by Bart van Es
In Dordrecht it was three men on the regular police force—Arie den Breejen, Theo Lukassen, and Harry Evers—who did most of the work. From the moment Lien arrived in the city in August 1942, these individuals would have been trying to track her down.
I hesitate for a moment, sitting in front of my laptop, then open the first box.
When I do so, it seems at first as though I have entered the world of Willem Frederik Hermans’s classic postwar Dutch novel The Darkroom of Damocles. The last part of this book is set after the liberation, with investigators attempting to work out who was good and who was bad in the Netherlands during the war. The main protagonist, Henri Osewoudt, awaits their verdict, but, as years pass, the evidence (made up of stacks of incomprehensible photographs and contradictory witness statements) simply gathers on desks. As he describes this situation, Hermans plays a literary game with the symbolic objects of the photo negative and the mirror, so that by the end of the book the reader can no longer tell who is the hero and who is the villain.
The first box of Harry Evers’s files gives the same impression. There are mysterious photos, several of which show the interior of a cupboard with hidden electrical circuitry. Others show microfilms with lines of code. Mixed in with these, apparently at random, are handwritten letters, typed up witness statements, and official forms. Some describe Evers’s violence: the kicking in of doors and the vicious interrogations that he carried out as he searched for illegal items such as radios and guns. But then, like Osewoudt in Hermans’s novel, Evers himself writes in outrage, saying that he has been wrongly accused. He was, he claims, in reality a resistance fighter who only joined the Political Police after instructions from above. Members of the resistance write in to support this story. There were, they report, frequent tip-offs from Evers about raids that were coming; he helped with the repair of weapons; and he assisted in the shooting of a collaborator in the final stages of the war. Then, toward the bottom of the box, comes a report from the investigatory committee, dated August 10, 1945, which declares Evers innocent, a war hero even. Press cuttings follow, which tell the adventures of Evers the undercover man.
Mixed in with these, though, there are letters of protest. Some in the Resistance say that the verdict is a gross distortion. There are even copies of flyers describing Evers as a traitor. These flyers have been posted around the town.
The truth of the matter seems hard to work out.
Over the days in the archives, however, I open more boxes. A few survivors return to Dordrecht from Auschwitz, a few others emerge from hiding, and as the witness statements mount up, first to tens and then to hundreds, doubt disappears.
One of the first to speak is Isidor van Huiden, a Jewish man who had lived just a few doors down from the Heromas on the Dubbeldamseweg. He tells the committee that, in the late afternoon of November 9, 1942, Evers and Lukassen, backed up by four policemen from Rotterdam, burst into his home, screaming and swearing, and began a search. After just ten minutes the family (who had crept into a hiding place) had all been discovered and were lined up under guard. Then, while the officers rifled through their papers and other belongings, the Van Huidens heard piano music from the adjoining room. It was Evers playing show tunes after concluding the job.
The Van Huidens were transported to the holding pen of the Hollandsche Schouwburg in Amsterdam, where they saw many of their Dordrecht neighbors, who told of violent interrogations in which Evers played a leading role.
They would not see those neighbors again.
Isidor himself was lucky because, as a member of the Jewish Council, he still had certain rights. He talked himself and his family out of the Hollandsche Schouwburg with the promise that he would move to the capital and remain at a registered address. The moment that they were at liberty, they found a new and better place to hide.
Similar stories come out over the ensuing months of the investigation, and, as I work my way through the boxes, the full arc of Harry Evers’s life comes into view.
He stares out vividly from various descriptions. A strong, thickset, blond man, a little puffy about the face. In age and social background he is typical of the Jew hunters: unremarkable, modestly educated, fond of a drink. Born out of wedlock to a Catholic mother, Evers was brought up by his grandparents in Tilburg and then drifted through various occupations, including shipbuilding and car maintenance, before joining the Dutch army in the run-up to the war. His physical power and ability to inspire obedience got him a promotion to sergeant, but he was denied elevation to the officer class.
Although for a time a member of a nationalist party, Evers was not especially political. His main interests were popular music, pornography, and chasing girls. He conducted himself well during the German invasion and, after defeat in May 1940, he and some other ex-military men did talk big about forming some kind of resistance. Nothing, though, came of this half-baked plan.
In August 1940 Evers joined the police force. The army, clearly, was no longer an option. Some Dutch men did sign up for the SS or the Wehrmacht, but he was not really pro-German, even if, like most, he now accepted the new state of affairs. Instead, he got a specialist job in the price control unit, which monitored the black market. It soon became clear that he had a talent for tracking things down.
What was it that motivated Evers to transfer to the Political Police two years later in July 1942? He claimed afterward that he did this on the instruction of a friend in the military resistance, but this is implausible. There was barely such a thing as military resistance in Dordrecht at this point and certainly not the fabled “Section K” of which he would boast at his trial. True, Evers kept contact with one of his old buddies, who would eventually become a resistance man. He was always good at keeping his ear to the ground. But things were going well for the Germans; resistance was absurd. He had just gotten married and he needed to move out of his boardinghouse. Proper Jew hunting was about to begin, which meant that there was easy money to be gained from the Political Police. A man with experience of the underworld and the black market was just what was needed. So Evers signed up as a member of the Fascist Union, always knowing that he had credit as a Dutch nationalist to fall back on if things turned bad.
