FROM THE UNDERGROUND AND INTO THE SUN

Every night Mama and her five daughters would be praying the Rosary in unison in identical positions, kneeling close together round her knees, hands palm to palm, praying the Rosary in unison.  At war’s end Papa would say that it was only our prayers for his safety and well-being that enabled him to survive that horror - the horror of being held captive by the Germans for three years.

That eerie high-pitched wail of the sirens to warn us of the bombing raids over Utrecht I can never get out of my head.  I was seven years old and didn’t really understand what it meant.  Nor was I particularly afraid because where we lived in the heart of Utrecht, Steenweg Street, we never received a direct hit.  When the bombs were falling, there was a palpable silence as you braced for a mighty explosion with screwed eyes and clenched teeth, but then all you heard was a dull thud.

In our street the water was sluiced away underground.  Every house or shop possessed a door that led down to a parallel street underground.  This meant you could slip stealthily downstairs, glide along this lower level in the dark and scuttle upstairs into a neighbour’s property.  It was a very effective means of escape as long as the Germans didn’t find out.  I ran errands frequently, as it was my job to escort desperate men on the run from one building to another.  On the top floor of our property was a secret entrance through which these men might hide from German soldiers hunting recruits for the labour gangs.  I felt rather cheeky but quite capable because as a little girl I believed I could carry out this exciting job without attracting the attention Mama might unwittingly have given.

We lived in a five-storey house with a butcher’s shop downstairs.  My sisters and I shared smallish bedrooms, each with our own fold-down bed.  My father’s butchers worked both on the level underground and in their shop above as well as at two factories.  In addition to Papa’s smallgoods (that is, sausages) and butcher business, the family owned a large tract of land around Utrecht, where we grazed our own animals for meat.  Uncle Bep ran a delicatessen further along the street.

During the war the shortage of food in Holland led to a system of rationing in the form of coupons.  As members of the Dutch Underground, Papa and my Uncle Joop managed to acquire extra coupons for food.  These coupons were to be stuck on official lined paper and smuggled from Utrecht to Amsterdam.  Informers must have given the game away because on their arrival from Amsterdam the German military were waiting for them.  Thirty members of my father’s group in the Utrecht Underground were slapped behind bars.

 

Mama was permitted to visit Papa in Weteringsgans prison in Amsterdam, take him some food and have a brief chat.  He’d always enquire about his five daughters and therefore knew that they were all praying for him, though they didn’t know that he would be sent away.  Each of us girls was born in successive years.  It goes without saying that my parents were obviously good Catholics!  Unfortunately, Papa was desperate for a son, to whom one day he could hand over his smallgoods business.

When the Germans decided to disperse prisoners to various camps in Germany.  Papa and Uncle Joop, who owned a butcher’s shop and smallgoods business in Hilversum, were transported to the labour camp at Osnabruck, where gangs of inmates were forced to clear the mass of rubble from German cities bombed by the Allies.  Obviously, Mama was not permitted to visit Papa.  Following the heavy bombing of the camp itself, my father and uncle were the only two prisoners pulled out from the rubble.  Sadly, Uncle Joop was dead.

Papa was then transported to the concentration camp at Buchenwald, which was not technically an extermination camp but a camp providing forced labour for armament factories.  Luckily for us, wherever Papa went, he was always a popular person, so when the Germans needed help they invariably chose him for the job.  By his good graces, he in turn was able to save the life of some of the inmates, including Lieftink, who in later years became treasurer in the Dutch Government. 

We had no idea how Papa was faring inside Buchenwald.  It was only after the war that we learned he had been tortured and used as a guinea pig for hideous medical experiments.  German pharmaceutical factories were creating vaccines to trial on humans.  Another prisoner, a courageous, well-meaning Czech doctor, who knew that Papa was father to five young children, would administer the antidote at night.  These tests apparently took place on twelve occasions.  I remember seeing a photo of a doctor making observations of Papa’s skeletal body.  My father appeared dreadfully emaciated, his sunken rib cage and shoulder blades standing out stark in hideous deformity. 

Buchenwald was the first concentration camp in Germany to be liberated.  After a forced evacuation of able prisoners by the guards, a Russian inmate who had covertly constructed a transmitter sent a message to the advancing United States Third Army.  He was utterly surprised to receive a reply.  General Patton was urging the prisoners to hold out, as help was on its way.  Such news emboldened the Communist detachment, who stormed the watchtowers and killed the remaining guards with their secret cache of guns.  Yet a ghastly shock was awaiting the Allies on their entry - the heart-rending sight of so many starving wretches who could barely totter or rise from the ground.

When Papa returned home, he resumed his smallgoods business.  He always knew he’d come home safe, he told us. Being the eldest, I was allowed to stay up and listen to Papa’s stories, but it was some time before I learnt the extent of the horror that was Buchenwald.  For his brave deeds, Papa was acknowledged after the war by Dutch organizations, the German Government Claims Office and the Yadvashim Museum in Jerusalem.

It was evident that my parents still hoped to have a son.  Tragically, their babies born after the war never survived.

By 1951 the family were beginning to enjoy life again after a bitterly long war of subjugation for Netherlanders.  Papa, once a well-known international water polo player, was currently coaching.  By now he owned meat factories in Utrecht.  At the same time there were growing fears that the Russians were intending to invade Holland.  When he got wind that Uncle Marius, his youngest brother, was about to emigrate to Australia, he decided that would be an ideal destination for his own family, so he booked a berth for the six-week voyage on the Norwegian ship, Skaubryn.  So impressed was he that after four days in Australia he summoned the family to join him and effectively walked out on his business in Utrecht.  Because of his assets, Papa and family could not emigrate to Australia on assisted passage, so he was obliged to pay full fare as well as find a job and accommodation.  Mama and we five girls set sail on the Johan Van Oldenbarnevelt in 1952.

We soon settled down in Victoria, where Papa established a meat factory at Geelong.  At the Karneval clubs, I was amazed to hear him speak German after his war-time ordeal.  Asked to perform a special dance, the Polonaise, Papa would lead the way, jigging with a big broom held up high in both hands.  ‘Ach, Toosje,’ he said to me, ‘you have to learn to forgive and forget.’  That was typical of my father:  he always expressed a belief in goodness, an attitude that was part of his loving ways.

As for me, I can still tense up seventy years later if I hear strangers speaking German in Chapel Street in Melbourne.  However, I did make a point of joining a German choir a few years ago, which has helped to get rid of such personal angst.  Moreover, Papa was to show great pride in the achievements of the son he never had.  His eldest daughter was chosen to represent Australia in the Peace Education Program for Children’s International Summer Villages.  The year was 1986, the Year Of Peace.

 

                                                                                                                      Michael Small
August 14-September 13, 2012