Velp was a beautiful old village with money—another that had been built by business people and old soldiers with fortunes made in the Dutch East Indies. Magnificent villas dotted many streets, and the baron had managed to secure one of them, Villa Beukenhof, which was, by comparison to some others in town, more quaint than stately. It was a fine brick home just twenty-one years old, two stories tall with a high attic and tiled roof. It contained a recently expanded kitchen and living space with a half bath downstairs, plus three bedrooms and a full bath upstairs—enough room for the baron, Otto, and Meisje. A bay window stood out in the front and there was a garden behind an iron gate that wrapped around the side of the house.
The Beukenhof sat on a wide boulevard called Rozendaalselaan, or “tree-lined road to Rozendaal.” The trees were centuries old and of the beuken, or beech, variety. A stroll or bike ride up Rozendaalselaan would take the van Heemstras to the ancient Castle Rozendaal with a tower dating back to the fourteenth century. Here lived Willem Frederik Torck, Baron van Pallandt, and his second wife, Aaltje, Baroness van Pallandt-Groenhof, relatives of the van Heemstras via marriage in 1837 when Baroness Henrietta Philippina Jacoba van Pallandt—she descended from French kings—married Frans Julius Johan, Baron van Heemstra. The van Heemstras now residing in Velp knew they would always receive a warm welcome at Castle Rozendaal, and its proximity to the Beukenhof was the primary drawing card to this particular dwelling.
A much shorter stroll of a block and a half in the other direction on Rozendaalselaan led to the downtown section of Velp and Hoofdstraat, or main street.
Ella’s apartment on Jansbinnensingel was connected by a straight line and a twenty-minute ride by tram to the center of Velp, with a convenient stop at the end of Rozendaalselaan. Really, even though the baron, Meisje, and Otto had left Arnhem, the heart of the family was just a little farther away in Velp than it had been at de Zijp—Ella and Audrey could still feel connected. And it worked both ways, as the elders could still freely visit their young dancer.
On 4 May, Audrey’s thirteenth birthday, she was already looking forward to the next public performance of the Dansschool at the Schouwburg in mid-July. She would be dancing a serenade by Haydn, while her emerging rival, Irene Grosser, would dance An den Frühling by Grieg. Most exciting of all was that Marova herself would be performing a solo with Draaisma accompanying. It was the first time that the Dansschool would be filling an entire program with classical and character ballet, a clear indication that dance was beginning to make its mark in Arnhem.
It was going to be a milestone day for Adriaantje—she was now a teenager and on the verge of adulthood. She was becoming Audrey and leaving Adriaantje or “Little Audrey” behind, and with the change came a rush of insecurity and feelings that she wasn’t good enough or pretty enough—a complex that would always be with her. And as if the anxieties of adolescence weren’t enough to contend with, that very day, her birthday, a cruel surprise was delivered via telephone.
Meisje was on the other end of the line and told Ella the story. It had begun with a knock at the door of their rooms at Zijpendaal at eleven in the morning. When Otto answered, two members of the SD, the Dutch SS security police, presented a warrant for his arrest. He was given twenty minutes to pack a bag with necessary items and changes of clothes and accompany them at once. With Meisje looking on in horror, Otto did as instructed, somehow maintaining his usual calm. He took his wife’s hands in his own and reassured her that all would be well. In moments he was loaded into the back seat of a luxury Mercedes and driven away.
Audrey had no father but she did have two father figures, Opa and Oom Otto, the cheerful, kind, and loving man and Arnhem jurist known to the world as Count van Limburg Stirum. Now he had been taken away without explanation, beginning a nightmare that, for the rest of her life, would never truly end.
10
Death Candidate
“I have a photographic memory in almost anything and there are visions of things which I will obviously never, never forget,” said Audrey. “Less of Nazis on the street because that became par for the course, but certain days, certain moments, certain things that happened, I will never forget.”
