Resistance, Part II: ‘We all have the choice as to how we will respond to those challenges’

Back to my father, Wim.

 

He is arrested and sent to prison, the one my mother will end up in after her arrest. After being brutally pushed around and hit in the kidneys, my father is left in solitary confinement for three weeks. From his memoir: 

 

Wim is sent back to the concentration camp in Vught where he suggests creating an entertainment committee for the barrack he is assigned to. My father's family was one where creativity and fun were key. They read out loud, sang together, went on camping trips, played games, wrote poems. With a fellow prisoner, Peter, the two manage to come up with skits, songs, poems. Others join in and the “Cabaret” becomes a nightly event. Wim and Peter form a tight friendship that helps them endure the horrible conditions. 

 

And it is at Vught that Wim meets his younger brother Jan, also arrested for his work in the Resistance. What a relief! They hug and spend as much time together as possible. He will bump into Jan again in Germany two months later at the concentration camp Sachsenhausen. The relationships with his brother and the other people he befriends are key to my father's survival.

 

Transported to the dreaded Haaren prison, Wim is finally interrogated. He sticks to his cover story of being a poor student paid cash to be a courier with no knowledge of the contents of the packages he is delivering. There is no beating or shouting. It is clear to Wim that the interrogator doesn't seem to know the details concerning his arrest. Wim is asked to sign his “confession” at the bottom of 1 and 1/2 pages. Ten long days later he is led back into the same interrogation room but with a different man behind the desk. This man takes out my father's confession but Wim notices right away that his signature is at the bottom of only a page and a quarter. It's not the paper he signed. He is alert and aware. He takes a risk and says, “There's been a mistake. I have no idea why I was arrested and not sent to Germany like the others to work.” It works, the man has nothing more to ask, but the consequence is the same, he will be shot. When he asks why, the man says, “Because you are in THIS prison. Nobody is here unless they deserve the death penalty. And we Germans do not make mistakes.” After the war, Wim learns that the man who originally interrogated him was killed by the Resistance and all the papers in his briefcase, destroyed. The file on my father was in that briefcase. Another miracle. 

 

Before he is brought before a firing squad, the whole prison population is evacuated and moved by cattle car to a concentration camp in the heart of Germany. Another miracle.

In Germany, my father survives four other concentration, work or death camps, travelling between them either by train, or on foot. 

 

In each, he actively seeks out other prisoners to talk with and learn from, and sympathetic guards and medical personnel and anyone else who can help him.

 

My father is a curious man, with an open mind and generous spirit. He has strong ethics and leadership qualities. He comes from a loving family and is not risk-averse (which, hopefully, at this point of the story, is quite evident!). 

 

He will risk his life for his brother. Reunited with his brother, Jan, in one of the work camps, one night he returns to the barrack to find his brother has become ill and taken to the hospital. Desperate to do something, my father waits until dark and then wriggles three hours on his belly through the mud, three seconds at a time, under spotlight sweeps to get to the building where his brother is lying, barely conscious. He swaps a package of 20 precious cigarettes, the currency of the camps, for 20 sulfa tablets. He convinces a Belgian doctor to give his brother two pills every two hours until they are gone. The good man agrees. My uncle survives. But someone notices my father and shouts for the guards. Chased, my father runs through the building and enters a room full of dead and dying men. He crawls under a body and lies very still. The guards look in but don't dare to enter. The room is full of disease. Wim lies there all night and the next day. Once it's dark, Wim makes the gruelling return trip back to his barrack.

 

My father's choices and simple good luck saw him through a very difficult time in his life, a very difficult time in Europe. He survived an appalling lack of food, horrendous cold, brutal discipline and gruelling work. He is one of a handful of several thousands of Dutch resistance fighters to survive and make it home.

 

At the end of his memoir, my father reflects on what helped him survive. In his words:

 

Of course, I also am very glad my father and my mother survived. If not, I would not be here today addressing you all! Too many people, including an unimaginable number of Jews, did not survive, do not have children to honour their memory. The world has been deprived of those people's gifts, talents, humour, love, service; and their offspring.

 

I am here today, sharing some of my parents' story of their life during WWII, not to impress you, but to honour them and to honour their contribution to the freedom we need to cherish and work to protect. 

 

I have no idea how many people's lives my parents' actions saved. No one does. They did what they wanted and needed to do.

 

No one can predict the challenges they will face in life. But we all have the choice as to how we will respond to those challenges. My parents taught me a lot about choice.

Wim and Ima's five children and 10 grandchildren have taken the legacy of suffering, integrity, strength and determination to find ways to contribute to life and to the world the best way they know how. To my mind, that's simply what everyone is called to do.

 

I am very grateful to have had the parents I had; I still feel their influence and support. And I hope that what I have shared with you today doesn't depress or shock you, but rather motivates you to value what is important in life: your family, your ability to choose, your gifts, and the freedom to express who you really are.

 

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.