The Heart Has Reasons (31 page)

This allowed me to be in secret contact with Siem de Vries. He was the man representing the labor union in the mine, so he was able to walk all over too. We became very good friends. Every day, I had to write down in a log where I was going to be. When Siem needed to talk, he would look in that log, and come and find me. Outside of the mine, we didn’t associate with each other. Everyone knew that he was a big socialist and that I was a Catholic. It would have looked suspicious.

I had no telephone in my house, but Siem de Vries had one because he was with the labor union. And he was in contact with a big man in the Resistance named Gill. Gill would phone Siem from Amsterdam, and Siem would come to me and say, “We need to hide so and so.” The job Tilla and I spent the most time on was hiding people. This also meant looking for addresses where people who were on the run could stay.

I would go to someone who already had an onderduiker and say, “Do you know someone else who might help?” And if he said that he knew someone, then
he
would go and talk to that person. If that worked out, he would give me an address, and I would say, “Tell them that I will come tomorrow night with the onderduikers.”

I found out that those people I had in my hands had tremendous
endurance. They went through so much. I knew a man who lived for two years in an attic. The couple who hid him had four children of their own, but the man had nowhere else to go, and they wanted to save him. So they kept him up there, and he couldn’t come down. If the family downstairs had company, he couldn’t even flush the toilet. In the winter-time he was there, too: no heating, no light—nothing. Two times I went to him and sat with him and held him. I had to hold him. When I came into that attic, it was freezing cold. Terrible—nothing but a bed. Not even a chair to sit on. He lay there all day in that bed, pale and cold. Every time I looked into his eyes I thought, My God—what these people are going through! And that man, he survived the war.

Once, three of us from the Resistance had to meet a certain Jewish family at the train station. I was to take the child. The station was very crowded because the buses weren’t running. And then they arrived, those people, and we walked over to them. I went in between, and took the child from the mother, and walked away with him. And that child, four or five years old, never cried for his father or mother, as small as he was. He just walked away with me, a total stranger, and left his parents.

I tell you, that was the hardest damn thing I ever did, handling those children. I can’t explain it to you, but I still feel it. The woman went one way, the father another, and I walked off with the child. For four months, those parents didn’t know where the child was—and I couldn’t tell them, because I didn’t know where
they
were. When I found out, I took the child to see his parents, despite the risk. I felt I had to do that.

I believe more people would have helped, but they were too scared. In the beginning the Germans didn’t talk about the Jews, but in 1941, they started putting notices up on the shop windows and in the newspapers saying that anyone who helped the Jews would be arrested. At first they didn’t say they would kill you. But after a while, you knew that if they came for you, you would never return.

Yah, so it was just fear. People lived close to each other, and not everyone could be trusted. There were some people who disliked the Jews, even though they had never known any Jewish people. And don’t forget that in some churches they were saying that the Jews killed Jesus. There was always something against the Jews. Then there were the Dutch people who were collaborating with the Germans. Those were not just a few. I mean, one third of the mayors had joined the NSB.

In 1942 the raids began. One day a policeman came to our door and told
Tilla that the Germans were coming to our street. He was a good man; he went to each house to warn everyone. Tilla got a message to me at the mine and I came home right away. We were hiding a Jewish family in our house—a couple with a young boy. The boy was supposed to move somewhere else, but he hadn’t gone yet because he had pneumonia.

Tilla started to put away all their things. She sandwiched their clothes between our clothes in the drawers. She hid their personal items. But in the cellar was a cache of about forty weapons that had been left by the policeman who used to live in the house. He wanted me to get them to the Dutch Resistance, but I hadn’t had time to move them. And now, the Gestapo were coming, and I had a cellar full of weapons. What to do? Then an idea came to me: we had an old vacuum cleaner that used a canvas bag to collect the dust and dirt. I attached this canvas bag to the air intake. Then I brought it to the top of the cellar stairs and turned it on. You should have seen the dust! After it had settled, it made it look as though no one had been down there for years.

