Deliver Us From Darkness

by Ian Gardner

  During the first few months of the occupation, the NSB recruited 20,000 new members, who for the most part were opportunists looking for better jobs or a higher social status. During his speeches, Mussert worked hard to put a positive spin on the “happier times” he thought lay ahead, but the Dutch remained sceptical and it was not long before a new political organization emerged called the Nederlandse Unie (Dutch Union).

  The Dutch Union objected strongly to Nazism and believed that it could create a different brand of right-wing government. The Union’s aim was to present an alternative to the NSB by representing the people in a peaceful and more practical way. Hoping that this would be instrumental in spreading pseudo-fascist ideas, Seyss-Inquart allowed the Union to flourish. Most did not take the anti-democratic ideology of the new party seriously but hoped that it would somehow protect the country’s national integrity. The Germans banned the Dutch Union in 1941, after realizing that its once-peaceful doctrines were giving way to anti-Nazi resistance.

  Food and clothing rationing was soon introduced and the population given a weekly allowance of coupons, which proved woefully inadequate. Many households pooled their vouchers to purchase high-value items such as shoes, and as a direct result the traditional wooden clog came back into popular use. Some families, out of pride and respect, did not wear clogs to church but would often share the only decent pair of shoes they possessed for “Sunday best” by attending different religious services throughout the day.

  As the dynamic of authority began to shift, so did the freedom of the people. The Socialist Trade Union (one of the largest unions in the Netherlands) collapsed politically after Nazi infiltration. Many noncommercial organizations came under scrutiny and were banned, like Freemasonry, and youth groups such as the Boy Scouts. Proclamations began to appear in every village and town, on large notice boards printed in German and Dutch, publicizing new laws that often ended with the chilling phrase “failing to conform will be punishable by death.”

  Before the occupation all bicycles approaching from the right-hand side of a road intersection or crossing had the right of way. The Germans abolished this rule in 1940, so that their tanks and vehicles would not have to constantly stop and give way (bizarrely the rule stood until 2005). No cars were allowed on the roads after 2200hrs. Tyres had to be applied for and petrol was only really available for professional people like doctors or high-ranking civil servants. Public transport soon became scarce and coupons for bicycle tires were issued to those living more than three miles from their place of employment. Curfews were imposed between the hours of midnight and 0400hrs. Although alcohol was free from rationing, cafés and restaurants were forbidden to serve drinks after 1900hrs. The authorities even clamped down on what the population was able to spend and withdrew all coinage marked with images of the royal family. New currency was introduced and as a silent protest many people made necklaces and rings from the old coins bearing the head of the Queen.

  A number of controversial bills were passed and one in particular provoked much attention from the younger population. As the war progressed and more Germans were conscripted into the armed forces, many civilians from occupied Europe were forced to work in German factories as “slave labor,” and in a totally separate edict to the one issued previously in 1940 to the Dutch Army, the Netherlands was no exception. Although the figure was much lower for women, over 600,000 men were sent to Germany. Every person between 18 and 25 and not in essential employment, was ordered to spend at least one year in the Labor Service (STO).This generally meant agricultural or factory work in Germany for the males and domestic work for the females. However, later in the war many older men were transported to the coast to help build German coastal defenses in areas such as Zeeland.

  Franciscus “Frits” Berens was 20-years-old when he was ordered to Germany in the summer of 1942:

  I had been working in the sheet metal department of the Lips Ship Company near the city of Tilburg. After ignoring the requests from the Labor Office at Waalwijk, the Grüne Polizei [officially known as Ordungspolizei or “Order Police” – the law enforcement agency of the Third Reich] came to the factory and arrested me along with several other men; we tried to escape but were caught hiding in the changing rooms of a nearby public swimming pool. The Grüne Polizei sent us to Waalwijk, where we were put on a specially chartered train with hundreds of workers bound for Germany. My girlfriend managed to pass me a hastily packed suitcase through the blacked-out windows, containing warm clothes and a loaf of bread, just before the train pulled out.

