Day after day, Danya spent her time helping Bertha with the household chores. After several weeks, she still felt like a stranger in this family. At night, Danya wanted to be alone, close to the passageway in the wall to the neighbor’s as if to signal her readiness to break out of the confinement of the basement. She preferred to seat herself on a wooden bench in the shadows of the flickering candlelight. No longer sixteen, she had become a woman of the Circassian realm, with her smooth olive skin and beautiful eyes defining her. The courage that was so much part of the amber in her eyes burned hotter than ever before.
Manus adored his model for the sculptures of Maria and realized how little she had physically changed from the girl he had first met. Manus did not want to tell Danya, “I am worried about you …” To Danya, they were the wrong words.
“Worry not about me,” she paused, well-aware that the resistance movement in Holland had become extremely precarious. German sympathizers had infiltrated the organization and caused the death of hundreds of resistance workers. The need to replace the fallen resistance workers reached Danya in Belgium through a secret radio channel arranged by Arie. It aroused in her the spirit of the Circassian warrior woman.
After a long silence, she answered. “Yes, soon I shall return to the resistance in Holland. That is where my destiny lies. Satanaya told me last night in my dream.”
Danya’s words galvanized the family. Ravished by hunger and despair, they stared at each other upon hearing Danya’s words. They knew Satanaya had spoken to her. Danya looked at Manus to see if he still stood with her in her mission.
“As a courier, I must be there to drive out the last German from Holland,” she added.
It did not matter that she had been jailed, followed by the Wewelsburg ordeal. That night, Danya set an example of raw courage for the family hiding in the basement, anxiously awaiting liberation. She spoke with a tinge of hope.
“Every evening, we hear the music in the streets of Antwerp, celebrating the liberation of the city of Antwerp. Soon, the marching band of the City of Schoten will be in our avenue.”
Bertha cried. “When will it all end? We are running out of food!” she lamented. She had been a creative cook with the provisions at hand. Oatmeal pancakes with onion slices and a little bit of remaining sugar served with a slice of pumpernickel bread became daily fare.
The hardest part of living in the basement was the lack of fresh air. The potatoes in a wooden box in the coal cellar started to sprout, despite the darkness, and the combined smell of coal and potatoes was nauseating.
Through it all, neighbors found joy in exchanging whatever food was available for the day. A few kind words from a trusted neighbor did a lot in keeping their spirits up. One of the avenue people found the courage to rebel against German regulations and listened to the BBC Station in London—their only link to the free world. The news bulletins left the impression that the war was nearly over. However, Danya knew the end of the war was still several months away.
“In my dream last night, Satanaya told me that difficult times lie ahead of us,” she told the family gravely.
The bloodstains on the wall of the schoolhouse left a vivid reminder of the brutality of the last days of the Nazi Regime: a memorial to the twenty-two young men executed for acts of sabotage. They were punished for blowing up the central electrical switching station, thereby knocking out power for the entire city. The tension between the occupying forces and the local population was escalating into open hostility. No less than fourteen times, the Germans ordered the people to leave their homes, declaring the avenue a dangerous war zone. Every time, Louis had one short answer: “Nein.”
During the first days of October in 1944, the sun barely broke through the cloud layer. This morning was different. The sun rose bright and cheerful. Manus remarked to Danya how quiet it was on the avenue. The guns in the tanks had fallen silent. Soldiers smoked cigarettes, in an ostensibly cheerful mood. Were they talking about going back home to Germany? Around 10 o’clock, as if on command, the tanks turned on their engines, revved up on high and turned eastward. As he had done before, Manus went upstairs to peer through a crack in the blind. He ran downstairs and saw Bertha.
“They are leaving the avenue! Going east to Germany!” Manus wanted to see more of this spectacle of retreat by the Germans.
“Wait! It is too dangerous! The White Brigade needs to do its work first,” Danya told him. When she was a courier, she had heard of the White Brigade in Belgium. They had connections with various intelligence networks, which included the Adyghe Intelligence Organization and the Dutch Intelligence Services in London. She had learned from Arie about the tactical moves the underground had planned for the arrival of the Allied Forces. In charge of clearing the street of automatic weapons nests, they took it upon themselves to jail collaborators. After four years of betraying their people to the Germans, revenge came down hard on them.
