This is another example of autobiographical writing (Remembering Events) written by JM.
Bergeijk, the Netherlands, Early Nineteen Forties.
It was over almost before it started. Germany managed to take a major part of Europe by means of the Blitzkrieg and, of course, Holland was a rich country and that was what Hitler was after. He also knew that the Dutch population wouldn’t put up too much resistance because their ties with Germany had always been close. So, in a matter of a few days, the Dutch resistance was no more, in some measure because the new Waterline, a defense line constructed to stop invasions, was no match for the bombers, but also because the Dutch army lacked the latest gadgets in warfare. The last war they were involved in had been just over a hundred years earlier and, exacerbating the sorry state of the army, there had been widespread pacifism during the two previous decades.
In order to get as much gain as possible out of Holland, Hitler decided that the Dutch population should be treated fairly well: everything would be as before but the Nazis would be in power. The Queen and her ministers had gone to England at the beginning of the war for safety reasons and so, for quite some time, that was how things were; everyone went about their business and for many people the changes in the power structure were hardly noticeable. This state of affairs continued until the Germans began to discriminate against the Jews and the deportations and concentration camps became common knowledge. The Dutch protested vehemently and started to strike. This of course was not tolerated by the Germans and resulted in swift and cruel punishment; it quickly became clear not only that they had absolute power but also that their intentions were anything but charitable. Things took a quick turn for the worse.
When the allies started moving up from the south and Holland had been partly liberated, the British government called for a rail strike. As a reaction to the strike, the Germans hermetically closed the part of the country that had not been liberated yet. The supply of food to the cities was cut off and a terrible hunger winter ensued during which many citizens lost their lives.
My grandparents, my mother, and her six brothers and sisters were living in Bergeijk in the south of Holland very close to the Belgian border. My grandfather had a considerable amount of inherited land which he rented out to farmers as well as a large house on a large estate with orchards, chicken coops and the like in the town of Bergeijk where the family lived - they were quite self-sufficient and my grandmother ruled the spread with an iron hand. My grandfather never worked a day in his life instead spending his time checking on his land tenants and collecting rents in his horse drawn carriage and playing the organ in the church. One day, at around four o’clock in the afternoon, they heard the front door being kicked and when they did not immediately open the door, shots rang out. My grandfather went to the door with a feeling of dread. There stood a small group of German officers, obviously drunk. “We had to be out of the house within an hour; otherwise, we would be shot,” my mother says as she tells me the story. They were allowed to go upstairs to collect some clothing and personal small items but everything else was to be left in the house; the officers had decided to take possession of the house and make it their temporary headquarters. My mother ran to the garden to open the rabbit and chicken coops so that the animals would not be killed by the Germans. With tears in their eyes, the family walked out of their house and down the street, not without first seeing how the Germans, young, power-hungry boys, stormed in and started ransacking the cabinets and armoires pulling out whatever caught their fancy, laughing at the stricken-looking family members. My mother and her family went to stay with neighbors.
When the war was over and the family returned to the house, the place was a shambles. The grand piano, my grandfather’s pride and joy, had been completely destroyed and his sheet music had been burned in the fire place. All the antique paintings were gone and so were the coffee and tea sets, my grandmother’s prized silver samovars, all the rest of the silverware, and all the antique furniture. The feather mattresses had been slashed – the Germans must have been looking for cash – and all my grandmother’s inherited cookware had also been taken. But they were the lucky ones; many of their friends and acquaintances had not fared as well, some had died from starvation, others had been shot because they had tried to resist, and many others had no house to return to.
Today, my mother is ninety-five years old. Two of her brothers and one of her sisters are still alive, all over ninety years old. Some of their short-term memory may be failing, but they all remember vividly what happened during those days of the war and there is not much variation in the story they tell about the loss of their house and their possessions. My parents lived in the United States for some years after my father retired and in that country my mother was often mistaken for a German because of her Dutch accent. It really annoyed her.
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