We’d already gotten false papers for the people we were hiding so that they could not be identified as Jewish. We gave the boy a note and sent him to stay with someone we knew on another street. The mother worked as a nurse at the tuberculosis sanitarium, and she could stay overnight there for a week. But the father refused to go with her. “It’s a false alarm,” he said. “They wouldn’t come here.” We tried to reason with him, but our time was running out. Finally, Tilla said, “If you won’t leave, then
we’re
leaving.” And the man was barely one hundred yards out the door when the Gestapo arrived.

Ten, fifteen Nazis surrounded the house shouting “
Sie! Komm her!
” and all the things more. They came in fairly rude and rough, and started searching. They didn’t ask where, what, or how. And then the man in charge, Commandant Müller, stomped in.

We were lucky in many ways. To validate the ration coupons you needed to paste a small stamp on them—without that stamp, you couldn’t get food. So I had some rolls of those stamps sitting in the cupboard. We’d forgotten about them, but I had always told Tilla, “
Never
clean in there.” So when the man who was searching picked up a cup and saw that it was dusty, he looked at Tilla as if he thought she was a terrible housekeeper, and walked away in disgust. But two of those cups were full of validation stamps. They had been issued by the government, but we had stolen them. If he had found them, we would’ve been finished. I wouldn’t be sitting here now.

So they’re asking me this and that, and accusing us of
everything
. And
I kept on saying, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’ve lived here many years. I work in the mines.” They said, “Yah, we know where
you’re
working.”

They treated Tilla very rough. She was scared, and I was too. I thought it might be the end for us, that they would shoot us before they left. Then Müller started interrogating us. The questions he asked would make you so confused that you didn’t know what to say anymore. But Tilla was very brave.

I knew that they would go down in the cellar. But I acted first to turn it to our advantage. I said, “Herr Müller, I know you’re going to search the house from bottom to top, and I want to show you that I have nothing to hide. Let’s start with the cellar. I’ll take you down there.” He glared at me. I went on, “Müller, you are accusing me of all kinds of things, but you’re going to find out that I am innocent. Follow me down to the cellar.” Now, if there’s one thing the SS couldn’t stand, it was to be told what to do by a civilian. He opened the cellar door, shined his flashlight down the dusty stairs, and said, “Aach, there’s nothing there.” Then he shouted to his men to clear out. But just as he was going, he grabbed me by my hair, and pulled my head back. “I’m going to get you someday. I’ll get you while you’re sleeping,” and
crack
!—he slapped me in the face.

After he left, Tilla, who we didn’t even know was pregnant, started to bleed very heavily. Then everything came out, and the doctor who examined her told us that she’d had a miscarriage. He said, “You will never have children.” And that is the price we paid—she and I.

Let me tell you about what happened on April 20, 1944—I remember the date well, because it was Hitler’s birthday and the Germans were celebrating all over. It was on that day that we went down to the cellar and dug out the rifles and pistols; there were about forty of them. Some men from the Resistance came with a truck, and within ten minutes we had them out of there.

But just as we were crossing some railroad tracks, the truck shook, rocked, and then stopped. What was worse: four German soldiers came walking by. “
Was ist das?
” they demanded. “Well, we work at the mine in Heerlen, and we had to go to another mine to get some spare parts for the mineshaft. And now our truck has stalled. But I must congratulate you because today is Hitler’s birthday!” We had two bottles of genever with us—that’s a Dutch gin, popular with miners—so I said to them, “Let’s drink to your Führer’s good health.” And the six of us polished
off two bottles of genever. And you know what? They helped us push the truck!

I was starting to get used to this mixture of pathos, excitement, and gallows humor
that made up our conversation. Ted broke into hearty laughter, and I found myself
thinking that perhaps this was how he got through the war. I asked him if he laughed
back then, also.

You must never forget that, even in misery, there can still be a lot of fun. Of course I laughed. And if you sat with the Jewish people who, you know, were really in trouble, they always tried to find a way to laugh. They told jokes, all kinds, especially jokes making fun of the Germans. Let me see if I can remember any . . .

