So in September 1943, we returned to Amsterdam. Back to a normal life, but partly because of the different neighbourhood we ended up living in, the difference with the pre-war period was huge. In terms of appearance, because the Germans had become part of the cityscape, and also because of the whole atmosphere, which you had to feel to understand what I mean.
The latter was caused by a combination of various factors. Uncertainty about the Germans’ plans for the Netherlands, hope and doubt about the outcome of the war, the deportation of the Jewish population, the way in which the male population was sometimes rounded up to work in German factories, the growing scarcity of clothing and food. The war had been going on for three and a half years and, step by step, the daily bread ration was being nibbled away. I am a lover of bread and cannot avoid saying something about it.
Let me start by talking about the quality of bread today. With a few exceptions, I find most bread produced in this country nowadays to be nothing more than a tasteless lump of dough. After half a day, or even a whole day, in the bread bin, it has lost all its flavour. The texture of the bread is often similar to that of cardboard, white or brown cardboard, depending on your preference.
The same applies to tomatoes and strawberries, but let me not stray from the subject of this book. I wanted to talk about bread, and in particular bread in relation to the war. Bread that we were less picky about back then, but as the saying goes, hunger makes even raw beans taste sweet.
There will be four bread memories, so sit back and relax.
That delicious bread in Eerbeek
The first story is short and is about the wheat bread – or was it farmhouse bread? – that we ate in Eerbeek. It’s a shame I’ve forgotten. In any case, they were large loaves, resulting in large slices that barely fit on a plate. That matches the description I found on the internet. Farmhouse bread is heavy wholemeal bread from which you cut slices that are almost twice the size of a normal slice of bread.
You could buy these loaves at the village bakery. Oh, the taste of that bread, just thinking about it makes my mouth water.
“Another slice of bread with butter and homemade sausage from Toontje’s mother, Rudie?”
I couldn’t say no to that. I’ve never tasted bread that good since.
I can imagine that you find my description exaggerated, and in all honesty, I have to admit that I have embellished it a little, but you’ll just have to take my word for it. All the events in Eerbeek hold a special place in my heart, and bread is no exception.
The legendary Swedish white bread
The second bread memory is about Swedish white bread. Sometime in the early spring of 1945, Sweden sent a shipment of flour to the still-occupied and starving part of the Netherlands. Food was scarce, as you can see above, and many people died from cold and malnutrition.
In hindsight, this shipment from the Swedish Red Cross was little more than a drop in the ocean, but it was more than that. It was also the boost that everyone needed to keep going. A sign that the war was coming to an end.
It is sometimes mistakenly claimed that the Swedes sent whole loaves of bread, but that is incorrect. Believe me, they sent flour, which was used to bake bread in the Netherlands.
In exchange for the necessary ration coupons, each family member could then obtain a quantity of white bread. If I remember correctly, there was also a little butter, but it could just as well have been margarine.
I remember my mum getting bread from the baker and us all having a slice of it in the evening. It tasted like cake. Even better, like heavenly cake.
I have never eaten such delicious white bread since. Apart from the bread in Eerbeek, of course, but the taste of that white bread, no, that will never come back.
Spared bread
During that same hunger winter, food rations were reduced more and more, and at one point I was only given one slice of bread for lunch.
I spread some homemade sugar beet syrup on it.
Of course, you could wolf down a sandwich like that in a few bites, but I did it differently. To enjoy it fully and for as long as possible, I cut it into quarters and then cut each quarter into four pieces. If you then ate the resulting 16 pieces at your leisure, it took you a good quarter of an hour and you felt full.
For the mothers, it was a blissful time in that respect. They never had to make comments like, “Ruud, finish your plate.”
Yes, Ruud did take a long time, but that was for a completely different reason. Dividing it up like this made it seem like there was more.
Bran bread
The last story is about bread that you could have baked at the baker’s if you handed in flour.
It also takes place during the hunger winter.
In the previous chapter, I talked about the period we spent in Eerbeek after my father’s arrest. It was the summer of 1943, the weather was beautiful, and with foresight, we, a privileged family in that respect, collected a large amount of wheat and rye.
How did we do that? Very simply, by ‘gleaning’. When the farmers mowed their grain, after they had removed the sheaves from the land, there were always ears of corn or wheat left behind. It was an unwritten rule that the local residents were allowed to collect and take them. If you did that and then removed the grains, you were left with a nice amount of wheat or rye. Together with my brothers, I spent many afternoons collecting this abandoned ‘gold’.
Once, we came home disappointed because the farmer forbade us from entering his land. He had caught me and Toontje the week before when we tried to take a few apples from his orchard.
The result at the end of our harvest season was impressive, and when we moved to Amsterdam, we took three jute sacks of grain with us. As I said, we had been forward-thinking.
But you can’t do much with grains. You have to grind them first, which was done in Scheldestraat with an old hand coffee grinder. It wasn’t quick, no.
It wasn’t pleasant work either, which meant that everyone had a turn at grinding.
The flour obtained in this way was usually used to make porridge with water. Sweetened with a little beet syrup, it tasted reasonably good.
But there was also the option of taking a quantity of flour to the baker around the corner to have a loaf of bread baked. We, and we weren’t the only ones, thought that was a bit of a waste. Handing in that beautiful flour, just look at what you got in return. That’s why we first sifted the grain we had ground ourselves. The mixture intended for the baker around the corner consisted of a quantity of beautiful white flour and a disproportionately large amount of bran. The result is easy to guess. The bread you got in return looked more like a baked coconut mat.
Food was incredibly important in those days.
As I wrote earlier, the weakest and most disadvantaged did not survive the hunger winter.
But more about that later when I talk about the soup kitchen.