There were over two hundred radios hidden in the attic

In 1935, my four brothers, my little sister, and I became orphans. We were taken to the orphanage, where “father and mother” De Ridder cared for a total of nineteen children of all ages.

On the night of 10 May 1940, Mien, the orphanage’s seamstress, was woken by the roar of countless airplanes. She quickly alerted the orphanage parents, who decided to wake all the children. There we stood, half-asleep and confused, in the hallway. Early the next morning, around 7:00 AM, the Red Cross arrived at our door. The orphanage had to be evacuated immediately! We were temporarily housed in the De Harmonie community hall. Cooking for over twenty people on a single butane stove was a real challenge! Two days later, we evacuated to Montfoort. The boys cycled there with father De Ridder. Along the way, we had to dive into a ditch near Culemborg to escape German gunfire, but we made it safely to Montfoort. In that cramped worker’s house, we squeezed in with father and mother De Ridder, nineteen children, our gardener-handyman Hoogteijling and his family, and Mien, the seamstress! Fortunately, after two days, we were allowed to return. It took us a full week to clean up the mess left behind.

The first year of the war was relatively peaceful for us. Notary Van Everdingen, a member of the orphanage’s board, had struck a firm agreement with the German Ortskommandant: no German soldiers would be quartered in the orphanage. This agreement held until early 1945, despite the high number of Germans in Buren. They were stationed in the elementary school, De Harmonie, and even in the hay barn at the Rijnberk family’s farm. In the second year of the war, the Germans ordered all radios to be turned in. Because the orphanage was officially off-limits to German soldiers, many Buren residents secretly brought their radios there. Father De Ridder took the risk, and at one point, there were over two hundred radios hidden in the attic under a tarpaulin.

A deeply traumatic event for me was the sudden death of father De Ridder in March 1943. I was there when he suffered the heart attack that took his life. He was a widely respected man—honest and just. After his passing, the board wanted to appoint a male head alongside Mrs. De Ridder. She threatened to resign on the spot. In the end, they relented, and our orphan mother continued to care for her nineteen children, with some outside help and assistance from the gardener until 1953. Help even came from an unexpected source: the German cook Heinrich secretly gave her a large piece of meat every week to make sure the children wouldn’t go hungry.

With our orphan father gone, the boys had a bit more “freedom.” In 1943, three of them, including my brother Piet, took full advantage of it. A few German trucks were parked on Nachtegaalstraat, and the boys quickly discovered they were filled with things to make any young heart race: bayonets, binoculars, and more. They climbed over the wall, grabbed what they could from under the tarpaulin, and threw it into the garden. But before they could stash it inside, two burly German soldiers climbed over the wall, caught them, and hauled them off to the Groene Kruis building on Gasthuisstraat. There, they were forced to strip naked and run circles around a table—at each corner stood a soldier with a whip. Their screams were so piercing that concerned neighbors sounded the alarm. Eventually, they were sent back, bloodied and bruised, and had to recover for weeks.

Another moment that left a deep impression on us was the death of one of our orphan sisters, Bertha de Smale. She passed away on 17 September 1944, from a throat abscess. She was surrounded by all of us orphans, while the sky above was filled with planes fighting in the Battle of Arnhem.

Near the end of the war, despite the earlier agreement, eight German officers were housed in the orphanage’s guest rooms—right next to the girls’ dormitory! Each evening, handyman Hoogteijling hauled heavy furniture to barricade the hallway door leading to the girls’ quarters. But the real problem was the officers’ late-night drinking at Beekman’s restaurant. They would return well past midnight, completely drunk, and start hammering away on the piano, keeping the girls awake. At her wits’ end, Mrs. De Ridder sought help from Dr. Ouwehand. Soon after, a sign appeared on the orphanage door in large letters: “Diphtheria! Contagious!” Within a week, the officers were gone.