Know what you’re getting into if you ever want to record your childhood memories. After the first chapter, I feel like I’m working on a huge puzzle. The beginning was simple; I could recall the first three or four stories from chapter 1 almost without thinking. Then another one came to mind, and as I searched further, more came to me that almost automatically fell into place. It was the image of a carefree time, and with that I unwittingly conjure up a false image. Let me try to explain what I mean.
Economic background
As a result of the Wall Street crash of 1929, economic chaos of unprecedented proportions had ensued throughout the world. Like all other Western countries, the Netherlands had been hit hard in the 1930s and was still struggling with the aftermath. Unemployment was rampant, causing poverty for a large number of families.
A conflict was brewing between Germany and the rest of Europe, but by maintaining strict neutrality, our country tried to stay out of it. Just as during the war of 1914-1918, the preference was not to become involved in a war.
In the course of 1939, the threat of war increased even further and on 3 September of that year, the moment had come: in response to the German invasion of Poland, England and France declared war on Adolf Hitler’s Germany. This did not mean that violence immediately broke out between these superpowers. Apart from a few minor incidents, nothing happened during the first seven months.
Consequences for the Netherlands
But of course it did have consequences for our country. I already mentioned the mobilisation in the previous chapter, and so the threat of war must have become increasingly palpable here too. Like an invisible blanket that came to hang over the country.
I was unaware of all these things. I was too young for that, I was fed, given drink, played with my friends, and in material terms, everything was taken care of. We weren’t rich, but we weren’t poor either. However, I can hardly picture how we spent our days. What I did, what the rest of the family did. How a day at home went by with ordinary everyday things.
What did we do in the evenings after dinner, for example? Television did not yet exist. Did we listen to a radio programme? We did have a radio. A Philips one with a green tuning dial. A large cabinet made of dark brown shiny wood with a narrow glass plate on top displaying the names of all kinds of foreign radio stations. And, of course, Hilversum 1 and 2. You could also choose between shortwave and longwave stations. For shortwave, you needed an outdoor antenna, otherwise you only got static and crackling. I can’t remember if that was also necessary for medium wave. I think that for that, and certainly for the stations Hilversum 1 and Hilversum 2, there was an indoor antenna in the set.
The question remains whether that radio was often on. I don’t think I was allowed to touch it. Something like this floats around in my memory: “Who touched the radio?”
From after the war, when we lived in Scheldestraat and no longer had a radio – all Dutch people had to hand theirs in on 15 May 1943 on Rauter’s orders – I remember the so-called radio distribution with Hilversum 1 and 2 and Radio Luxembourg. It was always on with music programmes, the colourful Tuesday evening train, Nine o’clock on Saturday evening, radio plays (Paul Vlaanderen) on Sunday evening, sports programmes and reports of the Dutch national team against Belgium.
Games
Games, what about those in Mercatorstraat? Did we have board games such as goose board? Perhaps we played chess, draughts or cards. In my mind’s eye, I suddenly see the shuffleboard and table tennis.
I think my older brothers and sisters often played those games in the years before 1940, but I was still too young to join in.
That changed when we went into hiding. Monopoly, bought by my father in Deventer in 1941, became popular with the family and, when they weren’t playing cards or bridge, they played a game almost every evening with four or five people.
Although it has nothing to do with the previous story, I must tell you about the Christmas tree in Mercatorstraat. It was a large tree, but the needles started falling off after barely a week. In addition to the usual decorations with coloured balls, pine cones, trumpets and angels, there were real candles in it. I can still picture the ceremony when they were lit and the children were instructed to sit motionless by the tree. “Stay seated, Rudie. The tree might catch fire.” “Yes, but I need to pee!”
Later that evening, when the candles had burned out, we were always allowed to take a chocolate wreath from the tree. I think there were burning candles in the tree for three or four evenings. After a week or so, the tree disappeared from the living room again. I can still hear my mother grumbling because the floor under the tree was covered in wax from the real candles. “I’m not doing that again next year. We’ll just buy electric candles.”