Otto, Count van Limburg Stirum, was a hard man to intimidate. He was an intellectual—symbolized by his wire-rimmed spectacles—and possessed a natural optimism and unwavering faith in God. The arrest didn’t rattle him except for the knowledge of how his wife would take it. Now he rode in the back seat of a German automobile and was driven some distance. Then the car stopped, and he was removed from it and shoved into a poorly lit room. About twenty others had been brought to the same location to share his predicament, bewildered men—yes, all were men—and prominent men at that. For what it was worth, Otto found himself in good company; he sat among the most prominent politicians and businessmen of Gelderland. Over there den Hartog, and there, van Winter.
They remained in the room for hour upon hour until the oxygen was about used up. The space seemed increasingly damp and cold, and the heating barely worked at all. Talking among themselves, they revealed similar stories: arrest warrant, told to pack clothing, toiletries, bedclothes, jackets, and sweaters. Otto was convinced that wherever he was going, he would be away from home for some time.
Finally, after six in the evening, a German officer came into the room and called the roll of Dutchmen who had had their lives interrupted this day. In a short while, some Green Police entered and conferred with the officer. Then the prisoners were led outside and placed in a truck with their luggage, and by now the nerves of all the men had begun to fray—they didn’t know where they were being taken. The truck and some Nazi staff cars set off in a procession to points unknown.
The journey took two hours. The light grew thin. Finally the stream of cars rounded some sharp turns and pulled to a stop after nightfall. The gate of the truck was opened, and Otto and the others were motioned down onto a circular driveway where the truck and cars had all parked. The group coalesced again and adjusted their eyes to look up at a magnificent building. It was tall, brick, and enormously long, extending well into the blackness of night. It seemed to be a religious institution or, perhaps, a mental hospital. They were led up a long set of stone steps and inside the main doors to an arched entryway with cornices. It became apparent at once that this was a Roman Catholic building, a seminary it turned out.
The group was herded around a corner and into a large room with an SS official’s name on the door. Inside were some Wehrmacht officers and a man who looked like he was about to go riding or hunting; they were clearly German from their accents and bearing. Not one of them addressed the forlorn group standing there. Instead, a sergeant conducted another roll call. Then a little man in rumpled clothes, a Dutchman, motioned for the group to follow him out of the room.
The man had a list and assigned the prisoners to quarters. He said there were five “cell blocks” in the “villa” and that, all told, up to 600 men could be held here. “Held where?” someone asked.
“Why, Beekvliet,” said the Dutchman. “You are in the village of Sint-Michielsgestel, at the seminary. The Germans have taken it over.” He went on to explain that they were now in the province of Brabant, in the south of Holland.
The place was as big as a palace, but not terribly grand. It just went on and on—up stairs, down stairs, into and out of long corridors, through a series of rights and lefts. Finally they reached a dormitory on the first floor with the official name of Block IV, and there Otto entered a small room designed to hold two persons. So began his life as a prisoner. His initial impression of his new accommodations? “It looks decent,” he wrote in the diary he started this night.
Otto would fill in some of the blanks the next morning. He was one of 460 Dutch men who had been rounded up for no crime other than representing the best and brightest in the country. They had been brought here to a central location in North Brabant, near its capital, ’s-Hertogenbosch. Sint-Michielsgestel lay southwest of Arnhem and northwest
of Eindhoven, and its best-known landmark was this complex: kleine seminarie Beekvliet, a Catholic training center for priests established in 1815 and named for the archangel St. Michael. The Catholics had been expelled so that it could be turned into a prison that would hold “death candidates” as part of a very simple plan: Since the Dutch Resistance movement seemed to be organizing at long last, then one way to head off acts of sabotage was to gather together some of the nation’s irreplaceable citizens as hostages. It was an experiment born of experiences with the tiresome French Underground—maybe shooting some innocents would keep resistance movements from growing in the first place.
