be bored or fretful. One of the few luxuries we had brought with us was her accordion, and sometimes at night she would play to us very, very softly while we whispered choruses of Dutch songs to her accompaniment. Oh, how we enjoyed these stolen, secret moments of family normality!

She was also a voracious reader, and swept through the Pollyanna series of girls’ books, among others. She also joined Jonas, Abraham and me in playing cards, checkers and dominoes, while Jonas and I took the cards in turns for a quiet game of solitaire.

So the days went by, each day a dull adventure, yet an achievement in togetherness. Not daring to think of tomorrow, we endured each day as if it were a completion in itself. The aggregate of our days endured would one day total the limit in time that was demanded of us, and then we would be free. So each day had to be lived through and counted on our behalf. As an author writes a line and then, having written enough lines, has written a page and then, having written enough pages, has written a book, so we lived each day of itself, and enough days would mark the end of our incarceration. That was my philosophy, and it sustained me through many bad times.

But it was not my husband’s philosophy; far from it. His temperament was entirely different from mine, and his sights were always set on tomorrow. Here is his account of how he felt in The Room.

“My wife was so busy worrying about her family that she had no time to be afraid. I worried abut my family, too, in a different way, and I will tell you that I was always afraid. I never stopped being afraid.

I take things inwardly and keep them to myself. I do not talk much and in The Room I talked even less than usual because it was vitally important that I should not say the wrong thing. I did not show my inward fear, nor did I ever admit it, but I looked into the future and what I saw there did nothing to calm me.

“I was the only one of the family who realized that we would have to hide for a long time. Everybody else was quite sure that the war would soon be over, and we would be able to go out again, but I was the one who knew that this was nothing but wishful thinking. I had always been a student of the news, and I knew this man Hitler. I knew that it would take a long time to beat him, and that he would kill many people before he himself toppled.

“That was what frightened me. How could we last out? I had collected together all my money, but it was inadequate for a long siege. What would happen when the money ran out? How would we live? What would we do? These were the thoughts that went through my head; these were the thoughts I dared not show; these were the thoughts that made me afraid.

“And The Room . . . all these people in one small room. How long could we endure this primitive living? At first it was an adventure, even a novelty, but how long before we all got on each others nerves? How long before we became ill? How long before our minds would bend under the pressure of boredom and fear? Realistically, I faced up to these questions. I did not know the answers, but I knew the questions.

“Our visitors brought news from the outside. Some of it was whispered only to me, and I had to live with its horror. My friends had been picked up and taken to concentration camps. During each visit Auntie Fifi or Dr. Martens quietly told me the names of people I knew whom the Germans had captured. When the food situation worsened, it was Auntie Fifi who told me why. Members of the Underground had tried to steal some ration cards and had been shot by the Germans. Worst of all, she told me of the Jewish people who had died in hiding, and how they had been carried out in the dead of night and buried in the backyards of the house where they had been hiding. These things I knew. Can you wonder they made me afraid?

“Even when the United States came into the war, I knew that those who prophesied an early end to hostilities were deluding themselves. The Germans were too well entrenched across Europe to be defeated quickly; it would take time.

“Not that I ever doubted the outcome of the war. In the early days, I did not know what to think. News was scarce and garbled. The British evacuation at Dunkirk might have been regarded as a miracle by the British nation, but the Dutch regarded it as a disaster and the Germans regarded it as a victory. That was the time when my inward fear rose to its peak, for I felt that Hitler would now invade the British Isles, and I could not see them holding out against his conquering hordes.

“That was a bad time for me. We looked to Britain to save us and, if that country was overrun, then we in Holland faced slavery and torture for the rest of our struggling, unhappy lives.

“But when Hitler marched into Russia, I felt absolutely confident that the allies would win. That was the turning point of my fear about the outcome of the war. From then on, I never doubted for a moment that Germany would lose. But the personal fear remained—when? And what would happen to the Veffers before the victory? Could we last out? What would tomorrow bring for us?

“During the day, I never took my eyes off the children. I watched them closely, anticipating their wishes and planning things for them to do all the time. I saw on Jacob’s face that he wasn’t happy, but we could do nothing for him. Could we expect him to play with children so much younger than himself? We expect him really to accept the fact that his studies had been summarily ended, and that his cherished ambitions of going to university and taking a medical degree had crumbled?

“I saw to it that his hands and mind were always kept busy, but I could not stop his thinking and suffering inside.

“When I realized that he still hoped to become a doctor and was studying hard from the textbooks towards this end, I became brutally practical. It was necessary to dissuade the boy to save him from future hurt. I knew that he would be in hiding for a long time and that, as the days dragged by, the boy would become more and more bitter. So I spoke to Dr. Martens about him, and together we inaugurated a policy of tearing down his dreams. It was a sad thing to have to do, but we both agreed it was best.

.“We would work the conversation round to the medical profession, and then Dr. Martens would proceed to point out all the disadvantages of medicine. ‘Who on earth in his right senses would want to be a doctor?’ he would ask. ‘We get called out of bed at all hours of the night, our lives are never our own, we are slaves of our patients, and we are underpaid.’

“Jacob would retaliate by saying that the satisfaction of healing the sick far transcended material reward or domestic comfort and, even though this was the creed by which Dr. Martens lived and breathed, the worthy doctor would argue against it with all the apparent logic at his command.

“My wife and I kept up the doctor’s good work when he was not with us, but I doubt if we ever really dissuaded Jacob from wanting to be a doctor. He was intelligent enough to know all the drawbacks of a doctor’s life without our ramming them down his throat, and he was intelligent enough to think for himself and to realize that we were talking that way out of kindness and sympathy. He never said much, but he thought a great deal. So did I, and my thoughts were no more pleasant than his.

“As I say, I kept Jacob and the other boys occupied in any way I could, with games, drawing and woodwork. At first, I supervised tile-making and fretwork with a view to marketing the finished products and helping our financial position, but my habit of always looking forward with pessimistic realism stopped this.

“I was afraid of what was going on outside us. We would give the tiles or the woodwork to Mr. Makkinje. He would try to sell them for us. ‘Who made them?’ he would be asked. Maybe he would be cautious, maybe not. Maybe by just a word or an inflection he would give away our presence in his house. And it only needed a word or an inflection to bring the Germans to us. For there were spies everywhere. A thoughtless remark, quite well meant and innocent, in a public place had resulted in the discovery and capture of other Jewish families hiding as we were hiding. I could not risk the same fate. I dropped the idea of selling the boys’ handiwork in the dangerous Outside.

“Then I had a new thought. I would make a small scale model of The Room and get the boys to help me with it. I am useful with my hands, and the job was an interesting one. We made it on the scale of one metre to one centimetre, and the materials we used included paper, wood, matches, cardboard, wire and anything else we could lay our hands on.

“The job took many months, and I supervised its construction closely, leaving the actual work to Jacob and Meyer. In my self-appointed capacity as foreman, I would criticize their day’s work with a ruthlessness only actuated by my desire to keep them working. The more complaints I could make about their craftsmanship, the more I was pleased, for that meant that they would have to improve on their work the following day, attending to and altering the little jobs I had pointed out before they carried on with the rest of the model. In other words, my sole desire was to stretch out every job and leave something for tomorrow.

‘Tomorrow.’ That was the word that was in my mind in letters of fire throughout my days in The Room. My wife also had a word in her mind, and that word was ‘today.’ She lived for each day, but to me each day was merely a prelude to an unforeseeable and fearsome tomorrow.

“I had no patience to occupy myself with any handiwork. I had no patience to read. I just watched my wife and children, thinking and dreaming, making plans for the future, conjuring up eventualities and devising solutions, worrying and wondering. I felt lost, afraid.

“As day succeeded day, I became more and more moody, quiet and withdrawn. My wife became worried about me, and asked Dr. Martens to have a look at me, but he could find nothing wrong with me physically. I knew there was nothing wrong with me physically—I have always been a very strong and healthy man—-but I did not dare tell him what really was wrong with me.

“How could I tell him, surrounded as I was by all my family, that I was always afraid and that the fear was clutching at my heart and mind until it was almost unbearable?

“So I cried as a release, and to this day I still cry when I think about it.”

11

For nearly three years we were “tenants” of the Makkinje family. The relationship was too close, the danger too acute and the period far too long. We started by all being friends; we wound up by getting on each others nerves to a point of near-hysteria.

Those early days at the Makkinjes were pleasant. Our family was together again; that was the most important thing. Mrs. Makkinje allowed us to use the washroom downstairs, and she let me cook on the gas stove in her kitchen. The food we were able to procure at that time was adequate, so we fed reasonably well. Apart from the fact that we all lived in one room and were in danger from outside enemies, we were about as comfortable as could be expected in our peculiar circumstances.

Annie, the sixteen-year-old daughter of the house, was a great help to us. She would bring us books from the library, struggling into the house with her arms full of varied reading matter she had collected for us. She used to come in to see us frequently, and she and Rachel would get into a corner and chatter away with their heads close together, Annie’s strawberry blonde mane of hair shaking under the force of the discussion. She was a girl of vitality and spirit, and her presence and companionship had a great effect on Rachel.

Her ten-year-old brother, Tinus, also provided companionship for the younger boys. He would bring in the newspapers and magazines, and keep them informed of happenings at school and in the town. Both Tinus and Annie had no fear of the consequences of their friendship with us. They ignored the dangers and seemed to revel in the cloak-and-dagger undercurrent of their actions on our behalf.

But the third member of the Makkinje family was a different proposition. This was seven-year-old Jan, and it was agreed right from the start that he should not be informed of our presence in the house. He was a bright and sensible boy, but of an age when the keeping of such an exciting secret might be too much for him. And we all knew the consequences of a careless word at school or to his playmates in the street. We dared not risk so young a child sharing our secret. When he came home from school, that was the signal for us to whisper, to creep about cautiously and to give no hint of our presence. We did not dare go downstairs when he was in the house.

Somehow we always felt that this was an unnecessary precaution, because of what would happen when Jan passed the house on his way to and from school. Watching him from behind the curtains, we would see him give a sideways, seemingly casual glance up to our room. It was a small gesture but I, who have raised five boys and know their mentality better than most, was quite sure from the outset that the quick glance had a message for us. It said to me: “Don’t worry. I know you’re there, but I won’t tell.”

Even so, despite this feeling, we could not take any risk and so we hid from Jan. And from all the friends who would wander into the house at odd moments to pass the time of day. And from Mrs. Makkinje’s special friend who spent every afternoon with her. And, of course, from the Germans.

Gerrit Makkinje, the father of the house, welcomed our presence because we brought much-needed company into his life. He liked to talk to people and regarded us as a welcome diversion. A stolid, practical man with more bonhomie than imagination, he seemed oblivious to the implications of our concealment. To him we were friends in the house rather than Jews hiding from the Germans. That carefree attitude of his worried Jonas, I knew, for we feared that he might inadvertently disclose our presence through thoughtlessness and lack of discretion.

In the evenings, Mr. Makkinje would come upstairs to play cards with us and chat. That was in the very early days, and his visits always set us somewhat on edge, because we had the very strong feeling that his wife did not approve of his friendship with us.

In the circumstances in which we found ourselves, our senses became trigger-sharp. We were always watching and looking for motives under the surface; we were sensitive to atmosphere and alert and suspicious at all times. So it was not difficult for us to work out for ourselves that Mr. Makkinje’s visits to us were not popular with his wife.

It all started with my desire to be friendly. Since she did me the courtesy of letting me use her gas-cooker, I repaid it by inviting her family upstairs to have dinner with us. I am good cook and, even with the meagre materials at hand, I was able to whip up something tasty and, as far as the Makkinjes were concerned, something unusual, for Mrs. Makkinje (as I well knew from seeing her in action) was a plain and unimaginative cook.

My anxiety to be friendly failed abysmally, and I knew it had done so when Tinus wolfed the meal I had set before him and then said: “Why don’t you cook like this, mother? We never get meals like this.” That was bad enough, but when Mr. Makkinje and Annie cordially agreed I knew that my relationship with Mrs. Makkinje would be strained in the future.

And so it proved. She was a nervous, highly strung woman, and I can well understand the strain under which she laboured through our presence in the house. When I issued another invitation for them to dine with us, she refused it, and went on to say that she did not think it was wise for her husband to keep coming upstairs to us. It was dangerous. She told him so, and I could hear their voices shouting at each other downstairs, but he still continued to visit us for a time.

I would say to him that he had better not come upstairs, as his wife didn’t like it. His reply was quite forceful: “I don’t give a darn,” and there we were stuck in the middle of a domestic situation because his wife was quite sure that we encouraged him to defy her wishes. It was a problem and one that grew worse as the days went by.

One day Joseph went down to the washroom in the usual way and, turning the corner in the hallway, ran slap into a visitor. He scurried out of the way, and Mrs. Makkinje explained his presence by saying that he was one of Jan’s school friends, but the damage was done. No longer could we use the washroom.

We had to make do with a pail in the corner of The Room, in front of which Jonas suspended a sheet. It was primitive and unpleasant in the extreme, but it is extraordinary-how, in such circumstances, one loses one’s sense of modesty. Natural functions had to be performed, and we performed them. The net was closing in on us.

At the same time, Mrs. Makkinje told me I could no longer use the gas-cooker downstairs. She wanted us to stay in our room all the time. On no account must we come downstairs. She was scared; who can blame her?

Now we had to do all our cooking over the tiny stove in The Room, a smoking, temperamental apparatus that added to the difficulties of our existence. Cooking, as I understand cooking, was out of the question. All we could do was heat the food and try to make it palatable while, from the kitchen downstairs, the appetizing smells of frying and roasting were wafted up to us.

Jonas contrived an ingenious way to get a gas supply for our cooking in The Room. In consultation with Mr. Makkinje, he worked out a simple means by which a pipe could be affixed to the main supply downstairs and so bring the gas upstairs to us. The equipment necessary to divert the gas could be dismantled before the man came round on his monthly visit to read the meter. It seemed foolproof, but Mrs. Makkinje was afraid. She said “No.”

As an added precaution in case strangers came into the house (as they often did), Mr. Makkinje and Jonas constructed a warning apparatus. They bored a hole in the floor, passed a string through it and connected it with a small bell in The Room. When there was danger, the string was pulled, the bell tinkled, and we knew we had to sit quietly and not talk.

This was a good idea until some busybody heard the bell tinkle and asked Mrs. Makkinje what it was. This so frightened her that she at once insisted the warning signal be changed. Instead of the bell, we had a small piece of wood which rattled on the floor. We always had to keep on the alert to catch the tiny sound, for it made hardly any noise. But in its way it was a warning.

There was another sound that used to come up to us from downstairs, the sound of a woman whistling. Mrs. Makkinje had an odd habit of whistling when she was in a temper. The louder she whistled, the more bad-tempered she was. After the pleasantries of the first few days, her whistling repertoire became extensive and continual.

I remember in those early days when we first talked about the warning signal and decided to rig one up. She thought the precaution was unnecessary.

“After all,” she said, “you won’t be here long, and what do we want to mess about with the floors for? It’s only a short time.”

Gerrit Makkinje laughed. “A short time?” he repeated. “This war is going to last a long time. They may be here for a year.”

“A year! My God!” Mrs. Makkinje went pale, and a look of absolute horror spread over her face. “Not as long as that! I couldn’t bear it.”

I tried to pacify her, but the thought of having us with her for a whole year shook her to the core. We ourselves did not visualize for a moment that our stay in The Room would last as long as it did, but we were at least fatalistic about it. Mrs. Makkinje was not. She resented us because we constituted an ever-present danger. The fact that she needed the money we gave her made her resent us more, as if she perversely blamed us for the lack of money which forced her to take us in. I tried all I knew to be friendly with her and to allay her justifiable anxieties, but she was not amenable to my approaches, and in the end—much later on—there was open hostility between us. At this stage of my story she kept away from us and tried to get her family to do the same.

Tinus was the first to obey her command. He became afraid to show himself in our room, and left the papers and magazines outside the door. Mr. Makkinje argued and shouted downstairs, and proclaimed his independence upstairs, but his visits were much curtailed and finally ceased altogether except for emergency calls.

Annie, however, was made of sterner stuff. She came up to see us as much as she was able, and her mother’s edict made little difference to the number or the length of her visits. She was a most obliging girl, and nothing was too much trouble for her.

Not long after we moved in, we thought we would find out exactly how we stood with our store. At this time, we did not know for sure what our assistant had done about the business, and we asked Annie to find out.

She did so with her usual willingness and impish loyalty, and described the conversation to us when she returned.

“I went into the flower store,” she told us, “and saw him. His name is over the store now. I asked him how things were. He said they were fine. Then I said: ‘Do you ever hear anything from the Veffers?’ He answered: ‘No, and I don’t want to know anything about them.’ I wasn’t going to let him get off so lightly, so I said: ‘I hear they’ve gone to Switzerland. ls that right?’ That’s the story I’ve been spreading around, as you know. Well, he said: ‘I don’t know where they are, and I don’t care. I want no part of them.’ So I said: ‘But I thought this was their store?’ and he went very red and said: ‘No, it’s my store.’ I thought it was time to come out then, as he was getting annoyed.”

So much for our ally and friend.

Apart from her social visits to Rachel and her regular trips with books for us from the libraries, Annie had another important reason for coming upstairs. She helped us get our only breath of fresh air.

With one eye on the neighbours, as always, it was important to keep up the routine of the house, and Annie had been in the habit of giving her room a thorough cleaning every month. Then she would open the window, shake the sheets, pummel the mattress, clean the floor and be well in evidence as she performed the chores.

It was necessary to keep up appearances, so once a month Annie arrived in The Room with mop, brush and other equipment and set about her usual cleaning. We all lay on the floor out of sight as she opened the windows and went through the usual motions, singing and drawing attention to herself as she did so. For us, this was a great occasion. It was the only time the windows were ever opened, and we gulped in the fresh air. It was necessary to extinguish the stove before the windows were opened, because whiffs of smoke would have been a suspicious oddity in such circumstances, and we had all the trouble of relighting the wood fuel when Annie had finished her chores. But the trouble was well worth while. Until you have been cooped up in an airless, smoke-laden room day and night, with seven other people, you can have little idea of the joy of breathing in cool, fresh air, even though you have to lie on the floor to do it.

