‘My father wanted to flee with his ship’

Riky de Beijer (1934) evacuated with a large party from Gendt in October 1944. ‘Our family had ten children including a baby. Also accompanying us were my grandparents, an adult cousin and two children of an aunt and uncle’. They had died along with their eldest child on 30 September 1944 in an Allied bombing raid in Gendt. The trio were buried rolled in sheets. ‘We had to evacuate shortly after’. Two older children from that family were send elsewhere. ‘We didn’t see them for months.’

German soldiers had brought the cousins to the De Beijer family. ‘Those soldiers had taken them to the doctor first, on bicycles. My niece had shards everywhere; my nephew was missing two fingers. The doctor provisionally stitched them up by candlelight. My cousin was in a lot of pain, for a long time. My mother had to rebandage him during the evacuation. When the Canadians came, they restitched his hand. After that the pain was gone’.

Her mother slept with the cousins in the basement, the rest of the family in an air-raid shelter behind the house. Until a German came to tell them they had to leave. With everyone else in the whole street. Her father was a barge captain, his ship The Four Brothers was moored on the river Waal. ‘That’s where we went. He thought; next week the liberators will be here’. The group stayed in the hold. At night, her father went into the polder to milk the cows, her mother made porridge.

After a few days, they heard shouting: ‘Raus! Her father wanted to go upstairs, but the adult cousin offered to go as he had no family. ‘He was walking down the plank, when a soldier said: “Zwei Schritte zurück”. He was shot. My father buried Wim in the polder’. Riky’s father wanted the ship to drift off from the shore. ‘Without an engine, so that it wouldn’t make noise. He waited for fog to leave unseen. But that failed’.

They went to Pannerden, over the dyke, as planes passed overhead. ‘Stupid of us, we were easily visible. We should have taken the lower path. After an overnight stay with a farmer, they moved on.

Large families had to go to Friesland. ‘My father didn’t want that, in his mind the war would over soon. As a sand and gravel shipman, he had many connections with stone factory’s and wanted to go to Havikerwaard near De Steeg’. On the way, they passed the city of Zevenaar. ‘My father knew that his blind and sick mother had been taken there in a Red Cross wagon. He went to see her; we waited by the side of the road. When he came back, he told us she died’.

In Havikerwaard, the group stayed in the canteen for workers at Jurgens stone factory. ‘In the middle of the room stood a big pot-bellied stove. We slept in a row on the floor on a tarpaulin with straw, my grandparents slept on a gifted bed’. Her sister, who had broken an arm, slept in the house of factory workers. ‘Her arm was set with a little plank, sleeping wasn’t possible in that room’.

On Christmas 1944, Evi Jurgens, the daughter of the director of the stone factory, taught the evacuated children a Christmas play with lots of carols. The boys were given rags around their shoulders and pretended to be shepherds. ‘I still know some of the songs’.

‘We didn’t even know we were liberated. We heard it through the grapevine. De Steeg was over an hour’s walk’. Upon returning, the house was found to be relatively unscathed, the ship was still in one piece. We no longer had any furniture and got given new ones from Zeeland. ‘We were happy to go back to school. Having to flee our home, it’s always stayed with me. When I see refugees on TV, I think: That’s how we used to walk. Let’s hope something like this never happens again’.

Interview with Riky Schouten-De Beijer (1934), evacuee from Gendt
By: Ineke Inklaar