Eva's Story (4 page)

Another concern was our health. Mutti and Pappy knew that if we went into hiding it would be very difficult to get medical assistance if we became ill. For several weeks I had been suffering from severe tonsillitis and it was decided that I would need to have my tonsils taken out.

By that time it was too dangerous for a Jew to go into hospital, as many who were admitted were arrested and transported directly from the wards. A local doctor agreed to operate on me in his surgery where I was strapped into a chair and given laughing gas. The gas had a strange effect on me. As I began to regain consciousness I dreamt that the whole room was on fire and everything around me was burning. I woke up in terror. My parents carried me home and I lay in bed for a week, unable to speak and only able to eat ice-cream. Mutti and Heinz were very attentive and Pappy told me how brave I had been. But when my throat healed and I was able to eat properly again I began to develop fast and I grew up, both mentally and physically. None of the children in the square talked about their family secrets. We trusted our parents to cope with whatever situation might arise. In any case I did not want to think about the future too much because I was happy as I was. I could not face the thought that it might mean separation from Heinz. I adored him and wanted to stay with him. In fact, I wanted everything to go on being the same but Mutti and Pappy knew this was not possible and had planned carefully for what they felt would be the inevitable outcome of the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

I can recall walks along sunny streets that were beginning to feel threatening. I remember Heinz returning from school one afternoon very agitated. His friend Walter had taken off his jacket because it was a warm day and since he was no longer showing the yellow star SS men had stopped them and arrested Walter. I felt that an immense evil was about to engulf us.

1942 Germans push towards Stalingrad

Pappy rented an empty room in a storehouse on the Singel alongside the canal where he put trunks to be filled with provisions for our hiding. By now food was already rationed so we had to make every effort to save from our weekly allocation.

I remember I had a brown paper parcel to carry. Heinz had pushed it into my satchel, helping me to loop the strap over my head so that the bag sat on my right hip. It was heavy for me, containing six tins of condensed milk and six tins of sardines, a packet of rice and a tin of cocoa. I watched Heinz fill his school case with tins of tomato puree, a bottle of olive oil, sugar and some chocolate bars. Mutti and Pappy were also preparing parcels of food to put into their bags.

By now it was springtime, April 1942, when yellow and pale green buds tipped the branches of the willow and plane trees alongside the canals. Mutti and Pappy walked together in front, Pappy with his attache case and Mutti carrying her basket; Heinz and I walked behind them along cobbled streets beside the canal, over little bridges and down towards the warehouses. My satchel was heavy and my shoe lace came undone. As I leaned against a stone wall to tie up my lace the tins clanked and I suddenly felt terribly afraid. But Heinz was there to put his hand under my satchel to steady it for me. I loved him for it. It was Sunday with fewer people about but there was a market further along the lanes so we pretended we were going there.

As soon as we arrived at the wooden door to the warehouse we entered quickly and climbed up two flights of stairs to our storeroom. Pappy unlocked the door and we went inside to unload our packages and tins.

‘Put the tomatoes in this suitcase with the olive oil and rice,' he instructed us efficiently, ‘and the sardines and chocolate over here.'

‘Shall I put the condensed milk with the cocoa?' I said. These were important issues to me and I wanted to help in any way I could.

After we had packed the goods away we covered them with clothing and sprinkled mothballs on top. We were to return there many times. In the event our secret hoard did provide the nourishment to help people survive the terrible privations of the war – but not us.

On the morning of 6 July a card arrived by post for Heinz. It gave instructions for him to report with a rucksack in three days' time to the old theatre nearby. From there he was to be sent to a labour camp somewhere in Germany. Mutti was desperate but Heinz tried to comfort her.

‘I'll go, Mutti,' he said bravely. ‘After all, my friends will be there too. Henk, Marcel and Margot had their cards too so we will all be together.'

‘It will be slave labour,' sobbed Mutti.

‘They won't harm me if I work hard,' Heinz said, looking to Pappy for agreement.

‘Young people will be useful to them,' muttered Pappy, ‘but I think it is time we disappeared.'