We welcomed her appearance at these times, but there was another occasion when we were not so happy to see her.

It was early evening in the spring of 1943. We had been hiding for only a few months. It was the hour before twilight, still light enough to read; but the air had that strange depth of focus and clarity that you get when the sun is about to go down. We were reading; the children were talking and scribbling. It was quiet, peaceful.

“Listen!” Jonas stood up, his ear cocked. Up the stairs someone was running—quickly, with no pretence of secrecy. Feet clattered on the wood, the door burst open. Annie, panting, and agitated, rushed in. Behind her, we heard the slower, heavier feet of her father.

“What is it?” I could hardly ask the question, for the fear on Annie’s face told me the answer.

Breathlessly, she replied: “The Germans. They are in the Brinklaan. They are raiding the houses for Jewish people. Quick!”

The Brinklaan! It was the street round the corner. The Germans would soon be here. Jonas jumped into action. He gave the word: “Scramble!” But this time he meant it.

The real thing was very different from the rehearsals, that first, terrible time. Gone was the smooth, orderly precision of our daily drills. We rushed about, getting in each others way, two of us picking up the same objects and standing there confused and bemused. The hiding-place in the closet seemed to be hopelessly small, and our belongings seemed to be hopelessly large.

While we ran about, trying to sort ourselves out and beseeching each other to be calm, Mr. Makkinje grabbed the hot stove and manhandled it downstairs and into the backyard. That was one of the most important operations, and when it had been completed it restored us to sanity. We remembered Jonas’s patient training, and gathered up all our belongings, placing them in the closet as we had done so many times before.

With our clothes, pots and pans, books and other impediments out of the way, Annie and I bustled about applying the finishing touches. Then we checked up. Everything looked calm and serene. We disposed ourselves in the closet, crawling in one by one to our allotted positions.

As we were doing so, I noticed that Jonas was clutching something in his hand. “What have you got there?” I asked. He brandished it. It was the axe we used for chopping our wood. His face was pale, his eyes were blazing. He said: “If they find us, I will use this. If we are to go, they will go first.”

We went into the closet. Jonas closed the door from the inside, and Annie closed the outside door of the closet. We heard her footsteps going away. There was silence.

We waited tensely. We were wedged in so tight that we could not move even if we wanted to, and nature has a mischievous way of amusing herself in such circumstances. Our flesh tickled, our bones ached, our faces ran with sweat that we could not wipe away, and our throats grew choked and dry. We wanted to cough; we dared not. And by the door, waiting grimly, with his hands clutching the axe was Jonas. If the door opened, Jonas would be the first to be seen and he would use that axe with all his strength before he let anybody take us.

“Shh!” A cold whisper ran through the hiding-place, and in the darkness our sweat froze and our throats closed up. No longer did we want to move; we were paralysed in our cramped positions. For we heard sounds—heavy footsteps clumping up the stairs, stamping into the room. The Germans had come.

There were two of them, we found out afterwards, but they might have been a hundred, the way the sound of their boots jarred our frozen brains, reverberating inside our very bones, filling our world and crunching our hearts. We were dead; only our ears were alive, hearing and magnifying the dread sounds.

The Germans stamped about the room. They stopped. We could picture them looking around. Had we left anything behind that would disclose our presence? I did not dare think.

A voice spoke in German. “What room is this?”

Mrs. Makkinje’s voice replied: “This is my daughter’s room.”

A second German voice growled: “It’s a big bed, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Makkinje, with throat-tightened nonchalance, answered: “She likes a big bed.”

We heard the mattress creak as the Germans felt it; we heard the complaint of the floorboards as they knelt down and looked under the bed; we heard them tapping the walls, opening the windows, prying, searching. The sounds filled our ears and stopped our breathing.

We heard Mrs. Makkinje quaver: “What are you looking for?”

They threw the one-word answer at her: “Jews!”

I sensed Jonas tightening his grip on the axe.

The feet of doom paced about the room. They came towards us. We gave silent cries of fright as the outer door of the closet burst open. The Germans were only a few feet from us.

One of them said: “What do you keep in here?”

Mrs. Makkinje answered: “My daughter keeps her clothes here.”

The second one growled: “Where are the clothes? Why are they not hanging up?”

Quickly she replied: “We are poor people. My daughter has no clothes now. We have had to sell them all.”

The Germans laughed. We felt their knuckles tapping the wall, coming closer and closer. Something welled up inside my throat; I wanted to scream. In an agony of terror we heard the knuckles rap on the very wall of our hiding-place, inches away from our tense faces. But in the midst of our fear an ice-cold part of my brain said a prayer of thanks because Jonas had foreseen just this happening and had hung the blanket inside the door. The knuckles were rapping hard now, passing over the entrance to our secret place, but there was no variation in sound, no telltale hollow ring to the wood. The Germans went out and closed the outer closet door. Our relief welled up into a silent roar in our heads.

The footsteps went away, out of The Room, down the stairs, out of the house. . . . Still we stayed there, not daring to come out, until Mr. Makkinje came upstairs and gave us the signal to emerge. Then we crawled out into the twilight, crying, shaken, stiff with pain, parched and choked with the intensity of our suffering.

Mr. Makkinje tried to cheer us up. “There you are,” he said jovially, with a forced heartiness he was far from feeling. “Now you know what it’s like, and you needn’t be frightened of it any more. Look at it this way—now you know the worst…”

The worst? There was so much worse to come that had we been able to look into the future we would have given up there and then.

 

12

Yes, worse was still to come. The summer was still to come, and that brought with it an enemy of its own—an enemy clad not in jackboots and uniform, an enemy against which even Jonas’s axe was powerless. The enemy was . . . fleas!

No biblical plague ever could have equalled the plague of fleas that beset Bussum (and, as far as I know, all Holland) in that summer of 1943. Unsanitary conditions in the streets and houses, coupled with a lack of proper cleaning fluids and disinfectants, brought the dread visitors into the houses in their millions, and we woke up one morning to find our room crawling with the tiny black insects.

Never in all my life had I ever had a flea in my house. The appearance of such an insect would have been a reflection on my domestic cleanliness, and the sight of the fleas swarming all over the bedclothes and the food and the walls and the floors sickened me.

With mops and brooms and everything we could lay our hands on we attacked them, and the more we killed the more seemed to come from nowhere. With our bare hands we started to kill them, crushing them between our fingers. For hours we all fought the plague, but the odds were hopeless. There were thousands and thousands of fleas, but there were only eight of us.

Those few days scar my memory like a nightmare. The nauseating revulsion I felt as I saw the insects darkening the room rises again inside me as I think of it now. And except for our hands and our brooms and mops we were helpless. Lysol was no longer available, water was scarce and, even if it had been possible to use a flit-gun or other spray, where could we go while the room was being sprayed? We could not go out of the room; we could not open the windows. All we could do was vainly try to fight them.

I cannot write much about that visitation. It is too horrible. Somehow those fleas were a symbol of our humiliation, of the depths to which we had sunk, of the abyss into which the war had flung us. Could this be happening to the Veffers, that all of us were chasing fleas and clicking them out of existence between our fingers? A nightmare, did I say? No nightmare could ever equal the horror of that reality.

Then, suddenly, the fleas went away. One day, they were there, swarming all over us; the next day, the room was free of all but their corpses. The battleground was deserted. We could breathe again.

We had a temporary relief from our ordeals. Our life, such as it was, went on. My major problem now concerned itself with how to use my ingenuity on such tasteless fare as sugar beets and a solitary potato. The children went back to their reading and drawing and scribbling.

Into this period of quiet came Dr. Martens to shatter the peace. He did not know it at the time; nor did we. He thought he was doing a kindness; so did we. But even the Germans and the fleas were minor incidents in our story compared with the trouble he brought us that night.

The visit from Dr. Martens that night did not occasion our usual joyous welcome. The carefree, relaxed mood of our early days in The Room had passed. We were edgy and worried and weary. The search of the Germans had shaken us more than we cared to admit even to one another, and the plague of the fleas had put the finishing touch to our nervous state. But our change of mood was lost on Dr. Martens, for he had problems of his own on his mind, and he was agitated and in a hurry.

“I cannot stay long,” he greeted us, “but you must help me.”

If there is anything we can do,” I said, “you know we will do it for you, doctor.”

“It is not for me,” he explained. “I have word that the Germans are searching my hospital tonight. I have disposed of all the Jewish people I have been hiding there—” he paused “—except two.” He hurried on. “Tonight has been a great strain for me. I have been round the town, begging people for accommodation, and they are frightened. I have had to beg, plead, bully them to make them help me, and now, as I say, I have found places for all my—hmm—patients except two.”

“So?” asked Jonas quietly.

The doctor looked embarrassed. “I know this is asking a great deal of you, but can you take these two people in?”

I looked at him aghast. “What—here?”

He nodded. “I hate to ask it, but I am desperate. There is nowhere else at all in the town. I have tried everywhere. You see”—he cleared his throat; he was not at all happy about his request—“they are old people. They need help.”

“Doctor,” I said slowly, “you know that we would do anything in the world to help you, but look what you are asking. There are eight of us here. Eight people in this one room, and you want us to make it ten? Surely you cannot be serious.”

“It is for one night only,” he pointed out to me. “I just need time to find them permanent accommodation. Then I will take them away. But unless I place them somewhere tonight they will fall into the hands of the Germans. Would you want that on your conscience?”

As I hesitated, he pressed home his advantage. “Do you remember when you tramped the streets and all the doors closed on you? How did you feel then? Would you do the same thing to two Jewish people?”

His logic was unassailable. I felt almost ashamed of having raised objections.

I said: “What about the people downstairs? Will they agree?”

Jonas interjected an anxious query. “You’re sure it is only for one night?”

“That is all,” Dr. Martens assured us. “By tomorrow I will be able to take them elsewhere. But putting them somewhere tonight is the problem, and I am desperate.”

I gave in as gracefully as I could. “Very well, then. If the Makkinjes agree, we will take them in.”

“Only for tonight,” added Jonas.

Showering his thanks on us, the doctor left. Jonas and I looked at each other wryly and then, on an impulse, we both laughed. “A couple of softhearted old fools we are,” I told him. “ As if we are not already crowded enough.” Jonas nodded.

Later that night Dr. Martens returned. With him were the two old people, and as they shambled in I recognized them, and my heart sank. They were the father and mother of my friend Greta, the milliner, whom the Germans had taken away. I knew them slightly, but I was not particularly friendly with them, nor was anybody else in the town. They were old, they were feeble, they were eccentric and, worst of all, they were here.

Remembering my manners, I stood up, forced a smile and greeted them. They ignored me and sank into chairs, breathing heavily. The old man took a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his brow.

“It is too hot in here,” he wheezed. “Open the window.”

I looked at the doctor. Gently he explained to the old man that we dare not open the windows for fear of the Germans.

“The Germans?” He stared around him with rheumy eyes. “What would the Germans want with an old man like me? They would not touch me. I will open the window.”

We managed to restrain him, and Dr. Martens could not get out fast enough. I raced him to the door. “What are you doing to us, doctor?” I whispered accusingly.

“It’s only for tonight. I promise you—it’s only for tonight.” He was gone, and ten of us were left in The Room.

II

The old couple’s name was Aaldwereld. She was Naatje and he was Samuel, but he was always known as Mulli. They were in their seventies, and they carried their age heavily. Some people of seventy are active in mind and body; not the Aaldwerelds. She was very fat, grey-haired, grey-faced, flabby and shuffling. He was thin and bald, with wet eyes and a huge nose. He did not breathe; he wheezed and bubbled and choked. It was a horrible sound.

We tried to make them comfortable, but they were suspicious of everything we did for them. When Jonas took the old man’s coat and hung it in the closet, the wet eyes followed him all the way with a brooding wariness as if he expected the contents of his pockets to be extracted en route.

I asked if they were hungry. They said “Yes” as if taking our food was their right and privilege. They were ungracious about the offer and ungracious about the food when it came. They watched me serve it, measuring each spoonful with their eyes, comparing their portion with those of the rest of us to make sure that they were not being cheated.

They ate it as if each mouthful was overloaded with salt. They expected better fare, and told me so. When I heatedly told them that we were lucky to get food at all, they did not listen. I could see they did not understand.

But worse was still to come. From his baggage, old man Aaldwereld produced a sputum mug with a lid, which he placed prominently on the table at his side. In between eating, he would hawk and cough and spit into the mug. We were appalled and sickened.

I protested violently, but the old man did not bother to reply to me. His wife said, “He suffers from asthma,” as if that excused everything, and then, to make sure that she was not left out in the cold, she went on to say, “I suffer from sugar diabetes.”

That was all we needed. Two unpleasant people were bad enough, but two unpleasant invalids . .. I felt faint with rage.

But Dr. Martens had promised that it was to be for one night and they were refugees like ourselves, and one must be charitable. So I told myself, but the platitudes did little to calm me. However, bending over backwards in my desire to help them, I arranged with Jonas that we should give up the bed to the two old people for that night, and that we would go upstairs to the tiny cold attic where we would sleep on our coats.

When we announced this, they took it as no more than their due. We went upstairs. We curled ourselves up in our coats, but sleep would not come. From below us we heard the droning of voices that went on and on and on. Jonas and I listened. “Is it the children?” I asked.

“No. It’s the people.”

“But the children will get no rest. put a stop to this.” I unravelled myself from the coats, heaved myself from the floor and pattered downstairs. When I opened the door of The Room, a sickening odour assailed my nostrils. I choked and coughed and spluttered. In the dark room, a tiny light was burning, and the old couple were still chattering as I came in.

I was in a temper. “What’s this filthy smell?” I burst out.

The children, wide awake and fretful, explained. The old man had some asthma powder that he burned in a saucer and inhaled during the night. They couldn’t sleep because of the smell, and apart from the smell there was the nonstop talking.

I pitched into them with my tongue. I was at a loss to know what to do about the asthma powder, but at least I could stop the talking. The two old people listened to me as if I was addressing them in a foreign language. They said nothing. I stayed in the room glaring at them. It was too dark for them to see my expression, but they must have sensed it for they did not speak again that night. I went upstairs with a silent prayer: “Oh, God, let tomorrow come quickly, and then they will go.”

When tomorrow came they did not go. The doctor did not come, and by the end of the day I was distraught. One is prepared to make allowances for old people, but the difficulty was that they were not prepared to make any allowances for the grim circumstances in which we found ourselves. They did not understand why we were hiding, nor did they care. They lived in a senile world of their own, bounded by their ailments and their suspicion. They regarded their age and infirmity as an armour. It would protect them from the Germans, for no harm could possibly come to people as old and sick as they were. We tried to tell them that the Germans had no respect for age or illness; that old people like themselves were useless to the Reich and would be the first to be put away; but their minds refused to grasp what we were telling them. They did not even listen.

By the end of the day I had had more than enough of them.

When Gerrit Makkinje came up to visit us and find out what was happening about the old people, I drew him aside and begged him to go to Dr. Martens.

“For God’s sake,” I cried, “tell him to take these people away, or else I shall go mad.” I told him a little of what had been happening—of the sputum mug and the asthma powder, of the suspicion and the hostility. He was a kind man. He went to the doctor.

When he returned his face was grave. “I have bad news for you,” he told me slowly. “The doctor says he cannot take them back to the hospital, and nobody else will take them in. He has tried everybody, but he can find no place for them. You will have to keep them here.”

The news was like a death sentence. I could not speak. Usually I can accept anything, but this news was more than I could bear. Jonas and I talked it over in whispers, and he tried to calm me. For once we reversed our usual roles. He was the fatalistic one now, and I was the one who looked into the future and was horrified at what I saw there.

That night, while I tried to adjust myself to this new and formidable invasion of our privacy, I let them have our bed again. I told the children to be patient, and we would soon think of something.

The effect of the Aaldwerelds on my family was a great worry to me. Their presence made us edgy and irritable. The harmony which had existed between all of us was being disrupted; they were a trial and an encumbrance. The Room now reeked of the fearful stench of the asthma powder, and our nerves were stretched to breaking-point by the coughing and spitting of the old man and the sloppy, waddling mistrust of the old woman.

During the day they said little, except to criticize the portions of food I gave them and complain about the discomfort of their amenities. It got so that I closed my ears; it was impossible to reason with them. But at night they let themselves go in the talking line. They jabbered away to each other for hours. It seemed as if they needed little asleep, and my children were spending their days hollow-eyed and miserable.

Finally I had no alternative but to consign the old people to the attic. When I told them of this decision, the old man drew himself up to his full shaky height and, with his great nostrils flaring, roared: “You cannot do this to us. We are old people. We are not strong. Your children are strong. Let them sleep up there.”

If he could roar, so could I. I went right up to him, thrusting my face at his. I was shaking with temper. “Listen,” I shouted, “you are endangering the lives of all of us by being down here, and I will no longer permit it.”

He tossed his thin head and clucked his tongue as if I were mad. “What are you talking about?” he sneered. “You are endangering our lives by your lack of thought for old people. Wait till you get old—see how you like it when . . .”

“Use your intelligence,” I interrupted him. “You talk like I am a child. Do you realize that the Germans come in here and search this room?”

He brushed the question aside. “The Germans!” He looked across at his wife with a pitying expression as if to say: “How can I talk to this crazy woman?

“Yes, the Germans,” I thundered.

He cackled and coughed. “Always you are frightened of the Germans,” he taunted me. “They will do nothing to us. We are old. What would they want with us?”

I appealed to Jonas. “Can you talk to this maniac?” I asked him despairingly.

Jonas came over from his seat on the hay-box. In his quiet voice he took over from me.

“If you stay down here,” he explained, “the Germans will smell that asthma stuff you use. They will ask questions and they will find that there are Jews hiding here. Then they will discover us, and take us away.”

