by Lynn Austin
On some days, Ans chatted with the other laundry workers to help pass the time, but most days, they all fell into silence, their grief too heavy to voice, their sorrow too painful to speak of. Ans scrolled through her memories to keep her mind occupied, and most of them were happy ones. But as the days dragged on and the weather grew frigid, regret for the mistakes and poor choices she’d made began to color all of her memories. She couldn’t think of her mama without regretting that she’d fought with her. If only she had another chance to make it up to her. She longed to tell Mama how much she loved her, how much she missed hearing her sing while she worked. The farm life Ans had rejected had been ideal in so many ways—she’d been well-fed and nurtured, surrounded by a family who loved her and each other. Yet she’d rebelled against the rules and a life of faith, longing for something more. What that was, Ans couldn’t say. She had been foolish—so foolish.
She wished she could thank her parents and grandparents for their patient Bible teaching and for insisting that she memorize the catechism. Those words had been in her mind and heart when she’d needed them, giving her peace and calm. She remembered doubting God’s goodness when her grandmother became sick and died. It had been her first experience with grief. Ans hadn’t known that death would soon surround her every day.
Ans prayed for her loved ones at night when she couldn’t sleep and while she scrubbed floors and clothes during the day. Not knowing what was happening to them was torture. She thought of Miriam and Avi and baby Elisheva, praying that they’d remain safe and well hidden. She prayed often for Eloise and Herman, wondering if Eloise had sunk into despair after Herman’s arrest. He must be so worried about her. Was he even alive or had he been executed for his crime? Ans prayed and prayed as she wrung out the clothes, begging God for mercy.
Most painful of all were her thoughts of Erik. Would he ever forgive her? He’d begged her to stop working for the underground, warning her that she might be arrested. She should have listened. How he must hate her for not marrying him when she’d had the chance. And for disappearing. Ans comforted herself in the freezing nights by remembering the warmth of Erik’s arms. She would close her eyes and recall his kisses. They had enjoyed walking and talking together, cooking spicy meals and laughing—how she’d delighted in making quiet, serious Erik laugh. He was her first love, her only love. But then she would recall her fumbling attempts to share her faith with him and wish she’d done a better job. Erik didn’t know how to pray—for her or for the war to end. He couldn’t find comfort in trusting God.
What would become of the two of them after the war? Could they ever be as happy as Mama and Papa, who worked together in a life they both loved? Or as her grandparents had been, serving the church? Would they ever be as unselfishly devoted to each other as Eloise and Herman? Or Avi and Miriam? Could she and Erik truly look forward to a life together after the very different choices they’d made, the opposite directions they’d taken?
On some days Ans’s thoughts were as bleak and cold as the gray winter skies, her tears dampening the cement floor as she scoured the latrine. She heard planes droning overhead and the distant rumble of explosions, and she grieved for her once-beautiful country, now being trampled and scarred and forever changed. And she would never be the same, either. She had failed the people she loved—her parents by leaving her faith and her home. Eloise, by deserting her. Professor Huizenga had relied on Ans to watch over his wife, and she’d failed him, too. And Erik. If she had truly loved him, she would have done what he’d asked. Yet that would have meant abandoning Avi and Miriam and Elisheva.
Ans’s thoughts swirled while her regrets piled higher and higher. Had she also disappointed God? Was He punishing her for walking away from Him? Ans had rediscovered her faith and had worked to serve Him by saving people, and now she was here, slowly dying in prison. And who would ever know what had happened to Ans de Vries? It would be Bernandina Kamp who had lived and died in Vught Prison.
As the rain turned to thick, slushy snow that soaked through Ans’s shoes, despair like she’d never known before filled every inch of her. She began to cry as she lay shivering on her bunk one night, unable to stop. If You’re there, Lord—if You can even hear me—please, please help me.
The barracks was silent except for the soft breathing of the women around her. God seemed far away. And then a shaft of silvery moonlight suddenly shone down on Ans’s bunk from one of the high, narrow windows. She looked up and saw the winter clouds slowly thinning like frost melting from window glass to reveal a glorious full moon. It filled the wooden window frame, bathing the room with light. She remembered marveling at a moon like this one with her grandmother a few nights before she died. Oma had compared her life to the phases of the moon, growing fuller and brighter with purpose, then gradually diminishing until it disappeared in darkness. “But watch the sky, darling Ans. The moon isn’t gone at all. It shines eternally, like our life in Christ.” Oma had accepted her death as God’s will without questions or bitterness, even though Ans had not. “We can trust His promise of eternal life,” Oma had said. “It’s more wonderful than we can even imagine.”
“. . . He watches over me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head . . .”
If that was true, then God must want Ans to be here, in Vught Prison. Not as a punishment, but for reasons only He could see, just as He’d had reasons for taking Oma to heaven. But what could they possibly be? As the moon bathed the barracks in light, another Scripture sprang to mind. “You are the light of the world. . . . Let your light shine before others . . .”
Ans thought of the women in her barracks and the laundry. What if she tried to help them battle despair the way she’d once helped Eloise? Instead of withdrawing inside herself and wallowing in self-pity, what if Ans reached out to them, offering encouragement and hope? She had worked with the underground because she’d wanted to serve God—and now He’d placed her in this prison. Could she serve Him here with joy? Without bitterness?