The avenue had to be cleared of any residual resistance by the Germans, in their futile fight to hang on to a lost cause. Heavy hand-to-hand combat broke out in the avenue between the White Brigade and German soldiers, who had been ordered to defend the military compound at the end of the avenue at all cost. The partisans were well-equipped with machine guns and hand grenades, and they did not hesitate to use their weapons on the Germans. German soldiers in the avenue ran out of ammunition and were hunted down with hand grenades and machine guns. The White Brigade showed no mercy. Soldiers of the German Third Reich died amidst the tall weeds and bushes of the empty lot across the street, where once stood houses, now bombed and laying waste. It was a gruesome scene.
Fifteen minutes later, a civilian truck slowly crawled through the avenue, with three partisans, machine guns at the ready. Louis, seated in the front, held the list of collaborators and German sympathizers in the street. He pointed at several houses. The truck carried heated tar pots and brushes, ready to mark those houses identified on the White Brigade list as collaborators. Louis led the way with his broad brush dripping with hot tar and painted a couple of houses with swastikas. Shortly after that, a large truck showed up and rounded up the inhabitants living in the swastika-marked properties. The White Brigade incarcerated the males at the Central Jail in Antwerp, and their spouses were dispatched to the zoo and locked in cages designated for the gorillas.
While Louis’ family remained sequestered in the basement, fearful of the hand-to-hand combat, Manus stationed himself upstairs, where he kept watching through a slit in the blind. Then he saw the unbelievable, like a ghost from another world, a jeep belonging to the Allied Forces crept slowly forward. With a machine gun mounted in the back, it crawled through the street, checking each house for enemy machine gun nests. They were Canadians dressed in leather jackets with heavy fur collars, sten machine guns at the ready, and a belt with hand grenades.
“They have arrived! The Canadians are on the avenue! We’re free at last!” he yelled, hugging Danya. Bertha was left standing by herself without Louis; there was no one to hug her to rejoice in this moment of liberation. Where was Louis?
Manus went to the passageway in the basement wall to shout to the neighbors: “They are in the avenue!”
“Where is Louis?” Bertha asked all day. Louis had gone missing. He had disappeared without a word, and nobody knew when he would come back. He had taken his place with the White Brigade.
Bertha knew where Louis kept a particular bottle of liqueur for this occasion: Elixir d’Anvers. She went to the coal cellar and retrieved it from a cubbyhole in the wall.
“Should we not wait until Louis has returned? He will be here soon.”
Louis never came home. The same sharpshooter who had allowed Boomke to live had killed Louis. He was the last war victim in the city of Schoten.
Chapter 19
Reprisals
During the first weeks of liberation, sentiments toward the German collaborators and black market
ers boiled over into a frenzy of retaliation. Less than three days after the liberating forces entered the avenue, people were anxious to emerge from their basements. The acts of naked revenge committed by the White Brigade did not come as a surprise after the Nazi atrocities endured during four years of their occupation. The hour of retribution for the years of Nazi terror had arrived with full vengeance, and the Belgians were going to make it count.
A brigade truck stormed through the street proudly flying a giant flag with the letter “V” for victory. The truck screeched to a halt and agents brandishing machine guns raided the residence of the Van Berkel family. The Van Berkels had collaborated with the German authorities for their financial gain. They were guilty of having provided fabricated information. Their victims perished from typhoid at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.
The unsuspecting owner opened the door, and brigade agents immediately put the shackles on, made from German copper shell casings, a special touch by the White Brigade, reminding the Berkels of their ties to the Germans. They picked up three more collaborators. They looked at each other—they were fellow collaborators from the same secret “cell” of traitors. A few neighbors came outside, shook their fists, and spat on them.
“Deutscher Schweine!” they yelled. Many of them had lost a husband or son in Bergen-Belsen.