The old man spread his gaunt hands. “So let them take us away,” he laughed. “They are fighting a war. Do you think they have time to bother with two old helpless people like Naatje and me?”

I broke in. “Your daughter and her child were helpless enough, but they took them away.”

“Greta and the baby will be all right,” said the old man smugly. “No harm will come to them.”

I  was beside myself with rage at his callous indifference. “But they have been taken to Poland, don’t you understand? Poland! The underground told us that the Germans have taken your daughter and grandchild to Poland.”

“It’s not so bad in Poland,” the old lady joined in wheezingly.

Old man Aaldwereld nodded his head vigorously. “I would be glad to live in Poland instead of here,” he cackled. –

I looked helplessly at Jonas and he shrugged his shoulders. “They are old,” he said to me quietly. “How can you make them understand?”

“This is how I’ll make them understand.” I was past arguing. I went over to the bed and lifted off a blanket; then I gave orders to the children and we all carried upstairs into the attic such necessities as we could spare. When I came down, I said to the old people: “From tonight, you sleep in the attic. That is final. If you don’t like it, that’s too bad, but there are many things about our life just now that we don’t like either.”

They spluttered expostulations and threats. I closed my ears. That night they went upstairs, but the old man came down in the middle of the night to demand a slice of bread. He was hungry. I told him we could not spare any food; everything was fairly divided. He went back muttering, and we could hear them talking upstairs. I heard his wife say: “God knows how much food they get, but look how little they give us.” His voice boomed down to us: “They are starving us. I will see that they are punished.”

What can you do with people like that?

At least we were spared the vile stench of the asthma powder, and the fear that the smell might some day give away our presence to the searching Germans.

Their complaints continued. They wanted a light in the night. They demanded a candle and they wanted to keep it burning all night. We were now getting desperately short of candles, and the electricity supply had been drastically curtailed by the Germans. Power was only put on at reasonably high pressure twice a day, at noon and six p.m. for the population to cook their meals. For the rest of the day or night, the supply of electricity was diverted to the factories. The private houses could go without, So we had to use candles, and these were scarce and expensive. Our meagre supplies had to be used sparingly.

But old man Aaldwereld demanded a candle every night, and when we refused he roared and shouted until he finally coughed himself into helplessness.

As for food, he was quite convinced that we were deliberately starving him and his wife. Our money was getting short, and the rations we managed to get were meagre in the extreme—meagre and tasteless. I shared the sugar-beets and the tiny amounts of butter, bread and meat with scrupulous fairness, but the Aaldwerelds insisted that, as they were older people, they needed more food to keep up their strength than did my children. Did you ever hear such nonsense? Yet we had to endure it. At every meal there was an argument as their vulture eyes measured each piece of food placed on each plate, and the bickering had the effect of putting us off our food, so that we left it uneaten. That convinced them that I was giving the family more food than they could eat, and the arguments about unfair sharing started all over again. How could you explain to them that all the uneaten food was zealously guarded and used towards the next meal?

The old woman was a trial, too. She insisted on having a cup of hot water sent up to her early in the morning. When we could, we let her have it, but when the food supplies became more and more scarce we slept late in the mornings so that we could miss the breakfast meal. This did not suit Mrs. Aaldwereld. At seven o’clock she would breathlessly waddle into our room, demanding her hot water.

Once we were awake we had to rise and, once we arose we were hungry, so our plans for saving the morning meal were short-lived.

In addition, as a diabetic, Mrs. Aaldwereld needed constant attention, and how could you treat her under the condition in which we found ourselves? When she blacked-out one day, I sent Tinus Makkinje for Dr. Martens, and he paid us his first visit since he had inflicted the Aaldwerelds on us.

I met him at the door. “Dr. Martens,” I greeted him, “how could you do this to us? Those old people are driving us mad. We will go out of our minds.”

“I know they are a problem,” he began soothingly.

“A problem?” I burst in. “They are a danger. We are not safe while they are here. They do not understand our position at all; they think that hiding from the Germans is a joke. Doctor, for God’s sake take them away. Take them anywhere, but take them away from us.”

He put his arm consolingly round my shoulder. “I am sorry I had to do this to you,” he said gently, “but would you have let me throw them out into the street?”

“Yes, but—”

He stopped me. “I know they are old and I know they are difficult but they are human beings and they have to be protected from themselves. If I could find somewhere else to put them, I would take them away from you this very instant, but all doors are closed to them.”

“I’m not surprised,” I told him bitterly. “We knew them of old, before the war. We all knew in Bussum that they were difficult; but now they are worse than difficult. They are impossible.”

“I will talk to them,” he promised me; and he did so, but with little effect. He told me afterwards that they had started by accusing us of ill-treating and starving them. When he patiently set about explaining the position to them, they listened and seemed to understand. But I knew it would not be for long. You told them something one night and they agreed with what you said, but by the next morning they had completely forgotten it all.

When he came back to me, Dr. Martens said: “I have talked to them, and I hope you will find them more reasonable.”

“You could have saved your breath,” I told him feelingly. “But thank you for trying, anyway.”

“Now I need some more help for those people,” he went on.

“Oh, God, what is it now?”

“It’s the old lady’s diabetes. She must have insulin shots at certain hours, otherwise her life is in danger. And you wouldn’t want her to die on you, would you?”

I made no answer. I was only concerned with the lives of my family. Wicked though it may sound, I could not truthfully care about the fate of the old people.

Dr. Martens read my thoughts and did not pursue the subject. “I cannot obviously arrange to be here whenever she needs an injection,” he went on hurriedly, “so I must make other arrangements.” I raised my eyebrows in a query. “I think your son Jacob is ready to try his hand at a little practical medicine,” he said jovially. “What do you say, Jacob?”

My eldest son, busy painting a tile at the table, looked up. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“If I show you how,” said the doctor, “will you give the old lady an injection of insulin?”

The boy stood up, delight registering all over his face.

“Certainly I will,” he said. “Then I’ll be like a real doctor, won’t I?”

Dr. Martens nodded, and the two of them then went into a huddle, the old doctor and the young boy. I watched the doctor show Jacob how to fill and use a hypodermic syringe. On his bare arm he showed him where to stick the needle, and in the midst of all my nervous anxiety I felt a tender feeling of pride and joy as I saw the enraptured pleasure on the boy’s face. He was an apt pupil, and by the time the doctor left that night he was an expert with the needle.

From then on, Doctor Jacob Veffer, aged eighteen, took Mrs. Aaldwereld, the sugar diabetic, under his care. At regular times he would give her the necessary injections with a facility that I never ceased to admire. But the old lady was demanding. In the middle of the night she would send her husband down to wake up Jacob and make him come up to her because she needed an injection. The sleepy boy would rise uncomplainingly, perform his medical duties, and go back to bed.

On one such occasion Jacob came running down in alarm. He rushed over to Jonas and shook him into wakefulness. “Quick,” he shouted, “come upstairs. I heard them talking. It is dangerous.”

As Jonas and I rushed up the stairs, Jacob completed his story. “I heard the old man say that he would throw a note out of the window tonight so that a passer-by could get help.”

When we taxed Mr. Aaldwereld with the story, he made no effort to deny it. “We want to get away from here,” he thundered. “We do not like you, or this poky room. It is a prison. Somebody will help us.” –

“But if you throw out a note,”  said Jonas, trying to reasonable, “the Germans will hear about it, and they will pick us up.”

“The Germans,” scoffed the old man. “Always you are frightened of the Germans. Well, I tell you something; we are not afraid of them. They will do nothing to us.”

“You fool!” My voice was shaking and I was nearly in tears with frustration and rage. “How can we ever make you understand? The Germans will kill you, as they killed your daughter,” I could have bitten my tongue off as I said the dread words for even in the midst of all of our suffering at their hands, I had agreed at Jonas’s wish not to tell the old people that Greta and their grandchild were dead. We knew this for a fact, but we we were not going to tell them. Now, in my temper, I had blurted it out, and I heard a gasp from Jonas.

But the old people were entirely single-minded. They had no thoughts or cares about anything or anybody except themselves. Instead of the reaction that Jonas and I expected, the old man laughed. “Greta was taken to Poland,” he said smugly. “With God’s help, she will survive.”

The old woman wheezed: “You cannot frighten us with such stories. We do not believe all we hear. It is easy to make up stories, but the Germans are not so cruel. They will not hurt us.”

I gave up after that. I went downstairs to bring Jonas the hammer and wood that he asked for, and there and then he nailed strips of wood crosswise over the tiny window so that it could not he opened. At least, they would not be able to carry out their threat and throw a note out into the street.

But if we thought that we had finished with their unreasonable and dangerous plans, we were wrong. Only a few nights later poor Jacob—once again awakened to perform his medical duties—ran down again and woke us up.

“They have the candle burning and they have opened the curtains!” That was the grim message he brought, so once more we had to rush upstairs and start our arguments all over again. They wanted light, so they had opened the curtains. That was allowable, but when they lit the candle they kept the curtains open and refused to close them. Needless to say, there was a strict blackout in force, and the sight of a candle shining through a window would have brought Germans to the house in a moment. Do you think I could explain this to them? We argued again, but this time more acrimoniously and violently than ever.

The quarrel grew so bad that the old lady got out of bed and announced that she was going downstairs to get help. The noise she was making—for she and her husband were shouting at the tops of their voices—was enough to wake the street, and as I tried to stop her from going downstairs she tried to push past me, and then . . . she slipped, and her whole two hundred pounds rolled and squashed its way down the narrow stairs to land in a podgy heap at the foot of the stairway.

She was unconscious when we reached her, and she was too heavy to move, so Jacob ran downstairs for Mr. Makkinje, and Jonas and he managed to lift the heavy burden and carry it to our bed. All the time, we were pursued by the voice of the old man roaring: “You’ve killed her! You’ve killed her!”

In the morning we sent for Dr. Martens, who examined her carefully- Except for a bang on the head which had made her nose bleed, the fall had not hurt her badly. She was bruised and shaken, and he advised rest as the only cure. So we let her stay in our bed in The Room, and in a couple of days she was fully recovered. I will not say whether I was glad or sorry; I am just telling the story as it happened.

Through Auntie Fifi and the Makkinjes we sent messages to all the people in the town who knew the Aaldwerelds begging them to take them off our hands; but all the answers were negative. We remembered that Greta Weenen had had a very nice head salesgirl in her hat-shop, and we sent a message to this girl asking her to take in Greta’s parents. She sent back the same message as all the others: no, she could not help.

We were now in despair. Every day that went by made our own position worse. Food and fuel were getting shorter and shorter; our money was running out, and the strain of living in The Room was beginning to tell on us. Added to all this was the ghastly problem of our two “lodgers”. It was unbearable.

I was concerned about my children. Joseph was getting thinner and paler every day. He would not eat, and whenever the Aaldwerelds came into The Room and started their grumbling he winced as if he was being physically hurt. Once he had finished his portrait of Dr. Martens, he seemed to lose interest in any form of endeavour. When he read a book, he would skim through the first page, then turn to the back, read the end, and if the front and back seemed reasonably interesting he would skip through the middle chapters. But more often than not he just sampled the first and last pages and put the book away. He was always asking querulously, “When can I go out? It’s so stuffy in here,” and when I told him as patiently as I could why we had to stay cooped up in this one room, he would say eagerly: “But I won’t tell anyone where you are. I’ll just go out and walk up and down. Nobody will know.”

I realized the boy was making himself seriously ill. It was agony to watch him, for he now seemed to have difficulty in breathing. But Dr. Martens was looking after him carefully; he examined him on every visit, and I could only leave the problem in his hands—and my heart.

Meyer, too, was getting restive. His constant vigil at the window embittered him. He could see his friends walking about freely, and he could not understand why he could not do the same. “Why can’t I go outside?” he would ask me fiercely. “Who’d notice me, anyway?” We told him that he might be captured by the Germans, to which he retorted: “Anything is better than sitting here.”

Judah did not say much, and he never complained, but I noticed with alarm that, as the days went by, he was walking stiff-legged and in an ungainly manner, as if he had difficulty controlling his legs. I realized that his habit of lying on the bed and reading all day was gradually sapping the strength in his legs. If we were not careful he could lose the use of them.

Rachel and I appointed ourselves masseuses, under the guidance of Dr. Martens and his student, Jacob. Every day we would massage Judah’s limbs and make him walk, supervised by Jacob, but we were too late to effect a complete cure. The boy needed real exercise for his legs, and all we could offer him was a few steps up and down a crowded room. Poor Judah, to this day he cannot walk properly; his legs were permanently affected.

Abraham was getting edgy. All along he had been the boy with whom I had least trouble psychologically. His experiences in the hospital and the orphanage had been frightening in the extreme, and his reunion with his family brought him complete happiness. What did it matter if they were all in one room? At least they were away from the Germans, and he had seen the Germans in action. This contented mood lasted several months. He was perfectly happy to be near me, to help me with my chores, to watch me as I worked. He liked looking at his comic papers. He never seemed to be bored or frightened.

Then the Aaldwerelds came, and he changed drastically. A sensitive child, he hated arguments. They scared him. Now we had arguments all the time as we vainly tried to beat some sense into the old people’s heads. I could see the fear in his big brown eyes as our voices rose, and all loud noises began to frighten him. On the canal-side opposite us, trucks would back up to the barges and gravel would be dumped in big loads. The sound of the gravel as it suddenly swooshed down into the trucks was now agony to him. He too was suffering.

As for Jacob, he derived some satisfaction from his medical duties. No practising doctor ever used an injection needle with the loving care that Jacob bestowed on his insulin shots for Mrs. Aaldwereld, and he would supervise the daily massage of Judah’s legs with the same intensity as, in other circumstances, he might have devoted to a major surgical operation.

But apart from these occasions the boy brooded. He was old and wise enough to be an adult, and each day that went by took him further and further away from the realization of his dreams and ambitions. He did not complain; like his father, he took everything inwardly, suffering inside with a deep hurt that left mental scars.

Rachel was the least trouble to me. Her gay, cheerful nature enabled her to disregard and surmount the unpleasantness and dangers of our life. She found plenty to keep herself occupied, and her friendship with Annie Makkinje was a great and valuable steadying influence on her. They always found subjects to chatter about, and they were kindred spirits in thought. I remember overhearing one conversation.

“Rachel,” asked Anne, “what are you going to do when the war is over?”

Rachel thought a while, her blue eyes glazed in dreamy thought. “I’ll go round the world,” she answered at length.

“Anywhere special?” Annie pressed her.

“No, just round the world.”

“Alone?”

Rachel giggled. “I suppose so.”

“But you won’t be alone if you get married.”

“Who ever would want to marry me?” The question was one of genuine surprise, not a rhetorical question inviting a compliment as an answer.

“Oh, you’ll get married,” asserted Annie.

“You think so?”

“I’m sure. And what’s more, Rachel, when you get married, I want you to promise me something.”

“What’s that?”

“I want to be your bridesmaid.”

“Oh, don’t be silly, Annie!”

“No, I’m serious, Rachel. Will you promise?”

“All right, if you want me to. I promise.”

“And I’ll be your bridesmaid?”

“Yes, you’ll be my bridesmaid. But it’s a waste of a promise, Annie, because I’ll never get married. Have you seen what is happening to me?”

“You look all right to me,” answered loyal Annie.

“It’s my hair,” Rachel went on. “It’s falling out. It’s getting ever so thin. Do you think a girl could go bald?”

“Of course not. Whatever made you say a silly thing like that?”

“Well, it is getting thin. It’s coming out in handfuls.”

“Oh, dear!” Annie, the lucky possessor of a veritable mane of thick, red-gold hair, was concerned. “What’s causing that?”

“Lack of vitamins, the doctor says.”

Annie thought a while. “Why don’t you let me wash it, set it and put it up in pin-curls? That would help it to grow.”

“You think so

“Sure.”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“Not a bit.”

“Well, thank you. I’d like it, then—if you’re sure it’s no trouble.”

Annie went downstairs, came back with the necessary equipment and the hairdressing treatment began. Annie had a flair as a hairdresser, and she made a good job of Rachel’s golden hair. When she ultimately took the pin-curls out, Rachel looked at herself in the mirror and was very pleased with what she saw there; but the humid heat of the room was too much for her silky hair. By the end of the day, Rachel’s hair was limp again.

Deciding that perhaps Rachel’s decreasing locks needed expert attention, Annie began to get books on hairdressing from the library and, having exhausted the complicated styles and coiffures illustrated in their pages, she turned her attention to beauty culture. Both girls were of an age when they were interested in making the most of themselves, and they read avidly the books that told them how to beautify their faces, following the directions with more enthusiasm than skill.

Annie bought the cheapest ersatz cold cream, and they smeared their faces with the stuff, using the motions as directed in the book. The next step was to concoct a home-made mudpack. The black sticky stuff made them look like badly made-up Negro minstrels, and they had to lie completely still while it hardened on their faces.

The boys were spellbound by this operation, and soon tumbled mischievously to the fact that the victim of a mudpack did not dare laugh or else the beautifying mask would crack. Consequently, they did everything they knew to get Rachel and Annie to laugh. Their antics had me in stitches; but the two girls closed their eyes, and rigorously refused to join in the mirth.

I think they must have expected that the ordeal of the mudpack would result in instant beauty, for when they washed the stuff off and examined their faces their disappointment was almost funny. “We’re not beautiful,” they complained. “We’re just the same as when we started.” That was the end of the mudpacks.

This was one of the few lighter incidents in our long sojourn in The Room. It was one of the woefully few occasions when we laughed, for in between the Aaldwerelds were continuing to make our lives a misery.

They had a new trick now. Having failed in their attempts to throw a note out of the window and then to open the curtains and let the light shine out, they now adopted another means of persecuting us. In the middle of the night they would start shouting and yelling to try to attract attention from the outside. This was serious not only for us but for the Makkinjes, since the Dutch family would have been in just as much trouble as we if the Germans found they were harbouring Jews. Consequently, Gerrit Makkinje lent all his aid to Jonas in stopping the commotion. But the old people persisted night after night in their screams and yells, until we were worn out and in a frenzy of anxiety and fear.

