Our village was hit hard

I was thirteen when my father suddenly passed away at the age of forty. My mother entered the war as a widow with five children. We lived by the dike, opposite the Steenoven (brick works). Fortunately, we had a vegetable garden, chickens, rabbits, and a pig, so we were never truly destitute. But we did have to work hard from a young age to help around the house. After primary school, I attended the naaischool (sewing school) run by nuns, which cost 25 cents a week. There was no money for a diploma, but I did learn to sew well. That has been a great benefit throughout my life—to me, my daughters, and my granddaughters! When I got married in 1947, there was still hardly anything available in the shops. But the notary Baltussen, for whom I had worked as a kitchen maid for years, gave me a beautiful piece of fabric. From that, I sewed my own wedding dress.

When the war started, we fled to Dreumel due to the fighting around the Grebbeberg. We stayed there until after the Dutch capitulation, our family spread across different homes. But once the fighting was over, life returned somewhat back to normal. We rarely saw Germans—they were stationed on the other side of the Waal. From September 1944 onwards however, British and Canadian soldiers arrived. The British gave us white bread, and Dutch resistance fighters from Brabant were quartered in our attic.

As a family, we didn’t suffer greatly during the war, but our village was hit hard—especially after the milk strike in the spring of 1943. Farmers refused to supply milk. Strikes broke out everywhere in response to the Germans deporting hundreds of thousands of men to work in Germany. The Germans cracked down harshly. Many men from Wamel who had taken part in the strike were arrested and sent to Camp Vught, including one of my brothers. My future husband, whom I was already courting at the time, had gone into hiding after previously being forced to work in Germany.

Five of our fellow villagers were executed in the prison in Arnhem. Another five were sent to Buchenwald, including Piet, my sister’s fiancé. Piet was the only one to return alive, emaciated. He had endured unimaginable horrors, especially during the death march, when the camp was evacuated ahead of the advancing Russian troops. Those who could no longer walk and collapsed were shot on the spot. After the war, he hardly ever spoke about it.

During the liberation, I saw how local collaborators, who had joined the NSB, were beaten up. I didn’t think much of that.