Within twenty-four hours all the appropriate arrangements had been finalized. Pappy and Heinz were to make their way to a separate hiding place. It had all been organized by the Dutch underground. Mutti and I were going to an address of a teacher, a Mrs Klompe, on the other side of Amsterdam Zuid.

We spent the last few hours together as a family. When it was time to part I clung on to my tall, handsome father.

‘Pappy, I don't want to go without you,' I cried. I could not bear the thought of being parted from him again.

‘Evertje, be a grown-up girl now,' he said. ‘You must look after Mutti for me.'

My arms were around his neck and my toes were off the ground as he hugged me. And then, when he set me on my feet again, he held my shoulders and looked at me very seriously and whispered as if in prayer, ‘
God bless and keep you
.' Suddenly I felt a great strength flow into me and I stopped protesting and stood quietly.

Heinz stood beside me with tears running down his face. He brushed them away with his hand, put his arms around me and kissed me goodbye.

I remember walking away from the apartment with Mutti. This time we wore jackets without yellow stars and I held a magazine self-consciously over my chest to hide the fact that I was not wearing it. I looked around the square where the children used to gather. In the early morning light everything seemed deserted and forlorn. We had not been able to say goodbye to anyone and I was worried that I would be missed by my friends that afternoon because they would not know what had happened to me. Our friendly milkman was standing outside with his milk-float but he turned his head away, pretending not to have seen us as we hurried out into the square.

Holding a small bag each, Mutti and I walked silently across Amsterdam to Mrs Klompe's house. We knocked on the door which was opened by a well-groomed, middle-aged lady. We had never met her before but she said quite loudly for the benefit of any nosey neighbours, ‘How are you? It's wonderful to see you again,' and she stood smiling at us repeating, ‘Come in! Come in!'

She was trying not to look conspiratorial but as we crossed the threshold she closed the door quickly behind us, and led us into her front room. Over a cup of tea she discussed arrangements with Mutti, then signalled us to follow her up three flights of stairs to the attic which had been partitioned off into two rooms. One was a small bedroom where I was going to sleep. The other was a living room with a cupboard, table and three chairs. There was also a floral patterned sofa where Mutti would sleep.

Down a few steps was a long room that was a bathroom with a toilet at the far end. We had no cooking facilities but we were to use her kitchen downstairs and Mutti had agreed to cook her dinner as well.

‘You cannot use either the bathroom or kitchen whilst I am out,' she warned. ‘If the neighbours hear any noise they will become suspicious. You will have to take great care to keep your presence here secret.'

‘How safe are we?' Mutti wondered aloud.

‘The Germans make frequent raids to search out hidden Jews,' Mrs Klompe said. ‘They are like ratcatchers intent on exterminating vermin,' she continued drily, ‘but we in the underground are equally intent on protecting the innocent.'

She smiled at me reassuringly but I began to feel the sickening contraction of fear in my stomach.

That same evening our underground contact, a Mr Broeksma, visited us. He was a teaching colleague of Mrs Klompe and they worked closely together. Being a Frieslander – one of the hardy outdoor people who took part in skating races in the midwinter along miles of frozen canal water – he was a fine and true Dutchman with fire in his belly against the invaders. He was intelligent, tough and reliable and, like the other underground workers, extremely resourceful. We were in his hands and he knew our peril, but we trusted him completely.

He took some time to survey our hiding place and then advised us that we would still need to have another secret place within its walls where we could conceal ourselves if searches were made on our block.

Of course, he had to organize everything. He found a builder and brought him the following evening when they both went over our tiny living space to determine how we might best be hidden. They finally decided that it would be safest to partition off the toilet from the rest of the bathroom.

They agreed to make a tiled wall which would have a kind of trapdoor in it so that it could be fitted back from the toilet side. From the outside it would simply look like a solid tiled wall. That meant we would have to climb through a hole every time we needed to use the toilet but we could hide in there in cases of emergency.

All the materials had to be found then brought to the house during darkness, piece by little piece, but the two men managed to start work within a fortnight.

On the third Sunday of our hiding they worked all day until it was nearly finished. Only the trapdoor needed to be tiled. They were both tired but they decided to stay late into the evening to complete the job. When they asked Mutti to try it out she climbed in, sat herself on the toilet and lifted the heavy tiled trapdoor into place, disappearing behind a seemingly solid wall.

