‘I was a carefree soul’

‘My mother deserves a statue,’ says Irene Bruning (1942). ‘After my father was executed for his work in the resistance in December 1944, she was on her own with five small children. She guided us through everything well’.
The six of them made music at home often. Playing guitar or piano, singing polyphonic while washing the dishes.
‘I was a carefree soul; we grew up in a cheerful and happy family. Although I sometimes saw my mother wipe her eyes with the tip of the apron’.

Her father was Johannes van Zanten. He helped people who were in hiding; raided population registers and prisons with his Betuwe gang. His most significant act was the Tilburg stamp raid in January 1944. When raiding a distribution office, the resistance got hold of 105,000 control stamps and 700 blank identity cards. He also escorted dozens of Allied soldiers across the river Waal to liberated territory.
Irene has no memories of her father. ‘In our beautiful room hung a portrait, a drawing of a man which I found a bit scary. I would pass it quickly and never asked about it, as it made my mother sad. That was my father, but other fathers were just portraits on the wall…’.

The older children knew more. The eldest two, her brothers Dick and Jan, were also at Van Zanten’s reburial at Kesteren cemetery on 3 July 1945. ‘We lived next door, we played there sometimes. My little brother once asked me, pointing at a gravestone: when will our father come out of that house?’

Irene shows photos of the reburial. She points to her mother, small in stature, standing among family members. All dressed in black. Her brothers, little boys, wearing shorts. Men in uniform of the Dutch Domestic Armed Forces form a guard of honour with their rifles.

After the liberation, resistance fighters helped her out. ‘She could go to them for everything’. Her eldest brother Dirk Hermanus took on certain parental tasks early on. For instance, he drop off his sister for sleepovers. ‘He really was too young for those kinds of tasks, he found that hard too’.

Certain fellow villagers weren’t always kind to her mother. ‘She did not live up to the perceived image of a war widow. They felt she should’ve been a grieving woman, but my mother left her tears at home’. After the war, affected families were giving financial aid by the 40-45 Foundation. Also, she had been given some money when she got married. She was able to manage with her five children’.

This caused jealousy with some of the villagers. Once, her cloak was taken off the coat rack and secretly ‘tried on’ by some of the women. They had a lot of fun in doing so. ‘My mother got very sad. She never went to that club again’.
The Van Zanten children also experienced hardship at school. At secondary school in Rhenen, Irene was seated next to a girl who also lost her father. The first school trip was to Germany – barely ten years after the war. Irene, of course, was the only one not allowed to go.

The oldest son Dik went to the HBS in Tiel to study. His report card was signed off by their mother. The headmaster sent him back with the message: get your father to sign off on the report card. ‘Sad things just after the war. My younger sister Jannie also experienced some of it. But by then, people were starting to forget the war a bit. Of course, that did not apply to people who had lost their loved ones’.

Interview with Irene Bruning, daughter executed Betuwe resistance fighter Johannes van Zanten
By: Ineke Inklaar