Those words were the best review I have received and ever will receive.
In the period that followed, something extraordinary happened. The book about two unknown figures, which no one had had any commercial expectations for, started to gradually take on a life of its own. After a modest start, Sonny Boy, as the Dutch edition was titled after Waldy’s nickname, climbed its way up the bestseller list. And once it was there, it stubbornly held its place—first for months, and eventually for years.
Sonny Boy had become the kind of book that people recommended to each other: “You’ve got to read this.” It has become a book that, even now, fifteen years after it was first published, is still one of the top three most popular titles in Dutch high schools. It has been translated, endlessly reprinted, and was eventually even made into a film, which later served as the Dutch submission to the Oscars for the Best Foreign Language Film.
And no one, not even I, found as much joy in the book’s success as Waldy. Again and again he shared his story with the press, and each time he did, he seemed a little less broken and a little more confident. At the film premiere of Sonny Boy, he proudly accepted a standing ovation from the one thousand people in the audience. And later, he walked like a celebrity through the streets of Paramaribo with the film’s director and accepted everyone’s congratulations on the story of his father, the Surinamese Resistance hero.
Waldy, who had spent much of his adult life feeling like a cast-off, unwanted orphan, transformed into a Dutch-Surinamese prince, loved and cherished by everyone around him, just as he’d been as a little boy at home with his parents on the Seafront. And when he died a happy man in May 2012, all the Netherlands knew the story of Sonny Boy. His death was reported in every newspaper, and photos of him and his parents appeared on front pages around the country. As one of his sons put it at his widely attended funeral, his life had, despite everything, finally come to a happy end.
This story, which had started out as a conversation around the coffee machine, ended up being life changing for me as well. For starters, it convinced me that writing was my calling in life. But more than that, it taught me that although you cannot rewrite history, no matter how badly you might want to, you can give it a twist. And sometimes, such as in this case, you can even create a lot of good.
For a long time, it seemed that evil had triumphed in Waldy’s life. But in the end, it was no match for the power of his story.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I write books about both famous and nonfamous people, and each type comes with its own particular challenges. With the famous, you are often hindered as a biographer and researcher by the myths that people, sometimes the person in question, construct about their lives. Whereas with the nonfamous, you’re faced with the tremendous disadvantage that, unlike public figures, ordinary people tend to leave behind fewer traces. This is even more the case when your subjects disappeared without a trace sixty years prior to the start of your investigation—as with Rika van der Lans and Waldemar Nods.
At first, there seemed to be no surviving evidence of these two forgotten lives other than a couple of lines in the Weinreb Report, a few letters, and two photo albums filled with piles of yellowing, mostly undated photographs. At that time, I even toyed with the idea of telling their story in the form of a historical novel. But as I dug deeper into the main characters and more and more material surfaced, I realized that fiction, at least in this case, is simply no match for real life.
Given that I simply could not not tell this story, I wrote it based on the memories of those involved and information found in archives, and in doing so, I became fully guilty of what a Dutch critic once beautifully and aptly described as “plundering the fiction writer’s toolbox.” However, this doesn’t take away from the fact that the book is founded on authentic material and verifiable facts confirmed by the various people involved. The sources of all quotations can be found in the Sources section, along with a list of archives consulted and an abridged bibliography.
Like every reconstruction, this book was a puzzle, and it wouldn’t have been possible without all the people who helped me look for the pieces. There were too many of them to name here, but a few people simply cannot go unmentioned. For starters, there was, of course, Waldy Nods; his wife, Christine Nods-de Vries; and their children, Carina Frenken-Nods and Remko Nods. Without their enthusiasm and trust, this book would have never been possible. I also couldn’t have done it without the support of Rika’s youngest son from her first marriage, Henk, and her grandchildren, Haaije Jansen (Bertha’s son—Bertha had passed away), and Nynke Lopez Cardozo and Isabel Greydanus (Wim’s daughters). Unfortunately, Rika’s second son, Jan, found the past too painful to revisit and decided not to participate in the project. Out of sensitivity to his feelings, his family’s last name has been changed in the text.