The two men looked at one another in approval and shook hands. When Mutti re-emerged they then shook hands with us and went away satisfied.

I was sound asleep by midnight so that the noises of vans in the street below and the heavy knocking at the front door only slowly penetrated through my dreams to bring me back to reality. Germans were downstairs shouting, ‘Are there any filthy Jews hiding here?'

‘Mutti?' I was terrified as I felt Mutti grab hold of me.

‘Quick, Eva, cover the bed with the counterpane,' she whispered as she pulled me out of bed and helped me smooth down the covers as quickly as we could so that the bed did not look as if it had been slept in.

We ran into the bathroom and pushed ourselves into the tiny toilet compartment. We lifted the heavy trapdoor back into position and waited in the pitch dark. I could feel Mutti sitting on the toilet grasping her knees while I squatted down next to her.

We heard the sound of soldiers' boots stumping up the narrow stairs next to our wooden partition. I crouched in terror, my heart beating so loudly that I was sure they could hear it.

Suddenly the bathroom door was thrown open and Germans were tramping into the room shouting to each other. There was a pause and then we could hear them stamping noisily all over the house. Finally they gave up and we heard them close the front door with a slam.

Mutti pulled my head against her face. I could feel that she was crying with relief. If they had raided the house two hours earlier they would have found us. God in heaven and our Frieslanders had watched over us.

From the time Mutti and I went into hiding, I entered a seemingly protected world. My days were spent entirely in the company of my mother and I remember them as full of warmth and love. During the next two years, hidden in our attic, she taught me German, French, geography and history out of books brought in by Mrs Klompe. Once or twice a week Mr Broeksma came to teach me Dutch and maths. I wanted to learn and occupied my time well but, unlike Heinz, I was not extremely bright and it did not come easily to me. I struggled along on my own, missing the company of other pupils intensely. Sometimes I would lie on my bed yearning for the old times in the square when we raced around like mad things on our bicycles. In my tiny attic cubicle I would kick my legs high into the air and fling my body around in an agony of pent-up energy and frustration at being young and imprisoned.

But occasionally, very occasionally, there were days of joyful reunion with Pappy and Heinz. Their hiding place was in the countryside at Soesdijk and it was truly perilous when we visited them because we had to travel by train. Oddly enough, we would never have dared to go out to the local shops for fear of being recognized by locals but we did venture farther out by pretending that we were ending our visit to Mrs Klompe.

Pappy's landlady, Mrs De Bruin, allowed us to stay for the weekend and we would return to Amsterdam on Monday morning with the commuters. On the rare glorious Fridays of our visit we would leave the house carrying our small suitcases and walk to the railway station. It was a strange sensation being outside again. But since we were both fair-skinned and looked like any other Dutch mother and daughter, with luck we could walk incognito in the crowd. Nevertheless, it was extremely risky: we were scared all the time, especially as we were occasionally stopped by police or soldiers at the station barrier when Mutti had to show her false identity card. As I was still under sixteen I was not required to have one but I did have to have my story off pat if I was asked questions. I never was; I must have looked too authentic to arouse suspicion.

Invariably the trains were full of soldiers, and the SS often made searches during the journey. We tried to look unconcerned whilst having to rub shoulders with our bitterest enemies. This journey was always harrowing, but it was worth it all just to be with Pappy and Heinz.

As soon as we were united in Mrs De Bruin's attic rooms my parents would shut themselves away to be alone, and Heinz and I would be left to ourselves to talk. Overnight, Mutti shared Pappy's room and I lay on a mattress on the floor in Heinz's room. In the darkness I would creep over to his bed and climb in next to him for a cuddle. We started kissing and hugging with the joy of being together again, until all our suppressed energy and budding sexuality began to arouse us. The kissing and cuddling became more and more furtively pleasant. We would start to pet each other, feeling blissful surges of adolescent love. We did not really do anything wrong and we were very scared that our parents would find out what we were up to, but we could not help ourselves. We only had each other to love. When I was alone in my attic bed I cried for Heinz, missing him more than anything.