Fueled by the anger of the bystanders, one of the resistance soldiers pointed his machine gun at Van Berkel. “I will make sure you are going away for a long time for the murder of the seven families!” he shouted. One of the agents pressed his pistol to Van Berkel’s forehead. “I’d like to shoot you seven times until every drop of blood has oozed from your body!” he shouted as he came face to face, shooting sparks of raw hatred from his eyes.
The Canadians had received permission to set up a first aid/emergency clinic for the neighborhood in number 26 of the avenue, where the Habers family lived. The landmines hidden throughout town continued to cause many casualties. The injuries were often so severe that the Red Cross staff was not able to save the victims. Too often people in the avenue saw the wooden boxes with the remains of the landmine victims going to the morgue. It lay a shroud of sadness over number 26.
It was late fall, and the wind blew the last leaves from the Linden trees lining the avenue. They were getting ready for spring foliage. On this warm day, trucks with the brigade flags sped through the avenue looking for specific addresses. The underground had planned for this operation three years ago. They picked up the girls who had dated German soldiers. For them, they had an unusual punishment in mind, making it clear how disgusted they were about their sexual behavior with the enemy soldiers.
Using a loudspeaker mounted on the truck that transported the girls, a brigade man called on the townspeople to come outside and express their feelings of disgust. The people came by the dozens, throwing eggs and rotten tomatoes and spitting on the girls. The brigade had arranged twelve chairs in the middle of the avenue, where they tied the girls with ropes that bit into their flesh as they wrestled to free themselves. A local barber cut the girls’ blonde curls. It was his punishment. He had been a secret investigator for the SS. Some of the neighbors collected the hair and put it in a paper bag. A member of the brigade instructed the barber to coat the girls’ scalps and faces with black shoeshine. The warm weather caused the shoeshine to melt in streaks, running down their face like a striped clown mask. The girls showed no remorse, screaming and laughing at the onlookers as if it was nothing more than a charade.
Few neighbors knew Danya. She was the mystery girl who lived at number 26. When Danya came outside, she saw Gerda, a neighbor’s daughter, amongst the girls. Danya wondered what had happened to her blonde curls, and why the black shoeshine?
“These are the girls who went out with German soldiers,” a neighbor whispered. Stirred by her feelings of aversion, Danya rushed ahead of the crowd of people to confront them. She stepped on a chair and asked for quietness. She looked at each girl.
“While you were laying with the enemy, enjoying yourself in bed with them, these same Nazis executed your fathers and brothers as they fought for your freedom! How could you bring yourself to such acts of debauchery? A year ago, the SS Supreme Court in Wewelsburg convicted me, sentencing me to lay with the Nazis as part of their Aryan Breeding Program. I said ‘no’ and risked my life by escaping to Belgium. Never would I have allowed a German to touch my body! Never! I have lived in hiding ever since. People are still dying in Holland, where I shall return as a courier with the underground. Now, you must face your punishment by the White Brigade, under their Code of Retribution for War Crimes.”
Canadian soldiers came by on patrol and ordered the girls released. Their order did not sit well with the people.
“We will come after you to tar your home!” they shouted. Members of the brigade followed the girls with a bucket of hot tar and plastered the swastika symbol on the façade of their homes, branding the girls as “Nazi prostitutes” for life.
One of the girls approached Danya. Through the dripping shoe wax on her face, Danya saw a tear rolling down her cheek. It was Gerda.
“Danya, I regret what I have done. I did not dare to say ‘no’ to the Nazis who came at me. It is true that these same Germans executed my brother. I’d like to go with you to Holland and fight beside you as a courier.” Danya paused, looking her over.
“Before you make that decision, you must remember that you will put yourself in great danger. The work as a courier puts you deep in enemy territory. If caught, they will kill you,” Danya warned.
“I must go with you to liberate myself from my past mistakes. The time is here to face my deepest fears. I am ready to give my life in the fight against the Germans, in retribution for what they did to my brother.” Danya thought she sounded sincere and agreed to let her make the trip with her.
