by Bart van Es
Looking back, the retreat of the Protestant synod in July 1942 stands out as a defining moment in the history of the Netherlands. Seyss-Inquart, the Reichskommissar in charge of the country, had been genuinely worried about the prospect of church opposition, because in occupied Norway protest from the Lutherans had galvanized resistance on a significant scale. If a collective church statement had been issued, more Dutch families might well have sheltered their fellow citizens, they might well have sabotaged the running of the railways to Poland, and they might well have been less cooperative as policemen in arresting and imprisoning Jews. H. C. Touw, the Reformed Church’s great historian, would be unsparing in his verdict on the synod. Their conduct was “deeply shaming” and “unprincipled.” There was “a fear of being burned by cold water.” In summation, “we must speak of enormous collective guilt.”
By the time that Lien was brought to the village of Bennekom in late 1943, things had changed for the Reformed Protestant Church, which now backed active resistance and told its members to protect their fellow citizens, even at personal cost. It was this alteration in the national picture, of which she herself knew nothing, that brought her to this rural and therefore safer part of the Netherlands.
* * *
—
THE LIEN WHO STANDS in a thin white dress on the right of the photograph is an altered creature. In the house that stands behind her she is more a housemaid than a daughter, even though she must say “Mother” and “Father” to Mr. and Mrs. van Laar. Every morning it is her job to clear out and then light the wood-burning stove in the kitchen and then to clean and polish the shoes. Straight back from school she sees to the furniture, holding a cloth in each hand so as not to leave marks. The blue Delft plates on display in the cupboard in the front room need to be lifted, one after the other, while the surface below them is first dusted and then wiped. Lien finds this difficult—she is unpracticed and also unwilling—so it takes a very long time.
They are opposites, she and Mother van Laar. Even their pictures in the photo album could hardly be more different. Lien looks distracted, waiflike with her curls, and already a beauty—she has dark and perfect features that bespeak another world. In contrast, Mother van Laar has a direct countenance and a boyish side parting in her flat, close-cut hair. She is not easily pleased with Lien’s efforts and, to the girl’s hot fury, is dismissive about them when neighbors ask. As Lien sits at the kitchen table she overhears comments about her slowness. They make her fingers tremble while she cuts and stacks the ration stamps, another of her jobs. Once at a low heat while in hiding in IJsselmonde, there is a fire now within her only just under control. While Lien cuts, Mother van Laar holds forth about Sunday’s sermon and recommends a method for keeping net curtains white. Each time she ends a sentence, to Lien’s irritation, she rests her teeth on her bottom lip.
Heading upstairs to her bedroom, the girl leaves a pile of bent coupons on the table, improperly stacked. In her mind she is already half in the adventure of the book she is reading. It is called Patriots and Liegemen and forms part of a series that sits on the shelves in the living room, the gold and red of their spines all perfectly aligned. Lien loves them. Three cheers for the Liegemen! True to God and the Prince of Orange! Right at this moment young Maurits is stowed in the luggage rack of a stagecoach that is rattling along the cobbles to Paris, and beneath him, swigging wine from a bottle, is Marshal Soult. If Soult discovers the boy he will surely cut his heart out. But Maurits is brave and must find his way to the hidden French plans.
Lien’s spare hours are absorbed into this world of schooners, sword fights, and moonlit escapes over castle walls. The Patriots are the villains (and so not really patriots at all). They are in league with the French invaders and take their orders directly from Napoleon himself. The emperor has put his weak younger brother Lodewick on the Dutch throne and he has designs on Holland’s riches, its freedom, and its church. Meanwhile, the Liegemen fight him by bringing help from England, crossing the Channel under cover of fog and night. Beneath their cloaks there are daggers and silvery pistols and noble beating hearts. Lien sits in bed, half under the covers, at one with a princess imprisoned in a tower, or with a hero who climbs to reach her, knowing that any minute the rope may snap.
* * *
—
FROM THE WINTER OF 1943 to the spring of 1944, Lien works to the rhythms of the Van Laar household: lighting the morning fire, polishing, performing the kitchen tasks, and reading aloud from the Bible at night. She takes pleasure in stories and in her success at school, where she stands out as clever, but all the same, resentment slowly builds within her. She dislikes the rules, the criticism, and the cleaning, and the way that the Van Laar boy, Jaap, tells tales on her, for example if she ever tries to run in the playground at school, which is not allowed because of her health. The Van Laars, from her perspective, are concerned only with outside appearances, while she herself lives so passionately within.
The earth is warming, yet even here in the countryside, food is becoming harder to find, and for this reason, a new task is added to Lien’s duties. It is called “carrying from the farm.” The carrying is really “begging,” and the girl, with her prettiness and her thinness, does this task exceptionally well. There are walks along hedgerows, through woods, and over heaths to farmyards where she will stand at the open door of a barn. “Do you have any eggs or milk for Mother?” she must ask. Almost always she comes back with something, such as a brown paper package with bacon inside it, a clutch of spring onions, or a thin yellow triangle of cheese.
