I am writing this as a Canadian citizen, now living in Ontario.
Born in The Netherlands, just before the second World War, I spent five years of my early childhood in wartime.
These are important years for physical, mental, emotional and social development.
No need to say that I had suffered due to lack of nutrition and for sure due to the wrong
environment. I was one of six siblings and my parents were under great stress to keep
us safe and fed. It was the wrong time to play games while war was raging and bombs
came down around us. It was a very serious time for young and old.
I do remember that I was standing in the public yard in the street where we lived at that time, the
Merwede street in Utrecht, when somebody yelled for me to get off of the lawn
and to come closer to the houses, which I did. Seconds later a bomb came
down at that same spot, where I just had been standing. It left a big hole in the
ground. I was too small then to understand what could have happened to me.
Sometimes I saw Dutch girls walking down the street, their heads shaven bald
with a swastika painted on it. They were pushed and being mocked by others.
I was wondering what it was all about. As I learned later, the girls had been going
out with the German soldiers.
One day, I saw a fisherman's boat pulling up a German soldier's body in
a big fishing net. My mother called me in the house, I was not suppose to see
this.
Often, when fighter planes came over dropping their load of bombs, mother would
call us together and we had to stand with our backs against the staircase, side by
side. We were told that the staircase could provide us some protection in case
the roof of the house would collapse. My older sister was ordered to open all the
windows upstairs, so the glass would not break from the concussion. I remember,
we could hardly hear ourselves because of the tremendous noise of the low
flying airplanes and the bombardment.
The Germans were always in need of strong and skilled men to dig trenches;
to set up devices and equipment to get information of the Allies etc.
So, many Dutch men were not safe on the street and sometimes not even in the house.
That is why I, as a little girl, did not see my father too often. I learned later, that he went out
to scrounge for food for his wife and six children or he did hide underneath the floor to
avoid being picked up during a raid.
Hidden underneath the floor, in this crawlspace, he chopped away on a piece of wood,
making an attempt to carve a guitar. I still can see the unfinished "artwork" standing
in a upstairs closet, long after the war. It looked abandoned and reflected
sadness.
Sometimes my father had gone out in the evening, dressed up like an old woman.
He then went to the farms for food for our family. I remember him coming home
with apples in his underwear.
One sunny morning my father wanted to see some daylight, after being in the dark underneath the
floor for weeks. My mother had gone around the block to check if it was safe for
him to come out, he then spent some time in the backyard.
Not long after the house was encircled with German soldiers.....father tried to
flee....but to no avail. He was dragged away in front of his family and we did not see him
for a long time, neither did we know where he was taken.
I was standing in the backyard with my wooden shoes on, when this happened and I cried : No...no... not my daddy........ don't take my father!!
Of course, no soldier would pay attention to a little girl's cry. I still can feel the pain and the shock.
Later, my father escaped and returned home, wounded, starved and sick.
For us, he was beyond recognition and it took him a long time to recuperate.
He was a man with an iron will, who's dictionary did not have the word "Cannot".
He had survived already a broken neck, blindness and lung perforation through
an accident. He was going to survive again. He died at the age of 87 years, in
November '93. During his earlier years, my father had invented several things in the field of electronic
technology; regarding television; amplification of sound; electricity converter etc.
My older sisters and I went once per week to a place where hot water was made
in big tanks . We did have an old baby carriage with several steel pails in it which were
filled with hot water for the laundry. My sisters pushed the loaded carriage
back home again.
Once in a while, our parents allowed us to go to the Red Cross soup kitchen,
called "Gaarkeuken". We did not go too often, because father felt that we should
leave that food for children who had nothing to eat..... hmmm!.....
We often had still some fodderbeet pulp , tulip bulbs , starling soup , raw green peas or the odd apple to
eat. Father shot the starlings for the soup with a pellet gun. I think we ate cat too.
I was too small to distinguish what all was in our diet.
Whenever I see or smell cooked red cabbage I have to think of the
"Gaarkeuken"or "Soup kitchen". We had to stand in a row with a plate in our hand and when we
came to the big steel kettle, a lady dumped a blob of mashed potatoes with
red cabbage and a scoop of some grease on our plate. My big sister would
urged me to go for a second helping, although she knew I could not eat it.
She finished her own second helping and then ate mine. I still don't know how she
could get it down her throat.
I dropped a spoon on the floor once, and while I went down to pick it up I looked
around underneath that "table", made from long boards.
I had a view of something which would make anybody cry; dozens of little feet without
socks or holey socks; poor fitted and holey shoes; worn out wooden shoes; underwear
with big holes and sloppy elastic, skinny legs some with sores on them etc.
I stayed down there a little longer than needed and I do remember what a great
impression it made on me, as a little 5 year old.
Sometimes I went to a school close by, which was occupied by the Germans. As young
as I was I helped peel their potatoes and then they gave me some to take home.
I felt I was helping the wrong party, but we needed food too ! !
In those days we had to do with very little, but whatever we did have, we learned
to share. A tall and skinny man came once per week to have something to eat at
our house and because his eyesight was poor (cross eyed), I had to make sure
that his plate was cleaned well. Sometimes I even had to feed him the last bites
of edible substance.
Imagine I must have been only about 5 years of age.
I always was a little scared and sometimes I shivered from his looks.
Nobody asked me if I did mind feeding this man. We just did it. Big or small, we all
had chores to do if we liked it or not. Just square your shoulders and get at it.
