How was the resistance in the Netherlands doing? Unfortunately, not so well. Despite all the precautions taken to prevent elimination by the occupiers, by the end of 1942, the German Sicherheitsdienst, the notorious SD, was increasingly successful in its attempts to infiltrate the resistance movement. Dutch traitors played an important role in this, and partly because of their work, hundreds of people were arrested.
Added to this chapter.
Postscript ‘Aunt Mieke. A remarkable woman’.
This is a newspaper headline that does not make me happy. It dates from a period halfway through the war, with no end in sight.
Even the illegal Communist Party was unable to escape this development and their organisation was systematically dismantled, link by link. My father must have noticed that the net was gradually closing in on him, but I don’t know if he realised how serious the situation was.
At the end of 1942, we moved to Eerbeek for the second time, leaving Deventer where the risk of discovery had probably become too great. Because a young woman from the resistance (Bep) was also temporarily in hiding there, my sisters were taken in by a single friend of Aunt Mieke’s in Velp.
Despite everything, we celebrated Sinterklaas with presents for everyone and Christmas with a small Christmas tree from the garden. In the evenings, we played Monopoly with the whole family.
In fact, many evenings were spent this way. Playing bridge, shuffleboard and other games. Television did not yet exist and you had to come up with your own entertainment.
In one of the first chapters, I already mentioned the woman who gave us shelter in Eerbeek. She was a remarkable woman whom we called Aunt Mieke, even though she was not related to us. Her real name was Rita Versteegh.
While writing this book, I have come across a number of things that made me wonder why, and this is another one of them. Why did she have the courage to do the things she deemed necessary, while others did not? She certainly did not do it for personal gain. In any case, considering the risks involved in her actions, it must have taken a great deal of courage, conviction and a hatred of everything German.
So, Aunt Mieke. She was said to be the widow of an architect and lived alone in the Calluna Alba villa. She was religious, a member of the Free Catholic Church, and had a small church built for this purpose, which was about a ten-minute walk from her house in the woods. Services were held in that church every week and I heard from my sister that the chemist from the village acted as the minister.
In addition to her role in the church, she was sympathetic to the resistance, and the communist resistance in particular. This went so far that she provided shelter to numerous members of that party who were in hiding. A remarkable combination, all in all.
Eerbeek today
When Lia, my sister and I visited Eerbeek in 2002, we couldn’t find the church. Where we remembered it being, there was now a sports complex. An elderly couple playing tennis told us that the church had fallen into disuse shortly after Mrs Versteegh’s death. After that, it had been used as a youth centre for quite some time. A major fire had eventually destroyed most of the building, after which it was demolished.
The people we spoke to had always lived in Eerbeek and remembered Aunt Mieke’s role in providing shelter to people in hiding. That Mrs Versteeg, she was something else. I wasn’t entirely sure what they meant by that, but I decided to leave it at that.Of course, we visited the Calluna Alba villa. Although I remembered the house as being quite large, it seemed to have shrunk. Had we all lived there?
We certainly had. During the periods when we were guests there, Aunt Mieke herself lived in one room. That’s where she ate her vegetarian meals, slept and spent a large part of the day. We weren’t allowed in there. At least, I don’t remember ever being in there. Sometimes I tried to catch a glimpse when the door was open for a moment, but I hardly ever succeeded. The rest of the house was at our disposal.
How old might she have been? I have to go back to my childhood memories for that, and as a child you don’t have the ability to estimate ages. But I think she was about sixty. She was already quite grey. I do know that I was always fascinated by the wart on her chin. Or was it on her cheek? She also had dark, piercing eyes. As I already mentioned, she was a strict vegetarian and did not allow smoking in the house, much to the dismay of my father, who was a heavy smoker.
When we first spent a few months with her, she had a large doghouse on a fenced-off piece of land next to the house, which housed a sheepdog. The rest of the family was allowed, or rather obliged, to walk this animal in the woods in return; on a leash, of course. It was not their favourite activity.
