by Marcel Prins
After the war, my relationship with Freddy fell apart, much to the regret of his father in particular. Freddy kept checking up on me all the time. Where have you been? When will you be home? Why are you going out? I couldn’t stand it. I’d been so powerless for years that I never wanted to feel locked up again.
Jack with his mother, summer 1939
I wasn’t even three years old when the war began. I have very few memories of the time before that, but what I can remember is the feeling of warmth and security within our family. My father had a good job as a bank clerk, and we lived in the Rivierenbuurt district in the south of Amsterdam. My parents really loved me. We used to go on camping vacations in North Holland, and I can still remember sitting on my father’s shoulders and playing with him on the beach, splashing about in the water and throwing a ball.
On the day war broke out, I woke up early. It was a beautiful, clear day, but there was the sound of airplanes all around. It made me feel anxious, so I went to my parents’ bedroom. “Can I come in with you?” When I was snuggled in bed with them, my father said to my mother, “Lies, this is serious.” He knew Jews were trying to escape from Germany, and he was convinced that Dutch Jews were in grave danger too.
As soon as we got up that morning, he went to pack our things and we headed for Schoorl, the village where we always went camping. So for me, the outbreak of war felt a bit like the start of a vacation. But we weren’t going camping. This time we had a room in Aunt Trien and Uncle Willem’s house instead of sleeping in a tent on their land. They had three children: an older son, a daughter, and a son around my age. I spent a lot of time playing with the younger son.
At first my father kept on going to work in Amsterdam as he had before. He usually came back to Schoorl on the train, but if there was no other option he slept in our house in Amsterdam.
The Germans started building bunkers in the dunes at the end of 1940. They thought the British would attack from the sea. One day I was down on the beach, playing in the sand. When I glanced up, I saw a German soldier aiming his rifle at me, as if I were an animal. I ran in panic to Aunt Trien’s house and cried my eyes out.
The Germans started coming through our yard and walking through the fields where Uncle Willem grew potatoes and vegetables. I looked like a typical little Jewish boy, so they thought it was becoming too dangerous for me. I had to leave.
My parents found a place for me at my aunt Greta’s house in Haarlem. She was my father’s sister. I was allowed to stay there because she was married to a non-Jewish man and so they weren’t about to be deported. On the day I left, my mother went with me to the station. I had to say good-bye to her at the train. Another woman was taking me to Haarlem. “You need to go now,” my mother said. “Or it’s only going to be worse.” She had to force herself to let me leave, and then she turned around and walked away. My parents soon went into hiding too, but in a different place.
Aunt Greta made me very welcome. Her eldest daughter, Rietje,20 was particularly fond of me. Rietje often used to take me to the hairdresser’s where she worked. I used to love going with her. Rietje was seventeen and too young to be a mother herself, but old enough to play mother. I enjoyed all of the attention.
One day the neighbors came by. My aunt knew they were members of the NSB, but they still used to talk to each other. “That Jewish child in your house has to go,” they said. “There’s going to be a search tomorrow.” But where could I go? My aunt had no idea what to do. So the neighbors said, “Bring him round to ours.” Their house wouldn’t be searched, because they were members of the party.
The evening before the search, my aunt Greta lifted me over the fence. It was a tall fence and she had to lift me up above her head. “Have you got him?” I heard her ask.
“Yes, just give him a little push.” So she did, and I fell a short way, but they caught me on the other side. Those neighbors might have been collaborators, but they were good to me. I stayed in their house for three or four days until it was safe again at Aunt Greta’s.
At the end of 1941, when the anti-Jewish measures were getting worse and worse, my aunt and uncle decided that it would be safer for me to stay elsewhere. “You have to leave,” Aunt Greta said one day.
“Am I going to my mommy?”
“No,” said my aunt. “But where you’re going now will be a better place for you. And you’ll have a fine time with the people you’re staying with.”
