Appelscha, Eerbeek, Apeldoorn, Epse, Deventer, Barchem, Deventer, like in a geography lesson from the past, the places pass me by in a long line. Epse cannot be left out, and Deventer certainly not.
Deventer, when did we actually go there for the first time? I don’t remember. In any case, it was after we had been to Appelscha and Eerbeek. If I remember correctly, we lived in Apeldoorn for a few months after Eerbeek. I don’t remember much about our stay there. The house, a detached house, was part of a row of villas in a quiet street. I remember how every morning a group of pigeons would start cooing like mad.
Apeldoorn
On Sundays, my father always bought bread spreads and meat from the Jewish butcher a few streets away. Until one day he came back excitedly without any shopping and told my mother that the butcher’s was closed and all the windows had been smashed. Probably by members of the NSB.
I don’t remember how long we stayed in Apeldoorn. I do know that we were still there at Easter because my youngest brother and I had been given a basket of chocolate eggs there.
Before we left for Deventer, we spent a few months in Epse. It was a detached house, and the only thing I remember about it is waiting for the paperboy in the morning because I wanted to read the Tom Poes and Mr Bommel comic strip.
Deventer
In Deventer, just like in Eerbeek, we spent two periods. The first was from around August 1941 to March 1942. The second was from June 1942 to December 1942. Both times we stayed at Schoutenweg 2, a detached house in a suburb of the city. With a small front and back garden ( ), it was located on a street with more similar houses.
The days passed differently there than in Eerbeek with its forests and heathland. There were no more long walks and, of course, the tranquillity of the countryside was missing. But it was a city with a pleasant centre and a large city park. You could walk along the IJssel and across the pontoon bridge to the other side of the river.
Looking back, I am surprised that this place was chosen as a hiding place. A family with five children who unexpectedly dropped in out of the blue. A father who was often away, while the rest of the family spent their days in ‘complete idleness’, i.e. not going to school or having a job. You would think that something like that would stand out. With neighbours on all sides – statistically speaking, there must have been a number of NSB members living in the neighbourhood – the chance of discovery must have been much greater than in the countryside. On the other hand, you could say that this made it easier to blend in with the crowd.
What was special about the house in Deventer was that we didn’t just live there, but shared it with the main occupant, just like in Eerbeek. The house in Deventer had been rented by Bertus Webeling on behalf of the resistance so that people in hiding could be accommodated there periodically.
Bertus and Reina, with their daughter Tineke, who was about four years old, were former neighbours from Amsterdam and members of – or sympathisers with – the CPN. He was a carpenter and painter, but also a photographer. For that reason, a darkroom had been set up in the attic of the house. His photographic activities probably had everything to do with forging identity cards and other documents.
The attic of the house was an ideal place for all kinds of activities, especially since all the other rooms were fully occupied. For example, my youngest brother and I had made a screened-off play area there, and Bertus and my eldest brother used the space for exercises that today would be considered body building. Every day, the two of them spent half an hour doing boxing exercises on a large sandbag. And to strengthen their arm and shoulder muscles, they had purchased a set of pull springs.
Skating and swimming
In Deventer, we experienced a harsh winter and a beautiful summer. During that winter, I learned to skate on the ponds in the city park. I can still remember going into town with my mother and her buying us a pair of wooden skates on what seemed like a whim. But it’s also possible that she had asked my father about it that morning for safety reasons.
I never became a great skater, but that wasn’t because of those skates. Even later, when I started skating with boots, I didn’t really excel at it.
Wooden skates had a number of drawbacks. Just tying them on was quite a feat. They had leather heel and toe straps and had to be fastened to your shoes with laces. This was difficult to do with cold hands. Once I was skating, those laces would sometimes come loose while skating, causing the skate to slip under my shoe. And that meant that with my hands, which had become even colder, I first had to untie those laces and then tighten them so much that the blood circulation in my feet was almost cut off. To make matters worse, the laces would sometimes break.