  Later that morning we arrived at Cologne, which happened to be in the middle of an air raid and took cover in a shelter deep beneath the station. Bizarrely, everybody in the shelter was being continuously buffeted by air pressure as the bombs detonated far above. After the raid, I was among those ordered out into the streets to collect corpses. We were provided with bags and soon mine became full of human flesh and severed limbs. As nobody seemed to be checking identity cards, I dumped the bag and tried to escape but all the bridges out of the city had been destroyed. A day or so later, suspicious of my age and dishevelled appearance, the Grüne Polizei picked me up. They didn’t like the fact that I had tried to run away and kicked me down the stairwell of a police station before locking me in a filthy cell with ten other men. During the period of incarceration, we were fed on “water soup” and forced to use a 20-liter sauerkraut tin as a latrine.

  Two days later, I was sent to the Dynamit A. G. factory in Troisdorf and forced to work eight-hour shifts on a lathe. I slept with around 50 other workers on bunks inside a large potato warehouse, about five minutes away from the main factory. Strangely, outside of working hours we were free to do what we liked, but of course we had no money so where could we go? Homesick and fed up, after about a month, I managed to board a train bound for Kaldenkirchen, from where I intended to sneak back into Holland.

  One night in early July, as I was climbing a border fence, a stern voice screamed, “Stop – Halt.” As I was trying to bribe the guard with a pouch of tobacco, another came along and took me to a small office, where I sat with four men who had been caught earlier. The following morning we slipped away, when our guard fell asleep, and headed for the border near Venlo. However, we were recaptured and taken back to the same border office and beaten with clubs by German soldiers, who forced us aboard a waiting truck.

  Frits was eventually convicted and sentenced to four months in prison for “dereliction of duty” and “attempting to cross the border without authorization.” After a brief spell on remand in Dortmund and Krefeld, Berens was sent to a prison at Duisberg where he served his time.

  The first few days were spent in solitary confinement being beaten and at one point the sadistic guards forced me to lick food from the floor of my cell. Although the prison was badly damaged several times by the RAF, for me the single worst moment came when two Dutch sailors were brought in after they had escaped from a prison in Holland. The following day all the inmates were paraded in front of a gallows and forced to watch as the sailors were executed. Afterwards, as a warning every tenth inmate was selected and sent to a concentration camp – thankfully I was number seven. I still get deeply upset at the thought of what happened to those two boys, and the inhumane way we were treated.

  In 2005, Frits Berens received a token payment from the German Forced Labor Compensation Programme (a human rights organization based in Switzerland) for the physical and mental abuse he endured under the Nazis.

  Knowing the right people sometimes meant it was possible to sidestep the forced labor program, which in Frits van Schaik’s case was more luck than judgment:

  Several of us who worked at the shipyard in Dodewaard were informed by the local labor office that we were going to be sent to Germany for war work. Resigned to the fact, I visited the Town Hall to collect my transportation papers. A friend of mine, Dirk Willemsen, happened to work there and told me to return the following morning. The next day, Dirk handed me a sealed lett
er and asked that I take it to the director of the labor office. I went to Tiel and after a long wait managed to give the director the envelope. I never did find out what was in Dirk’s note but received a letter a couple of days later stating that I was now exempt.

  The first organized strikes – orchestrated by communists – occurred on February 17, 1941, when the authorities in Amsterdam tried to requisition some 3,000 sheet-metal workers for work in Germany. The victory was short-lived as the SS were called in and martial law was declared. The situation worsened when the dockworkers joined the strike, as the authorities deported 400 Jewish residents. After control had been restored, the Germans began to crack down on all political parties, meetings, and demonstrations, by replacing many mayors, town councillors, police officers, and even teachers with German-friendly members of the NSB.