A lady from the resistance took me on the train to Zeist. Aunt Greta had made me promise that I would never say my own name. “From now on, you’re called Henkie Mulder,” she had said. I remembered what she said very well.
It was a long walk from the station to my new house in Zeist. As soon as I saw her, I realized that my new foster mother, Aunt Da, was old, much older than I thought she’d be. I must have been imagining the same kind of family that I’d stayed with in Haarlem. But Aunt Da was no Aunt Greta. And her daughters, Ali and Beppie, were nothing like my cousins.
Jack’s hiding place in Zeist, at #52 Van der Merschlaan (present-day photograph)
I was in Zeist for eighteen months, until the end of 1943. It was a really miserable time. I slept badly, ate badly, and was often beaten. When I couldn’t sleep, they hit me. When I didn’t want to eat, they hit me. Whenever I said, “I want my mommy,” they hit me.
It started early in the morning. I was awake every day at six. I didn’t want to eat breakfast then, which made them very unhappy. They were doing their best to provide food for me, and I wouldn’t eat it. The harder they hit me, the more stubbornly I refused to eat. It was a vicious circle: I was mean to them, and they were mean to me.
They would slap my face, and they used to whack me hard on the back with coat hangers too. As they were hitting me, I would shout out, “I want my mommy!”
“Well, your mommy isn’t here,” they yelled back, and hit me some more.
“So where is my mommy?”
“She’s not here, and she’s not coming either.”
“Then I want to go to Aunt Greta’s.”
“Well, you can’t.”
And then I just started up again, “Where’s my mother? I want my mommy, my mommy, my mommy.” And they would start hitting me again. Ali was the worst. If I’ve ever hated anyone in my life, it was her. Beppie was occasionally a little gentler. “Leave him now,” she’d say. “He’s had enough of a beating.”
Whatever food they put in front of me, I wouldn’t eat it. To force me to eat something, two of the women would hold my arms tight while the other pinched my nose shut. As I gasped for air, one of them would stuff the food into my mouth. Then they would clamp my jaw shut. But I still didn’t chew, and as soon as they let go of my chin, I spat the food back out. And then they would stuff it back in. If I finally did end up swallowing something, I sometimes vomited. They used to force the vomit back into my mouth as well.
One day they said, “Fine. If you don’t want to eat, then don’t eat.” So I didn’t eat for five days until they couldn’t keep it up any longer, and they put food in front of me again. I had won.
I cried myself to sleep every night. I used to sleep in a tiny attic room that was more like a closet. There was only a bed and a chair in the room.
I used to go to kindergarten, which was dangerous because I stood out among all those little blond children. I thought school was great, because at least it meant I was away from those women.
On June 2, 1943, it was my sixth birthday. I was allowed to have a party and invite eight children. In their own way, the three women tried to make something of my birthday, but I was unable to look forward to it or really enjoy it. My parents weren’t there. The only good thing that could have happened in Zeist would have been if my mother and father had suddenly turned up.
Jack during his stay in Zeist, 1943
Even after I turned six, I stayed on at kindergarten. Sometime in October 1943 I was called out of class one morning. “Henkie Mulder is to report to the principal.” Immedia
tely the thought shot through my mind that I wouldn’t have to go back to those horrible women. Everything happened very quickly, and I hid in the big box on the front of a delivery bike that was waiting outside the school.
Someone had given me away. The neighbors across the street had seen the SS21 going into our house, obviously looking for me. The whole neighborhood knew where I was; I didn’t even have a hiding place. It was probably one of the other neighbors who had reported me.
Just as the neighbors spotted the SS going into the house, the baker’s boy arrived. “Go straight to the school,” they said to him. “That Jewish child has to get away. If they find him, it’s not going to end well.”
I crouched inside the box on the front of his bike, in the section that was used to transport the bread, and he slammed down the lid. Darkness. I could tell from the bumps that he was cycling away, down the street and out of the village. After a while, I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I carefully pushed the lid open a little way. The baker’s boy reacted immediately. “That lid doesn’t open until I say so,” he said. And he banged it shut. So I was in the dark again.