In this way Lien ranges through the landscape of Gelderland, a fairy-tale figure with a basket in her hand. This is a different kind of Holland from the square fields, canals, windmills, and poplars of the west. Here the birches clasp their roots to dips and ridges, the dappled floor beneath their branches covered with blueberry bushes that have tiny dark leaves. Mixed in with the patches of wood there is heather, which shines pale purple amid the white of dry grass. The farms are small and ancient, low wooden barns with mossy thatch that shelter a few goats and chickens and a cow. In some of the clearings there are holiday chalets and campsites where German soldiers hang out their washing or sit at tables, smoking and playing cards.
One time, as Lien walks along a sandy track with broad, bright fields on either side of it, a horse and cart comes up behind her and slowly overtakes her. The back of the cart is open and carries half a dozen boyish soldiers, propped up on sacks, sunning themselves. As she recedes, they notice her and wave and she waves back. And then they stop and call to her, all smiling, to claim her as a prize. A young man with a face full of freckles jumps down with his bare feet in the sand and in one easy movement he squats and lifts her onto the hot wooden boards above him in the sun.
It feels high up there. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” the young men ask. She shakes her head and looks a little to the side. To win a smile they offer words in their language for her to practice and search their pockets for gifts, and so she eats the knäckebrot and imitation chocolate that they place, with laughter and entreaties, into her hand. The boys show Lien photos of their loved ones. They talk to one another in German while they fix her with sparkling eyes. In this way they ride for maybe half an hour through the fields and woodlands, with Lien a captive and a princess at the same time. Then, when they reach the edge of the village, she points to where her house is, and the soldiers lift her down.
Lien, as she walks on without turning her head, does not reflect on her encounter with the soldiers. Like everything else, it just happens. She does not think about the war or about friends or enemies. Nor does she ever think about her parents or indeed about anyone else connected to her who might still be out there in the great wide world.
* * *
—
MAY 1944 BECOMES JUNE and the early heat that promised summer is replaced by rain. Four hundred miles away in Normandy an Allied landing is successful, but this barely
registers with Lien. The main event is that the Van Laar family is off on a short holiday, which means that she must stay with the neighbors at number 31. It is quite a change.
Corrie de Bond, the girl next door, is a few years older—a chatty, motherly type with a strong country accent and rosy cheeks. She envelops Lien with teenage gossip and advice. Though Corrie still wears a Peter Pan collar she is almost a woman and, to Lien’s nervous excitement, she delivers home truths about Mother van Laar. Corrie’s parents, Toon and Jansje, are a jolly couple. Jansje is tiny, always smiling, and round-faced—an adult, but shorter than Lien, with a very quiet and soft-toned voice. Illness when she was young has made her fragile, so she spends a lot of time resting in bed. This makes Corrie a kind of chief in the family: cleaning the kitchen, helping with dinner, and sometimes even scolding her father if he is home late. There are always people moving in and out of the household, and it is Corrie who tells them the rules.
A few days into Lien’s visit, Corrie’s father comes in even later than usual. Though a giant, towering more than two feet above them, he bends meekly, with a smile of contrition, when his daughter points to the clock on the wall. Instead of a jacket and tie, he wears paint-spattered suspenders and an open-necked shirt. For a moment he stands there waiting in silence with a smile playing on his features and his hands behind his back, and then, with a wink, he reveals a sack of potatoes, edged with heavy soil, and puts them in triumph on the table, where they thunder to a point of rest. His little wife is delighted, but before anything can be said, the youngest, Maartje, runs in, trailing a doll, desperate to be lifted up high. Corrie warns her father to be careful. So, gently, allowing just the checked bow in Maartje’s hair to touch the plaster, he lifts her against the ceiling, which is only a little higher than the top of his own bald head. After, they sit together eating, with giggles and conversation instead of prayers. Lien is quiet but she enjoys the togetherness and the pudding that they have at the end.
That night, lying alongside the older girl, she whispers that she would rather live here with Corrie and Maartje because she would fit in right between them, the little sister to one and the big sister to the other. But as Corrie tells her with adult wisdom, it would be too dangerous to change. And so, three days later, Lien moves back to her familiar bedroom at number 33 with the Van Laars.
* * *
—
IT IS UNFAIR TO MAKE the Van Laars the villains. They have been brave to take in a hideaway and they have ideals and standards of their own. It is not easy to take another person into a family. No doubt Mother van Laar wants to teach Lien to do better, and the child, with her dreamy distance from others and her sometimes sulky demeanor, is not a model of the modest, homely, God-fearing girl that she admires.
Still, the nightly prayers about being truly grateful feel to Lien like an accusation and, as the nights darken in September, her angry conviction that the values around her are crooked ripens to an open secret that can be read in her every gaze. Tension lies coiled in the household and unsatisfied stomachs and rain do nothing to lift the mood. At table she scowls at Jaap as he reports, with all the detail that he can muster, that he saw her playing hopscotch in the playground at school. After dinner, as Lien reads aloud as always from the Bible, there is an edge to her voice.
The rain has stopped momentarily, so the parents decide on a walk before curfew and Jaap goes out to play. Lien hovers in the kitchen, uncertain. Maybe she could go and talk to Corrie, now that the dishes are done? Then a wicked idea steals upon her, and, almost before she is aware of it, she is in the hall. Here, under the stairs, is the doorway that leads to the cellar. She is still hungry. There is enough time.