Then there were the many nephews, nieces, cousins, friends, and other eyewitnesses who were happy to share their memories of Waldemar and Rika, namely, Anneke Swart-Renckens, Marcel van der Lans, Jan Rolandus Hagendoorn, Pie Springvloed, Juanita Treurniet, Georgette Treurniet, Henny Radelaar-Millar, Maggee Leckie-Millar, Tini Hewitt-Hennink, and—in Paramaribo—Muriel SamSin Hewitt and Christien van Russel. Also, the two survivors of the Pijnboomstraat raid, Dobbe Kirsh-Franken and Gerard van Haringen, were willing to tell their stories.
Though the form I chose for this story compelled me to leave scholars and experts out of the book as much as possible, that doesn’t mean I didn’t make liberal use of their knowledge and advice. In my quests through The Hague and Scheveningen, I was led by Dr. Bart van der Boom, Harold Jansen, Danny Verbaan, Aad Wagenaar, and Boris de Munnick. I traced the Nodses’ footsteps in the Dutch Resistance and the German concentration camps with the help of Dr. Hermann Kaienburg, Professor Andries van Dantzig, Margaretha de Bruijn-Chardon, Gisela Wieberdink-Söhnlein, Mies Wijnen, Leo van der Tas, and Bert and Lenie Intrès.
Then there were the heavily abused—by me, that is—employees of the various archives where I searched for clues about my main characters, people such as David Barnouw, Hubert Berkhout from the NIOD, Regina Grütter and Henri Giersthove from the Dutch Red Cross, Sierk Plantinga from the CABR Archive, Maikel Darson from the Bisschopshuis, Michael Kromodomtjo from the Centraal Bureau voor Burgerzaken, and Ernie Esajas from the Landsarchief—the latter three all located in Paramaribo. Professor André Loor, Dr. Jerry Egger, Heinrich Helstone, Laddy van Putten, Alphons Levens, Philip Dikland, Willy Oosterlen, Leonoor Wagenaar, the Vereniging Ons Suriname, and Pieter Bol from the Stichting Surinaamse Genealogie helped me navigate Suriname’s history. Also, special thanks to Carl Haarnack, owner of an excellent collection of books about the history of the former colony, which he lent me with great generosity.
The advice of Frans Bubberman, former director of Bosbouw van Suriname and one of the few people who had personally visited the colony Waldemar’s family had come from, as well as that of H. R. van Ommeren, descendant of Willem van Ommeren, was essential for describing the history of the Dageraad plantation as accurately as possible. (Initially, this early Surinamese history was included in the book’s manuscript, but I later cut it because it wasn’t considered relevant to the main plot.)
In the end, it was Cees de Kom, son of black Resistance hero Anton de Kom, who, without even realizing it, gave me the key to the story’s final mystery. He and his sister had been in contact with Waldemar’s fellow swimmer in the Baltic Sea, who had shared his story with them under the assumption that the man swimming beside him had been their father. However, Anton de Kom had died about a week before in the Sandbostel subcamp. In the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial Archives, it was confirmed that there was only one Surinamese man aboard the Cap Arcona, and that was Waldemar Nods.
Captain Robert Grabowski and the crew of his Marfret Normandie piloted me safely across the ocean and through tropical storm Anna, and the team at Nijgh & Van Ditmar publishers accompanied me with great dedication through the peaks and valleys of the sometime
s-turbulent creation process. I’m also very grateful to Em. Queridos Uitgeverij for the lovely jubilee edition published in honor of the book’s twenty-fifth printing, in which—in addition to all kinds of new photos—“The Dageraad” was included as a separate story.
Equally important were my own helpers, especially Jo Simons and Piroska Nijhof. They accompanied me in my travels, shared in my experiences, and helped me make sense of it all. They tolerated the fact that putting together the pieces of someone else’s puzzle often interfered with both my life and theirs, and above all, they were there to laugh in my face whenever I swore in all seriousness to never lose myself in a story again. But the one person to whom I owe the most gratitude for this book is Waldy’s daughter-in-law, Sefanja Nods-Muts, who first told me the story. She did everything in her power to make this book a reality, and through it all maintained a rock-solid faith in the realization of this project.