We were by now saddled with them. We would cheerfully have sent them out into the street, but we knew that we would endanger our own lives by doing so. They would have had no compunction at all in telling the Germans where we were; they did not have the understanding of the situation to realize why secrecy was necessary.

And the last straw came when I took their food upstairs to them and they threw it in my face, accusing me of not sharing out the food fairly. I could have killed them, old as they were.

Something had to be done. We asked Dr. Martens to call on us, and we told him the whole position. His face clouded as he heard of their unbearable behaviour, and clouded even more when, my voice choked with tears and unhappiness, I begged him to help us.

“Doctor,” I beseeched him, my voice trembling, “my whole family is in danger through them. We cannot make them understand the position; they close their ears to all our reasoning. I cannot stand them any longer.”

“What can I do?” he asked. He was disturbed. “Should I talk to them?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “You can save your breath. They will agree with all you have to say, and tomorrow they will have forgotten it and will be as bad as ever. They are like children! They cannot grasp our predicament. The war means nothing to them. They refuse to accept anything. I have even told them that their daughter and grandchild are dead. You know that that is true . ..” he nodded “. .. but they will not believe it. As far as they are concerned, the Germans are not so  bad”.  I mimicked the whining voice of the old man: ‘The Germans will not hurt us old people.’ What can you do with them, doctor?”

“What do you suggest?”

I clenched my fists. The nails dug into my flesh. I trembled as I spoke. “They are no good to themselves or to anyone else,” I said quietly. “You can see that.” He agreed. “Then do away with them.”

“What?”

“I mean it, doctor.” I was beside myself with agitation. “Give them a drug or a pill or something. . . . A mercy killing. It’s been done. And it will protect the lives of all of us in this house—eight of us, and the Makkinjes as well. Please, doctor!”

He shook his head sadly. “I know how you must feel, and I will do anything to help you, but this is impossible. We hate the Germans because they are killers. Would you want me to be a killer, too?”

“But this is a mercy killing.”

“A killing is a killing,” he said firmly. “No man has the right  to take life. I cannot do it.”

I felt ashamed of myself. In my desperation I had uttered words that a short time ago would never have entered my head. So low had I fallen that I was begging a doctor to kill two human beings. And yet, how else could I safeguard my family from the danger of these two senile people whom the doctor had wished on us?

The doctor was deep in thought. “You have given me an idea,” he said at length. “Mercy killing, eh?” He whispered the words, dwelling on them, savouring the syllables. “Yes, I think you have something there.”

“You mean—?” Now I was frightened.

“Oh, no. I would never do it, but I can use it as a threat. There is no harm in that, is there? Even in their state, they will understand a threat.”

He went off upstairs. Afterwards, he told me that he actually had threatened them with death if they did not control themselves and adopt a reasonable standard of behaviour. He warned them that if their senseless conduct again imperilled the lives of all of us in the house he would see that some drugs were introduced into their food that would put them to sleep. And while they slept they would die. That was the threat and, as he forecast, even their dull brains grasped the significance of it. For a time we had some peace.

But it is typical of me that I was now anxious to atone for the enormity of my sin in asking the doctor to do away with them. As a mother, I put my family first, and it was for their sake that I had put the horrible suggestion into words. It was an idea born of desperation; but now, having made it, I was sorry.

So when we learned through Auntie Fifi that the Aaldwerelds had a son in Amsterdam, we made arrangements to contact him. The son was married to a Gentile woman and, therefore, in accordance with the warped logic of the Germans, was not regarded as a Jew from a concentration camp point of view. He had to wear a star and was not allowed to travel, but he at least had some measure of freedom.

We got a message through to Amsterdam, and ultimately the Aaldwerelds’ daughter-in-law came to visit them. We learned from Annie Makkinje that she was in the house, and we heard her go upstairs to the attic where she remained for some time.

Then she came downstairs to us. Jonas, listening to her resolute footsteps on the stairs, said to me: “She is in a bad temper. I will handle this.”

I said: “God knows what they have told her.”

We soon found out. The woman came in breathing fire and smoke. That is the only way I can describe it. She began to tell us what she thought of us in no uncertain terms, the words tumbling out in a stream of invective. I was about to retaliate, but Jonas caught my arm and stopped me. “Wait until she has finished,” he said quietly.

So we waited. We said nothing and the tactics paid off. She stopped at last, and looked at us in some bewilderment. Then Jonas seized the opportunity to put forward our point of view. Without raising his voice, or in any way referring to her uncomplimentary comments, he told her forcefully and sincerely about the Aaldwerelds. He did not abuse them or even criticize them. He just gave a factual record of their carryings-on. He told her how their unreasonable behaviour placed the whole of our family in mortal danger, and as he continued talking the woman’s lips began to tremble and tears came into her eyes. When he finished his grim recital, she was crying openly.

“I was afraid of this,” she said, mopping her eyes. “I believe you. I cannot tell you how sorry I am. They have always been difficult people. It must be terrible for you.”

We agreed with her; “terrible” was the word.

“Isn’t it possible to take them into your house in Amsterdam?” I appealed to her.

She began to cry again. “How can I?” she answered. “Even though I am not Jewish, my husband is still in danger. He is not allowed to travel—that is why I am here. I could not endure it if they were with us. I would be too scared.”

I looked at Jonas and he raised his eyebrows. We both understood how she felt. If the situation had been reversed, and she had asked us to take the Aaldwerelds in with us, would we have said anything other than what she had said? How could we blame her?

“But I will send them food,” she went on eagerly. “Then they can share it with you, and that will help a little.” I thanked her but refused. “By all means send them food,” I said. “There is not enough to go round, and the food will help. But we do not wish to take any of it.”

“Why not?” She was surprised.

I gave a hard laugh. “Ask yourself. Can you imagine the stories they would spread around about our stealing their food? Can you imagine them measuring each portion and begrudging my children every single spoonful? No, thank you. We are very short of food, but we would rather starve than take any food from them. Whatever you send them, let them keep it.”

She went away in a very different frame of mind from the militant aggression with which she had greeted us; and, true to her word, she did manage to send some food to the old people. They did not offer to share it with us, nor did we ask them. At least they could no longer complain that we were starving them.

Now they adopted new tactics. They began to woo Mrs. Makkinje. We heard them telling her how cruel we had been to them and how we had given larger portions to our children than we had given to them. In fairness to Mrs. Makkinje, I know she was sufficiently well aware of the situation not to believe the lies, but she was a woman with an eye to the main chance, and when they asked her to provide them with food from now on she was easily won over. How? Mr. Aaldwereld told her: “We will pay you well for our food. We have plenty of money.”

And this was the man who had pleaded poverty rather than send money to save his daughter and grandchild from the Germans! How could anybody be so cruel and selfish?

So now we were relieved of the necessity of sharing our scanty food allowance with the Aaldwerelds. Mrs. Makkinje looked after them, and the money that could have saved two lives went into feeding the old couple.

13

The days dragged by with body-aching, mind-searing slowness. The summer of 1943 passed into winter. We knew it was winter because the room became cold instead of unbearably hot. To find enough fuel for the stove was now a major problem, for wood was scarce. Our own supplies and those of the Makkinjes were exhausted; and one night Gerrit Makkinje and my son Meyer crept out into the darkness to hack down a tree for firewood.

It was a dangerous mission; tree-felling was forbidden by the Germans. But the position was now desperate. They went away into the woods about a mile from the house, and their lives were in danger from the moment they left us to the time they returned three hours later. Fortune was with them, however. They had not been spotted, and they lugged back a small tree that kept the stove going again.

Burning the stove all day long in order to cook our meagre food made the room unbearably hot, but even in the summer we had to keep it going. Once it went out it took hours to light again. And all this time we dared not open the windows even for a moment. The telltale smoke from the stove—the acrid, scorching, blackening smoke that surrounded us and choked us—would have given our presence away in an instant.

 

1943 dragged its leaden way into 1944. We had lost all count of the days. For us time had only two dimensions: war and peace; hiding and freedom. While we were still cooped up in our one room, 1944 meant just the same to us as 1943. Discomfort and heart-sickness are the same in any year.

One day we were fortunate enough to secure a little coal for our stove. It was a warm day, and the sickly heat of the room allied to the fumes of the coal and the torment of my mind was more than I could bear. One moment I was watching the rising smoke as if hypnotized; the next moment I was rushing down a long, black tunnel that was closing . . . closing . . . closing . . . in on me.

When I came to, I found myself hanging out of the window. In the emergency of my collapse, Jonas had opened the window, and he and Jacob were holding me out in the fresh air while I gulped the clean freshness into my choked lungs.

It was a dangerous thing to do, and even more dangerous on that day, for as my senses swam back into focus my eyes caught a scene that I shall never forget. German soldiers were swarming into the street. They were blocking both ends, and even in my dazed state I knew that this was the dread prelude to a house-raid.

“Quick, quick!” I yelled. “The Germans!”

I struggled back inside, and we scrambled into the hiding-place. There was no time to remove the stove or even our belongings. We would just have to save ourselves. Meyer ran upstairs to bring down the Aaldwerelds, while from downstairs Gerrit and Tinus Makkinje came running up. By now, the search had intensified for all men of working age, and neither Jew nor Gentile was safe in a house-raid. –

But who was to close the outer door? I thought fast. “Abraham,” I shouted to my son, “stay behind and close the door. Then run downstairs and hide somewhere. In the backyard.”

“Leave it to me, Mama.” The boy was the only cool one among us. Somehow we all toppled into the hiding-place. There was no order about our positions. We were all spread-eagled across one another. The small closet was crowded with bodies, and all the time the Aaldwerelds complained and groaned and grumbled.

Within a matter of minutes, we heard military boots clattering up the stairs. The door of the room was flung open.

“Who lives here?” barked a gruff voice in German.

Mrs. Makkinje replied to the question. We admired her courage and coolness, for only we who knew her realized that her voice was two tones higher than usual from the nervousness she felt inside her. But to the Germans she must have sounded calm and cool.

The briefing that Auntie Fifi had given her many months before now stood her in good stead. “Some evacuees from Rotterdam live in this room,” she answered.

“Huh!” A growl of disbelief came from the German. We heard the footsteps marching round the room, examining everything, turning over our belongings.

The outer door of the closet opened. This was the moment. My heart stopped beating. We did not dare breathe.

And at this crucial instant, with the searching German separated from us only by a thin wooden partition, Mr. Aaldwereld developed an attack of asthma. As the first wheeze left his throat, my husband reached over and grabbed him, placing his hands tightly over the old man’s mouth. The old lady tried to pull Jonas away, but my husband clung on. The closet was a melee of moving bodies as we all tried to avert the disaster that was imminent. The old man kept forcing himself free. He was choking out threats. “I want to give myself up. I don’t care any longer.” Fortunately, his asthma was so bad that the words came out as a hoarse wheeze. Even so, they struck fear into our hearts there in the mad, milling darkness. I heard my husband whisper: “If you don’t shut up, I will kill you with my bare hands.” I knew he meant what he said. His hands were round the old man’s mouth. It would have needed little more provocation for him to move those hands down to the old man’s throat and choke the life out of him.

By the time order was restored, the Germans had gone. It was a close shave, and one that left us weak for many days.

What had happened to Abraham? He told me afterwards that he had run down the stairs as the German soldiers came into the hall. They had paid no attention to a small boy, and he had wriggled past them and out into the backyard, where he had hidden in a haystack.

The frenzy in the closet was bad enough, and nearly drove us out of our minds, but we would have been unable to stand it if we had known at the time what we found out afterwards. It was Gerrit Makkinje who later told us, pale and trembling, that the Aaldwerelds had left their two identity cards, stamped with the big accusing “J”, openly on the table in the attic. And the Germans, giving the attic only a cursory glance, had missed the telltale documents.

God was indeed with us that day.

But the strain on our nerves and bodies was beginning to take its toll more than we knew. The unhygienic conditions, the shortage of food, the lack of the amenities of modesty, the continual whispering which had now almost closed our throats so that we croaked hoarsely instead of speaking, the absence of proper cleaning materials—all these conditions were lowering our resistance more than we knew.

One day Rachel—the strong one, the cheerful one—collapsed suddenly and rolled in agony on the floor, clutching her stomach. We tried to help her, but how can you help a sick person when you have no medicines, no sedatives, nothing but dusty water and an old rough threadbare cloth to wipe the sweat from a racked brow? I sent an urgent message to Dr. Martens through the Makkinjes. He could not come in the daylight, and we had to wait until he could creep through the dark shadows of night to our aid.

As the hours went by, Rachel fell into an uneasy flushed delirium, alternating with bouts of acute pain. She was very sick.

When Dr. Martens at last arrived, his examination was short. He turned to me. “She has acute appendicitis,” he told me grimly.

“What can you do?” I asked him.

“She needs surgery—urgently,” he answered. “But I cannot take her to the hospital. The Germans are in continual residence there; they examine every patient. She would be caught in a moment if she went there.”

“Can you operate here?” I asked feverishly.

He shook his head. “It is hopeless. I could not get my equipment here. Whatever I could manage to bring out would not be enough. She would . . . she would . . .”

He left the dread word unsaid. I knew her life was in danger without his finishing the sentence.

“But you must do something,” I grabbed his arm. I shook him in my helpless grief. “Please do something. Save her!”

“I will do all I can,” he promised me. “Keep her very quiet. She must not move. Perhaps rest will help the ailment. It is all we can hope for.”

He went away, promising to call as frequently as he could. Now I broke down. I railed against the fate that was taking my daughter from me. I prayed and cursed. I stormed and raved. I felt I was going out of my mind. It was as though all the humiliations, the indignities, the fears and the privations we had endured now rose to mock me. For what purpose had we suffered? Needlessly, senselessly, we had lived virtually like animals for long grim months, only to have my daughter stricken by illness, an illness that had nothing to do with the Germans, an illness for which we could not blame the war. It was a cruel joke.

I pulled myself together at last and set about tending Rachel. For days, for weeks, she lingered between life and death. The doctor came as often as he could, but often many days went by and he could not steal out to visit us.

For six weeks I hardly ate or slept. I sat by the bed all day, all night, soothing her, holding her, trying to take her pain into my own body. And I prayed. O God, how I prayed!

When six weeks had passed, the pain left her. Dr. Martens came to see her and, for a change, his round face puckered into a laugh that lit the room. He put his arms round me and hugged me. “She is going to get well,” he told me. “The appendix is dormant. She will be all right.”

I cried with gratitude. Consoling me, he told me that she would have to be operated on one day, but it could wait till the end of the war.

Soon after that, Rachel arose from the bed and began slowly to walk around the room. It took only a few days before she was back to normal, paler and thinner, but still alive. Who dares to say that prayers are not answered?

From downstairs the whistling of Mrs. Makkinje was getting more and more frequent, more and more intense, more and more ear-piercing. It was a bad sign. It meant that she was not too happy, and I realized only too well that it was our presence that was causing the trouble.

At the back of the house, Mr. Makkinje raised a few vegetables and I remembered him telling us that he was particularly proud of his crop of rhubarb. With Rachel recovering from her pain and illness, I felt that some rhubarb would make an exciting addition to our tasteless meals.

Summoning up all my courage, I waited until I heard Mrs. Makkinje going in her bedroom and I ran outside and caught her on the landing. I told her what I wanted. Please could she kindly spare me a few sticks of rhubarb, so I could make a tasty dish for Rachel?

She answered “No,” and went into her room, shutting the door behind her. It was just one more incident that told us that the strain was beginning to tell on her too, and how could we blame her? Eighteen months had gone by. For eighteen months she had harboured Jews and placed her life in danger. Even if she drove us out, even if we found another place to hide, she would still not have been safe. The fact that she had at one time harboured a Jewish family would have been enough to send her to her death at German hands. There could have been no excuse, no explanation. In German eyes, to hide Jews was a crime, and in German eyes Mrs. Makkinje was always and would always be a criminal. Poor woman!

That our presence was getting too much for her we realized one night when a neighbour rushed in and told her excitedly that a raid was taking place down the street. Bundling the neighbour out, Mrs. Makkinje dashed up to our room. She was nearly hysterical with fear.

“Please, please, you must go,” she begged us.‘ “I can’t face the Germans again. I will crack up. I know it.”

She broke down sobbing.

“Where can we go?” I asked her. “We have no place to turn.”

She collected herself and talked fast. “I have thought of something. You know the Bakker family?” I did. They were the town bakers. They had delivered bread to our store for many years. “Let me go and tell them that your family is hiding with me.”

“You think you can trust them?” I asked anxiously.

“I must trust somebody,” she insisted. “It is too much for me. I can’t go on like this. I—”

I broke in on the hysteria that showed signs of overwhelming her again. “All right. Suppose you go and tell the Bakkers. What then?”

“I will ask them to take in your children,” she told me, controlling herself with an effort. “Ten of you is too much to hide in this house. Let them take the six children. That will leave only the four of you. It will be better that way.”

I looked anxiously at Jonas. He was the one who was scared of anybody knowing of our whereabouts, but what could we do? Slowly he nodded, and Mrs. Makkinje ran off.

In minutes she was back. The Bakkers were delighted to hear that we were still alive. Yes, they would gladly hide the children for the raid. We were to send them over immediately. The Bakkers’ house was next door to the Makkinjes, so the children went through the backyard. They were safe—or so I thought.

That left only my husband, myself and the two Aaldwerelds to hide in the closet, a more equitable “cargo” for the little hole than it usually had to accommodate.

When we called the old people to come downstairs, Mr. Aaldwereld staged one of his customary demonstrations, for he never gave up. Jonas found him on the stairway in his hat and overcoat.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I heard my husband thunder.

“I am going to give myself up,” was the reply.

“Are you mad?”

“I am mad to stay here in this one room. The Germans will not harm us. We are old people. They will understand.”

It was the old warped story. We wasted no more time listening to his feeble arguments. Jonas, Makkinje and I grabbed him and hustled him into the closet. Then we did the same with his wife, and on the way I heard Jonas threatening him. I don’t know what he said, but his face was set and white and his eyes were blazing. The old man was still determined to throw away the lives of all of us, and Jonas let him know in no uncertain terms what he thought of him. Whatever it was he said, it had the desired effect. They went into the hole, grumbling but chastened.