And once he was in, it was heaven, better than he could have imagined. He knew people who knew things and he had a natural, imposing presence, so it was easy to get to the truth. There were all-night sessions, handfuls of jewels and banknotes that he could simply take. He developed little tics that gave him character, like toying with his handgun as he spoke or playing piano at the end of a raid. He even obtained a piano of his own from the former house of a Jew.
It took talent to do things properly. Evers would check concrete floors for cracks that suggested hidden passages and would measure the distance between the height of a ceiling and the floor above. Power over women was a particular pleasure. There was a room next to his office that he used for the rape of the Jewish girls who happened to take his fancy. He liked to refer to his wife as his “cauliflower” and to these women as his “sprouts.”
As I read these things I think of Lien in hiding.
Evers also caught children. One time he saw a little girl on a bicycle and noted to Den Breejen that she looked “like a Jewess,” so they followed her home and found papers alight in the stove that proved that he was right.
It is the case of Miepie Viskooper, a girl from Amsterdam, aged seven, that is the closest to Lien’s. She is the subject of witness statements 146 to 148.
Witness 146 is Johanna Wigman, a barmaid in her midtwenties who had taken the little girl into her care. On the night of November 15, 1943, Miepie was sleeping beside Johanna on a mattress. Then, at half past eleven, Johanna heard a break-in downstairs. She just had time to hide the child under the blankets before Evers and Den Breejen burst in. The policemen demanded to know if her name was Johanna Wigman and then began their search. All too quickly Miepie was discovered. Den Breejen
is recorded in the statement as saying “Here we have the Yid!” But then, as the men continued in search of other evidence, the little girl ran out.
Evers and Den Breejen were furious and, for her act of protection, Johanna Wigman was sent to the concentration camp at Vught.
Witness 147 is the owner of the adjoining café, Cornelis van Tooren. He himself had a daughter, called Jannetje, of Miepie’s age. Evers and Den Breejen, he reports, had spent time searching the café before moving on to the neighboring flat. After they left, he kept watch in their absence, and then at around midnight Miepie ran into the bar. Evers came in right behind her, pointing his revolver, shouting, “It’s the choke hole for you” at the little girl.
“I’ve only come to say good-bye to Jannetje,” she replied.
The worst is witness 148. This is Miepie’s father, a small-scale confectionery manufacturer in the big city, the same as Lien’s. Like Lien, Miepie was an only daughter, and again, just like Lien’s parents, the Viskoopers thought their child would be safe if she hid with non-Jews, so they sent her away. They themselves also went into hiding, but they were caught. At the awful moment of their arrest there was at least the feeling that, for their daughter, theirs had been the right choice.
But then, as the couple was held at Westerbork, the Dutch transit camp for Auschwitz, Miepie was brought in to her mother, under guard.
* * *
—
AS I READ THIS I THINK of my own wife and children and imagine that unwanted reunion. I can see the smile of recognition on the face of the child.
* * *
—
THE VISKOOPERS TRAVELED together to Poland. Then, on arrival, Michel Viskooper watched as his wife and daughter were taken from him and driven away on a truck.
Michel, Miepie’s father, was one of just 5,200 Dutch Jews who survived the death camps, but he returned to Holland alone.
* * *
—
I SIT MOTIONLESS in the reading room for a few minutes. After this I copy Miepie’s case verbatim onto my laptop, typing as quickly as I can.
* * *
—
THE WARTIME CAREER of Harry Evers matches those of many collaborators recorded in the archives. Once the balance of power altered, they began to think about changing sides. In the summer of 1943, just as the transport of Dutch Jews was nearing completion, the Wehrmacht’s advance into Russia was stopped. Already in the spring, former Dutch servicemen in nonessential professions had received a summons to forced labor camps in Germany, and by July a quarter of a million workers had been sent. First thousands and then hundreds of thousands went into hiding to avoid this fate. And as the authorities began to search for the missing men, the mood of the population turned far more strongly against the occupiers. Armed resistance, virtually nil at the start of the year, grew rapidly in the last two months of 1943. Meanwhile the skies darkened with Allied bombers, and Evers, like others, started to worry about what he had done.
So from the New Year onward, he began actively to help the resistance and took every opportunity to tell them about his bravery as a double agent working for the Germans under instructions from his own side. As time went on, he became ever more helpful. Finally, as Canadian tanks rumbled through the polders, he visited his old friends in their houses and in cafés and made them swear to be true to him at the point of a knife. Once the war was over, he even took the piano he had stolen and returned it, badly damaged, to the house of the Jew.
For nearly a year he remained at liberty, but then, on February 13, 1946, in the tax office near his childhood home in Tilburg, Evers was placed under arrest. He was carrying a loaded pistol and had kept a supply of grenades. Still, he went quietly enough.