She turns the handle and sees the wooden steps and clicks on the light. Her ears are singing with the rushing thump of her own heart. It is now or never. Bending in, she hovers at the open hatch. There are sugar cubes, she knows it for certain, in the yellow enamel container on the top shelf. Quickly, she backs down the stairway onto the brick floor, watching the gray square above her grow smaller as she goes. It is there on the highest shelf, just as she expected: the yellow tin. With stretched fingers, Lien tips it toward her, catching the weight with her thumbs. There is a slight rattle from the lumps inside.
“What are you doing?” says the voice of Mother van Laar.
It cuts through the girl like an electric charge.
She looks up into the grayness above her head, an animal trapped, and her blush spreads sharp as a knife. And then the heat that has been for so long inside her, like a peat fire burning beneath the grass, bursts out into the light.
“You’re a rotten woman,” she mumbles, too soft to be confident but loud enough to be heard.
There is a long silence and then a reply.
“These are your Jewish tricks,” says Mother van Laar.
Fourteen
Bennekom, the place where Lien lived in hiding with the Van Laars, is my mother’s home village. This is the place I know best in the Netherlands and it is in Bennekom that I have, for the most part, been staying with my aunt and uncle since I began these weeks of research. It is a coincidence that Lien should have spent years in this familiar location, because her connection is with my father’s family and not at all with my mother’s.
Lien stops talking, but, like last time, the recorder on the table continues to run. It is Sunday at 1:00 P.M. and I am back at her Amsterdam apartment. This has been our first session of interviewing in over a week.
She moves the photo album with the pictures of the Van Laars off the table and sets out the plates and cutlery for lunch. We continue to talk as we eat.
The metaphor of a fire that burns beneath the surface, like the earlier image of a low heat when she was hidden at the farm in IJsselmonde, is important to Lien and she returns to it now as we discuss her feelings. Resentment had been building for months and once it burst out into the open it was impossible to contain. There would be fierce rows with the Van Laars, with all-out shouting, and Lien herself would say terrible things.
“I think I was very unkind to them,” says Lien gently, “and they also to me.”
In families, she observes, a pattern is often established where everyone’s behavior is fixed in advance. You know what one person will do and what the other will say long before anything actually happens. With her and the Van Laars it became a pattern of unkindness. There was no respect, no validation, they did not say nice things to one another.
“But,” Lien adds, speaking slowly, “I think it was also very decent of them, I think it was exceptionally moral, that, with the difficult behavior I had (and I certainly had that), they did not give me up.”
“Give me up”—the phrase means several things.
I ask Lien if she felt angry.
She pauses before answering.
“I think my main feeling was of having lost anything to hold on to. There were no borders. . . . There were no fences. . . . The biggest feeling, the most important feeling, was that I was free-falling and that nobody could hold me. You need somebody who can draw a line that you must not cross and I did not have that.”
Lien explains that later, in her professional life as a social worker, it was because of this experience that she could identify so strongly with children who had a problem with authority. They also had no sense of a line that could not be crossed, and because of this, there was nothing that stopped them from entering the criminal world. She thinks, given the wildness and sense of abandonment that entered her, she could have gone that way herself.
* * *
—
BEFORE RESUMING OUR INTERVIEWS LIEN and I take a short walk in the Vondelpark, which lies just a few minutes from her front door. In spite of her age, Lien is quick on her feet and, as we cross the road, she chivvies me to pick up my pace.
The paths in the park are thronged with speeding bicyclists and crowds of other walkers. In the winter sunshi
ne, people are sitting outside the park’s restaurants and teahouses, drinking coffee or sipping from tall, thin glasses of beer. From the three boys on the path ahead of us comes a strong whiff of marijuana. It makes me think of the 1970s when this park was famous the world over as a “magic center,” with thousands of hippies singing beneath the trees and by the lakes, spending their nights here in sleeping bags, celebrating peace and love. Apparently only 10 percent of the hippies actually came from Amsterdam, the bulk of the numbers making the trip from elsewhere in Holland and from France, Germany, and the United States. Then as now, the city was a haven of toleration that drew those who wished to experiment, even if only for the length of a minibreak. It is all the more haunting to think that during the war this place was a German military camp, surrounded by barbed wire, with concrete bunkers plumbed deep into the ground.
* * *
—
BACK IN THE FLAT WE BREW TEA. It is a bit of an effort to return to work after our outing and for a while my questions feel vague and forced. I try to get a picture of Lien’s life that autumn, but little color comes through. In spite of the quarrels and the tension, things continued as normal. She still did the cleaning, they ate their awkward dinners together, and she continued to flourish at school. In the evening, she always read out loud from the Bible, and while this might seem, for a Jewish girl, an imposition, for her it remained a pleasure.
“I have always been one for stories. That’s why the church was a joy to me. Learning psalms, hearing sermons, talking about the lesson—it gave such a sense of togetherness. It was the same as when I was a girl in the Pletterijstraat, when they would say during a story, ‘she just sits there and stares.’ I was totally in that world.”