The Cut Out Girl

by Bart van Es

  Sixteen

  In Bennekom the next morning, I wake up to an empty house. My aunt and uncle, Jan Willem and Sabrina, must have left for work hours earlier. Even their dogs are missing. A note on the kitchen worktop tells me that the neighbor will collect them at eight, which means that they must have left more than an hour ago. I sit with the newspaper, eating breakfast. At the far end of the sunlit room a large window stretches up to the ceiling, which follows the triangular pitch of the roof. It frames a cluster of pines across the lawn.

  The house, a spacious low-rise, was built by my maternal grandparents immediately after the war and embodies their faith in the modern: clean-lined and inspired by the American architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, it sits on a wooded hill just outside the village. A privileged child, I spent my summers here in the 1970s and ’80s, enjoying the huge garden and the swimming pool with my brother and my cousins. The place feels different now, after hearing Lien’s story last night.

  The newspaper that I am reading is the NRC for January 14, 2015. Its front cover shows a long line of people in Paris, the Arc de Triomphe right behind them, queuing for copies of the magazine Charlie Hebdo. From a circulation of less than a hundred thousand, it has run to five million copies for its first edition since the attacks. Inside the paper there are photographs of the Empire State Building and the National Gallery in London, both lit up in the colors of the French flag, and under the banner TERROR IN EUROPE, the shooting in Paris is described as an “act of war.” Articles and opinion pieces set out the threat to Jewish life in many countries, with synagogues closed as a precaution in case of attack. There is talk of mass emigration. More than seven thousand Jews left France for Israel just last year, one of the reports in the newspaper tells me, and numbers are on the rise.

  Lien’s history and these recent terror attacks sit so strangely alongside the familiar house that surrounds me: the parquet flooring, the stylish modern and antique furniture, and the huge speakers of the Quad stereo system on which classical music was always playing when I was a child. On the wall by the door there is a little pencil sketch of a duck in a pond with some reeds around it, perhaps four inches across. A few nights ago I learned that this picture was given to my uncle’s great-aunt by her Jewish neighbors just before they were transported to the east. Like almost all of the 107,000 Dutch Jews who went through the transit camp at Westerbork, the neighbors never came back. That is why the little sketch is now in my family’s possession.

  As I look at the picture I am reminded again of Lien’s first observation about stories and families. This square of pencil lines is not even a scrap of information—without the family story it could end up in a junk shop if there was nobody left to tell. I reflect that, for me, Bennekom has never really had history: it always felt modern and had associations only with a happy youth. It feels different now.

  * * *

  —

  BEFORE VISITING the Van Laars’ old house at Algemeer, I decide to go for a run. Soon I am jogging through woodland and then into winter stubble, heading toward the level crossing over the railway line. I had not planned this, but it strikes me, while I scan the horizon, that it is through these fields that Lien remembers being carried on a wagon by German soldiers. And then, as I cut into the Ginkelse Heide, I am on the broad expanse of yellow grass and purple heather where British soldiers landed in September 1944.

  It feels somehow orchestrated, this encounter with history, and that sense grows as, looping back, I see the familiar hillocks that are prehistoric burial mounds. There are lots of them, earth lozenges, obscured now through tree growth, almost at one with the undulations of the land. Brown tourist signs mark out the different phases: Neolithic into Bronze Age, hunter-gatherers replaced by farmers who scraped out a living on the fertile sandbanks of the Rhine. Bennekom, just like The Hague and Dordecht, can be seen as a birthplace for the Netherlands. It was one of the earliest regions to be cleared, drained, and put to use. And then, when the Romans came, these lands stood at the edge of an empire, overlooked by watchtowers and forts. And then, in the winter of 1944, it was once again a front line.

  Ten minutes later I reach a little heath that has what as children we called the climbing tree on it, where I spot two familiar dogs. The neighbor who picked them up at eight this morning has taken the pair for a walk. Although he has not always lived here, he has spent time in Bennekom, on and off, since he was a boy, so we vaguely know each other, and as I reach him, I come to a stop. We exchange the usual questions, and after a bit he asks what brings me to Holland.