If I’m not mistaken, she also had a cat. In my mind, I can even see several of them, being fed milk and filthy fish-smelling mash. One was called Griesje, or is my imagination running away with me? I can’t remember. I later heard that she was into spiritualism, and cats seem to go hand in hand with that, meowing as they walk right past you in the pitch dark.
When we visited for the second time, the dog was dead and, fortunately, had not been replaced by another one. We used to play near the doghouse, and I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but at some point I had torn some boards off the doghouse to give to Toontje. He could use them for his rabbit hutch. Maybe I even traded them for something, but that’s not important for the rest of this story. In my naivety, I hadn’t asked if it was okay. An old kennel like that, I probably thought, what else could you do with it?
But that evening, all hell broke loose when Aunt Mieke noticed what had happened. She was really angry and gave me a telling-off in front of her bedroom door. I felt myself shrinking smaller and smaller. My father had to come and see what was going on, and he gave me another telling-off. How could I have thought of doing such a thing? Did he think the whole family should be sent away?
All that violence had shrunk me to miniature size and I felt terribly guilty. Sending the family away probably wasn’t meant seriously, but I was only reassured when it turned out afterwards that words had not been followed by deeds.
Incidentally, the Gestapo struck not long after that, but that will be covered in the next chapter.
Postscript dated November 2020
Aunt Mieke. A remarkable woman.
In the spring of 2020, I received an email from Eric Kleverwal from Eerbeek.
Eric records the history of Eerbeek as a hobby and, while searching the internet, more or less by chance came across my website and the story about our time in hiding in Eerbeek.
He was particularly interested in the little church that I had been unable to find during previous visits.
Thanks to his efforts, all kinds of details came to light in the months that followed, with photos of the church as the icing on the cake.
Aunt Mieke was married to F.H. Versteeg, who had died in 1936.
I had always wondered how old she was. It turned out she was born in 1880, so she was 60 when the war broke out. We did not know whether she had any brothers or sisters. In the Nieuwe Apeldoornse Courant of 21 November 1939, we found the announcement that ‘after several weeks of suffering, my brother, Mr P. van Leeuwen, had passed away at the age of 69. On behalf of the M. Versteeg van Leeuwen family, Eerbeek, 21 November 1939’.
Aunt Mieke died on 12 July 1954 in a nursing home in Amsterdam. She had been staying there for some time due to her health, on the initiative of the CPN leadership.
Many prominent members of the CPN attended her funeral in Eerbeek.
After Aunt Mieke’s death, the Calluna Alba house was occupied by one of her friends, Ibeltje de Vries, until she died on 19 August 1967. After that, a family lived there until the current occupant moved in.
The church was built between 1931 and 1934. The land for it was purchased by her husband in 1930. The first stone was laid on 14 September of that year. The church was consecrated on 10 May 1931 by Bishop Bonger of the Free Catholic Community. The number of members was small: 13 in 1932.
Incidentally, we saw in the Apeldoornsche Courant of 26 April 1928 that there appears to have been a private chapel on the estate of the Indian Müller-Coldenhove family, ‘t Spreeuwennest, where a Holy Mass of the Free Catholic Church was celebrated every fortnight.
After her death, Aunt Mieke’s church was probably transferred to a foundation. Services were held there until 8 October 1975.
After that, it was leased to a foundation for young people between the ages of 18 and 25 who were involved in conversation, dance and music. This foundation was dissolved in 1979.
The church was then rented in 1980 by the Turkish Committee Eerbeek for Turkish workers at the local paper mills. This required renovation, including the construction and installation of a ritual washing place.
It was finally demolished in February/March 1989 to make way for the construction of tennis courts.
Interestingly, the sexton of the church is still alive and lives at Polweg 81. They own a small glass jug from the church and a green glazed tile with a brass cross in it.
I only got hold of a photo of Aunt Mieke in 2000 via the Internet at the historical documentation agency.
The second photograph, in which she appears with her husband, dates from before the war. I obtained it in 2012 during a visit to the Brink family, who lived in a house next to farmer Brink’s farm. They were kind people who had a lot to tell me about the past.