ARCHIVES AND INSTITUTES CONSULTED
Archiv Dokumentenhaus Neuengamme, Hamburg, Germany
Camp Vught National Monument, Netherlands
Centraal archief voor Bijzondere Rechtspleging, The Hague, Netherlands
Centraal Bureau voor Burgerzaken, Paramaribo, Suriname
Diocese of Suriname, Bisschopshuis Archive, Paramaribo, Suriname
Hendrik School Archives, Paramaribo, Suriname
Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Landsarchief Suriname, Paramaribo, Suriname
Municipal Register, The Hague, Netherlands
National Archives, The Hague, Netherlands
National Library of the Netherlands, The Hague, Netherlands
Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Oorlogsgravenstichting, The Hague, Netherlands
Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, Leiden, Netherlands
Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Stichting 1940–1945, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Stichting Oorlogs- en verzetsmateriaal, Groningen, Netherlands
Stichting voor Surinaamse Genealogie, Leiden, Netherlands
Stichting Vriendenkring Neuengamme, Buren, Netherlands
Surinaams Museum, Paramaribo, Suriname
Vrij in Suriname, Manumissieregister Database (see Vrij in Suriname, Volkstelling Burgerlijke Stand Database 1921)
SOURCES
Most of the quotations used in the text were found in various personal archives. For the sake of readability, the spelling and grammar have been adapted according to contemporary language standards.
1. Al Jolson, B. G. de Silva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson, “Sonny Boy,” from The Singing Fool, 1928.
2. Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler: A Memoir, trans. Oliver Pretzel (New York: Picador, 2002), 7. Originally published in 1937.
3. Prayer card for Lambertina van der Lans. Private archive W. Nods.
4. H. W. J. van der Lans, “In Memory of My First Holy Communion. To My Dear Parents.” 7 May 1903. Private archive W. Nods.
