The Cut Out Girl

by Bart van Es

  Soon, on a terrace in the spring sunshine, they are drinking coffee and planning their route. First, Lien would like to pass by her old home on the Pletterijstraat, which was only a very short distance from their primary school. From there they can walk to the site of the memorial, and then have lunch. They have all day for this journey.

  And so, an hour later, they stand in the redbrick archway with the door of 31 Pletterijstraat before them. To the right, there are the concrete stairs with metal railings that lead up to the landing, where there are doors for numbers 27 and 29. It was up on that landing that she used to sit with Lilly, their noses pressed against the ironwork, their feet hanging down. It was here in the hall that her mother parked her bicycle. It was down these stairs that she ran to ask Mamma if she could tell the secret about going to stay somewhere else for a while. Lien and Jaap stand in silence, taking it in.

  The place where their primary school once stood is now taken up by a block of apartments, dark brick and rather brutal, twelve stories high. As eighty-three-year-olds looking up at it, they are more dwarfed by this building than they ever were as little children by the school itself.

  It feels right, being here with Jaap.

  They talk together as they walk along the canal toward the center of the city, traffic rushing beside them, its noise reflecting from the dirty windows of run-down shops. It does not need to be the big subject of the past that unites them. Conversation shifts easily among topics: a concert they might attend together; a song they remember singing in primary school; Jaap’s plans for a holiday with his son in Israel; a sculpture exhibition here in The Hague this July. Now and then they stop and Jaap tells her about the things that once stood in the places where there are now hotels and offices with mirrored glass that shines in the sun: the old bakery, the greengrocer’s, Lien’s uncle’s ironware shop.

  And then they have reached it: the site of the old Jewish school. It is a pleasant square now with modern apartment blocks looking down onto a cobbled pedestrian area that is planted with sycamore trees. There are rows of tables with sun parasols facing a sushi restaurant, and, on one side, the imposing walls and gardens of a seventeenth-century church. The whole clutter of ramshackle buildings that stood here when they were children has gone. Jaap rests on his walking stick for a moment and surveys the scene.

  The memorial is not conspicuous, but they find it under the sycamores: a nest of shiny stainless steel tubing in the shape of a little cluster of chairs. As the two of them approach they see that there are six of them, of different heights, with rungs like ladders. A bicycle is leaning against the one that is closest, and on the chair in the center a dark-haired girl is clambering, her face serious, determined not to fall. From a short distance, a woman looks on with an encouraging smile.

  The memorial on the site of the old Jewish school is designed as a climbing frame, blending in with the hubbub of the square. Only if you look closely can you see that there are names and ages engraved on the steel tubing. They are the names of murdered children: four hundred in all.

  * * *

  —

  AFTER THEIR VISIT that day to the site of the former Jewish school in The Hague, Jaap and Lien have met up more and more often. This summer they went on holiday together to Spain and they are now a couple, dividing their time between Amsterdam and the village of Velp. They enjoy country walks, museum visits, music, and spending time with their children and grandchildren, sometimes as a group. Now well into their eighties, they know this cannot last forever, but they are happy. Lien feels connected to the world around her. She feels whole.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This has, from the beginning, been a work of partnership. December 21, 2014, was the first of many days that Lien and I spent together as this book evolved. After the hours of recorded interviews there were hours of walks, meals, Skype conversations, and e-mail exchanges over which we discussed its numerous drafts. It is thanks to Lien’s faith, honesty, and wisdom that The Cut Out Girl has become a reality. Our deep friendship is something that I will always treasure.

  As this is a book about families, it is a great pleasure to be able to thank family members on all sides. Lien’s children—Daan, Batja, and Arjeh—have been generous with their time and their memories. Getting to know them has been one of the many valuable consequences of writing this book. Their father, Albert Gomes de Mesquita, read and gave feedback on the chapters that describe his marriage and wartime experiences. He told me afterward that he felt he did not come out very well from this story, but I hope and believe he is wrong about that.

  It was thanks to my mother, Dieuwke, that I was able to make contact with Lien in the first place. From the beginning, she worried that this project would upset people and damage the family’s reputation, but, in spite of this, she continued to help with my research. The same is true for my father, Henk, who told me a great deal about his childhood and was thus an important source for my account. As with Albert, I am grateful for their openheartedness and am confident that, seen in the round, this book will bring understanding and admiration rather than simplistic judgments on those who played a part in Lien’s life.

  Wider family has been very generous. My brother Joost with his wife Sally and their children have shown great interest. My uncle Geert Jan gave me access to his mother’s diary, which my aunt Greta kindly typed up for me to use. Some other relatives had no wish to be involved and I respect their reasons. Jaap van der Ham helped with the epilogue. On my mother’s side there has been enormous generosity. Sabrina Meurs and Jan Willem Koekebakker appear briefly in these pages, but (through their friendship, insight, and practical assistance) they have done far more than it was possible to record. I am also grateful to Corinne Meurs, Rob van Lummel, Steven van Lummel, and Annemargreet Meurs, who put me up, cooked meals, and were constantly positive about the importance of this work.

