The Arrest

By Jack Krayenhoff

It was eight thirty in the evening or thereabouts – at least well after eight o'clock Sperrzeit the Germans had imposed on us. One reason for this deadline was that it gave them a time to make successful arrests because people were at home after that hour. Therefore the bell ringing, particularly when associated with banging on the front door, was a bad sign. It was the Gestapo, and they were going to arrest somebody.

It was August of 1944, and although I was sixteen and already involved in the production of an illegal newssheet, Het Parool, my identity card was changed to say I was fifteen. That made me an unlikely candidate for arrest. My three brothers and sister were all older and also longer involved in the 'resistance,' but for that reason stayed out of the house – where, we did not know. German police could not get out of us what we did not know. It was a basic precaution.

That left my father. How he was involved in the resistance, we did not know either, but a sure sign that he was involved was his habit for the past month to sleep at a neighbour's place. Once a week he slept at home with my mother – why that was, I did not try to fathom, but it was his bad luck that night: the Gestapo found him and took him along to prison, first to the local one, in Urecht, and after a few days to the Amsterdam prison.

We did not hear from him or about him for three months, until suddenly, some few days before Christmas, without any warning, he stood before us. He was free! That was unheard of! What happened?

This was his story. Shortly after his incarceration he was assigned a Sachbearbeiter, a man whose responsibility it was to get to the truth of the case. Now this man was intelligent enough to see the war was going to end soon, with a victory for the Allies. That time it would be his turn to give an account of what he had done during the war, and here was his golden opportunity to prove he was a good guy.

My father should have been an easy catch for him. His work included responsibility for the water level in the land immediately north of the liberated part of Holland, where the Rhine and Meuse rivers made a 90 degree turn to the west to debouch in the North Sea. The water level was crucial if the Germans wanted to flood this land when the Allies resumed their northward offensive. My father knew the German's thinking and passed it on to a Dutchman who had connections with the Allied commander via a forgotten phone line.

Now the ease of the catch consisted in my father's inability to lie. That should have been elementary knowledge for a beginning 'illegal' worker – to have a believable story to cover his present doings. My father had never learned this, so when he was asked a question, he was only able to tell the truth. His Sachbearbeiter was aware of this, so instead of recording the truth, he made up the lie that would excuse my father. For instance he would ask the question: "How did you know the person on the other side of the line was in touch with the Allied Commander?" and before my father could answer, he would add: "Of course you did not know! You only thought you were informing a colleague," and my father would then hasten to ensure him he had guessed right. This went on until he had made up a false story that made my father smell like a rose in German nostrils.

After the war was over, the Sachbearbeiter prophetic view was proven correct. He was arrested and given an opportunity to account for his labours. He called on my father to testify on his behalf, and he did. The man was judged to have taken a considerable risk for his own safety, because with the Germans it was very rare that a prisoner was freed, at best he was not shot but transported to a concentration camp.