The SS commandant positioned all this in a speech to the assembled gijzelaars, or hostages. But the concept had little impact on the captives simply because this wasn’t France, where the underground was organized and active and blowing up things right and left. This was Holland, where extremism had never gained much of a foothold and where acts of violence were uncommon.
In a message broadcast across the Netherlands the plan was announced—any act of violence against the Reich would call for executions of an appropriate number of death candidates who had been gathered for just this purpose. After an instance or two of capital punishment, the people would see the benefits of cooperating with the occupation forces rather than fighting them. Then maybe, finally, the Netherlands could become willing partners in the German empire. And Otto, thanks to his refusal to name names for Nazi man Schrieke, had made the list and been designated a death candidate along with another deputy prosecutor, current and former mayors, bankers, educators, business owners, journalists, and even a chef. Otto was shocked to see his younger brother, forty-two-year-old Constantijn Willem, Count van Limburg Stirum, among the catch. Constant was nothing more dangerous than a wine merchant, and yet here he was.
Otto sent a letter to Meisje immediately, then counted the days until he figured she would receive it. On 11 May, after a week of captivity, he wrote in his diary, “Have been reading in the monastery garden. Letter of M. who gave me the impression that she is a bit lonely—it’s a letter, however, written on Friday night, so she must have heard from me by now and I think it will be better.”
On 14 May Otto received a parcel from Meisje that contained, among other goods and clothing, snapshot photos of the Beukenhof. “It was funny but also melancholic to see all sorts of pictures of our [new] home,” he wrote. He had never even had the opportunity to lay eyes on the house he was about to move into!
The next day he received a parcel containing biscuits sent by friends in Oosterbeek and the day after that another with a jar of butter, a fresh loaf of meat, and a jacket. Many of the prisoners were receiving such parcels and sharing their contents for the common good. Even more precious were two letters from Meisje announcing that she had traveled to Brabant and was now close by, staying with local friends.
Meisje was a remarkable woman; a Frisian after all and a strong Protestant. Faith alone would see her through this, he knew. In his letters he implored her not to worry, that all the captives would be held for a time and then released—this was all a big Nazi bluff. But there was also troubling news that another group of hundreds of hostages, more leading citizens, had been rounded up and placed just a few miles to the west in Haaren at the Groot Seminarie in a setup similar to Beekvliet. Among them was Rheden’s mayor, W. Th. C. Zimmerman, who was married to Cecelia Emilie Louise, Baroness van Pallandt, a relative of the van Heemstras. Now, a thousand top Dutchmen were under lock and key and ready to die for the transgressions of any troublemaker with a bomb, whether a freedom fighter or a communist or just some nut.
On 18 May Otto was summoned to the commandant’s office and told that he may go to the fence at the edge of the compound and there his wife would be waiting. “It was a wonderful reunion,” he wrote, saying they had a half hour together. He noted that she was very brave and calm around the guard, who in turn was discreet. Otto was allowed to pass a bundle of dirty laundry to her; she gave him a picnic basket, fresh clothes, and other things. Later in the day he received a crate from the post office filled with “an incredible stock of delicious things: chicken soup, fresh strawberries, cherries in juice, all sorts of cans, and soft blankets.” He ended his diary entry by saying, “It has been a wonderful day and I am so grateful to her.”
May became June. In the labyrinthine building and grounds surrounded by barbed wire, with armed guards at the perimeter, the prisoners settled into a routine that was half university and half resort. Robert Peereboom, editor-in-chief of a newspaper in the city of Haarlem, joined the fraternity early in June and kept a diary that would be published in 1945.
“We lived in relative comfort,” said Peereboom, “very different than the people in the concentration camps, where abuse and punishment were the order of the day. We had self-government within our hostage community. Each made his own daily schedule. There was a cheerful, clean spiritual life. We worked stubbornly. We even played: football and cricket, bridge and billiards. We sometimes heard music. Family and friends, as well as interested people unknown to us, overwhelmed us with packages. But we were locked behind barbed wire. And Death threatened us.”