  Eindhoven

  On February 21, 1942, Dr Hub Pulles, a veterinarian, became the NSB mayor of Eindhoven, a large industrial city in the province of North Brabant. Pulles was sworn in at the Van Abbe Museum of Art, an imposing building built in the late 1930s by Henricus “Henry” van Abbe, who had made his fortune from tobacco. High above the museum’s main entrance, the Germans had constructed an observation platform to guard against air attack.

  By the early 1940s, Greater Eindhoven was made up of a series of wijken or suburbs. The northern wijken of Woensel and Vlokhoven merged into Centrum (city centre), with the suburb of Strijp to the west, while Tongelre, Stratum, and Gestel made up the southern part of the city. At the beginning of the 19th century, despite the fact that there were over 40 cigar factories operating in Eindhoven, the area also began to develop as an important electrical manufacturing centre and affectionately became known as “Philipstown.”

  Founded in 1891 by Gerard Philips, the Philips Corporation originally produced light bulbs. As the company’s industrial powerbase began to gather strength, Eindhoven’s religious dynamic slowly shifted from Catholic to Protestant in tune with the Philips family’s beliefs. Far ahead of its time, the company had its own in-house healthcare and a superb final-salary pension scheme. Philips also operated a regular bus service and provided a chain of general co-operative stores under the banner of Etos (which still exists today), offering discount rates and loyalty cards for all Philips employees. Every day except Sunday, fresh bread, produced at the company bakery in Philips Dorp, was delivered to the Etos outlets. The dorp or town was one of several beautifully appointed housing estates around Eindhoven which were provided by the corporation for its workforce. The dorp was perhaps the most well-known due to its imposing brick-pillared entrance.

  By the end of the 1930s, Philips were manufacturing enormous quantities of wireless sets, valves, and electric razors.* Just before the invasion of the Netherlands, the directors fled to the USA and there they set up a new operation – the North American Philips Company. The only member of the family to remain in the country was Frederik “Frits” Philips, whose loyalty and respect towards the people of Eindhoven would later elevate him to saintlike status. After he died in December 2005 a life-size bronze statue was erected on Markt (Market Square) in central Eindhoven.

  The writing was already on the wall when in January 1939, together with a number of Jewish welfare groups, Frits set up the Dommelhuis project. Mr Philips kindly provided the flats (originally built by his company for single employees) as temporary accommodation for around 200 Jewish asylum-seekers, who had previously escaped persecution in Germany. Soon after the occupation, persoonsbewijzen (identity cards) were introduced, the Jewish population began to suffer and were banned from streetcars, cinemas, and public parks. Sadly the asylum-seekers who remained at the Dommelhuis (now a private school called Luzac College) were deported. At the outbreak of war many Jewish people lived in what was known as “the writers’ area” of the city near Sint (Saint) Joris Church. During the occupation 280 families were deported from the suburbs, to concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Sobibor. Some went into hiding and were subsequently hunted down by overzealous Dutch national socialists. Callous part-time bounty hunters, mainly working at weekends, earned themselves seven and a half guilders for every Jewish person they tracked down.

  At the outbreak of war, 113,000 people lived in Eindhoven with 25,000 working in the Philips radio works and the lamp and valve factory at Strijp. Although much of southern Eindhoven was dominated by tall chimneys, the industrial area was instantly recognisable across the city by the Philips Lichttoren (Light Tower). Constructed in 1929, the Lichttoren was part of the smaller lamp and valve factory, and was topped by a huge illuminated Philips sign.

  Piet van den Heuvel lived in the suburb of Gestel, and began working at the radio works as a telegram boy in 1936, at the age of 16.

  In the early thirties, Philips purchased several large power stations and manufacturing companies. Many of the sites continued to operate under their original names such as The Nederlandsche Seintoestellen Fabriek (NSF) at Hilversum and The Metaaldraadlampenfabriek N. V. Volt factory at Tilburg. Each factory had its own independent power plant for generating electricity, with its own direct, secure telephone service link back to Eindhoven (operated by Philips engineers and not part of the national Postal & Telephone Company network). I believe that during the occupation, Mr Philips shared these service lines with resistance groups across the region and used the subsequent intelligence to guard against factory inspections and searches.