“. . . He also assures me of eternal life and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto Him. . . .”
Ans wiped her tears as a deep peace flooded through her, like the moonlight that filled the room, chasing the shadows.
CHAPTER 56
Winter arrived early, bringing bitter-cold weather. The nation’s railroads had been ordered by the exiled queen and her government to go on strike, making supplies of food and coal impossible to get. Fence posts and trees began to disappear as Lena and her desperate neighbors struggled to stay warm. The onderduikers all moved into the barn, where the heat from the animals helped keep them warm. Lena brought the girls into bed with her at night, piling on all of their blankets. The potatoes and cabbage and other food stored in her root cellar was dwindling fast, and she didn’t know what they would eat when it ran out. The rabbits she’d raised for the stewpot were as scrawny as the people eating them. The underground provided her with extra ration stamps, but the shelves in the village stores were nearly empty. It was hard not to sink into despair, but Lena knew there were always people worse off than she was. She still had milk and eggs and butter on the farm.
“Thousands of people are starving to death in the big cities,” Wolf told Lena on one of his visits. “And that’s not an exaggeration. There’s no food to be found at any price. Our countrymen are suffering more this winter than in all the months of war put together.”
Lena was washing the supper dishes one evening, with Maaike and Bep drying them, when there was a knock on the front door. No one used the front door. And she hadn’t heard a vehicle approaching. “Stay here,” she told the girls. She dried her hands on her apron and went to answer it. The knock sounded a second time before Lena reached the door, and she decided to peer through the curtains on her front window first. Three huddled figures stood on her doorstep, two of them small enough to be children. She quickly opened the door. “Come in,” she said before they could speak. “Our
house is chilly but it’s warmer than outside.”
The woman, wrapped in several layers of clothing, hesitated before gently prodding the bundled children through the door. “Thank you. You’re very kind. My sons are hungry. Please . . .”
“This way,” Lena said. “It’s warmer in the kitchen.” The lamp gave enough light for her to see that the trio looked bone weary. “Have a seat. I’m Lena de Vries, and these are my daughters Maaike and Bep.”
“I’m Janneke.” The boys pulled off their wool hats, the static making their fair hair stand on end. Lena guessed the woman to be in her thirties, the boys around Maaike’s age. It was clear from their gaunt faces and hollow eyes that they were starving. “Get three bowls and spoons,” she told Maaike. “Bep, can you fetch the bread, please? And the butter.” Lena had made pea soup for supper, and she put what was left of it on the stove to warm. “Where are you from, Janneke?”
“Den Haag.”
“You walked all this way? That’s quite a distance.”
“We had to. There’s no food anywhere in the city. I couldn’t let my boys starve. Some of my neighbors have died.”
“I understand. I would do the same for my children.” Lena watched them gobble down the food. She had hoped to serve the leftovers to her family and the shadow people again, but she filled their bowls a second time, praying that a kind stranger was feeding Wim and Ans and Pieter tonight. Janneke stopped her boys from taking a second slice of bread.
“We’ll take it to Oma,” she told them. She looked up at Lena as if fearful of a reprimand. “Please . . . may I take this for my mother? She isn’t well, and I promised her we’d bring something.”
“Yes, of course. Let the boys have another slice, and I’ll pack some bread and a bit of cheese for your mother.”
Tears rolled down Janneke’s face. “I didn’t want to bring my boys. I knew the trip would be hard for them. But there are so many other beggars on the roads, and I was afraid of being robbed if I was by myself. Even desperate people think twice before stealing from children.”
“I can’t imagine facing such impossible choices,” Lena said. She’d thought her hatred for the Nazis couldn’t possibly grow any stronger, but the plight of these desperate travelers deepened it.
Janneke stood when she finished eating and prodded her weary sons to their feet. “You have been so kind, Lena. We won’t impose on you any longer. May God bless you for your generosity.”
“You can’t go back out in the cold. Stay the night, please. My son’s bedroom upstairs is empty.”
“You would take in strangers?”
“You would do the same if you were in my place. Come. You look tired.”
“Mama?” Maaike whispered later in the dark when they were all in bed. “If we give away all of our food, won’t we run out?” In truth, Lena feared the same thing. But the war had given her no choice but to place everything in God’s hands and trust Him. She’d also learned that trusting Him wasn’t a onetime decision but a daily one. She sat up so she could see her daughter’s face better.
“Maaike, Jesus said, ‘Give, and it will be given to you . . . pressed down, shaken together and running over.’ He’s teaching us to trust Him. I know how hard that lesson is, believe me. But as we were feeding those poor travelers tonight, I prayed that someone else was feeding your papa and Wim and Ans for us.”
“Is that how it works?”
“Yes, dear one. I think that’s how it works.”