Did I not enjoy skating? On the contrary, after my first unsuccessful attempts in Deventer, I got the hang of it enough to be able to keep up with the crowd, and because a whole series of harsh winters followed after that and even later after the war, I was able to really enjoy myself.
So, skating in Deventer during the harsh winter of ’41-’42, which seemed to have no end. And sledging down the hills with a wooden model from the Davos brand. It was a sturdy model, but it was seriously damaged shortly after purchase because Bertus (or was it my eldest brother?) crashed it into a tree while sledging down a hill. One of the legs was broken, but as I mentioned earlier, Bertus was very handy. He glued the leg with bone glue and reinforced it with a screw. The repair was so well done that the sledge lasted for years afterwards.
Summer
I remember the summer we spent in Deventer because we went to the swimming pool so often. If I remember correctly, we usually went there by bicycle, with my youngest brother and me on the back.
While writing, I had some doubts about the location of the swimming pool. Was it in Lochem, or am I mixing up a few places? I recently found out that it was the Borgelerbad, which was easy to reach by bicycle via the Ceintuurbaan. A second swimming pool, pictured on page 71, is the Stijgoord swimming pool in Lochem. In addition to several pools, it had a large canoe pond.
I remember it was always busy there. I couldn’t swim yet, but I enjoyed splashing around in the shallow end with my younger brother, wearing a blue swimsuit. Swimming trunks were not yet common attire for men (and little boys). If you really wanted to show off, you casually let one of the shoulder straps of your swimsuit slip off your shoulder.
Raid
Once, a raid at the swimming pool almost went wrong. An unexpected manhunt was conducted, but first let me try to explain what a raid entailed.
Both before and during the war, the Germans could count on the support of a large number of Dutch people (so to speak). As occupiers of our country, they were naturally keen to take advantage of this offer and provided training to the men who were eligible. They had set up training camps for their police force in a number of places in the Netherlands, one of which was in the village of Schalkhaar, near Deventer.
One afternoon when we were at the swimming pool again, that is, my mother, my youngest brother and I, a training group from Schalkhaar was also present. It wasn’t the first time, but on that particular afternoon, after a few hours of swimming and lazing in the sun, they suddenly felt the need to take action. The programme probably included a lightning raid on the swimming pool.
This caused panic among many of the visitors, and certainly among my mother. With her forged identity card, she was naturally afraid of being checked. She hurriedly took us to a changing room. The tension was palpable as we hurriedly got dressed. From another corner of the swimming pool, we heard people shouting and commands from the Schalkhaarders. Probably all visitors were being systematically driven in that direction.
Don’t ask me how my mother managed it, but through the changing rooms we fled through a number of narrow corridors, surrounded by a small group of other frightened swimmers, and out through a side door. If I remember correctly, we didn’t go back to that swimming pool after that, but that may also have been because autumn was approaching and the good weather was simply over.
Incidentally, you could also swim in Deventer. A pool had been built in the IJssel river where you could swim in the river. That pool was enclosed by a floating structure with changing rooms and the like. There was no sunbathing area for when the weather was nice.
For some reason, I had to go with my mother and sisters on a drizzly afternoon. In hindsight, it’s a mystery what we were doing there, because there was no shallow pool for non-swimmers. The most likely reason is that I had to go because I wasn’t allowed to stay home alone.
Viewed from the city centre, the last pool was on the other side of the river next to the bridge. It was not a normal bridge but a pontoon bridge. Instead of pillars, there were anchored ships floating in the river, and a wooden bridge had been built over them. It consisted of movable parts, which allowed the bridge to compensate for changes in the river’s water level. This made it rather unstable, and I usually didn’t like walking across it.Was I such a fearful boy? No, but I was simply extra cautious. The risk of being discovered by the Germans certainly contributed to that.
See also the appendix The key to the back door. Schoutenweg 2a