To tell you the truth, it never did hurt me. It was part of life and as I learned later,
those experiences developed my character and sensitivity to the needs of others.
There was neither much fuel of any kind to cook with or to keep us warm by. I
cannot remember too well how my parents solved this problem other than that we
often did wear layers of clothes, of course all hand-downs, poorly fitted and
wooden shoes on our feet, to keep us comfortably warm. The Germans stole all our supplies.
So, wood or coal was hard to come by, but one day my father did cut a large tree down with a handsaw.
This tree was standing in a public yard in our street. A neighbour boy helped and
his widowed mother was also going to get some of the wood. A German officer
came by on his bike and ordered my father to hand him his saw. The officer said
that my father could not cut the tree and keep the wood.
Dad told the young lad to go home, he did not want him to get hurt. The Germans were
unpredictable and one would never know what to expect. Father did not show any fear and no way
was he going to give his saw nor the wood. He made this clear to the Officer.
He was a brave man, he rather would die or be shot than to give in to such a
demand. He needed to look after his family even at the risk of his own life.
The officer did retreat quietly.
Really, my mother was brave too, she never cried in front of her children during
those war years, even after the Germans took my father away. She had to look
after us all by herself for many months and I have never seen her upset or crying.
But I am sure that she unloaded herself when we were all in bed. We went early
to bed, because there was no electricity, thus no lights at night. We slept with three
children in a double bed , of course that kept us warmer. Sometimes my older
sister or my only brother sneaked up to the attic in the dark, to "steal" an apple or
a handful of dried green peas. We always seem to be so hungry.
My first contact with a chocolate bar was when the Canadian soldiers marched
past our house and my sister told me to run over to them and ask for one. They
were on their way to the swimming pool, for their morning exercise.
Their song was loud and clear :"It is a long way to Tipperary", their tread was fast
and I had a hard time keeping up with them. I grabbed the hand of one of the
soldiers and I only said "chocolate", not even knowing what it was. He
immediately stuck his hand in his pocket and handed me this flat bar called
"chocolate". What an experience for a little girl.
Of course we could not understand English and for a long time I thought that the song:
"It is a long way to Tipperary" meant, "It is a long way to peace and freedom" ,
at least that was my logical interpretation.
The winter of 1944-45 was a severe and cold winter when many Dutch people
died of starvation and exposure. Also in our family there was lack of everything.
My mother told me later that she prayed to the Lord and said: "Lord if you don't
provide, there is nothing else for us than to die".
Not long after the Canadian soldiers did liberate us and big containers of food were dropped in the fields close by. My older sisters waved with their bedsheets out of the attic window to the low flying
Allied aircrafts. Their noise was welcomed, it brought LIFE.
No need to say what the Canadian Remembrance Day means to me, seen from
the other side of the coin.
May 5th, 1945 was the big day of Liberation and when Queen Wilhelmina spoke
to her people via the radio, not too many had a radio to listen to her, because the
Germans had confiscated most of them. My father being a genius and inventor
had a home-made radio and we had to take turns
on the treadle sewing machine to generate electricity, so we could hear the
Queen's speech. The radio was set up by the upstairs open windows and
hundreds of people were standing outside listening, as I can remember.
We were free at last ! !
After the war we went back to school and soon it seemed, we as children had forgotten all about the war. We played again with marbles, skipped and played hide
and go seek in the narrow alleyways between the rows of houses. I did attend a
Christian Elementary and High school. There was not much exciting about going to school,
I had to learn four languages at High School and I hated most
days. We did a lot of swimming in the summer and skating in the winter and
became as tough as shoe leather. Most of our free time was spent outdoors.
In my last school years I had different boyfriends, as any other girl had. Later I was going
steady with a boyfriend who managed a "Dance Cave". This was a converted storage
space underneath the stores along the "Oude Gracht", an old canal in Utrecht. I became
a heavy black tobacco chain smoker, a drinker of alcohol and all other bad things.
A good thing that drugs were not too available in those days, although there was marijuana around.
This was the beginning of some painful years..... learning the hard way.
My teenage years were very rough, I did hang around with the wrong crowd and I
did not know how to get disentangled.
I had left my parental home to live on my own and shared a few rooms in
someone else's house. It was not easy to make ends meet and often I had two jobs.
I worked at a Newspaper, Dagblad Trouw, proofreading, at accounts and putting
advertisement columns together. In the evenings I washed dishes at a local
hospital . Later, I worked as receptionist/secretary of veterinarians at a Provincial
Animal Health Service (farm animals).
Thoughts of the wartime haunted me from time to time, and at some point in my life
it nearly took completely over. Psychologically it came over me as a heavy blanket and
physically I could hardly breathe at times. Other days, I could not see for several minutes,
while there was nothing wrong with my eyes. The devil was really trying to take a hold of me
and he nearly did.
I had been living a wrong lifestyle and it had ruined my young life. I had
chosen the broad path. What to do next.... I did not know. Where to turn to ! ! ? ?
Would death be the answer?
In my desperation I called upon God not really knowing on
whom I was calling. I was not a Christian at that time, not even a churchgoer.
Through an outstanding miracle I was saved from the pit of hell and lifted up
into His Glory. I had met the Saviour Jesus Christ.
* *After immigrating, in 1966, to Canada, I went back to The Netherlands and visited the graves of the Canadian soldiers who died in the fields of what was once my home country. I stood there with mixed feelings and I was very much touched by the thought that I had now become part of these young men..... I wept.* *
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