As I wrote in the previous chapter, during our stay in the children’s home we received no sign of life from my mother or other members of the family. We also heard nothing from Aunt Mieke’s neighbours. The only ones who came to visit once were Toontje and Riekie. I saw them standing at the entrance gate to the estate one afternoon, but when I walked towards them, they were so startled for some reason that they hurriedly took off. Despite my shouting, they ran away.
Added to this chapter.
Postscript ‘The children’s home 48 years later’.
My youngest sister was also supposed to have visited the Vluchtheuvel once with her older sister on their bicycles in Eerbeek. She was supposed to have seen us from behind the entrance gate. I can’t remember any of that.
Photo from the time we were there too. I am the boy in the third row, second from the left.
Picked up by the black coats
So it was a big surprise when one afternoon, while we were playing outside, my mother suddenly came through the big gate and walked up the long driveway to the house. I couldn’t believe my eyes, but for some reason I had always expected it to happen that way.
After a brief conversation with a few of the teachers and after we had gathered our belongings, we went with her immediately. There was hardly any time to say goodbye to the sisters and the other children. We had been brought there without warning by the black coats of the SD and we left just as suddenly.
Incidentally, we remained in contact with the children from the home because we stayed at the Tjark Riksschool for a few more months, but let me not get ahead of myself.
Of course, I wanted to know from my mother where we were going and how the others were doing. The answer to my questions was simple. We were just going back to the Calluna Alba villa, where the rest of the family was staying, as well as Aunt Mieke. Only my father was not there; he was being held captive by the Germans in Scheveningen.
Released
Looking back, I am sometimes surprised by how things turned out. While millions of Jews were being transported to the extermination camps and countless people were being executed without trial, my mother and my eldest brother were released after a few months. The same was true for Aunt Mieke, who had given shelter to many people in hiding. Why were they released, while hundreds of others were imprisoned for months in Camp Amersfoort or in one of the camps in Germany for similar reasons? I do not know and will never understand.
Back home with the others, little was said about our stay in the children’s home during those few months and the events that preceded it. Perhaps the older ones did talk about their experiences, but in any case not in my presence. I can’t remember whether that also applied to my father’s situation. I know that he was allowed to write a few times and that my mother had to go to The Hague several times to speak to a solicitor, but that is the extent of my knowledge. Even later, the family remained silent about the events during the war. This attitude was typical of most Dutch people who had participated in the resistance. It was only thirty-five years after the war that people began to talk about and share stories about the Second World War.
This silence is also found in Jewish families, where those who survived Auschwitz and other camps maintain an almost absolute silence about those events.
Postscript 1
The children’s home 48 years later.
Huis Eerbeek, a large country house, is probably the wing of a castle built in the fourteenth century by the lords of Bronckhorst. After the war, it was used as a study centre by various groups, among other things. Today, it is part of a hotel built on the accompanying estate.
This house was therefore put into use in early 1943 as a home for a group of children from Scheveningen.
I only found out about this in 1990 when three carers from that time came up with the idea of organising a reunion. This proved to be not so easy because the addresses of most of the children from that period were missing. However, the three ladies were not to be deterred and therefore turned to the KRO radio programme ‘Opsporing gezocht’ (Wanted). This proved successful, as they managed to get in touch with almost all the children from that time. In this way, they also searched for a Rudie and a Loekie Jansen, unfortunately without any response from us. I never listened to that programme.
Nevertheless, someone in the family had heard it. My eldest sister, in fact, but for reasons unknown to me, she had hesitated to pass it on. It was only a few months after the appeal that I heard about it from my mother, to whom she had told.
To my great regret, it was too late because the reunion had already taken place by then. Through the KRO, I managed to find the address of one of the organising ladies. I had a very nice conversation with her, during which we reminisced about all kinds of old memories, and she sent me a number of newspaper clippings from local newspapers in Eerbeek and Scheveningen, in which the event was described in vivid detail. A copy of one of the articles is attached to this chapter.
I have already described what Eerbeek looks like today in an earlier chapter. In 2002, I visited it again with my youngest sister and Lia during a nostalgic tour of our hiding places.
Not much had changed in the house and the surrounding area. Actually, I regretted not being able to shoot my bow and arrow again to evoke a piece of the past. But it’s not that simple. In fact, you can’t bring back the past at all. What lives on in my memories is an incomplete picture whose colours gradually fade with the passing years.
To conclude this chapter, here is a copy of an article from the Eerbeek newspaper.
Eerbeek in Reflection
Did that mean I stopped visiting Eerbeek? No, it didn’t. During a visit in July 2017, I finally got to see the inside of the house. The report of this visit and other places in Eerbeek has been added to chapter 13 under the name Eerbeek in Reflection.