Much later, maybe an hour, the lid opened a tiny way. The baker’s boy propped it open and went on cycling. Through the gap, I could see cows grazing in a meadow. He brought me to a minister in Maarn, a nearby village, who later took me to another address.
After that, I stayed at a whole series of different addresses. Usually they moved me late in the evening, on a bike. I can only vaguely remember those journeys now: the darkness, the cold, the back of the bike. The people I stayed with for only one or two nights are just a vague memory too.
It went on like that until late in 1943, when I was taken to Deventer. To get there, I had to cross the bridge over the River IJssel. The Germans would only let small groups of people over the bridge at a fixed time every day.
So there I stood, with about twenty other people. I wasn’t allowed to speak or to look around. I had to hold hands with a woman I didn’t know, and I had to keep on walking. It was a fall day, and it was so chilly. I remember being absolutely terrified on that bridge.
When we reached the other side, we headed to a small Red Cross center. It was like stepping into a warm bath; I suddenly felt that I was welcome. A lady sat me on her lap and put her arms around me. I’d forgotten what that felt like.
I traveled around a lot before ending up in Friesland in summer 1944, on a farm a few miles from the village of Hommerts, where I stayed until the end of the war. The Langeraap family loved having me there. They had five children and a sixth was born while I was staying with them. All of them were blond with blue eyes.
I enjoyed being with the Langeraap family — as far as that was possible. They didn’t beat me and they didn’t force me to eat. There was enough food there even in the Hunger Winter of 1944. They had some cows, a few goats, and lots of land, where they grew potatoes. It must have been difficult for them, because I was in my own sad and weary little world, where I thought about my mother every day, constantly wondering why she had abandoned me.
I went to school in Hommerts. In 1944, that was downright dangerous. If you were caught as a Jew, they packed you straight off to the camps. To get to Hommerts, I first had to cross the canal by the farm in a boat and then walk forty-five minutes through the meadows. Luckily I never had to walk alone. There were another three local children who went to school in Hommerts. It was cold that winter and the icy wind blew right through me on the way to school. Although I couldn’t stand the cold, I learned to skate in Friesland, which I really enjoyed.
My classmates were nice to me. I turned into a little Jewish boy who spoke Frisian.22 In fact, I got so used to speaking Frisian that it was months after the war before I could speak actual Dutch again.
One time that winter, the Germans came to search the house. It was the beginning of 1945. We were prepared for it, and I had a hiding place ready in the attic of the farmhouse. A small space had been boarded off for me between the sloping roof and the floor, not much bigger than a gutter. It was a kind of crawl space and there was just enough room for me inside.
We saw the Germans coming on a boat. There were three of them. “You have to go,” said my foster mother. “Quick! Up to the attic!” I immediately knew that I was in danger. It took them a while to reach us, because they had to tie up the boat at the landing stage first. I crawled into the space and wriggled my way between the planks and the roof. I was safely hidden away before the Germans reached the house.
They searched the entire house, including the attic. I could see their boots through the gaps in the planks as they walked past. I held my breath, but I knew they wouldn’t find me because it would have seemed impossible for someone to hide in such a small space.
The men from the Gestapo23 stayed on the farm for a while. They had something to drink, and then they left on the boat. The family fetched me from my hiding place an hour and a half later when they were certain the Germans weren’t coming back.
When Friesland was liberated at the end of April, they said, “You can tell us your name now.” I didn’t say anything. “Go on. Tell us what you’re really called. The war’s over now.” But I’d promised my aunt in Haarlem that I would never say my name. They begged me, they hit me, they tried everything to make me tell them my name. “I don’t know,” I kept on saying. “I can’t remember what my name is.” But I thought to myself, My name’s Jacky Eljon. I know that perfectly well.
