by Marcel Prins
But during the Hunger Winter, things became more and more difficult, partly because Aunt Marie was pregnant. She suffered from malnutrition, which caused her legs to swell up so badly that she could hardly stand. So I lined up at the baker’s every day, starting at four thirty in the morning, with the hope of getting some bread for my ration coupons. I intended to take care of Aunt Marie, and so I became a little thief who begged for coal at the barracks. At the market, where farmers would still occasionally bring a few carrots, potatoes, and sugar beets to sell, I stole whatever I could lay my hands on.
Since Danny’s disappearance, I’d been aware that strange things could happen when you were Jewish, but I still knew nothing about Judaism as a religion. Uncle Kees and Aunt Marie didn’t tell me about it, and they raised me as a Protestant. I really enjoyed going to church on Sundays, because the hymns were so lovely. I didn’t understand what I was singing, but I thought it sounded absolutely wonderful.
I made friends with a Catholic girl. One day she asked if I’d like to go to church with her sometime. Yes, I said, why not? Well, it was one of those Catholic churches with statues, paintings, rosaries — a big difference from that bare Protestant church. My friend taught me to recite the Hail Mary, in Latin too. I was in seventh heaven. I thought the Catholic religion was so much more beautiful than Protestantism, and they did much more singing too. I asked Uncle Kees and Aunt Marie why we didn’t go to a Catholic church. They couldn’t give me a convincing answer, but they never tried to force their religion on me either.
Every night, I obediently said my prayers to the Lord Jesus in Heaven, because I thought there was someone up there looking down on me and if I behaved myself he’d think I was a good little girl and do things to help me.
But after liberation, I soon stopped believing. There was a huge party in Amsterdam on May 7, two days after the Netherlands was liberated. Everyone went out onto the streets, including us: Aunt Marie with her big belly, Wim in the baby carriage, and me skipping alongside. We danced and cheered as we headed to Dam Square, right in the center of Amsterdam. But there were still some Germans around, and they opened fire on the crowd from a balcony on a tall building. We hid behind the royal palace as quickly as we could. When we got back home to Kwakersplein at the end of that amazing day, Aunt Marie said, “Well, Rita-pie, you’ve just got to wait for your parents to get here now. They’re sure to come soon, because the war’s over and we’re all free.”
It’s not going to happen, I thought. It’s not allowed to happen! I never want to leave here! My parents meant nothing to me. There was only one person, or so I believed, who had the power to make sure I could stay with the Fonds family: the good Lord Himself. At night, I got down on my knees and prayed for hours for my parents to let me stay with Aunt Marie and Uncle Kees.
There was one thing I knew for sure: I couldn’t abandon Aunt Marie while she was pregnant. I looked after her. She depended on me. But I thought I still had plenty of time. My parents wouldn’t come back that soon, would they?
I was wrong about that: In the middle of May, there was a knock at the door. I was playing with my foster brother on the balcony, and I heard Uncle Kees open the door and cry, “Wow, Beb, Frits, fancy you being here so soon!” I immediately knew who they were, and I sat down with my back to the room. Then Aunt Marie called me, “Rita-pie, look who’s here!” I heard them coming up the stairs, and I turned around and said, “Hello, ma’am. Hello, sir.” That was it. I just went on playing.
Many years later, Uncle Kees told me how he’d pleaded with my father, “Don’t take her right now. Leave her here. Just take her out to the zoo for the day first, and then let her stay with you for a night.” My father wouldn’t hear of it.
I said I wanted to look after Aunt Marie until the baby came. But that didn’t persuade my parents. They just took me away. I can’t even remember saying good-bye.
And that was the moment I stopped believing. If Our Dear Lord didn’t intervene, I was done with him. For two days, I tried saying, “Lord, bless this food, amen,” before we ate. And my parents told me, “We don’t do that.” Fine then, I thought, I don’t believe in it anyway.
