So the story of my experiences during the war of 1940-1945 is finally taking shape, almost seventy-five years after it ended.
As I write this, the PC screen in front of me shows a blank page for the final chapter. The conclusion, perhaps the justification I had intended to write, but it is not working out.
In my columns, I sometimes remedy this by conducting a short interview with my alter ego. Something along the lines of:
You’ve certainly taken your time, Ruud.
You could say that, yes.
Is it a relief that you’ve done it?
Mmmm, no, not a feeling of relief, but satisfaction that I finally wrote it down.
Does this book also reveal something about the impact of those five years? On yourself and on the world around you?
I don’t think so. Or maybe it does. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that it took me 75 years to put it on paper. Incidentally, I think I now know how I want to conclude this story. Something about the meaning of the resistance, or whether the price that many had to pay for it was too high.
Why resistance?
We have sometimes discussed within the family what the point of the resistance against the German occupiers was. What did it achieve and wasn’t the price of that commitment far too high? I am not only referring to the lives of those who participated in the resistance. Random people were also killed as a result of reprisals by the occupiers. The deportation of the male population of Putten to a concentration camp is one example, as is the execution of people who were imprisoned for minor offences against the occupiers.
We did not reach a conclusion during the above discussions. What would I have done if I had been faced with that choice? Perhaps there was far too little resistance. When you read afterwards what the average Dutch person did to save the Jewish population, you may well question that commitment.
So there is no ready-made recipe at the end of this story; how to act if we ever find ourselves in a similar situation.
But perhaps the verse by writer, journalist, resistance fighter and founder of the illegal Vrij Nederland magazine, Henk van Randwijck, comes closest to an answer.
I recently read a mutilated version in an article, so I will reproduce it as it is permanently inscribed at the Weteringcircuit in Amsterdam, on a wall that separates a playground from traffic.
A people that yields to tyrants will lose more than life and limb… then the light goes out.
A people that yields to tyrants will lose more than life and limb… then the light goes out.
To conclude the question of the meaning of resistance, I can think of no better answer.