Hiding

I was dressed like a country boy so that I would not stand out. I met Mr Appenzeller and he said, “This is your ticket to Hoogeveen. I must remind you that you are travelling as if you were alone.” It was a very difficult task. I realized that there would be no second chance. I couldn’t screw up.

Mr Appenzeller sat across from me. The journey took two hours, but it felt like an eternity. The landscape changed; I saw small houses and fields. 

A group of Nazis sat next to us, speaking in loud voices, their uniforms crisp and menacing. Before the conductor arrived, we heard him announce in German that identification documents should be presented. It scared me a lot. When the conductor opened the compartment door, the Nazi group of four soldiers shouted, “Heil Hitler,” and he responded to them with a wave of his hand and closed the compartment door without checking.

I felt that I had been saved by a miracle.

Mr Appenzeller disappeared, and then a farmer with a horse and a cart appeared. He helped me onto the cart. I don’t know how long we had been travelling when suddenly, we stopped, and the man said, “Step off!”. I got off, and stood alone on the dirt road holding the bag my mother had prepared for me. The horse and cart moved away. A young woman approached me and took me to one of the farmhouses. The farms were modest and stood close together. 

Marco, who had been at the place for some time, felt at home and gave me a tour. A short tour since the house was small and modest. There were two rooms: the “woonkamer”, which was used as a living room, and a bedroom for Jan, Jo and the children, where they also cooked; and the “mooie kamer” (“beautiful room”) that was made available to us. In every country house in the Netherlands, it was customary to have a mooie kamer, a kind of living room where visitors were received. Jan and Jo’s mooie kamer was simply another room, smaller than the room in which the family lived. It had two built-in double beds. 

In the morning, we ate porridge, at lunch, potatoes with some vegetables that Jo grew in a garden near the house, with pork or chicken, and in the evening, we ate bread with jam. After dinner, I learned to close my eyes like everyone else and listen. Jan read “Our Father” and the family prayed without moving their lips. After the silent prayer, he read stories, some from the Old Testament, and we all sat quietly and listened. The new routine was monotonous. Meal. Prayer. Work. Meal. Prayer. Work. Meal. Prayer. I was not excited about the menu. The same meals every day. But I loved working in the field and occasionally taking care of the blind pig. 

Jo and Jan’s friendliness and understanding were remarkable.

We could only go out when it was dark. We wore the wooden clogs villagers wore and walked a little around the house, in an area of only a few square meters. When it was dark we could chop the logs that were lying near the house and prepare them for burning. But in daylight, we were always inside, inside the room. When we were inside we could talk in a normal voice, but there was nothing to talk about; nothing happened. 

We had been in hiding for almost a year, disconnected from the outside world. It had been a year and five months since we’d last seen him. We sat with him, trying to figure out where he had been and what he was going through. It’s hard to say whether we felt more surprised or happy.

Our surprise intensified as he recounted what he had experienced since he left our flat. How he took the same route as us, got off at the same train station, and moved into one of the farms next to us with Jo’s parents, the Moes family. 

Sol told us: “Though the farm was small, everybody was always working. They treated me like one of their own sons. Eventually, I had to leave the farm because some pro-Nazi neighbours started gossiping about how strange it was that I never left the farm except to go to church and that no one ever came to visit me.” 

Thus, his farming experience ended. 

It was the book he used every day, the habit he adopted for himself during the hiding period. I suppose these pursuits were a source of comfort and brought order to the rhythm of his daily life. After the war, someone found the Sidur on the farm and gave it to Jo van der Helm, who gave it to us. Since then, I have kept it with me, and I use it every year at Father’s “Yahrzeit”, the anniversary of his death. 

There was a school next door, and the teacher we were watching from the window had probably seen us too. He gave Jan the books to give us. We returned to independent learning like at the Montessori school. The German we had learned in school was enough for us to read the basic geometry book over and over again. The thought that a neighbour knows about us, understands our hearts, and also gives us gifts was joyful and gave us hope. There are good neighbours, there are good people, there is a chance it will be okay and that we will get out of here and return to normal life.

He told them that there is no food in Amsterdam, that hunger was severe, and that people were calling this winter the “Hongerwinter” (the Hunger Winter). To keep warm, the residents dismantled everything made of wood from the empty houses of the Jews. People would come from the city to the villages and offer valuables, jewellery, or gold coins in exchange for food there. Oddly enough, our situation was better than that of the city dwellers. We were warm and always had something to eat, even if it was mostly porridge. 

One evening Father discovered larvae in the porridge. It led to a real conflict, probably the only conflict we had with the hosts during the twenty months we were there. Father refused to eat the porridge with the larvae. It was disgusting, and we wanted to cook a new stew. Jo simply said “Eat!” We all refused. And she kept saying, “Eat,” this time angrily. “If you were in the camp you would eat it.” Until that moment, the camp had only been a vague place to me, and we hoped that if we did not talk about it, we would not have to go there. The subject of the camp had never come up in our conversations, especially not with the hosts. And suddenly ... no one said much. We took the larvae out of the porridge and ate. 

Jo asked us to move to a corner in the courtyard where the straw bales were piled up, which we happily did. It was even a joy for us. Father and Mother stayed in the beautiful room, and we, the three teenagers, were given a separate housing unit. Despite the extreme cold outside, the good insulation provided by the straw bales offered us a warm place to sleep. Given the circumstances, it was a very decent hiding place. 

The radio was also hidden in the pile of straw bales, a grave violation of Nazi law, even for non-Jews. Once a week we were given permission to turn on the device. We would prick up our ears and pass on the news we heard to everyone. We knew about the Allied forces fighting the Germans. We heard about the invasion of Normandy and the upheaval in the war. Some places had already been liberated from German occupation. The tension increased day by day. At night we heard hundreds of planes from England passing through the skies of the small village on their way to Berlin.

I remember Jo briskly lifted a plank up from the bottom of the closet in our room, below which stairs led to a small cellar, a very wide and very low underground hideout, about a meter high, completely dark. We lay there for five hours, barely breathing, listening to every noise outside. Time passed slowly and it felt like an eternity, until Jo lifted up the board again and brought us back to the beautiful room.

Father kept silent and they did not relent. We lay motionless right below him and heard him being interrogated and tortured. They asked if more Jews were hiding in the house. Father stayed silent.

We heard a punch and another punch. Time seemed to stand still. His every breath lasting an eternity. We heard him breathing heavily, shaking, suffering ... 

We did nothing ... we could not do anything. 

Then – a single shot that said it all.

I no longer cared about anything. I realized that Father had sacrificed himself for us and I could not bear the pain of my loss. There was no way to resist. We went up the stairs. There were three SS men. One of them gave us the command: “Hands over your head.” We put our hands over our heads.

He approached Mother and said to her, “Mother, I gave your husband a coup de grace.” Mother kept her lips pursed. Expressionless. 

I told my mother that I was feeling dizzy, and then I fainted ... It turned out that I had been hit by a bullet in my leg, but had not noticed it. 

Before we set off, an SS officer arrived to interrogate Sol. The Nazis had found the straw hideout and the radio inside. The SS officer wanted to know what else was hidden there. Money for example. Although barely conscious, I could hear him being cruelly interrogated. The German almost strangled Sol. Luckily this time Mother was able to intervene before it was too late. Mother screamed and the German let go. 

We set off, the cart shaking and pounding mercilessly and every jump caused me great pain. The cold was intense and there was a lot of snow.