One of the songs the German army sang was “
Wir Fahren Gegen
Engeland
”—“We’re on Our Way to England.” So once a troop was singing that song as they goosestepped down our street in Heerlen, and the Jewish man here in the house sang, “
Plons, plons
” at the end of each line. “Splash, splash.” You know, like they were going to march straight into the North Sea. Ha, ha. Just remember: life is too serious to be taken seriously.

Tell me about some of the people you hid.

Our favorite was a child named Michael—we kept him here at the house. Michael was a good boy who enjoyed playing with the little wooden figures that I carved for him. After we’d been looking after him for a few months, I asked him, “Michael, what is the difference between our house and the other houses where you have been?” And he said, “You and Tilla have given me love all over the place.”

We had young, old, rich, poor—you name it. One fellow, Mr. Engel, had such good false papers that he was able to get a job in the coal mine. And his wife worked at the hospital. Just out in the open. Nothing could happen to those people. As far as anyone could tell, they were not Jewish.

Mrs. Engel had blue eyes, but to be on the safe side, Tilla would bleach her dark hair blond with peroxide. Mr. Engel didn’t look Jewish at all, but when he got his job in the mine, he came to me and said “Ted, but, uh, I am circumcised.” He was worried about the big shower area that all the miners had to walk through to get cleaned up. I said to him, “Man, don’t you worry about it—there are plenty of guys like that in the mine.” [
laughs
]

The craziest time was when “The Singer” came to live with us. I’d never seen anything like this girl. One day Gill phoned Siem, and Siem came to me and said, “We have a German-Jewish girl we don’t know what to do with. We have the biggest problem with this girl because we can’t get her to stay inside. Ted, you are the only one who can handle her.” I said, “No, man. I don’t want to do that.” But after thinking it over, it seemed to me that we had to help the girl. So they brought her here by train from Amsterdam.

The first thing she did was to tell me she was a singer. “But you’re not going to sing in this house,” I told her. “We can’t have that.” All the houses on the street were close together, and when the windows were open, anyone walking by could hear everything. So I said, “You can do whatever you want but not
that
. And don’t go outside, either, because I can tell you are a girl who likes to go outside.”

She’d been with us for about a week when one night we heard the Germans marching into town—they had hobnailed boots so you could hear them coming from far away. It was late in the evening, and we heard the clackety-clack-clack. Whenever they marched through, we always got scared, Tilla and I. We never talked about it; we just listened as they went passing by. But that night there came a knock on the door.

That German girl ran out of her room, and—can you believe it?—
she
opened the door
. Standing there was a German soldier. Just a common foot soldier, thank God, who didn’t know the road. So she calls out, “He needs directions.” I went outside with him; he was only about eighteen years old—you know, an innocent boy. We walked down the road together, and I showed him where he needed to go.

But when I came back in I said to that girl, “Look: I don’t know your name, and I don’t want to know your name,
but you are going to leave this
house.
” She stamped her foot and said, “If you mess with me, you’ll be sorry.” I said “Calm down, everything will be all right.” So I went to Siem, and Siem phoned Gill.

Gill said we should take her to the train station and buy her a one-way ticket to Amsterdam. Siem asked him what he was going to do when she got there and he said, “Nothing.” Just leave her there. But Tilla, God bless her, said, “Ted, you can’t do that. That poor girl, all alone in Amsterdam, a Jewish girl,” and all the things more. So we gave her money—about fifty guilders, which was a lot in those days—and then we put her on the train. Once again there was peace in the house.

Two days later there was a knock at our front door. I opened it and there she stood: The Singer. She remembered the way back, the name
of the street, the number of the house. She was not stupid, that girl. She said, “You put me on the train to Amsterdam, and nobody came for me. I hid in the railroad station for two days. Now I’ve come back, and good luck getting rid of me this time.” So I went to Siem; Siem called Gill. Gill asked, “How is it possible that she found her way back to you?” Well, Siem told him that I had given the girl more than a one-way ticket.