In September 1939, the month in which the first steps towards a global conflagration were taken, my quiet childhood life changed. I went to big school for the first time. This meant I entered a different world, but it was still not the world of grown-ups and everything that happened in it.
That suddenly reminds me of the life of my eldest grandson. When he was seven, his father called me once to tell me that he had become champion with his football team. It had been a big party on the pitch. I asked if I could speak to him on the phone to congratulate him, but that wasn’t possible. He had already left to play with a friend. That must have been how it was in my childhood too.
In the rest of this chapter, I would like to tell you a little more about that time. Nothing shocking, but read on anyway. I hope that afterwards you will be able to imagine what a blow the outbreak of that war must have been.
Before the war
(left) 1938 Hitler convinces Chamberlain of his desire for peace.
(centre) 1939 England declares war.
(right) Flying kites in the countryside.
‘Before the war’ is an expression that you will encounter several times in this story. ‘Before the war, things were different’ or ‘I can still remember that before the war, etc.’.
I suddenly realise that this must sound strange to people who were born after that period. Before the war? Before which war? In this collection of stories, however, it is clearly the war of 1940-1945.
In the previous chapter, I began with a number of memories from that time. My school, Zandvoort and a few other things. But as I mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, there is more that has stuck in my memory. I remember all the details of some things, but only fragments of others. You won’t find anything shocking in there, by the way; it’s a collection of essentially unimportant things.
My earliest memory is of Fred and Sonja having to keep me occupied because my mother was still in bed. And I remember him teaching me how to draw an aeroplane. That memory is so firmly fixed in my mind that I can still do it without any difficulty. The reason my mother was still in bed had to do with the birth of my youngest brother. I have my doubts about that last part of the memory. I was three years old at the time and recently read that your earliest memories only start at the age of four.
Something completely different is the time we had to take shelter somewhere on Admiraal de Ruijterweg because of a huge downpour that seemed to go on forever. I remember it because the rain made beautiful bubbles on the street.
Another incident was a visit to the school of one of my sisters, who was training to be a dressmaker there. For her final project, she made a coat for me. So I had to go there with my mother to try it on. I thought it was a disaster, all that fussing around with all those girls aged about 16 or 17.
The new coat
School and kite flying
Flying kites with my eldest brother behind the Hoofdweg was more fun. There was a large piece of wasteland there, waiting to be built on. Fred made the kites himself, enormous ones, and when they were high in the sky, I was allowed to send up little notes with messages attached to the kite string.
Of my childhood illnesses, I have vague memories of whooping cough with enormous coughing fits and nosebleeds. And the visit from Aunt Koosje, my father’s sister, who promised me a toy boat that could really sail. I never got it, but she was a lovely person. I also remember the unpleasant visits I had to make to a clinic for a while because the inside of my nose was inflamed. An unfriendly nurse had to clean it every day with cotton swabs and smelly ointment.
What made the biggest impression on me was my youngest sister’s concussion. She had fallen on her head while playing with my brother and had to lie motionless on her back in the side room for a few weeks. And no one was allowed to speak above a whisper in the house.
I only remember a few places or streets that stuck in my mind because of something striking. I can still picture that scary little stretch of canal at the end of Admiraal de Ruijterweg, near Jan Evertsenstraat. Not only because it was such a menacing and dark-looking stretch of water, but also because it always smelled terrible.
And of course Jan van Galenstraat is also etched in my memory. Not so much because of the street itself, but because of the fair that set up its tents there a few times a year. On a lawn, well, something that resembled one, with paths that were always soggy. It was a wonderful event because of the noise that overwhelmed me, the merry-go-rounds and horror tents, bumper cars that I wasn’t allowed to ride because I was still too small, and those pink candy canes that broke my palate when I sucked on them.