I heard nothing from Uncle Kees and Aunt Marie. There was no telephone, and it was too far to walk to visit them. I was desperately unhappy. I’d been planning to take care of Aunt Marie until the baby arrived. What was going to happen to her without me? I didn’t even hear about the existence of little Inge until two months after the birth. I thought of her as my new baby sister.
Rita, shortly after the war, 1945
I went once with my mother to our old house on Jekerstraat. There was somebody else living there. My mother could see the sunshade that she’d put up herself on the balcony. She wanted to have it for the new house. So we rang the doorbell and asked for it. The house had been cleared out, all except for a painting above the fireplace. “Mom!” I cried. “That’s our painting.” The people living there didn’t even flinch. The house had been assigned to them, along with everything else. We never got the sunshade back.
For a long time, I kept looking for the little boy who had lived next door, but he never came back. And neither did my grandparents or my mother’s seven brothers and sisters, the ones my father had arranged hiding places for at the beginning of the war.
Jaap Sitters, c. 1942
Before the war, I was always allowed to go with my father to the local soccer club to watch the matches on Sundays. We sat by the halfway line, me on the grass and him on a green first-aid bag. He was there to help any injured players. “Faster! Faster!” the crowd used to cheer whenever my father ran onto the field.
After the war broke out, he kept that first-aid bag with him at all times. Father was important: He was a member of the Red Cross and he drove around in a new Opel convertible, with a stretcher sticking up from the backseat. Soon after the Netherlands surrendered, Father came home without the car. It had been confiscated by the Germans. He kept the first-aid bag next to his desk, but we never went to watch the soccer matches again.
As I had done before the war, I went on playing with Jopie Hoefnagel,9 who lived around the corner. He was a couple of years older than me. First we would have a cup of tea with his mother, and then we used to go to our secret hiding place in the garden.
One afternoon we were sitting in our hideaway as usual when he said, “You’re going to have to leave school, aren’t you? Because you’re a Jew.” I just stared at him in amazement. I had no idea what he was talking about. I was just about to ask him what he meant when he smacked me really hard, out of the blue. My head was spinning. I had no idea what was going on. Stunned by the shock and the pain, I stood up and walked away. When I got home, I burst into tears. Mother comforted me. She told me that Jopie’s parents were NSB10 members and that we were Jewish. I never played with Jopie again after that.
In September 1941, Jopie was proved right. All Jewish children had to go to separate schools. Uncle IJs,11 a friend of my parents, started a school in a big old house.
The students were a mixed group of all ages. It was fun. But unfortunately, it didn’t last for long. Uncle IJs told us that all Jews would soon have to move. “The Germans are going to send out letters with the addresses of where you have to go. And then our little school will have to close.”
One morning, our letter arrived. My mother told my sister, Jetty, and me that we all had to move to Amsterdam. We went on the train, each of us carrying a suitcase. That same morning, my father turned the key in the door of our new apartment on Volkerakstraat in Amsterdam. It turned out to be a nice little neighborhood with lots of Jewish children who had also only recently moved in. I had plenty of new friends, and we didn’t even have to go to school.
After a few months, another letter came, and we had to move again. Our next apartment was directly opposite the German police garage. Night and day, there were trucks and open-top cars full of yelling Germans driving in and out. I could only sleep with a blanket over my head. At first I did
n’t know that they were out hunting for Jews. They would bring them back and imprison them in the Hollandsche Schouwburg theater, before sending them to concentration camps.12
My father was an optimist. He had a job with the social services department and had managed to get hold of a piece of paper with a special stamp on it, which was called a Sperre.13 My father said the stamp meant we were not in danger, but when we had to leave again after a few months, even he became less optimistic.
We moved to a district that was occupied solely by Jews. They knew their next address would be Westerbork14 and that would be followed by a “labor camp” in Germany. Stories about what happened to Jews there went buzzing around the neighborhood.