  In 1940, 12-year-old Wim Klerkx from Vlokhoven qualified for a place at the prestigious Philips Technical School on Kastanjelaan. Around 750 young people applied for the four-year course but only 125 were successful. “We had to pass a stringent medical, physical, and practical test,” remembers Wim. “I was being trained as a lathe operator to make parts for electrical generators. Around one hundred employees between the ages of 18 and 25 were about to be called up to work in Germany but there was a rule that meant any student or apprentice couldn’t be deported. Mr Philips was well aware of the rule and requisitioned the ground floor of the school to establish a fictitious ‘training scheme.’All the windows were covered with sheets of thick grey paper, protecting the ‘new students’ from the prying eyes of the authorities.”

  In May 1941, the Philips workforce turned the 50th anniversary celebrations of the corporation into a patriotic demonstration, singing the national anthem Wilhelmus which had been banned by the Germans. One brave but enterprising employee “borrowed” a forklift truck and wired a radio up to the battery.* Adorned in the national colors, the electric vehicle was then driven to De Laak, Frits Philips’ childhood home on Nachtegaallaan, accompanied by hundreds of factory workers all dancing along to music blaring from the prohibited radio. More forklifts followed suit and it was not long before the streets were full of people enjoying the party atmosphere. Wim Klerkx was watching the procession from a second-floor window at the Philips School and recalls: “A German sentry was passively observing the parade, when a member of the crowd came over and tied a ribbon around the muzzle of his rifle, exclaiming ‘go home the war is over!’ By the end of the day, the party was well and truly ‘over’ because the authorities quickly posted notices ordering people back to work the following morning.” The German police made many arrests that evening after a series of fights broke out in the Philips-sponsored bars and social clubs with the Weerafdeling or WA (the militant wing of the NSB that had been re-established after the occupation).

  In 1942, 20-year-old Noud Stultiens lived with his parents and older brother at 3 Jacob Catslaan, in the district of Stratum – a five-minute walk from the centre of Eindhoven:

  As a chemistry graduate I got a job working for a large textile company Jansen en Mit who owned a dye works in Schijndel and a hosiery mill at Geldrop. By that time raw materials such as wool and cotton were no longer available because imports from Australia, South America and the UK had ceased. Ladies’ stockings and tights were fabricated by the company from viscose and for socks they used a mixture of flax, viscose, and lanital, a fibe
r bizarrely made from skimmed milk. After two years of occupation, everything was rationed but luckily I was able to exchange socks and stockings for black-market goods such as wheat, meat, butter, cheese, and even bicycle tires.

  Adriana “Jenny” van Hout (neé Soons) lived in Woensel and reveals what it was like growing up during the occupation: “Most of us kids who lived along Boschdijk [the main trunk road between Best and Eindhoven] went to the Theresia Catholic School. As with so many other teaching establishments, the school was requisitioned and became a German army billet. Subsequently my class was moved several times, firstly to a local pub and then to a timber factory before ending up at the Pastoor Van Ars Church School. Because the school was unable to cater for the extra numbers, we were only allowed to attend class in the morning.”

  On Sunday afternoons, Jenny’s parents, Jacobus (who worked for Philips) and Adolphina, sent Jenny and her older brother Leo to the local library on Fellenoord. However, on Sint Nicolaas Day, Sunday December 6, 1942, Jenny and Leo stubbornly refused to take their books back to the library and stayed at home to play with their new toys.* Around midday, the Royal Air Force attacked Eindhoven for the first time: “As we were arguing, the air raid sirens sounded and the entire family ran down into the cellar. Unaware that this was the first of three raids on the factories at Strijp, many of our neighbors came out into the street after the first wave. Against the advice of my parents, who remained close to the house, I ran to see the factories where most of the damage seemed to be concentrated.”