Constantly moving and spending months in the cellar

My parents owned a pub at Voorstad 12. I was four years old when the war started. The real hardship didn’t begin until September 1944. I was still very young, but I clearly remember the intense shelling from the other side of the river Waal, fired by the British. That autumn, we had to relocate multiple times. When Voorstad was declared a restricted zone, all families on the odd-numbered side of the street, including ours, were forced to evacuate.

Together with four other families, my parents—along with my four older sisters and me—moved to Oliemolenwal, where we stayed in a warehouse for several weeks. After that, we moved again, this time to Hoveniersweg. There we found shelter in the cellar of the Patronage building. We lived here for six weeks, until we were forced to leave once more. The Germans had decided to demolish the large Van Wijk family villa and the music school on Voorstraat, using the rubble to create a barrier against the Allies. Along with the same families from Voorstad, we ended up in the Nieuwe Bak on the Grotebrugse Grintweg.

For months, we spent most of our time in cellars. By then, the schools had closed as well. In mid-January, during the mass evacuation, we were supposed to travel to Friesland. We had to make our way to the ferry at Rijswijk, trudging through the snow in wooden clogs. Proper shoes were almost impossible to find by then. In the end, we never made it that far. Instead, we stopped in Zoelen, at the public primary school on Jeudestraat. They had laid out straw in the classrooms and provided us with blankets. Five days later, we moved on to Erichem, where we were taken in by the Heuff family on their farm. My father helped in the stables, while my mother and eldest sisters worked in the kitchen and around the house. We stayed there for several months after the liberation. As a token of gratitude, my father gave Anton and Marietje Heuff the very last bottle of gin from his pub—a valuable barter item during the occupation! We were treated well there.