5. H. W. J. van der Lans, “In Memory of.”
6. N. Govers, Een Halve eeuw in Suriname 1866–1916 (’s-Hertogenbosch, Neth.: C. N. Teulings, 1916).
7. Jacques Samuels, Schetsen en typen uit Suriname (Paramaribo, Suriname: St. Rafael Boekhandel, 1944).
8. Govers, Een Halve.
9. Bertha Hagenaar’s diaries, 1930–1940. Private archive H. J. Jansen.
10. Jolson et al., “Sonny Boy.”
11. Hagenaar’s diaries.
12. Hagenaar’s diaries.
13. H. W. J. van der Lans to her son Henk, letters, 1940–1943. Private archive W. Nods.
14. H. W. J. van der Lans to her daughter, Bertha, letters, 1931–1942. Private archive H. J. Jansen.
15. H. W. J. van der Lans to her daughter, Bertha.
16. Guest book, 1933–1942, Pension Walda. Private archive W. Nods.
17. Guest book, Pension Walda.
18. H. W. J. van der Lans to her daughter, Bertha.
19. H. W. J. van der Lans to her daughter, Bertha.
20. Hagenaar’s diaries.
21. Hagenaar’s diaries.
22. Hagenaar’s diaries.
23. Hagenaar’s diaries.
24. H. W. J. van der Lans to Mr. and Mrs. J. van der Lans, letter, 13 June 1933. Private archive W. Nods.
25. Guest book, Pension Walda.
26. H. W. J. van der Lans to Mr. and Mrs. J. van der Lans.
27. Guest book, Pension Walda.
28. Walda Pension brochure. Private archive W. Nods.
29. H. W. J. van der Lans to her daughter, Bertha.
30. H. W. J. van der Lans to Mr. and Mrs. J. van der Lans.
31. Hagenaar’s diaries.
32. Hagenaar’s diaries.
33. Hagenaar’s diaries.
34. Hagenaar’s diaries.
35. Hagenaar’s diaries.
36. Hagenaar’s diaries.
37. Hagenaar’s diaries.
38. H. W. J. van der Lans to her daughter, Bertha.
39. Albert Helman, Zuid-Zuid-West (Utrecht, Neth.: De Gemeenschap, 1926).
40. Guest book, Pension Walda.
41. Hagenaar’s diaries.
42. Hagenaar’s diaries.
43. H. W. J. van der Lans to her daughter, Bertha.
44. H. W. J. van der Lans to her son Henk.
45. Hagenaar’s diaries.
46. Guest book, Pension Walda.
47. Guest book, Pension Walda.
48. H. W. J. van der Lans to her son Henk.
49. H. W. J. van der Lans to her son Henk.
50. H. W. J. van der Lans to her son Henk.
51. H. W. J. van der Lans to her daughter, Bertha.
52. H. W. J. van der Lans to her daughter, Bertha.
53. J. W. G. van der Lans to M. van der Lans, letters, 1941–1942. Private archive M. van der Lans Jr.
54. H. W. J. van der Lans to M. van der Lans, letter, 1943. Private archive M. van der Lans Jr.
55. H. W. J. van der Lans to M. van der Lans.
56. J. W. G. van der Lans to M. van der Lans.
57. H. W. J. van der Lans to M. van der Lans.
58. J. W. G. van der Lans to M. van der Lans.
59. Guest book, Pension Walda.
60. H. W. J. van der Lans to her daughter, Bertha.
61. H. W. J. van der Lans to M. van der Lans.
62. Kees Chardon 31 August 1919–April 1945. Private records of the Chardon family, Municipal Archive of The Hague.
63. Chardon 31 August 1919–April 1945.
64. Guest book, Pension Walda.
65. H. W. J. van der Lans to M. van der Lans.
66. M. Spaans, Procès-verbal 18 January 1944, and interrogation report 1946. CABR-dossier.
67. Spaans, Procès-verbal and interrogation report.
68. Spaans, Procès-verbal and interrogation report.
69. Paula Chardon, Een beschrijving van 13 dagen gevangenisleven in de Polizei-Gevangenis in Scheveningen. 1944. Archive Jewish Historical Museum.
70. Chardon, Een beschrijving.
71. Chardon, Een beschrijving.
72. Chardon, Een beschrijving.
73. Chardon, Een beschrijving.
74. Chardon, Een beschrijving.
75. K. Kaptein interviews. CABR Archive.
76. K. Kaptein interviews.
77. W. H. Nods to J. van der Lans, letters, 5 March 1944–1945. Private archive W. Nods.
78. Chardon, Een beschrijving.
79. Chardon, Een beschrijving.
80. Chardon 31 August 1919–April 1945.
81. Chardon 31 August 1919–April 1945.
82. W. H. Nods to J. van der Lans.
83. Chardon 31 August 1919–April 1945.
84. W. H. Nods to J. van der Lans.
85. H. W. J. van der Lans to J. van der Lans, letters, 1944. Private archive W. Nods.
86. W. H. Nods to J. van der Lans.
87. W. H. Nods to J. van der Lans.
88. H. W. J. van der Lans to J. van der Lans.
89. H. W. J. van der Lans to J. van der Lans.
90. H. W. J. van der Lans to J. van der Lans.
91. H. W. J. van der Lans to J. van der Lans.
92. W. H. Nods to J. van der Lans.
93. D. de Montagne to H. W. J. van der Lans, letter, 9 December 1944. Private archive W. Nods.
94. W. H. Nods to J. van der Lans.
95. Chardon, Een beschrijving.
96. Chardon 31 August 1919–April 1945.
97. Chardon 31 August 1919–April 1945.
98. Red Cross Archive, The Hague, file number 33438, H. W. J. van der Lans.
99. Red Cross Archive, file number 33438.
100. J. van der Lans to W. Nods, letter, 14 July 1945. Private archive W. Nods.
101. M. van der Lans to J. W. G. van der Lans, letters, 1941–1942. Private archive M. van der Lans Jr.
102. W. Nods, personal memoirs and diaries, 1944–1955. Private archive W. Nods.
103. Prayer card for Hendrika Nods-van der Lans. Private archive W. Nods.
104. Telegram from Jo Herdigein and Hilda Nods. Private archive of W. Nods.
105. Spaans, Procès-verbal and interrogation report.
106. K. Kaptein interviews.
107. N. Slob [pseudonym of Albert Helman/Lodewijk “Lou” Lichtveld], “Niemand sprak; geen kreet, geen kreunen,” in De Diepzeeduiker, 1945.
108. Nods, personal memoirs and diaries.
109. Gunther Schwaberg, “Angriffsziel Cap Arcona,” in Stern 4 (March 2003): 3, 10, 17, 24, 30.
ABRIDGED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anton de Kom-Abraham Behr Institute. A. de Kom, zijn strijd en ideeën. Amsterdam, Neth.: Sranan Buku, 1989.
Bal, C. Scheveningen-Den Haag 1940–1954 / Van Dorpen Stad tot Stützpunktgruppe Scheveningen. The Hague, Neth.: The Hague Municipality, 1996.
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