After liberation, the people in Westerbork, where my mother had been taken in February 1945, were given lists of children who had survived the war. But my name was never on those lists, of course, because no one knew what I was really called. The Red Cross knew by then that there was a little boy in Hommerts who couldn’t remember his name. So they organized a meeting with women from Westerbork whose children had disappeared. Most of them had been murdered in concentration camps.
Two days before my eighth birthday, a Red Cross nurse came to fetch me. She took me to Sneek, a small city north of Hommerts. It was a really long way. I rode on the back of her bike for about ten miles. We went to a school gym, where lots of stern-looking men and women were sitting around a table.
There was also a line of twenty chairs in the gym, with bald-headed women seated on them. I spotted my mother immediately, but I wasn’t allowed to go to her; I had to start at number one. I walked past all of those women with their bristly scalps. The Germans had shaved their heads and now their hair was starting to grow back. Near the end of the line sat number seventeen: my mother. I jumped onto her lap. Finally, after four years, I was back with her again.
I never felt so close to her as in that room in Sneek. After we were reunited, we went back to Westerbork. She was staying in the officers’ quarters, where the SS had been during the war. Now the roles were reversed and the German soldiers were in the sheds. My father was there with us too on that first night in Westerbork. He had taken up his job at the bank again but was working in Groningen for the time being, instead of in Amsterdam.
The first time he saw me, he fell on his knees and thanked the Lord for saving me. I thought he was acting really strangely, because I didn’t know anything about Our Dear Lord. Later I found out that he’d picked up various Christian habits during his time in hiding, although he remained Jewish and was proud of it. At that moment, when I saw him down there on his knees, I thought he was crazy, even repulsive. He seemed nothing like my father from before the war, the man I’d longed to see.
We celebrated my eighth birthday, two days later, in Westerbork. I even got a present: a pen and eight pots of colored ink to draw with. But what I remember most clearly is wanting to have an egg. And I got one, too: a fried egg in a little pan. I ate my egg at the window of the officers’ house where my mother was staying, with the Germans across the way, guarded by Dutch soldiers. And, as they stood there watching, I licked the pan. That was my revenge.
We stayed at Westerbork until we were allowed to return to Amsterdam. Eve
ryone seemed happy that the war was over.
Later, though, it all turned sour. I couldn’t forgive my parents for handing me over to strangers. I couldn’t shake off the feeling that they’d abandoned me. There’s no way a boy of four can understand the idea of being sent away for his own good. I would never, ever let any children of mine go into hiding alone, or hand them over to strangers.
That warm feeling I had as a little boy sitting on my father’s shoulders was gone for good. I rejected my father. I didn’t want to be on his lap. I didn’t want to give him a kiss. I kept well away from him.
Jack’s hiding certificate. These documents were issued after the war to show that someone had gone into hiding. At the bottom it reads, We call on all government institutions, companies, and welfare organizations to assist the holder of this card.
The Langeraap family from Friesland emigrated soon after the war, so I never had any further contact with them. But Aunt Da, Ali, and Beppie were still living in Zeist. My parents made me visit them and say thank you. I had to go see Aunt Da when I was ten, twelve, seventeen. She and her daughter Beppie even came to my wedding. I went on visiting her in the retirement home until she died. “She saved your life,” my father always used to say whenever he dragged me there yet again. That’s true. She saved my life. “And she ruined it too,” I always used to add.
Rose-Mary Kahn, c. 1938
During the first days of the war, we often talked about escaping. Initially my father wasn’t at all enthusiastic about the idea. He didn’t want to abandon his business. “Everything will turn out fine,” he said.
“It won’t turn out fine at all,” my mother would reply. “We have to find a way to get out of here.” She finally managed to persuade my father, and a few days later we went to the port at the town of IJmuiden. We hardly took anything with us. But we got there too late, and the boats were all full. So we went back home again, and I ran straight up to my bedroom to clean off some words I’d written on the windows. It was something like “Germans, go home!”