“You can come with me.”
Two weeks earlier, Arie had found a way to contact Danya and alert her that the Allied Forces desperately needed experienced couriers to transport coded messages in the German-held territory. The Allied Forces had great difficulty recruiting girls with Danya’s experience. What made the courier girls’ task even more difficult was the fluid situation of German military movements over dikes and canals, which required reconnaissance on foot and inventiveness to stay in hiding.
The Dutch Resistance was in close communication with the Belgian Brigade. As soon as the war was over in Schoten, Arie notified the Dutch Underground where they could find Danya. The Dutch intelligence unit of the resistance needed her to return to her former position as head courier in the Moerdijk Region, with its famous bridge over the Rhine River in Holland. Her familiarity with the relay system of dropping coded messages in the roadside chapels made her the top-ranked courier for the region. It was no coincidence that she knew the details of each drop site. Each chapel housed a statue of the Virgin Mary, carved by Manus. They were located at ten-kilometer intervals along the main road, running through Danya’s assigned area.
Delivering the coded messages without arousing suspicion by the German military was routine for Danya. Before her capture and imprisonment in Wewelsburg, she had already deposited hundreds of silk scrolls in these same chapels. Each scroll contained vital data about German positions, troops, tanks, and artillery deployed by the Germans as a last desperate defense before the Allied would breach the border with Germany. The bridge over the Rhine River in Moerdijk was a key strategic objective for the Allied, to secure this main road for the invasion of Germany.
Danya knew the danger she faced by re-entering German-occupied territory. If they discovered that she was on the list of “Most Wanted Criminals” and an escapee from Himmler’s Lebensborn Program, they would summarily execute her, but Danya felt it was her mission to help drive the Germans out of Holland and was willing to risk her life. Had Satanaya not spoken of the dangers in her father’s study?
The war had caus
ed severe food shortages throughout Belgium. One day, the parish pastor invited them for supper. They entered the rectory and smelled the stew cooking in the kitchen, made with bay leaves and allspice and little chunks of pork belly fat drifting atop the broth. It was the family’s first meat dish in months. Word around the dinner table was that they ate a rabbit, but not long after their dinner visit, word leaked out that the pastor’s cat was missing. The pastor never raised rabbits!
Each morning, everyone listened to the news on Radio Belgique, which broadcasted from London. Despite the success of the Allied Forces, Hitler planned a massive counterattack into Belgium, known as the “Battle of the Bulge.” On the morning of December 16, 1944, the German Army launched a surprise attack in the Ardennes Mountains of Belgium. Opening the main road to Antwerp and occupying the port was Hitler’s final strategy to stop the Allied invasion of Germany. General Eisenhower had designated Antwerp as a significant point to disembark troops and equipment for the Allied.
After fierce fighting around Bastogne, the Allied denied the Germans access to the vital road to the port city of Antwerp, three hundred kilometers to the North. By January 25, 1945, the battle was over. The end of the hostilities in the Ardennes Mountains came at a considerable cost of lives on both sides, making the Battle of the Bulge the costliest military battle in Western Europe.
Hitler became so infuriated at the German loss that he ordered immediate attacks on London and Antwerp with the V-1 and V-2 rockets, his “Miracle Weapons.” The photographic evidence, collected as early as May 1943, showed how far the Germans had come in developing the V-1 and a rocket known as the V-2. However, the British believed that Hitler did not have the fuel nor launching pads to fly his V-weapons to London.
Four years of Nazi terror had robbed the population of any form of entertainment. In an ironic twist, the shooting down of German V-1s became the entertainment of the day. It was after dark when Manus joined a small group of people on a hill above town from where they could see the anti-aircraft guns firing at the rockets in the sky. In the distance, a few cows grazed around the cement pillboxes, a legacy of the German occupation. Broken-down trucks, jeeps, burned-out tanks, and munitions boxes littered the grasslands. Seated on the grass, huddled under blankets, the crowd kept an eye on the night sky, gazing towards Germany. It was like a festival atmosphere, with Belgian beer flowing freely.
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