Eva's Story (3 page)

In August Pappy took us to a small boarding house in Zandvoort, Holland, for a holiday by the sea. The weather was perfect. We spent two carefree weeks running along the dunes, swimming together in the sea and splashing each other with water. Everything seemed glorious. I was full of joy until we returned to Brussels and school at the end of the month.

1 September 1939 Germany invades Poland

3 September Britain declares war on Germany

4 September France declares war on Germany

At the beginning of September a lot happened very quickly. When war between England and Germany broke out Pappy realized that borders between Holland and Belgium were likely to close so he took immediate steps for us to live with him in Holland. As alien refugees, however, we had to wait until February 1940 for the appropriate papers to come through and only then were we able to join him.

We rented a furnished apartment on the first floor in a secluded, modern square in Amsterdam, Niew Zuid at 46 Merwedeplein. Although life was full of uncertainty and fear because of the war, I felt much more content and secure because we were together again as a family. That, for me, was the only thing that mattered.

I was growing fast. As soon as we arrived in Holland Pappy stood Heinz and me up against our bedroom wall and drew pencil marks of our heights.

‘Now you have made your marks here,' he said, ‘so this room is yours.'

When he measured me a month later, I was delighted to discover I had grown half an inch – and so had Heinz.

My brother and I shared the back bedroom which led out on to a small balcony with an icebox in the corner. Once a week the ice man came round and Heinz would have to carry up a huge block of ice wrapped in sacking to place at the bottom of the fridge where Mutti kept milk, butter, cheese and meat. Sometimes we would creep out in the middle of the night and help ourselves to a sausage for a midnight feast. We would sit on our beds munching and whispering and having fun. After the formality of the boarding house it was wonderful to have our own home.

Residents in the square had to take part in fire and air-raid drills, so Mutti and Pappy soon made friends with other Jewish families. There was a spirit of comradeship between them, with neighbours helping to keep each other cheerful. Pappy made good friends with a neighbour, Martin Rosenbaum. He was a kind man, married to an Austrian Christian, Rosi. They had no children but he often complimented Pappy about us.

‘What delightful children you have, Erich,' he would say, ‘and so talented.'

This was certainly true of Heinz. Mutti had been delighted to find a baby grand piano in the lounge of the apartment. Both she and Heinz played well and Heinz was soon taking piano lessons again. He would practise Chopin exercises followed by jazz music which he could play by ear. ‘
Bei mir bist du sheyn
, again and again,
bei mir bist du sheyn
means you're grand.' I loved dancing round the room whilst he played, pretending I was on the stage while Mutti or Pappy applauded me.

Mutti found a cellist and violinist amongst her new acquaintances. They came up to the apartment once a week to practise chamber music. It was too much for Pappy. As the squeaky violin started he would say he was ‘just going out to get some fresh air' and nip over to Martin's apartment to escape. I would see them strolling away together.

Once again I was sent to the local primary school and I resigned myself to having to learn yet another tongue. It was Dutch but easier this time because the Flemish I had heard in Belgium once a week was similar. At least I could understand a little: most Dutch primary schools taught French and by now my French was almost fluent.

This had its drawbacks because I thought I was better than the teacher. Whenever she mispronounced a French word – which was often – I corrected her. It made me feel very important but she was furious and took it out on me during the rest of the lessons. She was really nasty to me but I didn't care because it made me a great success with the rest of the class.

The daily routine at home gave me the security I had not experienced for a long time. In the early spring evenings I could hear the sounds of children playing outside in the square below. It seemed a perfect place for games – a no-through road in the shape of a triangle with a grassy space at one end edged with newly planted bushes and trees. All the youngsters from the surrounding flats and streets gathered there to size each other up and play together.

Many Jewish families had been living in that area since 1933 so by this time the Jewish children were in tight cliques which tended to keep newcomers out. I would stand around waiting for someone to talk to me, anxious to join in, but they did not want me. I was glad when some of my Dutch schoolfriends came into the square and asked me to be their friend. I suppose I was a novelty but before long I was playing marbles with them, marking out patches for hopscotch or playing skipping games. Then Pappy bought me a black second-hand bicycle to ride and do tricks on like everybody else. In the early months of 1940, as I rode around with my friends wearing the required uniform of navy raincoat and Wellington boots, I felt at last that I really belonged. Often, when it wasn't raining, there were enough children to make up teams for games like rounders. That was the best part because it required the process of picking sides and as I was a good batter and runner everyone suddenly wanted to pick me, which restored my self-esteem.

Gradually I began to recover my natural high spirits. Life seemed to be improving all round. Birds sang in the lengthening April evenings and, after reporting home from school, I would dash out into the square to join in the games and become one of the gang. At six my mother would call me in for supper but I was always reluctant to leave and would protest loudly – after all, some children were still outside after eight! – but Pappy insisted that I was not to be out later than supper time. Unlike Mutti, I was not gentle and docile: I had inherited Pappy's strong character and he enforced many ‘house arrests' on me for stubbornness. I was so brimful of verve and energy that I always wanted to be outside in the thick of things.

In time I began to make special friends. I developed a crush on Suzanne Lederman. She had luminous violet eyes, peach skin and thick dark plaits that reached halfway down her back. I hung around her all the time but she wanted to be with two lively girls called Anne and Hanne. This selective group of three went around together. We nicknamed them Anne, Hanne and Sanne because they were an inseparable trio, each of them a little more sophisticated than the rest of us – more like teenagers. They did not want to join in with our childish games and would sit together watching us and giggling over the boys, which I thought was silly. They were always looking at fashion magazines and collecting pictures of filmstars.

I could look across to Suzanne's bedroom window from my room and sometimes we would send messages to one another. One warm Sunday afternoon when I was sitting with Suzanne on the steps of our apartment, she confided in me how much she admired her friend Anne Frank because she was so stylish.