Cautiously I peeped out into the street. There were the Germans raiding the houses. They were bringing people out. They were coming closer. They were five houses away. I watched them. They walked past the next house. They entered the third house. Another group made for the house next door. I realized what was happening. They were searching every other house. Our house would be missed but—oh, my God!—they were searching the house where we had taken the children “for safety”!

I could not move. I could not speak. The pounding of my anxious heart filled my head. The children—the children! With eyes misted by fear and despair, I watched and waited. I saw the German soldiers come out from the house next door. They were alone. My heart bounded. That meant that my children were safe. The raiding party went past our house, down the street and away. The raid was over.

With rubbery legs I scrambled down the stairs with Jonas in close pursuit, through the backyard and into the Bakkers’ house. What a rejoicing there was when they saw us. Mr. and Mrs. Bakker had thought that we were dead, and they hugged us with joy. We chattered away in relief. It was exciting for us, too, to be welcomed, to see new faces, to be anywhere but in The Room. We all laughed and cried together; it was a happy moment.

At length I asked: “Where are the children? How did you manage to hide them?”

Mr. Bakker was very pleased with himself. “I tell you what we did,” he said, grinning all over his face. “We bundled three of them into bed upstairs and let them stay there.”

“The Germans saw them?” I asked aghast.

“Of course they saw them,” chuckled Mr. Bakker. “We said they were our own children. They believed us. It was better than hiding them, say, in a closet or something like that, because that would have been suspicious. This way, it was all so open and we fooled ’em.”

The three children joined us from the bedroom upstairs—Jacob, Meyer and Joseph. They hugged us.

I looked round. “Where are the others?” I asked.

The smile on Mr. Bakker’s face was wiped off in an instant as I asked the question. He clapped his hand to his forehead. “Oh, my God!” he shouted. “Quick, the cement—the hole. I had forgotten.”

“What’s the matter?” I shouted at him. He had wheeled away and was beginning to dash for the door. But as he reached it, it opened and into the room stumbled three apparitions—three children white from head to toe, coughing and crying. They just stood there, the white dust swirling around them; then they stumbled into my arms.

“What has happened?” I asked in horror, as we all set about trying to clean up the mess.

Bit by bit the story came out. Mr. Bakker could find no place in the house safe enough to accommodate Rachel, Judah and Abraham, so he took them out to a work-shed that he had rented to a man hauling cement, gravel and bricks for the Germans. The work-shed had been a garage, and there was an inspection pit in the floor. He put the three children into the pit, then closed the hole with some heavy wooden boards, on top of which he dragged some hundred-pound bags of cement.

This made a good hiding-place, for although the Germans went into the shed they gave it no more than a glance and did not even bother to search it.

But for the children it was a terrible experience. Mr. Bakker had done his work too thoroughly. He had sealed up the hole so that it was airless. Cement dust was everywhere. Instead of air, they breathed cement. They were choked, sick, as the insidious dust clogged their mouths, their eyes and their nostrils. And then, after the Germans had gone, they became panic-stricken. What had happened in the house that no one came to rescue them? Perhaps the Germans had taken everybody away, and they would be left there to suffocate in the pit. Choked and gasping, they shouted for help, but nobody heard them.

In desperation born of terror they humped their shoulders and heaved upwards to move the mountain of weight that imprisoned them. Superhuman strength must have been given to them in their ordeal for, wonderful to relate, they pushed the cement bags out of position sufficiently for them to climb through to safety.

Afterwards, Jonas and I went to look at the scene. It defied belief that two boys and a girl could have heaved aside the imprisoning weight of such heavy planks and cement bags. It seemed impossible, and yet they did it. A few more minutes and they would have been choked to death, while Mr. Bakker forgot them in his joy at seeing old friends again.

It took us almost a week to get the three of them back to normal. Even with proper materials in normal times, it would have been a major job to clean them up, but with the scanty equipment at our command it took hours and hours of brushing and combing and washing and scrubbing. And The Room was filled with cement dust, adding to the discomfort of all of us. We choked and coughed for days while the white dust swirled around us, clinging to our bedding, to the walls and to the food. Had the Germans raided us then, the cement dust would have revealed our presence for sure; but they had other things on their minds.

We were into 1944. Vaguely we had heard that the Allies had landed in France and were attacking Europe. We felt that this was a good sign, but we did not know what was happening. We could only hope.

And in any case we had our own troubles. In the world around use earth-shaking events were taking place, but in The Room our horizons extended only as far as the four walls. We were fighting our own personal battles. And we had the first real casualty.

Joseph was wasting away. The shortage of good food, the smell and the dust and the dirt—these were reducing him to a wan shadow. I could see his resistance crumbling day by day. I knew that he was very ill.

Dr. Martens, when I called him, confirmed it immediately. He said: “I am sorry to add to your troubles; but I must tell you frankly that this room is killing your boy. Unless we get him into the open air right away, and let him stay there . . .” he spread his hands with grim expressiveness.

“But what can we do? Where can we go?” I was fluttering with anxiety.

He thought awhile. “If I make arrangements, will you let him go?”

It was a wrench that twisted my heart at the mere thought, but what could we say? Mutely Jonas and I nodded.

“Very well. I will be back.” The good doctor went away.

That night Dr. Martens came back, accompanied by Auntie Fifi and took Joseph away.

I cannot attempt to describe the hopelessness and helplessness that Jonas and I felt as the frail boy left us. For eighteen months we had struggled and suffered to keep our family intact and together, and now Joseph, our youngest child, was gone. A part of ourselves went through the door with him.

Sad as it was to be separated from him, it was even worse when we found out that no one knew where he had been taken. The Bussum underground had passed him on to another part of the organization who took him away—a long way away. All we could ever discover was that he was being looked after on a farm “somewhere in northern Holland”. We heard no news from him. He was gone. The Veffer family had been separated, and the fear gnawed at my heart in the awesome darkness that we might never see Joseph again.

We perforce turned our attention back to our immediate problems. All the upheavals of the past few months had prevented us from giving Judah the full attention that he needed, and his leg-muscles stiffened up completely. He could no longer walk at all. We began the massage treatment again. It helped a little. Gradually, he began to improve and regain the use of his legs until finally he was able to make his own way around The Room again. He walked slowly and with difficulty. He still does.

And now the major problem that Jonas in his farsighted pessimism had foreseen was upon us. Our store of money ran out. Without money we had no food. We devised drastic economy measures. Our supply of oil was so low that it was impossible to keep a light burning any longer; Jonas, therefore, devised a makeshift lighting device out of a glass of water. He floated a little oil on the top of the water, inserted a piece of cloth as a wick, and lit it. The feeble glow was our only illumination.

As far as food was concerned, we had to conserve everything as long as possible. A loaf of bread lasted the whole family for a week, and our tiny ration of butter was placed in water and stirred to dilute it and make it last longer.

I became worried about Jonas at this time. He was becoming more and more withdrawn and despondent. Previously he had taken an interest in his surroundings and studied the needs of the children. Now he sat in his corner moody and apart. God knows he had enough on his mind, but so did we all, and I found myself yelling at him to make him stop feeling sorry for himself. The children sensed his changed attitude; it became doubly hard for me to keep their minds at ease.

To raise money, we had to start selling everything we owned—clothing, the few trinkets we had clung to, all our sparse belongings. We gave them one by one to Gerrit Makkinje to sell on our behalf, and he brought us the few guilders that they realized. On one occasion I heard his wife haggling with a dealer downstairs over my last coat. They finally settled for forty guilders, as I heard clearly, but when she came upstairs she handed me twenty-five guilders and told me that that was all she had been able to get. Who can blame her? They were poor too, and short of food, as we were. Whatever food was brought in with the money we shared with them. We were all in the same dark boat.

We left ourselves with only the barest necessities of life; the clothes we stood up in and little else. But even these sacrifices were not enough. Food was very expensive, and our belongings fetched an inadequate amount of money for our needs. We were very hungry.

Finally there was only one more possession that we could sell, and it was Jonas who hardened his heart and parted with it: his gold wedding-band. He cried as he handed it over to Gerrit Makkinje, for it was his treasure; but we were desperate, and gold was a valuable commodity which would raise a good deal of money.

Sure enough, Mr. Makkinje sold it well, and with the money he managed to procure a whole side of beef. What a treat that was! It would be true indeed to say that, in more senses than one, meat was worth its weight in gold at that time, and we had not seen such a mouth-watering feast since the beginning of the war. With our inadequate facilities we began to cook it. We would start to eat it, in careful portions to make it last as long as possible, on the next day.

That night there was an uproar. We heard the front door open and close with a crash. We heard the sounds of someone stumbling around and falling over the furniture. We heard a man’s voice raised in unintelligible melody. I turned to Jonas. “Makkinje is drunk,” I said. It was not the first time.

We listened tensely. There would be a quarrel; we could sense it in the charged air.

The quarrel, when it erupted, was conducted in such loud, shouting voices that we feared the attention of the German patrols would be attracted by the commotion.

“You drunken sot!” screamed Mrs. Makkinje. “Spending your money on liquor when we are starving!”

It was a sentiment with which we wholeheartedly agreed, but that did not make the quarrel any the more palatable.

They screamed abuse at each other. She warned him, she threatened him. He laughed at her and then yelled at her with equal unrestrained fervour. The pent-up emotions of the long months broke free in a barrage of screaming and shouting and invective. It was horrible to listen to, and frightening. The children were awake. We tried to pacify them, but the shouting from downstairs drowned our soothing words.

The quarrel rose to a crescendo of abuse.

“Will you stop your drinking?” yelled Mrs. Makkinje. “No. Never.”

“Very well then. I am going to the Germans, and I will tell them that you are hiding ten in this house against my will.”

The threat sobered the man. “You can’t do that,” he quavered.

“I can,” came the answering yell. “I am going there now, and if serves you right.”

The slam of the front door as she swept out of the house sounded like a crack of doom in our ears.

There was a long silence. We were too stunned to be frightened. We just sat there, immobile and bereft of thought. The children looked at us for guidance, but we had none to give them. .

The spell was broken when Jonas raised himself heavily from his seat on the hay-box, walked toward me and put his arm gently round my shoulder. His face was pale, but it showed no fear—just decision. It was as if the shock had steadied and calmed him. He spoke quietly.

“This is the end, Sara.”

I said nothing.

“It is no use,” he went on slowly. There was no panic in his voice; only a heavy acceptance of the blows of fate. “We are too tired. We can go on no longer.”

The children began to cry. He soothed them. “What are you crying for?” he chided them gently. “We have done our best. We have nothing to reproach ourselves with. But people can only take so much, and we have taken all we can bear.”

I said hopelessly, “You are right, Jonas. This is indeed the end.” Then I braced myself. “We have faced bad things before. We will just have to face some more; that is all there is to it.” Foolishly, unreasonably, the decision seemed to cheer me, and it was almost with a perverse relief that I realized that our future, such as it was, would be taken care of. We gave up the fight.

I looked around. “I tell you what,” I said briskly. “Let’s cook that side of beef and eat it tonight, eh? If the Germans are going to take us, let them take us when we are well-fed. What do you say?”

The diversion was what the children needed to make them snap out of their gloom. They began to busy themselves helping me prepare our Last Supper, and Jonas went down and brought up Gerrit Makkinje, Annie and Tinus. Gerrit was now sober and penitent but, like all of us, he accepted the inevitable, and he agreed with us that we might just as well stuff ourselves with good food. It could easily be the last good meal we would ever have.

So we gorged ourselves on the good meat. I should imagine it was pleasant to eat, but we hardly tasted it. It was just food to be pushed into our mouths, food to fill our empty stomachs, food to mock the Germans when they came for us.

And then we put our belongings together. A pitiful pile they made, but they were all we had. We were ready to go. We waited.

Midnight came and went. The woman had been away three hours. We were resigned to our fate. When the door downstairs opened, we were almost past caring. Let them take us. We were ready.

But Mrs. Makkinje was alone. There were no Germans with her.

I went downstairs and had a talk with her. She had recovered from her temper, and was horrified at the enormity of the deed she had contemplated. She apologized to me profusely for the worry she had caused me, and she excused herself by saying that it had been so long; she was very tired and her nerves were in shreds. I knew how she felt; I felt the same way myself.

Her last words to me were: “Don’t worry; it won’t happen again.”

I went upstairs, and before I retired that night I said a prayer of thankfulness. The immediate danger was over. We could sleep.

But my sleep was short lived that night. I had hardly closed my eyes before I was awakened by a violent stabbing pain in my heart. The pain increased until I felt as if red-hot knives were piercing my flesh and grinding into my body. The room was swirling with pain. I tried to control the gasps and moans that babbled uncontrolled from my lips, but my husband heard them and came over to me.

He tried to soothe me, but I was too far gone to hear his words.

Vaguely I remember the light coming. The night must have passed. Dr. Martens was bending over me. The touch of his gentle hands was acute torture. I heard his diagnosis: “She has a cramp of the heart-muscles, brought on by over-excitement and lack of proper food.”

“What shall we do?” It was Jonas asking the question.

“She must have complete and absolute rest,” came the solemn answer. “She must not move a muscle. You understand? You must all co-operate. As you walk about, you must not shake the bed or the floor. The smallest vibration will cause her agony.”

“What about the pain?” queried Jonas anxiously. “Can you give her anything to relieve that?”

“I will keep her doped with morphine powders, and I will leave you a supply. She can have two a day when the pain is unbearable. No more than two, otherwise her heart may not be able to stand the drug.”

Grim instructions indeed, but how well my beloved family carried them out! Rather than risk hurting me by vibrating the floorboards, the children stayed in bed, only getting up for the most pressing and unavoidable duties. Jonas sat by my bedside day and night, trying to give me courage, soothing me and caressing me with his comforting words, while I lay in unbearable agony, biting my tongue till it bled so that I would not scream out. The slightest noise, the slightest tiny sound, pierced my body with agonizing intensity, and any involuntary movement I made produced shafts of pain that were more than human flesh and blood could stand.

Even under the drugs I was in never-ending torment. The pain of childbirth was trivial compared to the excruciating agony of those awesome continual stabs—so bad that I felt my heart would stop.

How long did this agony endure? For seven unbearable weeks, a period that was unbearable to live through and is still unbearable to think about. During that time Jonas could not wash me or touch me. The children could not move. They did not even dare talk, in case the sound of their voices should hurt me. Jonas told me afterwards that he always feared that their minds would snap under the acute strain; but, like me, they endured it all and lived it through.

Just to make matters worse, the war had taken a turn which at other times we would have welcomed. Bussum lay on the air-route along which allied bombers flew to attack German armies and cities in Europe. Night after night the aircraft droned overhead, shaking the house. “Do not make a noise, for the slightest sound will hurt her,” the doctor had warned my family, and now here were our friends the Allies torturing my racked body with the nightly droning of their planes.

How I lived through it I shall never know. The agony of my pain was added to by my agony of mind. Suppose I screamed out in helpless torment and attracted the Germans? Suppose under the drugs, I screamed out and worried the poor children? These were mental tortures to add to those of my body.

Seven long agonizing weeks, and then the pain gradually went away, leaving me weak but alive. It took Jonas three days to comb my matted, tangled hair. I wanted to cut it off, but he would not allow it. He always liked my long black tresses, and patiently and gently he combed through them, strand by strand, untangling the mess until my hair hung free again. When I remonstrated with him and told him that his action, though kind, was really unnecessary, he laughed at me. “What else have I got to do?” he asked me in his gentle way. “I have plenty of time on my hands. Let me spend it doing something I enjoy doing.”

How lucky I am to have such a husband and such thoughtful, loving children—children who uncomplainingly sat watching me motionless for seven-weeks, lest their movement hurt me.

So we passed through that crisis. But another one was on us. I was out of bed at last, weak and ill, but no longer in pain. I now found out that the children had given up their food so that I could be fed during my illness, and that there was little remaining. The food had nearly all gone, we had no fuel, and it was now the winter of 1944, and very cold. We could not even make ourselves a hot drink.

In despair I tottered downstairs to the forbidden regions. Mrs. Makkinje was in the kitchen. She was looking pale and haggard. I could tell that her nerves were on edge.

I said to her: “Please can you help us? We have no more fuel. We cannot even make a hot drink. Will you let me cook a meal for my family in your kitchen?”

Without even looking at me, she flung over her shoulder the one word “No.”

I was aghast at such uncharitable behaviour. I knew all that she had had to put up with for two years, and I sympathized deeply with her, but I was appealing to her as one mother to another. I said so, and my words seemed to break the flood-gates of her pent-up emotions.

She wheeled on me. “You must go. You must get out of here. I don’t want you here any more.”

I reasoned with her. I said: “Where can we go? If we had had anywhere to go, we would have gone long ago.”

“I don’t care about that,” she burst out. “I have had enough. You must go. At once. Tonight.”

“Be reasonable,” I begged her; but her mounting hysteria was now getting the better of her.

“You get out. I don’t want to see you again. Any of you. I am too tired, too frightened. I cannot stand it any longer. Get out!” Her voice rose to a scream, and she began to yell at me. I tried to answer back, but it was no good reasoning with her.

I heard somebody running down the stairs. I looked round. Rachel was watching the scene with wide-open eyes. Her presence annoyed Mrs. Makkinje. She turned on the girl, and Rachel ran. I heard the front door close as she left the house. Now I saw red. We started shouting at each other.

In the midst of the altercation, the door opened again. Rachel was back. She had brought Mr. Bakker with her, and he was saying, “Now, what’s going on here? What’s all the trouble?”

His presence roused Mrs. Makkinje to a peak of fury directed against Rachel. She screamed at the child: “How dare you go to the neighbours? This is nothing to do with them.” Beside herself with anger, she made as if to hit Rachel across the face.

That was all I needed. Weak as I was, I still had the strength to defend my children. I staggered forward menacingly and, if Mr. Bakker had not dragged us apart, there would have been an undignified brawl.