  Even now I find this an awkward question to answer. The right reply is too lengthy, too intimate and serious. Also, I’m still uneasy about what I’m really doing, not clear if I have a plan. Still, I can’t help answering, and when I do so, I find, as elsewhere, that the story opens an exchange. Like almost everyone of his age here, the neighbor remembers the time of the landings. He describes how, in the weeks that followed September 17, he and other boys collected spent ammunition, scraps of uniform, and military equipment, which they found around the woods. What he also recalls—one of those details that sticks with me—is the carcass of a cow that he and his friends came across, right here in these woods, butchered by British soldiers, all hollowed out and reduced to leather and bone.

  * * *

  —

  IT IS TWO O’CLOCK by the time I set out on my uncle’s bicycle to visit the house of the Van Laars, and in less than five minutes I reach Algemeer, a leafy residential street that extends right up into the woods. Sizable properties, mostly freestanding, are set back from the tree-lined pavement, surrounded by clipped hedges. Farther in toward the village center the houses become a bit smaller. Number 33 is an extended semidetached with a pretty front garden and a neat brick drive. I park my bicycle against a lamppost and head straight to the door.

  A woman of around my own age answers. Practiced now at these introductions, I begin to tell her about Lien and her time here, but I have not gotten far with my explanation when she interrupts, smiling, to ask if I mean at the time of Mrs. Van Laar?

  “Yes,” I say. “Do you have a personal connection?”

  “Not directly, but we found a little book of hers when we extended the cellar—we still have it somewhere.”

  A moment later I am seated in a pleasant open-plan sitting room and kitchen, which has fitted wooden floors, uncurtained windows, and walls that are decorated with modern art. Even the wood-burning stove (which makes me think of Lien and her morning duties) is new.

  The woman, whose name is Marianne, comes to sit with me while her teenage son searches for the little book, which is soon discovered and brought downstairs in a small Plexiglas box of the kind that might once have contained a pack of playing cards.

  “We kept it because it felt important,” Marianne explains, “because it was linked to the war.”

  It is rather exciting. Lifting the lid with the air of an expert, I am reminded of the National Archives in The Hague. There is a frisson because the book dates from exactly the time when Lien was here, and it looks impressively timeworn, mouse-eaten, and spotted with damp. On inspection, it is a housekeeping notebook full of shopping expenses, like gherkins bought at thirty-five cents. This makes my pose as an expert a bit comical. It reminds me of Jane Austen’s heroine Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey, who builds a plot in her imagination from the discovery of some old laundry lists. Mrs. van Laar’s book really does list the household washing—the sheets, the vests, the tablecloths—with precise dates for each wash. All the same, it has a kind of magic to it. You can see the daily staples (mustard, for example) and the moments of celebration (where cakes and lemonade, but never alcohol, are brought in at great expense).

  After the little book, there is a tour of the house, including the cellar. The original wooden steps are still there, as is the old shelving, which is now stacked with little-used kitchen items, such as an electric deep fryer stil
l in its box. I think of Lien here, stealing sugar cubes. Upstairs, Marianne points out the period features, like the doors with their top panels of frosted glass. There are football boots drying on a sheet of newspaper by the radiator on the landing. How strange that, seventy years ago, this was a house under occupation, full of the soldiers of the SS.

  As I thank Marianne on her doorstep, she mentions her neighbor.

  “He was born right after the war ended, you should speak to him,” she suggests.

  I’m reluctant. Knocking unannounced is never easy and here there is not even a direct link. However, because Marianne still stands there looking, I cross the drive to a blue door that has a ribbed window in it with a sticker stating that cold-callers are unwelcome. I press the bell and inside I hear the barking of dogs. The face of a woman appears, blurred by the glass. As I struggle to explain who I am, two Alsatians come to the high steel side gate beside me and I see a stocky man in his late sixties striding behind.

