We always kept our distance

At home, we were four girls. I was the third in line. My father was a watchmaker and optician, with a shop and workshop at home. I helped him from a young age and gradually became involved in the work. He taught me the trade, and when he stopped, I took over the business. My oldest sister was a seamstress, and my other sister also worked in the business. She would pick up work from clients, my father and I would repair it, and she would return it to the customers’ homes. During the war, the business continued running, although of course, there was much less clientele.

Shortly after the capitulation, we had German soldiers billeted in our house. I remember that the officer coming to our door and making a joke about it: “Four girls, well, you’ll get four soldiers!” But my mother didn’t find it funny. There was never anything between us girls and those young men. They stayed for quite a long time, but we always kept our distance. One time, that distance was somewhat reduced, and that was in the first year of the war at Christmas. We were playing music and singing Christmas carols when suddenly the Germans knocked on the door and asked if they could join us. They were, of course, very homesick! Four of them slept in a small room at the back of the house, and they had dug a latrine in our orchard, with a cloth hung around it. They made sure to cover the hole properly when they left. They had been told they were going to England. I still remember one of them sitting at the table, putting his gun to his own head and saying, “I’d rather die here than go there!” I screamed at him not to do it, and fortunately, he didn’t. And they never went to England.

While the four Germans were staying in the small room, two people in hiding, Kees and Henk, were staying below. One had come to us via my aunt in Geldermalsen when things were getting too dangerous there, and the other was from Asperen. Both had gone into hiding to avoid being sent to Germany as forced labourers. They always behaved very carefully, and the Germans never noticed them. Nor did they find out that my father had hidden a radio in a cupboard. Although we had handed one in when it was demanded in 1943, we had two more…

In the last winter months of 1944/1945, we housed evacuees from Zaltbommel. Us girls then started sleeping in the attic, so these people could sleep in our beds. Every evening when the couple went upstairs, he would say to her, “Would you like to go to the toilet?” And she would say, “I don’t need to.” But once she was upstairs, she suddenly had to, and she would come down the stairs again in the faint glow of a small oil lamp – as we had no electricity anymore. We were always afraid she would miss a step in the dark and fall!

What left a deep impression on me in those last winter months, were all the hungry people from Rotterdam, looking for food. We often had them at our door, and my mother was a truly good person. We didn’t have an abundance of food ourselves, but she never sent anyone away empty-handed or with an empty stomach. I still get moved when I think about it! We had to get up early to fetch milk from the farmers. I had a blue drinking can that I hid under my coat. I also harvested grain in the fields behind the mowers. When it was mowed by hand, a lot of stray stalks were left behind. Then we had what we called a ‘Boaz field,’ named after the Book of Ruth in the Bible!