There was no television yet. There was a cinema, but I don’t think I went there more than once. That was at the Hallentheater, where Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was shown. I watched it breathlessly.
Childhood illnesses and family
I will discuss family ties in a separate chapter. On my father’s side, there were at least two uncles and an aunt whom I saw regularly. His eldest brother Wilhelm had died as a result of an accident. Two older sisters died around 1925. Did they visit often? My father writes in his farewell letter that because of his struggles (in the CPN, I assume), he was never able to devote much attention to his old family ties, but he always cherished them dearly. What I remember is that I saw them regularly at . Even after the war. Several times, my brother and I went with my mother to visit Aunt Koosje (Catharina Jacoba), who lived across the street from the Wilhelmina Gasthuis hospital.
She was divorced from Willem Haages and had two children, Wim and Elly.
Contact with my mother’s family was not nearly as close. After the war, she visited her mother once a year in Leeuwarden. And I vaguely remember visiting her brother-in-law and sister once, who were moored with their cargo ship in the Houthaven in Amsterdam.
The family had a fairly extensive circle of acquaintances. My mother sometimes talked about Viruly, the KLM pilot, the parents of the photographer Ed van der Elsken, who became famous after the war, and other names that I have forgotten. Good friends were Jo and Elske de Smit, who lived on Westlandgracht. I often visited them with my mother and my youngest brother, walking from Mercatorstraat. Then there was the Jan and Mieke Minke family in Betondorp.
An unforgettable family favourite is the story about the fence that fell on my head.
I was about six years old at the time and one beautiful Sunday we were out walking, my mother, my youngest brother in his pram, my youngest sister and me. After walking around Kinkerstraat, we passed a place where a house had been demolished. A high fence, about four metres high, had been erected on the street side. It was a wooden fence, and a couple of boys were sitting on it, rocking it back and forth.
Out of curiosity, I had stayed behind and stood by the fence to watch what the boys were doing. They continued to swing frantically and, urged on by the rest of the family, who were already about fifty metres ahead and under the jeers of the boys on the fence, I finally walked on. At the wrong moment; as a result of the boys’ shaking and swaying, the fence fell over, on top of little Ruudje.
And then? And then I don’t remember anything else. I came to my senses in an ambulance, which had been called after the accident and took us home. My first words seem to have been “those rotten boys”, referring, of course, to the pair on the fence.
So there was a bit of commotion in the family, but it all ended well and at least I didn’t suffer any physical damage.
Toys
Toys, a rewarding subject. When I close my eyes, I can easily picture the toy shop on Jan Evertsenstraat, where they had a tiny tractor in the window. A tiny Dinkey Toy with real caterpillar tracks. Owning it seemed to me the highest form of happiness. I never got it, despite clear hints and then pleas in that direction. But at least it’s clear where my grandsons inherited their fascination with those vehicles from.
Dinky toy
The ultimate was a real train like the one Nico, my neighbour in Mercatorstraat, had. With tracks and a little station, it appears later in this story.
And then, of course, there were the Schuco cars. Sturdy, tin models with a key to wind up the spring so they could drive. They had front wheels that you could steer so that the car could drive in a circle. An extra feature was the rear bumper that you could pull out. If the car hit something while reversing, the bumper would be pushed in and the vehicle would then drive forward again. Those cars were wonderful. I had one that was painted red; plastic had not yet been invented. When the war broke out, I got one that was even steerable. It was a luxury model, with a thin cable that you had to attach to the car.
Unfortunately, I no longer have that toy. It broke, was given away, thrown away, I don’t remember; in any case, it’s gone. A pity, especially when you know that enthusiasts are willing to pay a fortune for an original. Collector’s items, sir.
Until one of those cars suddenly reappeared. While clearing out my mother’s house after her death, I opened a kitchen drawer and what did I see shining at me? That little green remote-controlled car. She had carefully kept it for fifty years. All trivial matters, really, although I have given that little car a place of honour in my room. It is not for sale.