  My Dutch feels awkwardly formal. “I’m sorry, your neighbor Marianne suggested I call on you. I’m looking into the life of my aunt, who lived in hiding at number thirty-three as a child. . . .”

  But before I can say anything else, he interrupts me. The expression on his face has utterly changed.

  “Lientje!” he says. “She is the reason that I was born.”

  Seventeen

  Moments later I am in another living room as someone searches for a book. A large television is on low volume and there is the warm smell of oven french fries. The floor is strewn with children’s toys. “I’m sorry, the grandkids have been here all morning,” says the man, whose name is Wout de Bond. Thus far he has explained very little, but he has said one thing that comes as a revelation. During the war Lien spent time in this house.

  This news disorients me. Lien herself has no recall of the neighbors. Right now Wout is too busy to offer further explanation; he has his back to me and is rummaging through a chest of drawers. Occasionally he pulls out documents and photographs, which are placed on a growing pile. I sit a little awkwardly, full of questions. When could Lien have been here? Why does she not remember it? And how could this man have been born because of her?

  Eventually, the book that Wout was looking for is found and handed over, but he has other things that he wants to show me, so he heads out to the kitchen, calling to his wife with a question about a red folder, which he thought was in the drawers.

  I am left alone, seated on the sofa. The book that he has left with me is called Bennekom: Jewish Refuge and it has been opened to page 142. There I see a picture that is familiar to me, of Lien aged eleven. Beside it is a small paragraph of text:

  At Algemeer 33 with Gijs van Laar there was a Jewish girl, Lientje, in hiding. Lientje belonged to the family and was a total part of it. She attended the Reformed School. She survived the war.

  There is nothing else.

  I turn back a page and see that the previous entry is devoted to 31 Algemeer, the house where I am now. Here there is much more text as well as two photographs. One shows a three-year-old girl with a checked bow in her hair; it is labeled “Maartje.” The other is of a woman in her twenties who is called Hester Rubens. Both were Jewish and they lived here during the war. “There were many more people in hiding at Number 31,” the book tells me, “but their identities are unknown.”

  As with the earlier news that Lien stayed with the neighbors, this information comes as a shock. So there were other Jews in hiding right where Lien lived on Algemeer. When she met Maartje or Hester Rubens, as Lien must have done if she stayed here in this house, she could have had no idea of who they really were. The notion that Bennekom was a Jewish refuge comes as a total surprise to me. I have spent a lifetime visiting this village, and even now, though I have talked to my mother and her family about the work that I am doing, no one has ever mentioned this past.

  Still waiting for Wout’s return, I scan page 140, which is devoted to the house across the street. Here too, I learn, there were Jews hidden. A man and a woman, not a couple, lived concealed in an attic space, which could be accessed only through a ladder that ran behind the false wall of a bedroom on the second floor.

  Skipping back a few pages, I start the entry at the beginning and read about Bertha Ruurds, a local woman who often visited Algemeer during the war and who even lived for a while on this street. Through small tokens, Bertha signaled her loyalty to the resistance. She planted orange marigolds in her front garden, sold portraits and little tiles that featured the royal family, and distributed copies of the Protestant underground newspaper, Trouw. In this way, she became a point of contact, a distributor of information, always quick to help. Only after the war had ended and the relevant files were gone through was it discovered that Bertha was, in reality, an informer, employed by the Political Police. It was thanks to her that, on September 4, 1943, officers raided 32 Algemeer, right across the street from the Van Laars. The home owner went to prison and Salomon Micheels and Wilhelmina Labzowski, discovered hiding in the attic, were sent straight to Auschwitz as “punishment cases,” both dead before the end of the month.

  Two hideout addresses within a few yards of where Lien lived. Another six on the adjoining street. My sense of the one village in the Netherlands that I thought I knew has suddenly changed.

