Mom 1940-44: Dark Times

The house where my mom and her sister lived during the war still stands on the Groesbeekseweg on the outskirts of Nijmegen. Thirty years after the war, when I was four years old, I spent a summer there with my mom, sister, and Oma. I played with the neighborhood kids and walked in the woods across the street. I sat on the metal-pipe fence out front and posed for photos on the garden path to the front door, where family photos galore had been taken for years. I can no longer remember specifics about the interior, but my overall impression is one of dark, heavy wood furniture, wool-rug table runners, and old lace. I had no idea then, of course, of the fear and tension that that two-story house held in the dark, early years of the war. But I do now.

The house on Groesbeekseweg, shortly after WWII

My mom had told me how the Germans and police used to bang on the door and come in to search the house for Jews. Now I know more of the back story, I can understand how terrifying that must have been for Oma. She knew there were Jews in the house alright, and they were not hiding in the attic or the cellar. They were there in plain sight: she and her two daughters, Clara (my mother, the younger) and Willy (my aunt, the older).

Because Oma never discussed her Jewish heritage and her decision to hide it, none of us in the family really know the details. Her father, who was the stationmaster of the Nijmegen Central Station around the time of WWI, died when she was just a teenager. Rumor has it she was not overly fond of her mother and rushed off to marry Opa, the dashing young officer, as soon as she turned nineteen and the war drew to a close. Was it a conscious choice to marry a Gentile, a way to distance herself from her mother and her heritage that she would later hide so carefully? Although Oma proudly displayed a framed portrait of her father in her seniors’ residence, none of us are sure what her mother looked like. She didn’t display any pictures of her. Neither did she label any names on the photos of her family of origin, so I am also stuck guessing who is who in regards to her siblings: Oom Mau (Uncle Maurits), Tante Gien (Aunt Regina), Tante Fie (Sophia), and their respective spouses and families. However, from her earliest family album that I have discovered, I am confident that the picture below is that of Oma’s parents. The man is definitely her father, and it must have been taken just a few years before his death in 1916.

Oma’s father and mother
[My mom’s grandparents, and my great-grandparents.]

I’m not sure that my mom even knew the details of her mother’s heritage, and alas, now that she is gone too, I can no longer ask her the questions that spin through my mind. Did Oma and Opa have a plan for keeping her Jewish family a secret? What did they tell their daughters? How was the plan affected by their separation at the start of the war, with Opa living with his mistress in Rotterdam? Did Opa’s position in the military make him aware of the seriousness of the Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda and Nuremberg Laws? Who helped Oma change the records at the city hall to “erase” the big, capital “J” beside their name? And perhaps most interestingly of all, how does one go on with daily life with that type of secret? A secret, which if exposed, would mean deportation to a concentration camp and perhaps death for you and and your two young daughters.

Pencil sketch on a newspaper by Polish worker, Joseph Richter. “Train from the Netherlands. They are oblivious. A Pullman-carriage, luxurious. They will be dead in one hour…”
[Image from http://www.sobiborinterviews.nl]

Of course, no one in Holland at that time really knew the truth of the camps and what went on in them. When I learned that Oom Mau and his wife Rachel died in Sobibor in 1943, I started reading articles and books specifically about that camp in south-eastern Poland. It was built for the sole purpose of extermination. Many Dutch Jews were sent there from late 1942 to the late summer of 1943. Unlike the Polish Jews who came there in cattle cars for “processing”, the Dutch typically arrived on regular passenger trains, even with Pullman sleepers. Blissfully unaware of what was happening to them, they stepped out onto the Sobibor platform often dressed in their best clothes, fur coats, and jewellry. Many did not realize the terrible truth until they stepped into the communal “showers”. When I discovered that the Dutch transports typically arrived on a Friday, I looked back in my notes to find the date of death for Maurits and Rachel, April 16, 1943, and found that this was indeed a Friday. [Another interesting note about Sobibor is that the largest successful escape of prisoners, about 300, occurred there in October 1943. The Germans, fearing the consequences if the world learned the truth about the camp, hastily tore it down shortly after the escape and before the advancing Russian army could reach it.]

My research also indicates that Maurits and Rachel had a couple of sons. Their eldest (age 18), died in Auschwitz the autumn before his parents’ deportation. Why he was taken away first, I doubt I’ll ever know. Apparently the younger one survived, but I have no details about him. Oma’s widowed mother, shown in the picture above, lived in Amsterdam fairly close to Maurits’ family and was taken to Auschswitz in February 1943. She died there the week before her 79th birthday. What happened to Oma’s sisters, Regina and Sophie, is still a mystery to me, but I vaguely remember my mom telling me that Regina’s family may have lived in Indonesia during the war and had to contend with the Japanese instead of the Nazis. I do know that Regina ultimately survived the war, as she died in 1957, and is buried in Holland. Of Sophie, I have no idea.

Oma before “surrendering” her radio, June 1943

While unaware of what was happening to her siblings, Oma must have been worried. But what can one do? In that generation particularly, people just went on with life as best they could, and life for Oma and her girls did go on. They lined up with ration cards to buy bread, clothes, and shoes. My mom always blamed the terrible state of her feet on the poor shoes she had during the war. She was a big girl for her age, so the shoes for which she “qualified” were often a size too small. Opa visited every other weekend from Rotterdam to keep in touch with his daughters, and he remained on reasonably good terms with his wife, given the circumstances. And Clara and Willy continued going to school, a fact of childhood that, although affected by war, did not end with the German occupation. Like all good Dutch citizens, they rode their bikes to school and on errands, at least while they still could. After awhile, the Germans confiscated the rubber tires for their war effort, so my mom and Willy wrapped old garden hoses around their wheel rims instead. Eventually I believe, many bikes themselves were confiscated. And then the radios. And then the cameras. And then…

One early afternoon in February 1944, the air raid sirens went off around lunch time. This was a fairly common occurrence as the American bombers would often go over Nijmegen for their daylight raids on Germany. The all clear sounded, and my mom and sister went on their way back to school and music lessons. They were part-way into town when they heard the planes returning, but the air raid sirens did not have a chance to sound again before bombs started dropping. The American bombers had misidentified their targets and were bombing the eastern part of Holland by mistake. Clara and Willy got off the street and scooted inside a building to wait it out.

Stationplein of Nijmegen shortly after the bombing of Feb 22, 1944 [Credit: http://www.go2war2.nl]

When they came out half an hour later, much of Nijmegen was in ruins, and bodies were strewn about in the dust. Many people had been caught outside in trams and trains due to this sudden, mistaken attack of the Allies. It was yet another terrible event from those dark times, another thread of anxiety and darkness that wormed into the life-fabric of my mom and her sister.

And yet, as 1944 turned into summer and fall, better times were coming. Times that would shape the two girls further and weave lighter threads into their tapestries. There would still be crises and war, but there would also be new “family” members, freedom and laughter again in the house on Groesbeekseweg.