From the beginning, Otto believed it his duty as Dutch nobility to set a positive example for those around him. Constant was of a similar mind. They became engaged in conversation at every turn with some of the most brilliant minds in the Netherlands. Otto wrote in his diary of the relaxed mood of the prisoners and the guards; he remarked how quickly the days passed; he liked having a church so close by and went there often. The structure itself was Roman Catholic, but it would suffice for a devoted Reformed Protestant.
In general he found this a great adventure, and he determined early on he wouldn’t give the Germans the satisfaction of seeing him downcast. Almost all the hostages felt that way, he learned. They gardened. They engaged in rhetorical debates about various political and religious issues. They energetically ate bad food prison-style in large dining rooms. The professors held classes in history and literature. Otto and Constant engaged in Otto’s passion, contract bridge, and staged bridge tournaments. Football matches between various groups on the adjacent field—contained within barbed wire and with sentries on patrol—drew hundreds of spectators.
June became July. The countryside outside the barbed wire grew lush and the flowers reached full bloom. Otto found it wonderful to have his brother so close by; he hadn’t seen so much of Constant in years. Meisje was by now staying in the homes of various friends near Beekvliet to be near her husband. She showered him with so many parcels containing so many wonderful treats obtained from the black market that he complained about gaining weight in prison—six pounds in just ten days. Imagine, being taken away by the occupiers and eating better than at home!
Visits at the fence became a usual occurrence, but he grew frustrated, saying, “The distance and the impossibility to go to each other remains odd; but of the moment itself, the feeling of being able to see each other overrules and that’s lovely.”
He also exchanged letters with Ella and learned that on 11 July, Audrey performed at the Schouwburg, dancing to pieces by Mozart, Grieg, and Haydn. Otto read the clipping from the newspaper. His niece was mentioned first, as usual, leaving no doubt that she was a gifted dancer. “The performances of Audrey Hepburn-Ruston and Irene Grosser are examples of what the pupils are capable of,” read the clipping. “The former, only thirteen years old, is a natural talent who is in good hands with Mevr. Winja Marova.”
By mid-July Otto had gained another two pounds in confinement and decided to distribute some of the bounty from his wife to the other hostages. Meisje was delighted because she had heard such marvelous things about Otto’s comrades and considered them family. “Everyone is full of admiration,” he wrote, “about the way she does this [builds parcels of food] for ‘her boys’ and about the quantities and the variation.”
More weeks passed and frustration roamed the halls with the prisoners. “It’s remar
kable to notice that the mood is less hopeful than some time ago,” Otto wrote. “I nevertheless remain optimistic about a quick redemption. I try always to be cheerful, to cheer up others and to have a friendly word or a joke for everybody. That is, in my view, my duty here.”
The air war strayed close to the compound and low-flying planes menaced the population. At the end of July an Allied fighter attack took out the Den Bosch central train station just a few miles away—Meisje was much closer still and the detonation of three bombs startled her.
On the last day of July, control of the prison was transferred from the NSB and Green Police to the Wehrmacht, the German regular army. A few days later, Otto contracted a viral infection that landed him in the sick quarters for several days with a high fever. Then on 9 August, a Sunday, Otto saw an item in the newspaper—an act of sabotage had been committed on a railway in Rotterdam, but in good Dutch style only a railroad worker was seriously injured and a Nederlander at that. He wrote that the commandant had gathered together all in the compound and announced that “the hostages will be held liable if the culprit isn’t arrested by the night of 14 August.”
The next day, Otto’s fever had broken, and he left sick quarters to return to his usual schedule. Hostage Robert Peereboom wrote, “Conversations remain optimistic. In our group in the dining room, van Limburg Stirum, the Arnhem substitute officer of justice, takes it very merrily and is convinced that it will end with a threat. He is a man who always tends to expect the best from his fellow men. A remarkable mentality in such a profession.”
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