When he had restored some kind of order, I said coldly: “Mrs. Makkinje, you want us to go? We are going. I would not stay another day here. I would rather die in the street.”

She retorted: “You can leave the children here. It’s you I don’t want in this house.”

I was about to answer her, but Rachel forestalled me. “If mother goes, we all go,” she said with dignity.

I turned to Mr. Bakker, who had been standing by watching the scene uncomfortably. “For God’s Sake, can you help us? We cannot stay here another moment, but we have nowhere to go.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “I will find somewhere,” he promised me. “Get your things together and come next door to us. We will find a place for you.”

Rachel and I went back upstairs. In a few quick words I told Jonas what had happened. We gathered up our few belongings and made our way down. Mrs. Makkinje was not around, and she had kept the children from saying good-bye to us.

We went out through the backyard into the Bakkers’ house next door. We were still in hiding; but, after two full years, we had left The Room.

 

14

With the inconsistent loyalty that makes the actions of people a source of continual wonderment, even to themselves, my first concern when we reached the Bakkers was about the Aaldwereld couple. What was going to happen to them? In my haste to get away, I had forgotten them. In fact, I had forsaken them. Unhappy as they had made me, I felt in some measure responsible for them.

When I mentioned my anxiety to Mr. Bakker, he reassured me. “Mrs. Makkinje is keeping them on. She told me so.”

I was so relieved that I was rude. I said: “They are welcome to each other.”

As the town baker, Mr. Bakker had access to many houses and knew many people. Leaving us in the care of his wife, he went out to see what he could do about finding new accommodation for us. His own house was too small for all of us.

Within an hour he was back, and within an hour after that we had been moved to our new home. Mr. Bakker and members of the underground saw to the transportation of our few blankets, pots, pans and other trivia, while we walked across town. It was a long way but, oh, what heaven it was when we got there!

Our new hiding-place was with an elderly couple named Snell. They lived in a villa that stood in a park. The address was Blaricumerweg, and we were surrounded by trees and grassland that were a delight to our weary eyes. The Snells were quite comfortably situated in a financial sense, and their house was spacious and airy. We were given the attic, but it was an attic with a difference, for it extended over the length of the house and gave us all plenty of room. We could move about at last. No longer were we cramped and airless. The windows of the attic opened above us and let in the air and sunlight without our presence to anybody from the outside. This was luxury indeed. From a strategic vantage point in the room, we could even watch squads of German soldiers performing their drills and military exercises in the parkland just in front of the house. Jonas particularly enjoyed these manoeuvres; they appealed to his sense of humour!

We were given the freedom of the house. We could go down to the washroom on the next floor whenever we wanted to; we could have a bath; we could cook in the kitchen, and every evening Jonas and I went right down through the house into the basement. There Mr. Snell had a small secret radio set, and we listened to the news over Radio Orange, the free Dutch broadcasting station in London. Now we were able to catch up on the war. The news was good and exciting. The Allies had recovered from their early setbacks, and now it was the turn of Germany to suffer. We were much heartened by the news.

But Jonas, the inveterate worrier, found plenty to worry about. Within the limitations of the war and our poverty, I was quite happy. The children were happier in their new surroundings, and that made me content. It was good to see the colour coming back into their cheeks, and the ravaged look leaving their eyes.

Jonas, I knew, shared this pleasure with me; but he had other problems. “The Snells are not careful enough,” he would say to me anxiously. “They forget we are Jews. They forget we are in hiding. They let their friends know we are here; they talk about us openly. We will be found out. I tell you, Sara, we will be found out.”

I could see his point of view, but I was not disposed to lose any sleep over it. I had taken as much as I could take;  I was past caring about the future. All I wanted to do was to luxuriate in the present.

But I will confess that even I had qualms when the Snells sent up their maid-servant with a message for us. Up to that moment we had not met her, nor did we even think that the Snells would have told her that we were in the house. Why were we so agitated about her? She was a German girl. She hardly spoke Dutch at all. She was a pure-blooded German.

I agreed with Jonas that her knowledge of our presence was frightening, but when my husband mentioned his fears to Mr. Snell the old man laughed. “You can trust her,” he said blithely. “She is a good girl. She will not tell anybody. Don’t you worry your head about her.”

Afterwards, to me, Jonas said: “That’s what I complain about. Don’t you see, Sara, he’s not serious enough about the situation. We are in danger. Real danger.”

It was even more worrying when one day we saw her leaving the house with her boyfriend, a uniformed German soldier. Poor Jonas! His anxiety kept him awake for two whole nights.

But, strangely enough, even though the maid went out frequently with her soldier and in fact spent all her leisure time with the Germans, she was, as Mr. Snell had said, “a good girl.” She never ratted on us. If she ever reads these words, we would like her to know that we are grateful.

The food situation was now desperate, not only for us but for all Holland. The people were starving; there was not enough food.

Auntie Fifi, our contact with the outside world, came to visit us frequently at the Snells and brought us the grim news of the suffering of our people. In all the towns official soup-kitchens had been set up to help feed the hungry. The soup was made from the country’s staple wartime food—sugar beets, the food of pigs and cattle—and thousands of gaunt, emaciated people lined up to get their portion.

People were dying in the streets. It was as bad as that. A spontaneous barter system had been set up among the people. Someone who did not use sugar would put up a notice on a hoarding saying that he would exchange his sugar ration for butter or some other commodity. These exchanges we’re even advertised in the newspapers.

And while people starved and bodies with match-stick limbs were taken daily out of houses, the black market flourished openly. If you had money, you could buy food; but most people didn’t have any money.

When people died there was no money to bury them, so it became standard practice to smuggle the bodies into a church and leave them in the aisle, with just a pathetic name tag tied to a limb. Somehow the church would dispose of them.

And through the streets of every Dutch town marched the dreaded Grune Polizei (Green Police), the German soldiers in their green uniforms, entering the houses, taking away the menfolk into slavery and concentration camps while the frightened air quivered with the warning word Razzia! (Raid!)

But were the Dutch people entirely subjugated by their German oppressors? Far from it. Auntie Fifi’s eyes shone with pride as she told us of the never-ending work of the underground movement—how they received ammunition dropped by parachute from the Allies; how they fought battles with the Germans, blew up trains, disrupted production; how they forged papers and ration-cards and passports and official documents; and how they plastered the walls of the main streets with their whitewashed messages of defiance. One of the most popular slogans, painted in man-high letters on walls and buildings, was an obvious one: Eischt meer voedsel (Give us more to eat). And the other popular one was the rallying call Verzet! Verzet! (Fight! Fight!).

And it was Auntie Fifi who first told us the story that will live forever in the annals of Dutch history, that of thirty-two members of the underground who were shot down in a pitched battle in Amsterdam. Their bodies were left lying in the street where they had fallen, and a brave man crept out and covered them with a Dutch flag. What patriotism inspired the gesture, what courage to carry it out!

She told us, too, of the continual search for fuel. Wood was one of the most precious commodities in Holland, for coal had run out, and electric power had been cut off; the populace was cold. Every bombed building was ransacked for rafters, beams, furniture—wood, wood, wood, to feed the stoves and the fireplaces.

And the Jews? Name after name she listed for us of friends who had died in the camps. For the first time, we heard of the dreaded gas chamber and the mass killings.

But against all this sad news the hidden radio told us (and Auntie Fifi confirmed it) that this was the dark before the dawn. The war was not yet over, but the Germans were being hard pressed. It was the Allies’ turn to take the offensive. This we could see for ourselves, for the British and U.S. bombers were now droning nightly in huge formations to attack. We urged them on with our blessings.

Oddly enough, though, it was the Allied bombers that caused us to leave our comfortable hiding-place at the Snells’. That was when they started to bomb targets uncomfortably close to us.

Just outside the park and only a few hundred yards away was the Hotel Jantabak, which had been commandeered by the Germans as an officers’ headquarters and residence. This was their first target, and they were very accurate with their bombs.

The explosions as the missiles hit the building rocked our house to its foundations. Later we saw a stream of ambulances taking away the dead and wounded. The bombers had done their work well. Many German officers had been killed; the hotel building was a shambles, and above the trees ahead of us the smoke from the blazing ruins billowed into the sky.

On the next day the bombers came again. This time their objective was another commandeered hotel, about a hundred yards down the road from the Jantabak. This was the Hotel Boschvan Bredius, and the cloudy weather and heavy enemy flak interfered with the bombing accuracy. Bombs sprayed down around the target, many of them falling in the parkland perilously close to us. Our windows were blown out by the blast, and one bomb in particular seemed to have the Veffers’ name written on it. We heard it come swooshing down as if it were destined for our attic. We cowered on the floor, our heads tucked in our arms. The missile’s whining path through the complaining air rose to an ear-splitting crescendo, and then there was a heavy bump below us. Not an explosion—just an earth-shaking bump at our feet. We waited breathlessly, helplessly. Nothing more happened. The anti-aircraft guns spattered away in the distance. The drone of the bombers receded. The raid was over.

Mr. Snell came running up from downstairs. His face was grave and pale. “That bomb,” he burst out. “It has not exploded.”

“Where did it fall?” I asked anxiously.

“Just by the trees. You can see the hole it made. If it had exploded—” We all looked at each other in fear, and then in relief, and then in thankfulness.

Practical Jonas, the man with one eye permanently on the future, was the first to realize the implications of Mr. Snell’s news.

“We must get out of here,” he rapped decisively. “There is not a moment to lose.”

The children began to complain. “Why, Daddy?” They clustered around him, grumbling. “We are happy here.”

Mr. Snell nodded slowly. “You are right, Jonas,” he said. “The Germans will seal off the area round that unexploded bomb. There may be others for all I know. They may even evacuate this area. The park will be crawling with Germans any minute. I expect they will come to the house to investigate the damage. You will not be safe.” He took my hand kindly. “I shall be sorry to see you go, but I know it is the right thing to do. How can I help?”

I answered: “Please get a message to Auntie Fifi.”

That amazing woman was with us within the hour. We explained the position to her, and she agreed with our decision. We had been with the Snells for a wonderful month, but now we must go elsewhere. But where? The only family we could think of who might help us was the Bakkers, the people next door to the Makkinjes, who had already been so kind to us. Aunt Fifi went away to contact them.

She came back with good news and, better still, she came back with Mr. Bakker himself. We were glad to see him. Henk Bakker was a big man, over six feet tall, with bright red hair. He radiated strength and confidence. Yes, he told us, they would take us in. They did not have much room, but in such an emergency they would help.

As a baker delivering bread around the town, he still had some transport—a bicycle with a canvas-covered carrier—and he trundled off with our belongings. We had to wait until the night fell before we ourselves could brave the dangers of the open streets.

That last day at the Snells’ was an anxious one for us. From our peepholes we saw German soldiers busying themselves in the park, almost up to the very door of the house. Fortunately they were more concerned with the bomb itself than with the people in its vicinity, but I realized it would only be a matter of time before they turned their attention towards the house. We were on tenterhooks as the hours of daylight slowly ebbed away.

Night fell. The cavalcade of the Veffers passed through the dark and silent streets. We did not all go together; that would have been too conspicuous and dangerous. The children went off in pairs at intervals, and finally Jonas and I said good-bye to the kind Snells, thanked them profusely for the hospitality they had extended to us, and wended our anxious way across the town. It was an ironical fact that as we were leaving the German servant-girl came up to us and wished us luck. Poor Jonas nearly jumped out of his skin, but I trusted her; and I was right.

The night was dark and moonless. We felt our way step by step through the park, and as we proceeded slowly and carefully we heard heavy, military footsteps coming towards us and voices speaking in German. Instinctively we moved back into the shadows, and I heard a strangled cry as Jonas tripped and fell into a ditch at the side of the road. As I was struggling to help him out, a shaded flashlight shone on the scene, and standing by us was a German soldier. As I stood there numbed and helpless, he laughingly reached forward and helped my husband to his feet. “You be more careful next time,” he admonished us and, still chuckling, went on his way.

We walked the rest of the way to the Bakkers, laughing and crying at the same time.

The Bakker family had two young children, a boy of seven and a girl of five. Their house was different from that of the Makkinjes next door. It was built over a garage (the same garage in which my children had had their adventure with the cement-bags), and a flight of stairs from ground level rose steeply to the Bakkers’ living-quarters: a living-room, kitchen and bathroom. One floor further up were the bedrooms, and we were given two small ones. They were attic rooms, but reasonably comfortable and quite airy.

Henk Bakker and his wife Pietje were very kind to us. They were gentle people, and small thin Pietje, always peering through her thick glasses, was a most pleasant woman. They gave us the run of the house, so far as was possible. We could use the washroom (a delight enough in itself); we could cook in the kitchen (when we had anything to cook); and in the evening we could even come down to the living-room and chat the hours away. Nor did we need any kind of warning signal when company came, for the structure of the house helped us in this respect. Anybody opening the front door from the street had to climb twenty steep stairs to the first floor, and when we heard the steps we had plenty of time to make ourselves scarce. It was a good arrangement.

But by the beginning of 1945 the last of our money had gone. We had sold everything. We were destitute, and very hungry. In our emergency we turned once again to beloved Auntie Fifi and she did not fail us. She scraped together some money and found a little food for us. It was miraculous how she was always able to help us in a dire emergency.

The Bakkers themselves were not much better off than we were. Food was very scarce and, even though he was a baker, his supplies of ersatz flour were so heavily curtailed that he could only bake enough bread for a few of his customers. One loaf to a family—that was the ration for a week, and each loaf was precious.

I mention this because, when we were very hungry, young Abraham produced some slices of bread which he had saved up from his own meagre ration for us. He told me he did not like the bread, and could not eat it. He had kept it for use in such an emergency as now confronted us. We wolfed the bread gratefully, and thought no more about it.

Later we learned that Mr. Bakker was a loaf short in his day’s ration. This was a disaster. This meant that one of his customers would go hungry. It was the only time I ever saw him in a temper, and he flounced up to our room asking us if any of the children had stolen the loaf. Hotly and confidently I denied the accusation. My children would never do such a thing. Convinced and apologetic, he went away.

He never found out who stole the loaf, nor did I for many months. After the war, Abraham confessed to me that he had taken it. His excuse? “You were so hungry, Mama. I could not bear to see it.”

With the money that Auntie Fifi scraped up for us Mr. Bakker and my son Meyer made a long trip into the country to find food. From all the towns the people were making treks to the outlying farms, hoping to get vegetables, milk, eggs and perhaps meat. They walked long distances, pushing handcarts, sleds, prams, wheelbarrows, anything that would hold the precious food. If the farmers had anything to dispose of, they would sell it to the people, but many weary travellers made footsore journeys of many miles only to find that the Germans had cleaned out the farms and there was nothing to spare.

We were all of us so hungry now that this was our last resort. There was no longer any food in the stores for our meagre, insufficient rations. Even the horrible sugar-beet began to taste good when we could get it; at least it was something to chew. We were very hungry.

Henk Bakker and Meyer rode out of the town on two bicycles, both of them dilapidated and falling to pieces. Meyer’s cycle had no tires, and he rode on the rusty rims for many back-breaking miles.

They were away six days, during which time we could only wait and pray. There was nothing to eat in the house. We were starving. We were so faint that we could not rise from our beds. Even lifting our heads was an effort. All Jonas’s fears had come to pass; I now understood why he had been so worried and afraid, for this was the ghastly development that he had so clearly foreseen.

Then the wanderers returned, and their mission had been miraculously successful. Worn out with the strain of the journey and the added strain of avoiding the Germans (who would have commandeered their load had they ever seen it), they tottered into the house with some meat, butter, flour and a hundred-pound bag of potatoes.

What rejoicing there was at their return with such treasures! Pietje Bakker and I summoned up all our strength to prepare a meal, and we rationed out the potatoes one a day to everyone. As for the meat, we only ate this on Sundays, dividing one pound into fifteen portions. Why fifteen? We had learned from Auntie Fifi that Jonas’s sister and some of his other relatives hiding elsewhere in the town were even worse off than we were in regard to food, and we sent over to them all we could spare from our bounty.

Like the Snells, the Bakkers had a secret radio, and it was from Radio Orange that we first heard that the Canadian forces were fighting for the liberation of Holland.

This news excited us so much that on April 17th, 1945, the day of my daughter Rachel’s nineteenth birthday, we had a little party. We dipped more lavishly than usual into our rations, we all sang and, when we heard the news on Radio Orange, we cheered. For the Canadians were now fighting inside Holland and, with God’s will, were on their way to liberate us.

Rachel asked a question when we had heard the news. “What is a Canadian?” she queried. “Where does he come from?”

Jacob, the educated one, answered: “He comes from Canada.”

“Where is Canada?” asked Abraham.

“Across the Atlantic,” Jacob told him. “There is a big American continent. At the bottom is South America; in the middle is the United States of America, and at the top is Canada.”

“What do you know about Canada?” Rachel was interested.

Jacob shrugged his shoulders. “It’s cold there, that’s all I know.”

I could see that for some reason the mere idea of Canada fascinated Rachel. “What are the Canadians like?” she persisted.

Jacob was short with her. “How do I know? I’ve never met any.”

There was a pause. Rachel looked thoughtfully at me. “Mother,~” she said, dreamily, “when the war is over, will you do something for me?”

“Of course—if I can,” I answered. “What is it?”

“Will you let me go out with a Canadian?”

We laughed at that. Dutch girls are strictly brought up, and do not go out with strange men. When a Dutch girl goes out with a man alone, she means business—matrimonial business. I thought Rachel was joking, but she was quite serious. Laughingly I answered: “As it’s your birthday, darling, I promise. When the war is over, you can go out with a Canadian.”

The conversation was oddly prophetic. Little did I realize then how much Canada and the Canadians would come to mean to all of us in the years that lay ahead.

The state of the people in Holland was now desperate. The intensification of the war against Germany meant that food supplies could no longer come into the country, and the stated rations were a farce. What was the good of being allowed 125 grams of meat a week when there was no meat, or two litres of milk when there was no milk? People fell down in the streets and died where they fell from starvation. Everybody was hungry. Holland was starving.

