After our visit to Eerbeek and Deventer, Lia, my youngest sister and I took a tour of the northern Netherlands in 2002, visiting Appelscha and Apeldoorn. Through the polders where the boat to Lemmer once made its daily rounds, we drove via Almere, Leliestad and Emmeleroord to Friesland.
Back to Appelscha
The silence and vastness of the landscape along the way was overwhelming. What space! The only discordant note was the large number of wind turbines used to generate green electricity. Useful and forward-looking, but surely there must be another way. Of course, you have to use the wind as a source of energy, but I strongly believe that something like this can be done without polluting the horizon and without those gigantic propellers on steel masts.
Appelscha was the first destination on our itinerary. The town is located on the Opsterlandse Compagnonsvaart canal, and I remembered that we had lived for a while in a farmhouse on the canal, a short distance from the bridge.
When we arrived, it soon became clear that it would not be easy to find that place again. Not only because a lot has been built in this area, which is attractive to holidaymakers. It turned out that there were now two bridges.
Anyway, after driving back and forth a few times, I chose one of the two because of the sloping bank. My youngest brother once rolled down it, straight through the nettles. There was no shortage of tears, and I believe my mother dipped him in vinegar to ease the pain.
There were a few farms, but they didn’t bring back any memories for me. And the pitchfork I had once used to pin myself to the ground was obviously no longer there.
We also looked for the shoe shop where my youngest sister had bought her Robinson sandals, but it had disappeared along with the Robinson brand.
Nothing reminded me of the local steam tram that used to run across the street. Even the tracks were gone. And was that tall silo building on the other side already there during our short stay in 1940? I couldn’t remember.
The funny thing was that when I lay in bed that night and let everything pass before my eyes, that silo suddenly came back to me as something I remembered. For a moment, I imagined myself back in 1940, sitting by the canal watching my father fishing with my eldest brother. In the distance, the steam tram whistled and cars drove back and forth to unload their cargo at the silo building on the other side.
But not much remained of that image. And the little road that ran from our side of the canal to the woods and the natural swimming pool had been transformed into a wide road lined with houses and bungalows on both sides.
We had something to eat at the café on the corner and tried to glean some information about the past. But that yielded nothing, which was to be expected, as the owner and his wife were in their thirties and had only taken over the business a few years ago.
Onwards to Apeldoorn
After we had eaten something, we drove from Appelscha to Apeldoorn, first passing one of the many canals that cut through both Friesland and Drenthe. Perhaps my mother had walked there as a girl. On the towpath, labouring with her father and brother in harness to pull the family’s cargo ship along, because there was no wind on such a day and because the boat had no engine.
Those canals are still there, but they have long since ceased to be used for transporting cargo. Nowadays, only large pleasure yachts sail on them.
Apeldoorn promised more success because the address of our temporary accommodation there was etched in my sister’s memory. Badhuisweg 86, we couldn’t miss it.
With the map in hand, we had no trouble finding it. Everything was correct, including the streets in the area. Not much had changed until we stopped in front of number 86. A house in a row of detached houses. Did we have a flash of recognition? No, and that was difficult because number 86 clearly differed from the rest. What we saw was a house that looked much newer and therefore more modern than the others. We estimated it to be no more than ten years old.
It was the only house that had been replaced by a new build.
Reminiscing
A little disappointed, we drove towards Hoenderlo a little later to recover. On the way, we indulged in reminiscing.
My sister told me that Aunt Mieke in Eerbeek had at least seven cats. Some of them were allowed to eat indoors, in the living room by the stove. That must have been quite a sight, because two or three mice would also come out to eat with them. A scene from Tom and Jerry that I didn’t remember.
In her memory, she had visited my youngest brother and me a few times during our stay at the children’s home in Eerbeek. I doubt her story because it doesn’t ring a bell with me at all. But maybe she stood at the gate once to see if she could spot us, even though it wasn’t clear to her how she had found the address.
What she did remember clearly was the weekly visit to Eerbeek by a number of ladies and a gentleman. The latter acted as pastor in the little church close to Aunt Mieke’s house. They usually stayed for dinner and we were expected to withdraw until they had left.
Almost inevitably, we would occasionally become reflective during these trips.
It was remarkable that the war years still preoccupied us and our peers so much. When you think about it, it was only a period of five years, and what does that really mean in terms of time? In our case, however, the impact was significant due to the death of my father. And there are perhaps a number of other arguments that could be made for the period in hiding adding an extra dimension to the whole experience.
Be that as it may, it remains striking that it was only from around 1980 onwards that we started talking about that period so intensively. This gives the impression that the war period was never properly concluded and that certain issues were never discussed or spoken about.
But perhaps it is just nostalgia for the past.
I don’t know.
Finally found Appelscha
At the beginning of 2018, I finally managed to find our place of residence in Appelscha.
This is how it happened.
At the end of July 1940, we left for Friesland on the Lemmerboot. From Lemmer, we travelled to Appelscha on the local tram/train. We lived for a few months in two rooms on a farm on the Opsterlandse Compagnonsvaart.
In my memory, it was about 100 metres from a bascule bridge. On the other side ran the train we had taken to get there. A journey to the left from our house took you to Oosterwolde. If you followed the road to the right at the bridge, you arrived at the forest, the sand dunes and an open-air swimming pool. The sloping bank of the canal was about four metres high.
We visited Appelscha in 2001 with my youngest sister. Our search for the farm yielded less than we had hoped to find. There were two bridges over the canal, and we eventually chose one of them, but we still had our doubts. Consulting Google and Google Earth now shows that we were right to have those doubts.
Not only had we chosen the wrong bridge, but also the wrong side of the canal. We had followed the north side when we should have taken the south side. The bridge I remember is the Stokersverlaatbrug. A war memorial near the bridge commemorates the landing of 60 French paratroopers at the end of the war.
From the bridge, the road on which our farm stood is no longer called the south side but Industrieweg. If you turn right at the bridge, you come to Bruggelaan and after a kilometre and a half you arrive at the nature reserve with woods, sand dunes and a natural swimming pool.
Is the farm still there? I can’t tell from Google Earth. I think it must have made way for a few new houses and a garage. In any case, the embankment at that spot is the same height as I remember.
But it’s still nice to find the place where our period in hiding began.
Google and Google Earth were not yet available to me in 2001. The Dutch version of Google appeared a year later, in 2002.