Resistance, Part I: ‘It became increasingly impossible to remain standing on the sidelines of the conflict’

I want to invite you to travel back in time with me.

 

The year is 1940. It's May and Germany invades Holland. The Dutch air force is eliminated the first day. The government surrenders after five days to avoid mass casualties and devastation. Holland is occupied. At first, life doesn't change much. The German occupiers have orders to treat the population politely. Changes in policy and governance are made slowly and covertly. Life seems to go on pretty much as normal. Except for the presence of Germans in uniform on the streets.

 

My father Wim (short for Willem) is a student at Leiden University. He is 20 years old. He is not Jewish.

 

My mother, Ima, is an art student at a private studio in Amsterdam. She is also 20 years old. She is not Jewish.

 

Do you know someone who is 20 years old? Some of you are a few short years away from that age. At 20 years of age, you are enjoying your independence, meeting all sorts of new people, and learning about the world. It is an exciting time for most. It is for both my parents.

 

My parents know each other, vaguely. Their mothers were good friends, so the families have socialized on a few occasions. 

 

Slowly but surely, life starts to change under German occupation. More and more rules are put in place and enforced with increasing brutality. The Germans control the news, so it's difficult to know what's going on in the war. Illegal newspapers keep people informed. University students are active in getting these newssheets out to the population to counter the German propaganda and misinformation. Editors and distributors of these underground papers, when betrayed to the Gestapo (the German security services) are lifted out of their beds at night and “disappeared.” After some time, it is leaked that those arrested have been tortured to extract information and then either died or were shot.

 

When a friend of his who he suspects is distributing underground news is arrested, tortured and shot without trial, Wim wakes up to the danger of what is happening to his country and fellow citizens.

 

In his memoir, which he wrote two years before his death in 2001, my father writes: For people with a conscience, it became increasingly impossible to remain standing on the sidelines of the conflict. By their actions the Germans, in fact, supplied the resistance movement with a steady stream of new recruits.

 

When all the Jewish professors at my father's university are fired, the rest of the faculty and the students go on strike. The Germans simply shut down the university.

 

Many of those fired Jewish faculty members go underground.

What does it mean to go underground? It means hiding where you won't be discovered in a razzia, a raid by the German police and their dogs. People hide in plain sight as someone's visiting relative or in a secret room, like Anne Frank and her family. Some hide in haystacks or pigsties. But all those in hiding need support. They need food, and at this point in the war, food can only be purchased with special coupons. The Germans regularly check identity papers, so people need false identity papers. This is the work of the Resistance, the people who put their lives on the line to help those in hiding. The Resistance steals food coupons and identity papers, they print fake food coupons and forge identity papers. And as the war goes on, they hide and smuggle downed Allied pilots out of the country.

 

What exactly is the Resistance? It's not a formal organization that has a front office and a phone number. No, it's individuals finding ways to work together, in secret, creating networks of similarly minded people who want to DO something to undermine the evil of the German occupation. 

 

My father joins the Resistance. From his memoir:

 

Wim manages to avoid arrest for two years which is unbelievable, given the odds.

My mother, Ima, is studying painting in Amsterdam. Several of the other students are Jewish and one by one they disappear – either to concentration camps or by going underground. Not one of her Jewish friends survives the war. 

 

Ima is disturbed by what is happening in her country. She wants to do something. She suspects my father is involved somehow and decides to ask him how she might join. My father laughs at her insinuation that he is part of the Resistance. He must be very careful – is she a spy? If not, he doesn't want to put this young woman in the path of danger. Ima persists and I don't know the details but one day he takes her into his confidence and she begins working with him.

 

Ima's role is to transport downed Allied pilots through the country from safe house to safe house in order to get them back to England where they can fly and fight again.  

Because of her cool-headedness and her ability to speak English, Ima is assigned this work. But how does she do this? These pilots don't know a word of Dutch: they are Brits, Canadians, Americans. If they open their mouths, it will be clear they are not Dutch citizens.

So, Ima is a “social worker” who takes her “deaf clients” on outings. Imagine… these young men cannot respond to any sound. They have to keep their eyes on Ima or keep them shut. They can't react to shouting or other people. It works but it is tense. Luckily, Ima also speaks German and can understand what's going on when German soldiers enter the train she is on. When necessary, she can explain to soldiers what she is doing. Once off the train, she connects the “deaf” pilots with their next guide and returns home, ready to make the same trip with another set of “deaf” clients another day.

 

My parents are working together in the same group, or cell, in the Resistance. They are doing different work but towards the same goal, helping people in the underground survive, helping the war effort, and working towards the liberation of Holland. The risk of arrest is present but somehow not real. The work is dangerous, but it was also exciting. Ima once told me, “The difference between good and evil, right and wrong was crystal clear. We knew we had to do something. We felt useful, we were making a difference.” 

 

In January 1943, a random group of 200 students is rounded up from the university my father had transferred to and taken to Vught, the notorious concentration camp in eastern Holland. Wim is one of these students. They do not know he is in the Resistance. 

 

A Dutch collaborator has been shot by the Resistance and the Nazis threaten that 10 students will be shot every day until the guilty person surrenders to the police. 

 

The churches protest loudly and although no one is shot, the mood in the camp remains tense. Only after six weeks are the students released. On the way back from the camp, my father is warned that his cover has been blown, that his real name is known to the secret police. He has managed to escape arrest because he was in Vught when his sabotage group was “rolled up” (arrested). This is the first of many “miracles” that help my father survive.

 

Wim steers clear of his old haunts and manages to secure the identification papers of an actual German security police officer of Dutch origin who has been transferred to Poland. These papers allow him to travel around with a certain amount of confidence, passing easily through German checkpoints. He is a liaison between different resistance cells, arranging the transfer of food coupons, identity papers, and weapons. To a limited extent, he also passes on espionage material. 

 

A person carrying the identical ID as my father's is caught by the Germans, and the next day Wim is arrested. Ima continues his work along with her own until a month later, in June 1944, when she too is arrested.

 

My father's memoir focuses mainly on the months between his arrest and his liberation, describing his life moving from concentration camp to work camp to death camp. I won't share all the details; it is a gruesome read, but the good news is that the story ends with his liberation at the end of the war. It is stunning that he survived. He weighed only 67 pounds when the Red Cross took him by boat from Germany to Sweden to recover.

 

But I do want to share a few highlights that show his resilience. Because, in the end, that is what I have found helpful.

 

My mother did not write a memoir; she did not like to talk about the war so I'm not able to tell you much about her life after her arrest except to say she was sent to prison on the west coast of Holland for the last 10 months of the war, living under harsh and crowded conditions. I do know she too was resilient and a comfort to those in the prison cell with her, leading activities to keep morale up; finding ways to make cards to play games and innovating ways of doing embroidery with a needle smuggled in. 

 

 

Rev. Selinde Krayenhoff is the wife of out-going Shawnigan Chaplain Rev. Jim Holland, and has been supporting him in his role at the School for the last 18 years. She is an Anglican priest currently serving in Lake Cowichan as well as a community worker, a writer, a retreat leader, and the former owner and publisher of Island Parent magazine.