More people came to Lena’s door in the weeks that followed, desperate people who had walked from Den Haag or Leiden or even from Amsterdam. They wore layers of clothes for warmth, rags and pieces of carpet tied around their feet. They were starving, begging for food, willing to trade anything they had for a piece of bread or a cup of milk or an egg. Some stood at a distance and sent their children to her door. “Hunger trippers” people called them, risking capture by the Nazis or being robbed by their fellow beggars for a bite of food. Lena was now cooking the sugar beets meant for the animals. “Give us this day our daily bread” became her fervent prayer.
At times, she felt as though she were feeding the world. But Lena couldn’t turn anyone away. For as long as the Lord provided, she would share what she had.
CHAPTER 57
FEBRUARY 1945
Ans sang the hymn that had been her grandmother’s favorite as she scrubbed the latrine floor. She sang for the women in the barracks who were too sick to report for work, and for the woman sitting on the toilet, too ill to keep the food she ate from running straight through her. Some of the invalids hummed along with Ans. “We look forward to your songs every morning,” many of them told her. Most of the guards looked the other way when Ans took time away from scrubbing to pray with someone. At Christmas, she had coaxed the women to sing carols. She and another woman fashioned a crèche from scraps of wood and cloth and retold the story of Christ’s birth. In saving others from despair, Ans realized that she also had saved herself.
She was in the middle of the second verse when a guard opened the outside door, bringing in a gust of wintry wind. “Which one of you is Bernandina Kamp?”
Ans sat upright on her knees. “I am.”
“Get your belongings and come with me.”
“What about my bucket and scrub brush?”
“Leave them.”
Ans quickly scooped up the rags she used to cushion her knees from the hard floor and stuffed them beneath her sweater. Someone else would snatch them up to pad their clothing for extra warmth if she left them behind. She hurried to her bunk and gathered the toothbrush and comb she’d received from the Red Cross, along with the other items she’d collected over the months. She had arrived at the prison with nothing.
Cold, damp air struck her as she walked outside. The guard who prodded her across the prison grounds wore a long woolen greatcoat and leather boots. Ans wore only a sweater. She didn’t need to be encouraged to hurry. The guard led her to the administration building, where she’d been forced to strip on the first day, then left her standing for more than an hour while the clerks behind the desks ignored her. At least the building was warm. She tried not to imagine what punishment she might face for singing and praying with her fellow inmates. She feared solitary confinement most of all.
At last, one of the clerks called her name and motioned her forward. “According to our records, you’ve served your sentence for breaking curfew,” he said. “You’re being released.” Ans grabbed on to the edge of the desk to steady herself. He shoved her bag into her hands with the blouse and slacks she’d been wearing when she’d been arrested in Woerden and said, “Get changed.” She knew better than to ask for privacy and quickly slipped off her prison gown. Her body was so thin and malnourished, she almost hoped the guards would stare and that they would feel ashamed. Her clothes still stank of vomit from the night she’d been arrested.
Ans couldn’t imagine freedom. She hadn’t dared to imagine it. But unless this was a cruel joke, she was about to walk out of Vught Prison a free woman. She wished she could run back to the laundry and say goodbye to the women she’d worked with and then stop to encourage her friends in the barracks to remain strong. Would her release give them hope that their freedom would come soon—or would it fill them with despair at being left behind? Either way, the prison authorities weren’t going to give her a chance to go back.
When she was dressed, one of the guards escorted her through the front door and out through the prison’s double gates. They slammed shut behind her. She was free! Ans couldn’t comprehend it. Tears filled her eyes. She gazed around at the beautiful woods and heard the birds singing. She was weak and cold and hungry, but she thanked God for her freedom as she stumbled down the long driveway from the main gate. When she reached the road, Ans had no idea which direction to turn. She tried to recall the day she’d arrived at Vught in the early morning hours and decided to turn left. But where should she go? Back to the Dykstras’ farm? To the town house in Leiden? To her parents
’ farm? All three places were at least fifty miles away, and she knew she wasn’t strong enough to walk that far. She had no money for a train ticket. Even so, she kept walking, stopping every few minutes to rest her weakened leg muscles and pull up her baggy slacks. If she collapsed, she would freeze to death on the road.
Eventually the trees thinned. She passed frozen fields and saw church steeples on the horizon. After walking another fifteen minutes, Ans staggered into a town. A sign above a shuttered bakery told her she was in Vught. Next to the bakery, like an answer to a prayer she hadn’t uttered, was a Red Cross post. A woman hurried to greet Ans as she stumbled through the door, no longer able to feel her frozen toes. “You must have come from the prison,” the woman said.
“Yes . . .” She felt dizzy. She was going to collapse. The woman caught her just in time and helped her to a chair. She wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.
“Let’s get you something to eat. What’s your name?”
“Ans de Vries.” She spoke without thinking, then remembered she was Bernandina Kamp now. She didn’t care, glad to be herself in this moment.
The soup with beans and carrots was warm and delicious. Ans tried not to wolf it down. “Slowly, dear. Don’t eat too much or it will come up again. Your stomach has surely shrunk by now.”
“Everything about me has shrunk,” Ans said, trying to laugh. Tears of joy and relief hovered close to the surface of her laughter. She was still shivering.
“I’m sorry it isn’t warmer in here, Ans, but there are fuel shortages all over the country because of the rail strike. Food shortages too.”