In the end, he received an eight-year sentence, reduced to three years and six months on appeal. This was not out of proportion. After all, Albert Gemmeker, the famous “laughing commandant” of Westerbork, who held a great party to celebrate the transport of the forty-thousandth victim to Auschwitz, served no more than six years. And afterward Evers returned to society, enjoying a second marriage, although this one too ended quickly in divorce. When he died, aged seventy-three, in the early 1990s, there were still those in Dordrecht who hailed him as a hero and as the victim of an unfair campaign.
* * *
—
EVENTUALLY I RETIE the final bundle of papers. The next morning, Steven gets up early to see me off on the train. It is only as we are walking to the station, the same one used by Lien when she traveled to Dordrecht, that he points to the little medal with ribbons that sits askew on his chest. This, he tells me, was awarded to his paternal grandfather for heroism in the resistance. After he died, nobody else was going to wear it, so Steven wears it now.
The train doors hiss shut and the carriage starts moving. Steven remains on the platform, giving me a smile and a wave. As I move to the upper deck in search of a seat, I begin to question myself about the work I am doing. Lien asked me about my motivation. There are so many stories like hers, and besides, the bare facts have already been recorded for the Shoah Foundation archive, which was set up by Steven Spielberg soon after he completed his film Schindler’s List back in 1994. Is there anything that I could add to that?
Around me morning commuters are tapping on their laptops while the suburbs of The Hague rush ever more quickly by. On flawless tracks, the heavy carriage runs almost without a sound. Just as happened earlier when I was driving into The Hague on those flat and straight motorways, the smooth, unbending movement of the train makes me feel distant from the world outside the window. Rail travel in the Netherlands feels different from that in most other countries because almost nothing of the prewar infrastructure remains. This makes the past less tangible than it is in England, where everything rattles and looks old. Yet this is the same journey that Lien made when she left her parents just over seventy years ago: it runs on the same ground. Switching my gaze from the view through the window to the modern interior of the carriage, I ask myself if it might be possible to write something that traces this invisible link between Holland’s past and its present. I also wonder about my family and their relationship with Lien.
Seven
The second page of the red photo album on Lien’s table in Amsterdam is devoted to the early 1940s. “Dordrecht” is written as a header and underlined. There are nine photographs in all. Across the top are two of the same set of children, a girl and a boy standing together but hardly touching: Ali and Kees. The version on the left, which looks wintery, is the earliest.
It is probably from the time when their mother was still living. Ali, the elder, is no more than three. She holds a doll with one hand and with the other she steadies her brother, who is concentrating to stay on his feet. In the version on the right, taken a few years later, Kees has already thrust himself forward, smiling a little cheekily at the camera, cocking his head. The photographer stands high above the pair so that they look upward, expectant, framed by too much space. Ali stands behind Kees now, in his shadow, figuratively as well as literally, one suspects.
Like most of the pictures on the page they are quite ordinary and rather inexpertly taken; expressions are hard to read. In the middle there are some passport snaps without names written beneath them: these are Lien’s “Auntie” and “Uncle.” Uncle is the father of Ali, Kees, and Marianne. Auntie is Marianne’s mother and now also the stepmother of Ali and Kees. She is a little chubby and plain looking—it is easy to imagine her as a farm laborer’s daughter and then, from the age of fourteen, as a maid living in service, which is what she was until her late twenties when she and her husband met. As a child she was called “fat Jans” by her family, although one could hardly get very fat on the bread and potatoes that were the staple diet of her early years. He is more intense and wiry, but beyond this the photo gives little away. It makes me think of the neutral expressions on the identity cards that he smuggles for the resistance—one of
the many secret activities he is involved in, which he will almost never talk about, even later in life. For his day job he is an engine fitter for the Electrical Motors Factory in Dordrecht, an expert at aligning machines so that they work in the best possible way. This means that he travels throughout the country, to mines and to printing presses, for example, adjusting and maintaining the engines that were built in Dordt. Such work is excellent cover for a resistance man.
The conventional, restrained appearance of the couple actually says a lot about them. They are not given to emotional outbursts and they dislike pretension. They will do a great deal for you, but expressions of thanks will be dismissed with an awkward, slightly painful, shrug. Their passions are lived out in the Social Democratic Workers’ Party, the forerunner of the Dutch Labor Party: not revolutionary but communal, a belief in institutions, in public provision, in the betterment of humanity by giving equal chances to all. The two of them met at the evening classes that are provided by this organization—he already a young widower with two children, she an idealistic warmhearted girl of twenty-eight. There is nothing very romantic about them. Auntie likes mainly to talk about housekeeping, children, and politics. She is practically minded and thinks little of the delicacies of appearance. “Thin women are for looking at and fat women are for marrying,” her husband once told her and she repeats this with satisfaction to her friends. He is rather stern and expects obedience, and if on a rare occasion she exceeds the boundaries that he sets for the household he will order her out of the room. This is not the behavior of a model husband. There is an edge to him but there is also an air of authority; he is unfailingly honest, he has principles, and he gets things done. Thus, although she is a little fearful and would rather do without his masculine passions, Jans is proud of her husband and of the family she is bringing up.