In this emergency the Swedish Red Cross took a hand. They asked permission from the Germans to be allowed to send food into Holland. The Germans—who had their own problems by then and were only too glad to let somebody else look after the Dutch—agreed.

So again we heard the drone of heavy aircraft, but this time it was not bombs that they dropped but food—loaves and loaves of bread, pounds and pounds of butter, that parachuted down into the towns. And meanwhile along the canals came barges with the Red Cross insignia, and they were loaded with flour.

It says a great deal for the law-abiding, orderly character of the Dutch people that, despite their starvation, they did not riot to grab as much of the food as they could. They lined up patiently while the food was served out fairly to each person.

Thanks to the Bakkers and Auntie Fifi, we were not forgotten. We could not go out to get our rations, so they got them for us.

I remember so well our reception of the food—real white bread and fresh sweet-smelling butter. Each of us had a loaf to ourselves, and it was typical of my family that five of us—myself, Jonas, Rachel, Jacob and Judah—ate a little of the bread and butter, and put the rest away to provide future meals. But Abraham and Meyer had no such prudence. They slit the whole loaf lengthwise, smothered all their butter on it and ate it ravenously there and then. It should have made them sick, but it didn’t.

The war was ending. That we could tell from the news. There was subdued excitement in the air. The avenging armies were on the march to victory. But it was the avenging armies that gave us our last and greatest scare of the whole weary war.

May, 1945. American bombers were flying overhead. We heard the crash of bombs as they struck at German strategic bases. The bombs were coming nearer. We worked out their direction from the sound. They were bombing the railway line, and the railway line led right up to the yards three blocks away from our house.

Henk Bakker came running upstairs. We heard commotion in the streets and German voices shouting some instructions.

“Quick, you must get out of there!” he told us urgently. “They are evacuating the whole district.”

“Why?” I asked.

“The bombers—they are after that ammunition train in the yards. If they hit it, half of Bussum will go up.”

There was an eleven-car freight train just outside the depot. It was loaded with heavy ammunition. We knew about it; we had all talked about it. And now, with freedom so near, disaster threatened us.

“We cannot go,” said Jonas. “If we saw a German, we would give ourselves away. They have not finished with the Jews yet. They could still kill us.”

“But the train—”

“You go,” said Jonas quietly. “We will take a chance.”

Expostulating, Henk Bakker dashed down the stairs. Amidst the crashing of the bombs we heard people hurrying and shouting outside. And then there was quiet—dangerous quiet. All the people had left the houses. The canal bank was deserted. The trucks stood without their drivers. The workmen had left the barges. The Germans had gone. Not a soul was left in the whole wide area—except us. And the only sound was the whine and the crash of the bombs as they came nearer and nearer along the railway-line. ‘

“If you want to go, Sara,” Jonas told me, as he went about opening the windows to relieve the danger of breaking glass, “please do. Take the children, if you wish.”

I said: “We will stay here, Jonas. We have come so far together. If anything happened to one of us now, it would be the same as if it happened to all of us. If we have to go, let us all go together. We will stay.”

He said nothing. He came over and kissed me tenderly.

For two full hours the Americans bombed the yards while we crouched, numbed but calm, the children in our arms, waiting for the end. Out of the whole neighbourhood we were the only living souls within range of the deadly missiles. Freedom was so near and yet—as each crash came—so far.

The house was rocked to its foundations by the blast. We were deafened by the explosions. The canal was hit. The station was hit. The bombing went on and on.

God heard our tortured prayers that day. The Americans left a ruined town behind them, but they did not hit the train that would have blown us to eternity.

A month later, almost to the day, we were sitting downstairs in the Bakkers’ living-room when we heard Auntie Fifi’s voice from below. She was running upstairs shouting. She broke into the room. She was crying with joy and waving a Netherlands flag. She screamed: “The war is over! Hitler is dead! Germany has been conquered! Holland is free!”

I sat there like stone. I put out my arms and my children came running towards me. I pillowed them to me. My husband stood by my side, his hand on my shoulder. It was a family tableau of joy too great for words . . . of relief too great for tears.

 

PART THREE:  SUNRISE

 

15

The date was May 5th, 1945. Holland was free. People were shouting and dancing in the streets and, before I could stop them, the children ran out to join them in the mad delight of freedom. But we called them back. There were still German soldiers with loaded rifles parading the streets, and the sounds of gunfire could be heard above the excitement as nests of Dutch Fascists and Germans made last-ditch stands against the authorities.

It was not until May 8th that we summoned up courage to emerge into the open. The German soldiers had by then been disarmed. They were still walking the streets, but they were no further danger to us.

Oh, the feeling of the open air as we came out on to the sidewalk! The feeling of belonging again, of being human, of not being hunted. I felt weak and giddy. The strength drained away from me in the overpowering relief that surged through my body. I clung to Jonas, for freedom had given him strength and he led me, proud and resolute, through the streets of our town. The children followed us, and we joined in the singing and the shouting and the cheering and the backslapping. I could taste the sweet air on my lips; the sunshine stung my eyes and the sidewalks hurt my feet. I was no longer used to walking; I was no longer used to the sunshine. I was uncomfortable—but, oh, so happy!

We turned the corner into Stationsweg—our own street. There was a large crowd round a truck. They were shouting and gesticulating. It was not the cheerful, carefree shouting of celebration. We stood by to watch, and then we realized why the crowd were angry. Dutch police and civilian helpers who (we guessed) had been members of the underground movement were dragging quislings out of the houses and thrusting them into the truck. The traitors were being rounded up and it was just as well that there were plenty of guards to supervise the operation, otherwise there would assuredly have been bloodshed had the crowd been able to lay their hands on the quislings. We watched in silence. Now justice was being done to our enemies. We saw Simono and Moses, the two arch-Jew-baiters, being herded into the truck. They were scared and screaming for mercy. No longer were they strutting about to the terror of defenceless Jews. This was their day of reckoning.

As we stood by, one of the police chiefs in charge of the round-up noticed our little group. He had known the family for twenty-five years, and his delight and amazement were a pleasure to see.

He was shouting: “It’s Jonas! It’s Jonas! I can’t believe it!”

He grabbed my hand and pumped it vigorously. He looked at the children, and there were tears in his kind eyes. “It’s a miracle!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “We thought you were all dead!” He was full of questions.

“How did you manage? Where have you been? What happened to you?”

“Those traitors can walk to their prison,” he went on. “The truck is for you. I will take you round the town myself. It will be a real Victory Parade.”

And so the Veffers, standing on a truck, were paraded round their town, while people cheered and cried, and our friends leaned over and grabbed our hands, and we waved like royalty, choking back our happy tears.

That night we did not sleep. The whole town of Bussum celebrated with parties and dancing, singing and parades. From dusk till dawn, the rejoicing went on nonstop. I do not know how we found the strength to join in, but we were in the forefront of the celebrations all night. We were living again, and free.

When we tottered back to the Bakkers’ in the early light, Jonas and I were still too excited to sleep. The children lay down in complete exhaustion, but we stayed talking and talking. By this time we had been reunited with the rest of our family hiding in Bussum—my own sister Deborah, and Jonas’s two sisters—so it was a grand and wonderful reunion.

And we soon had another visitor. The commissioner of police came over to see us. “What are your plans now, Jonas?” he asked.

My husband spread his hands helplessly. “I have not thought about it,” he confessed. “The present is so wonderful that I have had no time to think about the future.”

“Well, I will see what house is going that we can find for you and your family. Leave it to me.”

We thanked him, but he waved aside our thanks. “It is the least we can do after all you have been through,” he said; then he frowned. “There is just one thing—your old home and your store in Stationsweg.”

We looked a query.

“If you want it, I will get it back for you,” he went on, “but it will take a little time and may prove difficult. You see, the man now running your business claims that you gave it to him of your own free will. What do you say about it?”

“I did no such thing,” answered Jonas forcefully. “I told him to run it for me while I was in hiding, and we would share the profits. He agreed, but I have heard nothing from him for years.”

The commissioner nodded. “That’s how I thought it was,” he said. “Well, if you care to dispute his claim and take the case into court, I will back you up one hundred per cent.”

“Thank you,” said my husband, “but that will not be necessary. I am very tired, and I do not want any more trouble. If this man feels he can be rich and happy in a store that he got the way he did, let him have it. He’s welcome to it—if his conscience lets him keep it.”

I said to the commissioner: “We will be starting a flower store again somehow, but we have no equipment. May we take our equipment out of the store? It belongs to us, you know.”

“I will arrange that,” he agreed, and went out, but Jonas was not happy about my request.

“Why did you do that?” he asked me angrily. “Haven’t we had enough already? I don’t want to have anything more to do with the old store fixtures and equipment. Let him keep them.”

I said nothing. I had my own views on the subject, and I was stubborn. In any case, there was a more pressing problem on our minds—our youngest Joseph. Since he had been taken away by the underground just over a year before, we had heard nothing from him. All we knew was that he had gone to a farm in northern Holland; that was all. We had to get him back.

We located Auntie Fifi (it was wonderful to be able to walk over to her house in broad daylight, instead of having her creep over to us in the dark!) and told her our problem. All she knew was that the underground worker who actually took Joseph out of Bussum had since been killed by the Germans. Apart from that, she had heard vaguely that the boy had been passed on to the underground in Friesland. She knew nothing more.

This was a slender lead, and we invoked the help of Henk Bakker, for he was a native of Friesland and would know his way about in the flat, farming country of northern Holland. Jonas asked him if he would help in the search for Joseph, and it was typical of this kind man that he at once agreed. He and Jonas would go together.

Jonas went to the mayor of the city and explained the whole position. Help was quickly and willingly forthcoming. Permits were at once made out for Jonas and Mr. Bakker to travel freely on the Dutch roads. The mayor explained: “I cannot give you permission to travel by train as no civilian is allowed to make train journeys just at the moment. But these permits I have given you will enable you to make your way from town to town right through Holland. When you get to the water, to cross over to Friesland by boat, you will have to make your own arrangements on the spot; my jurisdiction does not extend that far.”

Mr. Bakker still had his own bicycle which he had used all the time on his bread-round, but Jonas had no means of transport so the mayor found a bicycle for him—a girl’s model with solid rubber tires. They mounted their bicycles and rode off.

No sooner had they gone than a policeman came round to see us. He told me he had been sent by the commissioner to see that I took our fixtures and belongings out of our flower store, and I was very glad that things had worked out that way, for if Jonas had still been around he would never have allowed us to do what we did.

With the boys following behind me, and the policeman in close attendance, we marched to our store, and the expression on Bob’s face as he saw us walk in would have been comical if the attendant circumstances had not been so tragic.

He tried to stumble out words of greeting, but I cut him short. “Don’t you talk to me!” I told him. I indicated the policeman who explained our mission. “They have been given permission to remove their fixtures and equipment from the store,” he said, and I thought Bob was going to faint as he realized what was going to happen. He started to expostulate and plead, but we paid him no attention. Systematically, my boys and I set about our work.

We did not touch the flowers, but that was about all we did not touch. We removed the counter, the shelves, every vase, every ornament. We tore down the decorations, we stripped the walls, we left the store bare and empty.

Then we went to the greenhouse in the back of the store where we kept our orchids. Bob had a big supply of orchids, and we left those alone. But we stripped the greenhouse bare.

When we had bundled everything into a truck, Bob was crying. “How can you do this to me?” he asked. “I have so many orders for Easter—I shall be ruined.” He wrung his hands with rage and grief.

I stopped on the threshold. I would not give him the satisfaction of addressing him directly so I spoke to the policeman. “When I was in hiding,” I told him conversationally, I was very, very ill for seven weeks. I was dying. And you what pulled me through? In my moments of agonizing, unbearable pain, I would grit my teeth and say to myself: ‘I am going to come through. I must. I will. I cannot die until I have gone into our store again.’” I could feel Bob listening to me. I went on: “And you know why I wanted to go into our store again?” The policeman shook his head. “To do just this.” I spread my hand in the direction of the loaded truck, and then indicated the stripped walls. “I am not a revengeful person, but this I had to do.”

Without another glance in Bob’s direction, I walked out of the store. There were many people in Bussum—even so-called friends of ours—who said I behaved badly to Bob and that I should have let bygones be bygones. All I said to them, when they made such remarks was: “If it had happened to you, you would have done the same as I did. I wanted to do it, and I am glad I did it.”

We unloaded all the stuff in the Bakkers’ garage. Whether we would ever need it or use it again, I did not know. Frankly, I did not care.

But it so happened that the fixtures and equipment came in very useful very quickly. The same day, the commissioner of police called on us again. “I have good news for you,” he told me. “We have arrested a quisling who was running a vacuum cleaner shop round the corner from your old store. It is a house big enough for your whole family. You can have it. You can move in right away.”

We moved in that very day, and our joy was tempered by great sadness as we walked into our new house. For this was the house and store once occupied by my dear friend Greta Weenen, the girl whom Jonas had tried to save from the concentration camp—the girl whose parents had shared our sufferings with us, and given us plenty of extra sufferings on their own behalf. . . Dear Greta, who had died with her child and husband in a concentration camp.

The erstwhile hat store had long been taken over by the quislings and, while we were moving in, the authorities moved out hundreds of vacuum cleaners. That was all they took away; the rest they left for us to use, a beautifully furnished and well appointed house ready for occupation.

So we had a home again.

The commissioner himself took us round to our new quarters and walked with me on my tour of inspection.

I tried to thank him, but he cut me short. “There is no time for thanks,” he told me with pretended brusqueness. “I want you to be in business again as a florist within two weeks from now. Can you do it?”

I could only nod, my heart full.

“Then that is an order,” he went on. “Two weeks from now, Bloemenhuis Jonas must be functioning again and—a smile lit his face—“I hope I shall have the honour of being the first customer.”

Before he went out he told me that he had a special job for Jacob, my oldest boy. “You’re going to guard the German prisoners,” he said to the boy, and my son smiled broadly.

“That’s poetic justice,” he said. “I’ll be delighted to do it.”

They gave him a rifle, and there was no more dedicated prison-guard in the whole of Holland than Jacob Veffer, the Jewish boy who had survived to help herd the Germans into captivity.

We settled down to normal living. The house was comfortable, and the amenities were all we could desire. Outwardly we were all happy, yet beneath the surface there was a nagging doubt. We had been away too long. Could we adjust ourselves again? Could we continue to stay in this land where our friends had died and our own sufferings had taken place? Could we be happy a block away from the store that had been taken from us while we were helpless and in hiding? I did not know the answers then, but I knew that the questions themselves constituted problems we should have to face.

During the week in which all this happened, Jonas was away searching for Joseph. Afterwards he told me the story. Here is his description of the events:

“After being given our official papers at the City Hall, we went on our way northwards. We met very little private traffic; people were being kept in the towns so that the transport of food and vital equipment could easily be conveyed along the roads and also the net was being spread all over Holland for fleeing Germans and Dutch Nazis. We had to keep on stopping and show our official permits; it was just as well because the solid tires of the bicycle I was riding made progress an exceedingly painful matter for me. We pressed on, greatly helped by the official committees which had been hurriedly but methodically organized in all cities. We went to them for information, and they were all most helpful.

“Reaching Muiderberg harbour, we had to cross the Ijssel Meer, the northern end of the Zuider Zee. Here we were on our own. It was not a question of permission; it was a case of making our own arrangements and finding someone who would take us. The weather was bad, so we had trouble finding anybody who would venture out, but finally we persuaded the skipper of a twenty-four-foot sailboat to take us across. We bundled our bicycles aboard, and had a very bad crossing.

“Reaching shore at last, we made our way to the information centre, where it was suggested that we ride to Leeuwarden, capital of Friesland province, forty miles away. Without stopping for food or rest, we rode on.

“The next few days were occupied in asking endless questions from endless officials. We were on the track of Joseph, but he had been shifted around a great deal. At one place, we were told that there had been a mass execution of eleven citizens because a Jewish child had been found hidden in the village.

“Ultimately we were directed back on our tracks to a town called Sneek, where we were at last given a positive address. We hurried to the farm. It was one o’clock in the morning when we arrived, but I had no compunction about waking up the occupants; I wanted my boy.

“Joseph was there. They awakened him, and I greeted him in tears but a shock awaited me for he didn’t recognize me. For some incredible reason he thought I wore a moustache, and I nearly lost my patience and my temper as I sought to explain to the farmer and his wife that I really was the boy’s father and was not some impostor trying to kidnap him.

“It took some time but, with the help of Mr. Bakker and my own sincerity, they realized at length that I was telling the truth and the atmosphere of our meeting changed. I was anxious to get on my way immediately but they asked me to let Joseph stay another day. He was taking part in a horse-riding exhibition at a Liberation carnival that the town was staging the following  afternoon and the boy was looking forward to it.

“The farmers told me that nobody in the district knew that Joseph was a Jewish child. They passed him off as a boy whom they had adopted, and, in the few months that he had been with them, he certainly seemed to be very fond of them. He called them ‘Father’ and ‘Mother’, and it gave me a funny feeling to hear him talk like this, especially when he did not seem entirely certain who I was.

“The farmers were Catholic, and devout Catholics, at that. They were very nice people. They thought the world of Joseph, and were very upset at the thought of losing him, although they were glad he was going back to his own family.

“Next day, a change came over Joseph. He knew who I was. He was my son again and, believe me, I was very thankful.

“At the Liberation celebrations, Joseph duly rode his horse, and a fine horseman he had turned out to be, much to my surprise. The farmer made a speech to the spectators saying that Joseph’s father had found him and was taking him back to his family, and everybody cheered and congratulated me.

“Then, when we set out on our journey home, the kind farmers loaded us with food. Both our bicycles were groaning with sacks and bags and parcels of eatables, and Joseph rode on the carrier of Mr. Bakker’s machine.

“To the waves, cheers and good wishes of the community, we left for Bussum. Loaded as we were, the journey was a pleasant one for our mental happiness overcame our physical discomfort. The miles flew by as we sang and talked and joked, and we reached Stavooren in record time.

