War Story: Part III

By Jack Krayenhoff

As the tendency of the Dutch to obey Nazi ordinances became less and less, their regime became harsher and harsher. It was made illegal to listen to the BBC (which was being jammed by the Germans anyway), and then every household had to turn in its radio. If you were found to possess one, you were severely penalized. Of course most people hid them somewhere under the floor, with a carpet covering the loose plank. Later again, electrical power was cut off for lack of coal to keep the generator going, and then the only way to catch snatches of the BBC was with a crystal receiver. However, a helpful electrician, bypassing the meter, reconnected one room with the net, giving us one light bulb that worked. At night we made very sure that the blackout curtains would not permit one beam to shine on the street before turning on that precious light, and then, and if the bell rang, we would first light a candle, then give some time for the light bulb to cool off, and only then go to open the door.

Then an ordinance came to surrender all metals other than iron, as they were needed for their war industry. I had a collection of tin soldiers, which I buried in the backyard. To keep the occupation forces well-clothed, food and textile was rationed, and to keep them mobile, no gasoline was made available for civilian cars (except doctors). Rubber tires for bicycles were no longer made; people replaced them with garden hose and when that ran out, by wooden tires (torture on cobble stones!). Shoes were not to be had anywhere, and as my feet outgrew my last pair, I had to resort to wooden shoes on my way to the classical high school.

All this had an unexpected effect on the morale of the Dutch people. Just as Hitler united the Germans behind him by blaming the Jews for all their problems, so now he united the Dutch by giving them a common enemy, to wit, himself (and all the Germans behind him). It used to be that the political parties in Holland were perpetually at loggerheads, and the Protestants hated the Catholics, but now the universal enemy was Germany. In the underground, atheistic communists cooperated harmoniously with right-wing Christians, former animosities forgotten. ALL our problems were blamed on the Germans; we all knew that once they were gone eternal peace and happiness would result.

So our morale actually improved. Doctors noticed that those difficult patients with psychosomatic illnesses actually got better by themselves, and the reason was clear: their problems were no longer their own – they were the fault of the Germans. Yes, morale was OK.

But what about morals? They say that the first victim of war is morality. Shooting somebody is suddenly praiseworthy, as long as it is an enemy soldier. You don’t have to speak the truth to the enemy; in fact it is your duty to deceive him. If you were hiding Jews and the police asked if you did, of course you said ‘no’. Any sin became a virtue, as long as it damaged the Germans. One time I saw somebody lean his bicycle against a German office building, and enter it. So he was a traitor, cooperating with the enemy. I grabbed the bike, rode off at high speed and brought my trophy home, where I was praised as a hero. The whole basis of morality had changed; sin was helping the Germans, virtue was obstructing them. It was actually amazing how after the war the world’s sense of right and wrong returned more or less to normal.

Of course what also returned immediately to normal after the war was the bickering between the right-wing and left-wing political parties in Parliament, and the antagonism between Protestants and Catholics.

Food rations became smaller and smaller as the war went on, but things did not become really tough till in the fall of 1944. General Montgomery’s grand strategic vision of crossing the Rhine not on the French border with Germany, but instead in Holland where it split into three branches, involved dropping a large number of paratroopers who had to take the bridge across the largest branch of the Rhine at Arnhem and hold it till the Allied troops from Southern Holland had fought their way northward to relieve them. You know the sad outcome of this battle from the book and movie “A Bridge too Far”. For a few days we thought we were about to be liberated, but instead things rapidly got worse because the western part of Holland, extremely densely populated, was now almost cut off from the agrarian part where most of our food came from. The caloric content of our rations soon dipped below starvation levels, and in the big cities many people who were unable to get out, died. Our only hope came from kindly farmers around the cities, who had kept part of their produce back from the authorities and sold it to us city people. Some were not so kind and charged outrageous prices, and some even employed jewellers to assess the value of gold or precious stones the people offered in their desperation. One time my father brought home a big bag of sugar beets. The sweet juice we turned into a syrup, and then we ate the remaining pulp with some salt, pretending they were potatoes, or with vinegar, by way of salad. We dared not lose one single calorie. Elsewhere people ate tulip bulbs and complained, but I would have much preferred them over our beet pulp. Many cats were sacrificed – they were then known as ‘roof rabbits’. Many ducks and swans were taken from the ponds in the parks. Trees in the parks were cut down, and wood taken from deserted houses, because wood was the only fuel left for cooking and heating. Electrical services had stopped, so had the city’s gas supply, and coal was unavailable. This was particularly hard during the ‘Hunger Winter’ of 1944-45, which was exceptionally cold. Our whole family lived in one small room, which was heated mostly by our own bodies, plus a tiny stove the size of a top hat, in which we burned small chips of wood.

While the ‘Hunger Winter’ finally yielded to warmer weather, but with starvation still getting worse, the Allies resumed their offensive and finally, on May 5, 1945, the Germans surrendered. The news that it was about to happen reached us on the evening of May 4, after curfew time. I was staying with a friend, in ‘underground’ hiding, and thought it was safe to go outdoors. Stepping outside I saw, fortunately in time, a German soldier raising his rifle at me. I dove back indoors while he fired a shot, missing me.

But the next day it was official. We were free!! Never in my life, and never since, have I experienced such an immense joy. People were dancing in the streets, singing patriotic songs, total strangers hugging and kissing each other, and people were bringing out their Dutch red-white and blue flags with a separate orange streamer and sticking them on a pole out of their dormer windows

The following day Canadian soldiers and supplies streamed into town and my friend and I went to watch them. The trucks had to stop at a check point and we went to see if we could be of help as interpreters, as we both could speak English fairly well. We were taken on, and by way of payment received a bag full of biscuits (‘for dogs and liberated people’ they were designated, we heard afterwards, but we were not fussy at that point.) We gratefully took them home, but not the big prize: a tin with two dozen wiener sausages – those we took to my friend’s bedroom, and ate them all up in one feeding frenzy. It was an uninterrupted orgy. You would have thought they would make us deathly sick, but no: only blissfully sated. For the first time in two or three years!