  Beyond this, friends have been inspirational. Marianne Reijnhoudt, Frank Pot, Rajika Pot, and Eric van Noort housed and fed me during numerous research trips. It was a privilege to share the book with them as it developed over time. Many other people opened their doors to me on my travels: Wout de Bond, Corrie Verhoef-de Bond, Marianne van der Top, and Sascha and Ruud van Gageldonk to name but some.

  Experts in the field were exceptionally giving. Ad van Liempt, whose many books I have read repeatedly, took time to meet me and explained the workings of the National Archives in The Hague. Gert van Engelen did the same for Dordrecht, and Kees Heitink and Ad Nooij gave me access to their sources on Bennekom. This is not a book with footnotes or a bibliography, but it is, of course, for a large part dependent on research conducted by others. In this format it is not possible to acknowledge debts properly, but I should note my dependence on the work of Bert Jan Flim (who has written a great deal on the rescue of Jewish children during World War II in the Netherlands) and J. C. H. Blom, Dienke Hondius, and Chris van der Heijden (especially on the Jewish experience after the end of the war).

  The staff of numerous libraries and other institutions have provided assistance: notably the Dutch National Archives; Leiden University Library; the National Institute for War-, Holocaust-, and Genocide Studies (NIOD) in Amsterdam; The Hague Central Library; Dordrecht City Library; The Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam; the Resistance Museum in Amsterdam; Museum 1940–1945 in Dordrecht; and the Shoah Foundation at the University of Southern California.

  I began writing this book in January 2015. Right from that first moment, my dear friend Tore Rem has been very important. His comments on drafts and our many conversations gave me the confidence to carry on. Colleagues at Oxford have also been unfailingly positive. It was thanks to the suggestion of Peter McDonald (of St. Hugh’s College) that I began recording my interviews and we have discussed this book over squash games ever since. Andrew Kahn, Louise Fawcett, Justine Pila, Marc Mulholland, Adam Smythe, Lorna Hutson, Peter McCullough, Paulina Kewes, and many others at the University of Oxford h
ave given encouragement and advice. My direct colleagues in English at St. Catherine’s—Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, Jeremy Dimmick, David Womersley, and Ben Morgan—and, of course, the Master, Roger Ainsworth, have followed this project closely. The same is true of colleagues at other universities, among them Tiffany Stern, Andrew Hadfield, Douglas Bruster, Lukas Erne, Patrick Cheney, Michael Suarez, and Indira Ghose.

  In August 2015, thanks to the advice of James Atlee and the help of my former student Katherine Rundell, I sent a working draft of the first nine chapters of what would come to be called The Cut Out Girl to the literary agency Rogers, Coleridge, and White, where, via Peter Strauss, it reached David Miller. More than anyone else, it was David who reshaped what I had done up to that point. Over a series of intense late-night phone calls and conversations in pubs and restaurants, he challenged me to be more innovative in the structure and contents of this book. Shockingly, David died (aged just fifty) a little more than a year after I met him, but his ambition and passion, his erudite reading suggestions, his probing questions, and his sheer joy in literary writing will stay with me for life.

  David introduced me to the world of trade publishing, where a great many people helped me along the way. Among these I would like to thank Martijn David, Philip Gwyn Jones, Lisa Highton, Arabella Pike, Ravi Mirchandani, Alan Samson, and Neil Belton, who all showed interest and gave advice on the book. Within Rogers, Coleridge, and White, I’m grateful for the support I’ve had from Melanie Jackson, Laurance Laluyaux, and Stephen Edwards and also from Katharina Volckmer, Federica Leonardis, Matthew Marland, Miriam Tobin, and Rosie Price. Most importantly, I want to thank Zoë Waldie, who took over after David’s death as my agent. Her strength, kindness, insight, and enthusiasm have been essential to me in the process of rewriting and book production. I owe her a lot.

  Revising and editing has been an exciting process. My publishers (Juliet Annan of Penguin UK; Scott Moyers of Penguin USA; and Haye Koningsveld of De Bezige Bij in the Netherlands) provided extensive comment as we moved from what Scott called “Version 1.0” to “Version 2.0” and beyond. Their collective input along with the help of Catharina Schilder, Christopher Richards, Mia Council, and Kiara Barrow have made this a much stronger piece of work. The care and attention of that revision phase was also there during copyediting, where Caroline Pretty (of Penguin UK) and Jane Cavolina (of Penguin USA) both did amazing work on the details of the text.

  I began these acknowledgments on partnership and family. To finish, I will do the same. My wife, Anne Marie, has lived this book with me and has been the first reader of every chapter, often with tears in her eyes. Her deep insight and moral support have been an unfailing resource. The same is true of my children—Josie, Beatrice, and Edgar—who have been there not only as readers but also as emotional anchors as I have worked at reconstructing Lien’s life. Readers of this book will know that there were moments where I felt a strong parallel between Josie’s inner struggles and conflicts and the conflict between Lien and my grandmother. The two of us had some tough times together when she was a teenager but the experiences have made both of us wiser. I am immensely grateful for the generous and openhearted perspective that Josie has had on this project from the beginning. Families are not straightforward: there will always be causes of sorrow, but families also give us the most powerful love.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Bart van Es is a Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St. Catherine's College. He is the author of Spenser's Forms of History, Shakespeare in Company, and Shakespeare's Comedies. He was born in the Netherlands and now lives with his family in England.

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