“There, our troubles started. The weather was still bad, and nobody would leave the harbour. We found the skipper of a freight-carrying motor-barge—a low craft about forty feet in length—who was prepared to take us when the weather cleared. We were impatient to continue our journey, and we tried all we knew to persuade him to make the crossing but he wouldn’t budge. Then, just as we were turning away in miserable frustration, the storm abated, and the skipper said he would take us. We threw our bicycles and our loads of food into the shallow craft and, standing up by the engine, we began to navigate the Ijssel Meer.

“What happened after that is something I shall never forget for the rest of my life. We were caught in a storm, and this time we nearly lost our lives.

“The weather changed with frightening suddenness. The wind sprang up at gale force, and our craft was battered and shaken by the mountainous waves. Water poured over us. We clung on to anything we could find to prevent ourselves being swept overboard. Hell broke loose.

“It was a nightmare that lasted until the wind abated a little and, from the shore, we suddenly saw a lifeboat looming up to rescue us. . . We were safe.

“We had drifted off course to Enkhuisen, and there we were taken into a cafe and given attention. Our clothes were dried, and a doctor came to examine us but, amazing to relate, none of us was injured. Unfortunately, all our precious food had gone.

“We rested for a few hours at Enkhuisen, and then started on our way again but by now we were very tired. Mr. Bakker’s tires had worn down to the rims, and travelling for both of us was very uncomfortable. After a time, we managed to stop a truck that was going to Amsterdam. There was only room for one passenger, so we sent Joseph on in comfort and arranged to meet him in Amsterdam later in the day. By the time we met him again, Mr. Bakker had managed to get his tires changed, so the rest of the journey to Bussum was reasonably uneventful.

“I arrived home sore and aching in every bone. I could not sit down in comfort for several days afterwards, but what did it matter? Joseph was home, safe and well. The Veffer family was together again.”

…

When Jonas had finished telling us of his adventures, I had to tell him all about our new house and the flower-store we were about to open. Then Joseph had to tell us all about the time he had been away from us. We talked happily and excitedly. And then Joseph said something, and the talking cut off into shocked silence.

“What did you say?” I said.

Joseph replied: “When we were caught in the storm, I prayed to the Virgin Mary, and she saved us.”

We all looked at each other. “The Virgin Mary?” I could hardly believe my ears.

“Yes,” repeated the boy contentedly. “The Blessed Mary heard my prayers. Tomorrow, when I go to mass, I will thank her.”

I groped for words. “But—but—Jewish people do not go to mass. They do not pray to the Virgin Mary.”

“I’m not Jewish,” said the boy. “I am a Catholic.”

We did not dare say anything. Dimly, we felt we were in the presence of something we did not understand. Kindly, we bundled the boy off to bed, and then Jonas, weary as he was, ran for the rabbi. We felt he could advise us.

Rabbi Van Gelder listened to my anxious and stumbling words with a thoughtful frown.

“It is a problem,” he said gravely. “He is at an impressionable age. He has been in the care of a devout Catholic family for several months now, and they have implanted their faith in him.”

“What shall we do?” I trembled.

“You must treat him gently,” was the thoughtful answer. “To try to break him from his beliefs or to tell him that he is wrong in thinking the way he does—that will antagonize him and make him hostile to you. You must be patient—and very kind. Do not let him go to church but, otherwise, let him go on in the way that he believes. Talk to him, tell him he is Jewish, explain to him that Jews and Catholics both worship God but in different ways. I think you will find that he will gradually change. Remember—he is still impressionable and it is what his family does and what his family believes in that will ultimately make the most impression on his young mind.”

It was good advice, but it was very hard to carry out. We had to stand by without saying anything when Joseph crossed himself; we had to wait at every meal while Joseph said grace in the Catholic way.

As the rabbi had suggested, I talked to Joseph about religion and gently tried to explain to him what had happened. It took six months before the environment of his family overcame the strength of his new teaching. Gradually, he began to lose interest because nothing was being done to foster or strengthen his Catholic ties.

We are not a bigoted or strictly orthodox family, but we are devotedly Jewish and the problem of Joseph was a worrying one to us. We did not find it easy to treat him with the calmness and the forbearance that the rabbi advised, but I am glad we steeled ourselves to do so and faithfully carried out the principle of his wise words. It took six months and then the little Catholic was a Jew again.

The Canadian Liberation Army had now entered Bussum, and very glad we were to see them. They were fine soldiers and pleasant, friendly young men who became immediately popular with all the townspeople. In co-operation with the local authorities, they took over the running of the town and conditions became much better as they brought in food, cleared up the damage, reorganized the public services and helped to round up the quislings and fleeing Germans.

16

There was still fighting around the town, and we heard rumours that bands of Germans were roaming the countryside, still armed and still putting up resistance. Many known quislings had gone into hiding, and it was part of the work of the Canadians to root them out.

One day, Jonas went out of town to some friends of ours at Laren. He would be away all day. The children left the house to play with their friends. Abraham, Meyer and Judah stayed together; they had similar tastes and liked to watch what was going on in the busy streets.

As I understand the sequence of events, when they reached the Brinklaan, they saw children piling into a Canadian jeep for a free ride round the block. The Canadians were very good to the children in that way; you could always see the soldiers surrounded by children, feeding them candy or playing with them.

Abraham and Meyer climbed aboard the overcrowded jeep but Judah, whose legs were still weak from his incarceration, could not manage to join the others. He arranged to stay where he was until the jeep came round again, when his brothers would rejoin him.

The jeep went round the block, with its young passengers cheering their heads off and its young driver grinning contentedly, but, as they drove back to the starting-place, another sound rose into the air above their screams of childish delight—the sound of rifle-fire. A battle was going on in the Brinklaan. A prominent quisling had been located and he was firing from the upper window of a cigar store. Soldiers and police were spread out as they fired back.

The jeep stopped. The children darted for cover. Abraham and Meyer ran towards the corner where they had left Judah. He was in the line of fire. They saw him trying to move away on his weak, unsteady legs. Above the crackling of the firearms, they shouted at him to make for a doorway. He took a stumbling step towards safety.

But he was too slow . . . too unsteady . . .- too late.

So it was that, as I was busying myself in the kitchen, a neighbour burst in. He shouted: “There’s been an accident. One of your sons has been killed.”

I screamed. The neighbour grabbed my arm. “Come with me to the hospital. Quick!” he shouted. I do not remember getting, into the taxi that he had waiting for me; I do not remember reaching the Majjella Hospital. I came out of my shock to find myself being tended by a sympathetic, white-clad doctor. He was repeating over and over again: “The boy is not dead. The boy is not dead. Do you understand? The boy is not dead.”

I swam back into feeling. I said: “What happened?”

“Your boy was accidentally shot in the back,” he answered sympathetically. “There was a gunfight in the street with a quisling hidden in one of the houses. Your boy has weak legs. He could not get out of the way. But don’t worry. He will get well.”

I could not speak. I looked at him for reassurance.

He smiled. “He has already been operated on, and the bullet has been removed. It was a narrow squeak—another inch and the bullet would have entered his lung. It’s all right now. He will be as good as new in a few weeks.”

I sat there for a long time, idly watching the work of a busy hospital. Down the long passage, I saw coming towards me a Canadian medical orderly. , He was leading a short man who seemed to have been in a bad accident, for his face and hands were pouring with blood. The Canadian was hurrying. I looked more closely, and then my heart was in my mouth and I was stumbling on jellied feet towards them, crying out in horror.

For the little bloodstained man was my husband Jonas.

II

Jonas was on his way back from Laren, cycling peacefully towards Bussum, when he heard the news—the same, dread news that had been told to me, but with an extra elaboration. Judah was dead. The quisling had killed him, and was still holding out. Neither the soldiers nor the police could break in to arrest him. The battle was still on.

That was the exaggerated story told to Jonas, and he saw red. With a mad courage born of rage, he cycled like a demon to the Brinklaan. There were still soldiers and police about. He didn’t  know that the quisling had already been captured and taken away. He threw down his bicycle and hurled himself through the plate-glass door of the beleaguered store. Badly cut on the head, face and hands by his mad action, he rushed through the house in a blind rage to get his hands on the man who had killed his son. The house was empty.

When they had calmed Jonas down by telling him the truth of the whole incident, they took him to hospital—the hospital where his son was lying—the hospital where his wife was waiting.

Judah made a good recovery, and Jonas’s cuts all healed up in time. But the event had some odd and far-reaching consequences that subsequently affected all our lives, for the Canadian medical orderly who brought Jonas so solicitously into the hospital was to play a major part in our destiny.

When he had taken my husband for attention, he came over and spoke to me, for he could see that I was reeling at this second blow. First my son, and now my husband. It was too much for a woman to bear.

He expressed his sympathy. That I could tell from the concerned look on his dark, good-looking face, and from the caressing nuances of the words. But he was talking in English, and I did not understand a word. Realizing this, he went away and brought over an interpreter. After that we chatted, and he calmed me.

During our conversation he asked me if I was Jewish and, when I told him I was, he said he was also a Jew and was wondering whether he could perhaps call on me. He was a little lonely and homesick, and he would like to spend an evening with a Jewish family.

I assured him that he would always be welcome, and immediately invited him to join us for the feast of Yom Kippur—the feast that follows the fast on the sacred Day of Atonement. He accepted readily, asked permission to bring some more of his Jewish colleagues, and we welcomed them at our house a few nights later.

That was the beginning. His name was Martin Stern, and he came from Toronto, in Ontario, where he was a partner in his father’s financial business. I liked him at once, and he liked us all—but most particularly, he liked my daughter Rachel.

It was not long before he asked if he might take her out, and we were thrown more and more into closer relationship when the Canadians took over the house right next door to us for use as a mess-hall and social centre. Then Martin was with us every day, and we regarded him as one of the family.

On April 4th, 1946, he did in fact become an official member of the family—my son-in-law. The scene of the wedding was the ruins of the Bussum synagogue. The building had been bombed, and its interior had been ransacked by the Germans. There was just a shell of the old building standing, so it was almost an open-air wedding as my daughter Rachel was married to a Canadian soldier.

Rabbi van Gelder conducted the ceremony, Annie Makkinje was bridesmaid, and the whole of Bussum turned out to join in the ceremony and the attendant festivities.

Soon after that, the Canadian liberation armies packed their kit, said their good-byes and were transported back to Canada for demobilization. It was a sad day for Rachel when her new husband left her, but she was heartened by the fact that she was shortly to follow him.

In September, 1946, Rachel left to join her husband in Toronto, Canada.

 III

Work went on. Life went on. The store prospered. The children went back to school, and Jacob proved the value of all the studying he had done during our hiding by passing through two grades in less than six months.

But life in Holland was no longer the same. The taste had gone out of it. Our years of hiding had done something to me that, even now, I am at a loss to describe. There were scars that could not be erased; memories that could never be forgotten.

I tried hard to bury this mounting depression and, to some extent, I succeeded, but Jonas was being visibly affected and it got so that I became worried about his health. He was pining for his daughter, that I knew, but more to it than that alone. Something was not right with his outlook. I tried to get him to talk about it. He brushed it off lightly. I persisted. This is how he has since explained it to me:

“All the time I was in The Room, I knew for certain that when the war was over I would no longer stay in Holland. I made plans for myself and the family. We would go away. Where? I only thought of two places: Israel or Australia.

“Why dream of going away? Because I knew that Holland would change. No countries can go through such agonies and remain unaffected. And I was right. Holland has changed. The Holland we knew before the war has gone…forever.

“Hitler left something behind in Holland. There was a feeling, an undercurrent, that expressed itself in odd ways. ‘The Nazis told us all Jews were dead. Are you still alive? I am so glad.’ There was a hypocrisy in the way they said it; there was almost a regret. After all, the Germans had said all the Jews were wicked people; perhaps it might have been better if . . .

“Other people were less restrained in their opinions. One man stopped me in the street: ‘Are you still alive, dirty Jew?’ he asked. When I said nothing, he went away grumbling: ‘They should have killed all the Jews.’ I was in a fight with some hooligans in Amsterdam. They set on me and reviled me as a Jew. This was not the Holland I knew.

“Even among our friends, there was suspicion and envy. When my wife’s brother came across from Belgium and brought us clothes and food, the difference in our attire was at once noticed. And it was typical of the general feeling that the new clothes should be attributed at once to the wrongest reason.

“Little Joseph was stopped on the street by a policeman. ‘Where did you get the money to buy those clothes? Have you been stealing?’ the frightened boy was asked; .

“A policeman came to the store. ‘We have had a complaint,’ he told me. ‘Your boys are so well dressed, where do you get the money to dress them like that? We think you must be engaged in smuggling.’

“The incidents were, in themselves, trivial and the accusations were easy to deny, but the mounting effect of the hostility and lack of understanding grew more and more difficult to take. I felt that, instead of being accepted back into my rightful place into the community, I was being watched and spied on as an outsider. The strain began to make me ill. I felt my strength failing. I could not eat. I was a sick man.

“Maybe I mentally exaggerated the anti-Jewish feeling I found in Holland at the end of the war. I am a super sensitive person and it could be that I found insults where none were intended. Maybe it was a passing phase. Maybe it was not as bad or as general as I felt it to be. I don’t know.

“Let me just leave it at this. I had known all along in The Room that I would not stay in Holland. Now, I lived for the day when I could get away.

“And, with the help of Dr. Martens, that is just what I did. He came to see me at my wife’s request, and had no hesitation in telling me that I was sick. He talked it over with Sara and she knew more about the situation than I thought, for he went away and contacted the transport authorities. I was a very sick man, he told them, pining for my daughter in Canada, and I would assuredly die unless I were given immediate facilities to make the journey to join her for a long vacation.

“The officials were kind and helpful. They worked with great speed to clear away all the red tape and in May, 1948, I made my first-ever flight by aeroplane from Schiphol Airport to New  York. From there, I went by train to Toronto. I was with my daughter again.”

IV

It was lonely without Jonas and Rachel. They wrote to me regularly, telling me what a wonderful country Canada was, and every Sunday, disregarding the expense, my husband would telephone me and talk to me. He was better in health; he was very happy; he missed us all greatly.

I knew him so well that, even though he said nothing definite, I knew what he was planning, and it was no surprise to me to receive a call from Dr. Martens to tell me he had been asked by Jonas to arrange for our emigration. The officials again cut the red tape to make our exit as smooth and easy as possible. No difficulties were placed in our way. Everybody was most kind.

The children were happy at the thought of leaving for another country and rejoining their father and sister. Holland for all of us was a country of bad memories. We had to get away.

I sold all our belongings. We said good-bye to our friends. We packed our bags and on December 12th, 1947, we boarded the Dutch liner Veendam bound for Montreal.

We had left the scene of our misfortunes. We were free to begin a new life.

 

EPILOGUE

This book is being written in my apartment on Bathurst Street, one of the main northern arteries of the growing and spreading city of Toronto. From my window, I watch the passing pageant of people and recognize the lineaments of European races—immigrants like ourselves who travelled across the sea to find a new home and a new freedom.

We are happy. We have had our struggles, physically and financially, but Canada provides opportunity for all who care to work and we have worked hard and gained the rewards of our endeavour. Both Jonas and I have been gravely ill and have had to undergo surgery, but we are both well again—as well as we shall ever be with the strained heart and nervous disorders that will always be with us as a legacy of The Room.

A few blocks southwards down Bathurst Street, you will find a florist’s store on a prominent corner—the Dutch Flower Shop. That is our store. In any part of the city you may see a smart blue truck with the same insignia lettered on the side. That is our truck, delivering flowers and floral arrangements to hospitals, homes, weddings and funerals.

We all speak English now, although only Jacob had had any tuition in that language at school before we came to Canada. The children picked up the new language quickly, and they all speak it without a trace of a Dutch accent. They have even changed their first names to fall into line with the more informal method of address that is prevalent on this side of the Atlantic. Rachel is now Shelley; Jacob is Jack; Meyer is Max; Judah is Joe; Abraham is Allan and Joseph is Johnny.

As for Jonas and myself, we have done our best to master the English language but we still have a guttural Dutch accent that colours all our conversation and Jonas, particularly, will never be able to pronounce a “J” except as “Y”, in the true Dutch way.

We still often talk Dutch among ourselves, and, of course, will never forget our own language. We have many Dutch friends and we patronize Dutch food stores and read Canadian-produced Dutch newspapers. But please do not think by those facts that we are insular and still essentially Dutch-minded. We are all of us bonafide Canadian citizens now, and we are very proud of our new nationality.

We act like Canadians, too. Twice a week my delight is to go along to an organized bingo game; for two weeks every year we spend our holidays at Muskoka, by one of Canada’s loveliest lakes; we have our own car; we go to the movies; we enjoy our television, and Jonas is a sports fan, keen on baseball, ice hockey and Canadian football. We are quite happy.

And why shouldn’t we be? God has indeed been good to the Veffers. The whole family live within a few miles of each other in Toronto, still as closely knit as ever. Apart from nerves and nightmares, they are well in health. Except for Allan, they are all married and have twelve children among them.

And what of the rest of our families? Out of my eight brothers and sisters, only two survived the war—Judah, who lives at Antwerp, and Deborah, who has gone back to Bussum. Two of Jonas’s sisters are still alive out of six. The rest of the two families went into the concentration camps and never came out. The saddest case is that of my husband’s brother Judah, for we had definite proof that he had been alive in the camp two weeks before the liberation. But when the armies of freedom opened the gates, Judah was dead.

And so my story is told. I make no pretence that it is a story of stark horror or violence or torture, such as is usually associated with war. It is just a narrative of personal suffering and anguish, and of an inflexible determination to keep a family together in circumstances that ought not to happen to people in these civilized days. May nothing like it ever happen again!

Many families hid away from the Germans in Holland, but few came through alive. No other family of eight remained alive to tell the tale in circumstances such as ours. So there is a difference from the usual war story in this, our own tale. Yes, there is a difference.

A happy ending. That’s the difference.