It was quite true. Once, when Mutti had taken me to the local dressmaker to have a coat altered, we were sitting waiting our turn and heard the dressmaker talking to her customer inside the fitting room. The customer was very determined to have things just right.

‘It would look better with larger shoulder pads,' we could hear her saying in an authoritative tone of voice, ‘and the hemline should be just a little higher, don't you think?'

We then heard the dressmaker agreeing with her and I sat there wishing I was allowed to choose exactly what I wanted to wear. I was flabbergasted when the curtains were drawn back and there was Anne, all alone, making decisions about her own dress. It was peach-coloured with a green trim.

She smiled at me. ‘Do you like it?' she said, twirling around.

‘Oh, yes!' I said breathlessly in great envy. I was not up to that standard! Anne appeared so much more grown-up than me, even though I was a month older. She attended the local Montessori school and was a whole year ahead of me in her school work.

Anne's apartment was opposite ours in the same square. I often went over there because I wanted to be near Suzanne. The Franks also had a large tabby cat that purred appreciatively when I picked it up. I longed to fondle a pet of my own but Mutti firmly refused to allow me one. I would wander into the sitting room to cuddle the cat and find Mr Frank watching me with amused eyes. He was much older than Pappy and very kind. When he realized how little Dutch I knew he always made a point of talking to me in German. Mrs Frank would prepare lemonade for the children and we would sit drinking together in the kitchen.

Heinz had developed a crush on two girls, both of whom lived in the same square as us. One, Ellen, was a Jewish immigrant like ourselves but the other, Jopie, was a pretty Dutch blonde. I resented the attention he paid them – in fact, I did not like the idea of my brother paying attention to any other girl. I became quite jealous. After all, I was his little sister and I was intensely proud of him, of his musical gifts and brilliant mind. Apart from this nothing much else troubled me. Spring was here and I loved Amsterdam where my life was at last returning to normal.

10 May 1940 German invasion of Holland and Belgium

We had thought that we were safe living in Holland and were settling down to enjoying our new life when, to everyone's shock, the Nazis invaded Holland.

On 13 May my family with thousands of others went down to the port trying to get on a ship to escape to England. We queued for hours but in vain. All the ships had either left or were full and we were eventually turned back and told we were too late.

14 May 1940 German Luftwaffe bombs Rotterdam to force capitulation of Holland. After five days Holland surrenders
.

The country was now under the total control of the Nazis. German soldiers were everywhere. Although the Germans announced at first that nothing was going to change, each week new regulations to restrict us were announced over the radio and on posters.

Hitler decreed that Jewish children had to go to Jewish schools that were to be opened specially for them. They were not to be allowed to mix with other children in Dutch schools and Jewish teachers had to be found as Christians were not allowed to teach us.

Until that time Heinz had attended the lyceum (secondary school). He now had to go to the Jewish School where he met Margot Frank, Anne's elder sister, and they became quite friendly, often doing their homework together. They had a lot in common – both were academically gifted and ambitious to do well in their studies. My parents managed to find a private tutor for me and I attended his home with some other children to continue my school work.

All Jews now had to be inside their homes before eight every evening and were not allowed to attend cinemas, concerts or theatres. We were not allowed to use the trams or trains. We could only do our shopping between the hours of three and five in the afternoon and we could only use Jewish shops. All Jews had to wear a bright yellow Star of David (Magen David) on their clothes so that they were instantly recognizable.

On 19 February 1941 400 young Jews from Amsterdam Zuid aged between twenty and thirty-five were rounded up. On 25 February, the Dutch trade unions organized a General Strike in sympathy and all transport and services in Amsterdam came to a halt for two days. The Germans threatened to take hostages and kill them if normal life did not resume immediately. Even then some brave Dutch Christians started to wear the yellow star in sympathy with us and to confuse the Germans.

Mutti had to buy the stars for our clothes. Every outside piece of clothing had to show a yellow star.

‘Never take off your coat if your dress has not got a star on it,' Mutti warned me as I watched her sew them onto my navy coat and jumper. ‘If any Jew is stopped and is not showing the star the Germans will arrest them.'

As time went by, during 1941 and 1942, we began to feel increasingly frightened. Pappy was at home with us now because he had been prevented from travelling to the factory in Brabant. He came up with the idea of manufacturing small round snake-leather handbags from cast-off snake-skins and soon the business became a flourishing cottage industry giving work to others who had lost their jobs because of the Nazi decrees. It gave him the means to support us and save for a time when he himself might not be able to work.

He went out to many meetings to discuss the worsening situation with other Jews. One evening he sat us down together and warned us that we might have to go into hiding. He felt we would have a better chance if we separated and went into two hiding places. When I started to cry at the thought he explained that continuing the family line was important to him, that people achieved a kind of immortality through the memories of their children and grandchildren, and that we would double our chances of survival by splitting up. Meanwhile he was going to acquire false identity papers for the time when we would be forced to conceal our Jewish identity.

The Dutch had organized themselves to form underground resistance groups to fight the hated Germans. Pappy made contact with them and they provided him with false papers which identified us as true Dutch citizens, not Jewish, with quite different names and background.

Mutti was to be Mefrouw Bep Ackerman but although I remembered my new name, which was Jopie Ackerman, I kept forgetting my false date of birth and where I had been born, so Mutti had to keep coaching me.

Naturally Heinz knew his part off by heart. By this time he was fifteen, tall, and rather Jewish-looking which worried him. I did not need to worry because I was born with bright blue eyes, fair skin and fair hair so that I looked exactly like any other little Dutch girl. Mutti had the tall, elegant stance of a Scandinavian and her looks would not give her away either. She sold some of her jewellery to have some ready cash on hand.