On Friday evenings, my father used to buy something tasty from the Jewish baker’s shop and some peanuts in their shells. For a brief moment, the war seemed far away. But later in the evening the mood would change. Then the trucks would come, bringing the German officers shouting their orders. They brought lists of names with them and sent soldiers to the addresses where Jews were to be rounded up. During these raids, people were dragged from their homes and taken away in trucks. Every time they came, we were worried that we might be on the list.
At first, new people moved in soon after families had “left,” but later, the houses remained empty. The Germans hammered big nails through the doors and into the door frames and then placed a seal on the locks so that they could see no one was living there.
Jaap’s letter of deportation to Westerbork, which includes a list of items to be brought to the camp: a pair of work boots, a set of work clothes, two blankets, bedclothes, a towel, toiletries, two pairs of socks, two sets of underwear, a sweater, a bowl, a spoon, a cup, and enough food for three days. People were told to leave their houses locked up and were not allowed to bring pets.
The days crept by until, one day, there was a lot of commotion in the neighborhood. My father announced, “The Germans are coming again tonight and they’re taking absolutely everyone this time.”
That afternoon, Father went out. When he came back to the apartment, he hammered away at the door for a while. We sat inside, anxiously waiting for him to finish. Finally he came back inside. He told us to sit around the table.
“Okay,” he said. “When it gets dark, you all have to be as quiet as mice. We’ll close the curtains and turn off the lights. And we’ll stop the clock because they might hear the ticking. The door’s already locked and I’ve knocked a nail into the door outside so that it’ll look like our apartment’s been nailed up, just like the other houses where no one’s living. But the door isn’t really sealed shut. I sawed the nail in two so it doesn’t go all the way through. And I took the seal from an empty house and stuck it over our keyhole to make it look like our apartment’s already been emptied. Now we’re going to have something to eat. Just some bread, because the smell of cooking might give us away. And then it’s time for bed.”
Half an hour later, the clock was silent and the house was pitch-dark. I lay in bed, staring at the wall.
I was awakened by the sound of vehicles driving up and stopping nearby. Orders shouted in German, stamping of boots, people wailing. I sneaked out of bed and felt my way in the darkness to the living room. Father and Mother were already there, and Jetty wasn’t far behind me. We heard the Germans breaking through the door downstairs. There was an elderly couple living on the floor above us. I didn’t know them, but I heard them wailing that night as the Germans beat them down the stairs.
Then the Germans came back up. We could hear their voices outside our door. It seemed to go on forever. Finally the footsteps went away. Then we heard the engine start up, and they drove on and stopped outside the next house.
When I came into the living room the next morning, Father and Mother were already dressed. The curtains were closed and there was a strange atmosphere in the house. It was so quiet. Everything was silent. The table was laid differently. No tablecloth, just a package. “That’s some food for the journey,” said Mother. “Your father will explain the rest.”
“There’s absolutely no one else living in the entire neighborhood now,” he said. “The stores are all closed and it’s too dangerous to buy food outside the area. We have to leave. And it’s too risky for all of us to go together. Our only option is to leave one by one.”
Jetty and I weren’t told where Father and Mother were going, and I wasn’t allowed to hear Jetty’s new address either. It was my turn first, and Jetty was sent to her room.
So there we were, just the three of us. Father said, “Do you remember how to get to Aunt Toni and Uncle Jo’s place?”
I shook my head.
“I’ll explain it to you. It’s easy. You go around the corner here and then turn right by the stores and walk all the way down Middenweg.” He pointed at my right arm, just to make certain. “After Middenweg, you just keep on going,” Father continued. “Straight on, for about five hours. If you do that, you’ll eventually see that street where you always used to meet me when I came home from work. You know the way from there.”
Then he gave me a stern look. “And remember, it’ll take you a long time to get there, a really, really long time, and you can’t leave until dusk, when it’ll be quieter and safer. If you hear a car coming, get off the road until it’s gone past.”
Mother removed all of the stars from our clothes that day. At sundown, we said a quick good-bye, and off I went. Getting to Middenweg wasn’t a problem. Turn right and keep going straight on. I walked along briskly.