  It was, it turns out, not just Algemeer that had secrets. At least 166 Jews spent time in hiding in Bennekom, a village of just five thousand, and more than 80 percent of them survived. This is the opposite of the national picture. So why here, a place in which, in 1940, there were virtually no Jews?

  The answer is really twofold. It is the achievement of remarkable people, but it is also the product of history, of connections, and of land. Bennekom is a place of hills, woods, and simple farmyards, which, in terms of landscape, makes it un-Dutch. In the 1930s, the place was known as a holiday resort to Jewish visitors from the cities, and when the war came, it was a natural location to seek out. There was room here for disappearance, and its rental villas, campsites, hotels, and leisure clubs were points of contact through which rescuers might be found.

  Help itself, of course, came not from land but from people. For example, from Piet and Anna Schoorl. This couple, who enjoyed sports and motorbiking, owned a food-testing laboratory in the center of the village. In July 1942, Piet got a call from an old acquaintance, a businessman from Rotterdam named Leo van Leeuwen. A few years earlier, before the war started, Leo and his family had come to the village for a vacation, and he and Piet had played tennis together at the local country club. They were hardly close, but Leo was desperate. He and his family had just received their summons for transport to Poland, and so with no other options available, he asked if Piet and Anna might be willing to help them by saving the life of their little girl.

  It was the decision of a moment. Piet, who was away on business in the big city, could not even consult his wife. She later described the sudden arrival of a stranger at her doorstep, who brought “a pretty little blond girl with a tear on her cheek.” Anna knew nothing of the situation, had in fact never knowingly met a Jewish person, but she could imagine what had happened. So little Eline, aged just three, was tucked into bed next to the Schoorls’ own daughter, who was four, and hidden from view.

  And once contact was established, the connection deepened. Eline’s elder brother, Karel, also came over, and some time later so too did their parents, Leo himself and his wife, Pauline. Then, on top of this, as the crisis deepened, Leo’s cousin and his family joined the group. The pressure on Piet and Anna was almost unbearable, but in spite of this, they decided that it was possible to do more. So they rigged up the laboratory in the village as a safe house, and through Piet’s business connections, put out the call that sanctuary might be found. Families and unaccompanied children now made their way to Bennekom, often to stay only for a while beneath the laboratory before being brought, with the help of the village doctor, Wim Kan
, to a permanent address. In this way over fifty people owed their lives to the Schoorls.

  And then there was a raid. Police from the big city had heard, through their interrogations, about what the Schoorls were doing and they descended on the house. Amazingly, the hiding place proved effective and no one was discovered, but Piet was arrested soon afterward and spent seven months detained by the SS. By this time a whole network was active: food suppliers, couriers, and locations throughout the village to keep the hideaways safe. Piet kept his secrets and, when released in May 1944, simply resumed his work.

  Finally, after the failed Allied landings, while the SS patrolled the streets and requisitioned the houses, the Schoorls one by one cycled a dozen Jewish children—white-faced from their months in hiding—to safety in a forester’s shed on the Keijenbergseweg. From there they were collected a day later, concealed on a wagon among bales of straw. The children survived, as did all the others who relied on the Schoorls.

  * * *

  —

  ONE MIGHT THINK that Piet and Anna would today be remembered through a street name or a statue, that their names would be famous, but this is not the case. After the war, Piet’s business, which was ill equipped for the modern food industry, went under. He got a job at the agricultural college, which to him was a comedown in life. In his declining years he was plagued by depression. When he died in 1980, Anna applied for a war pension, but her request was declined.

  As I read about Anna’s disappointment, I am struck by the contrast with the case of the widow of Wim Henneicke, the head of the Search Division of the Hausraterfassung, the Jew-hunting operation that sent around nine thousand to their deaths. In the final stages of the war, Henneicke was shot by the resistance, and afterward, in compensation, his wife was granted a pension of two hundred guilders a month.