After about half an hour, I wasn’t quite so sure. Was I going the right way? I seemed to have been walking forever. The bag of food and drink was getting heavier with every step. At one point I stopped to eat something. I think I fell asleep for a while too.
It was pitch-dark by then. I tried to keep my spirits up by talking to myself out loud. I finally arrived in Bussum, the town where Aunt Toni and Uncle Jo lived. I have no idea how I did it, but I know that I’ve never been so tired in my life.
Jaap’s star
Aunt Toni and Uncle Jo lived in a big, grand house. They were just as I remembered: Aunt Toni was kind, and Uncle Jo was bald. He smoked cigars and wore glasses with thick dark frames. They rented out rooms, and I was introduced to some of the residents as soon as I got there. There was Aunt Job, a kind, gray-haired lady, and Aunt Moeke,15 who wasn’t as gray but was also nice. And there was a scary man with a red beard.
Then Aunt Toni took me up to the attic, where I would sleep. “If you can’t get to sleep, just come downstairs,” she said.
When she woke me the next morning, I saw that I’d been sleeping in a nice, cozy room with a sloping ceiling.
“This used to be a guest room,” Aunt Toni told me. “But now it’s yours.”
There was a curtained partition in the room with space behind it for clothes. She opened the curtain and pushed the clothes aside. “You might need to hide from the Germans at some point.” At the back of the space, almost invisible, there was a wooden panel.
She pulled the panel away. “Here’s a flashlight. Go take a look.”
There was a mattress on the floor, with some blankets on it, and a chamber pot with a blue rim. “You mustn’t tell anyone about this. And you’re only allowed in there when Uncle Jo and I say so.”
Uncle Jo, who worked for the newspaper, left early every morning. When he went out, he tucked his slim briefcase under his arm so that no one could see the yellow star. He and Aunt Toni had a mixed marriage, which meant that Uncle Jo hadn’t been forced to move to Amsterdam.
One day, Uncle Jo called up to me. “Surprise!” he said. He took me to the garage, where Aunt Toni was standing beside a magnificent rabbit hutch with two tiny little rabbits in it. “You’re to take care of them,” Aunt Toni said in a serious voice. “You have to give them food and water and freshen up the straw once a week. And you have to clean out the cage every day.”
It turned out to be a dirty job. The bigger they grew, the larger the dr
oppings were. Then one of the rabbits started to pull out the fur on its chest — in great big clumps! “That’s what female rabbits do when they become adults,” Uncle Jo reassured me. “It means they want to build a nest.”
Soon there were five little creatures in the nest. Those ugly little things soon turned into cute little mini-rabbits. We needed three more hutches, and I was very busy.
I had one rabbit that was my favorite: Sijbeltje.16 Her mother had rejected her. Uncle Jo made a hole in a cork and poked a thin tube through it to make a feeding bottle. Sijbeltje grew well, just like her brothers and sisters. More nests were built. More hutches were added. Before I knew it, I had twenty-three big adult rabbits in ten hutches! And Sijbeltje, of course. She was my rabbit. I loved her and she loved me.
“All of those rabbits are a lot of work,” said Uncle Jo one day. “And we can’t build any more hutches in the garage. It’s difficult to get hold of enough food for them too. We’re going to have to get rid of them.”
I nodded. “But I want to keep Sijbeltje.”
Uncle Jo said I could.
A day or two later, when I wasn’t allowed into the garage, I thought someone must have come for the rabbits. It wasn’t until later that I realized the whole house smelled of cooked meat. I rushed downstairs. Aunt Toni and Uncle Jo and a really big man were at work in the kitchen. The counter was covered with skinned rabbits, and there were pans on the boil. I started crying and screaming, “Where’s Sijbeltje? Where’s Sijbeltje?”
They told me that she was safe and sound in her hutch.
I ran to the garage. There, in the corner, was our original hutch, with one large, reddish-brown rabbit inside. But it wasn’t my Sijbeltje!
