Hidden Like Anne Frank

by Marcel Prins

  So I went back to school. It was a school that was just for Jewish children. Our classroom grew emptier and emptier as my fellow students were deported or went into hiding. At the beginning of May 1943, I did my final written examinations, with two other classmates. By the time of the oral exam, a few weeks later, I was the only one left, but the twelve exams, spread over two days, went ahead as usual.

  At the end of the first morning, after the first four exams, Freddy was waiting for me at the school door. My mother had received a visit from some “gentlemen” who had come to fetch me. Apparently my Sperre had been withdrawn. So “until further notice” meant until today. They were going to come back for me at eight o’clock. They said that if I wasn’t there, they would take my parents and my sister.

  As we were talking, the air-raid siren went off. Everyone hurried inside. We went into the school. I had a flash of inspiration, and I went to the school principal. I explained what had happened and asked if he could arrange for me to take the remaining eight examinations that afternoon. The principal managed to get everyone together. I was the very last student in the school and the only student in two classes to take the complete set of leaving examinations. There was a brief meeting and then they called me in and gave me my diploma.

  That afternoon I didn’t think seriously about going into hiding. It was a horrible thought that the “gentlemen” might take my parents and my sister instead. Besides that, going into hiding was not something you could do at the drop of a hat. My mother had wanted to go into hiding, but my father was too scared, because if you got caught, you were automatically deported as a criminal. The Germans did everything they could to make people believe there was nothing to be scared of if you followed the rules. But if you broke them, then things could go very badly. We never thought their ultimate intention was to murder everyone though. That was too awful to imagine.

  When I came out with my diploma, Freddy was waiting outside again. He took me to his parents’ house, where we ate dinner. I got home a little before eight. At five past eight, the “gentlemen” came. My parents were distraught when we said good-bye. My sister, Via, cried and waved after me through the window. Carrying my shoulder bag and a backpack, I followed the men to the police station, where I found other Jews waiting. We spent the night there, slumped on the floor and trying to sleep.

  Shortly before I left, my mother suggested that I should try to join up with a family, as they might be able to protect me and give me advice. I soon met a suitable family at the police station. They had some younger children and agreed to “adopt” me as their eldest daughter.

  The next morning, the Germans took us to the Hollandsche Schouwburg.19 It was a famous theater in Amsterdam and until recently had been one of the few places where Jews were still allowed to perform and to attend shows. Now it was an assembly point where Jews from Amsterdam and the surrounding area were held while awaiting deportation. As people entered, their names and addresses were noted so that the Germans knew exactly which Jews they had in the theater. This also allowed them to make up lists of names and dates for transportations. They called it registration. I didn’t want to be registered. If they didn’t know I was inside, they wouldn’t miss me if I managed to escape. As everyone lined up, I pushed my backpack forward a couple of feet, then I walked back to fetch my shoulder bag and put it down a little in front of the backpack. I shuffled around and tried to make myself look busy, and that’s how I got inside the Schouwburg without being registered.

  Hollandsche Schouwburg, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

  The atmosphere in the building was awful. Everyone was anxiously wondering what was going to happen to them. I felt so lonely without my family, without my boyfriend. There were hardly any bathrooms in the building, and you had to wait endlessly in line for food.

  When I was in the Schouwburg, I received a nice letter from my parents, with a number written in the margin: 339. It was the number of a house on Orteliusstraat, where Truus and her husband, Floor, lived, acquaintances of my father’s who had offered several times to organize a place for us to hide.

  I knew that one of my cousin’s friends worked at the Schouwburg. Everyone called him Bul. It was days before I saw him. When I did, I stopped him and said, “I want to get out of here.”

  “You and everyone else,” he replied.

  “But I’m not registered.”

  “Ah, that changes things.” He said he’d see what he could do for me.

  A few days later, Bul came up to me and said, “You’re leaving tomorrow. At four in the afternoon, they’ll ring the bell to tell the children up to the age of fourteen to gather in the lobby to be escorted across the street to the kindergarten. You can go with them. Just pretend you’re one of the supervisors. Stay in the kindergarten for the night, and get out of there the next day.”

  I was so nervous the following day that I got clumsy and split the seam at the back of my shoe. There was a cobbler in the Schouwburg who offered to repair the shoe for me. I gave it to him and he said he’d bring it back in a couple of hours. But he didn’t. And it was almost four. So I came up with the idea of asking my new “family” to send the shoe to the kindergarten. I told them what I was planning, but they strongly advised me not to try to escape: It was far too dangerous. When I told them that my mind was made up, they promised they’d do their best to help.

  The bell sounded and I hurried to the lobby. I was the first one there, because the children naturally wanted to stay with their parents for as long as possible. There I stood, with one shoe and one sock. Suddenly the guard at the door turned around and shouted, “Was machen Sie da?” What are you up to?

  I froze. I couldn’t say a word or move a muscle. The man looked at me, and his gaze moved down to my shoeless foot. Then he shrugged his shoulders and turned back to look at the street. The children came and we crossed the street to the kindergarten, where I was to spend the night. It was far too risky to run away immediately. The Germans kept a really close eye on us. A few hours later, to my astonishment, a courier finally delivered my shoe to me at the kindergarten.

  A tram running in front of the Hollandsche Schouwburg, carrying Jews guarded by soldiers

  Early the next morning, I went out on the street. The people at the kindergarten had explained to me that you couldn’t just slip away. If you wanted to keep out of sight of the Germans across the street, you had to wait for the tram to pull up at the stop in front of the kindergarten. When the tram moved off, you walked along with it and quickly took the first right-hand turn. It worked. There I was, walking along the street, anxiously holding my purse in front of my star. It was a beautiful May morning, and the day soon became warmer. I was wearing a thick winter coat, which my mother had told me to take.

  But, on my way to Orteliusstraat, I got lost. When I arrived there a few hours later, there was no one home. I walked around the block and rang again. Still no one. I knew it was a really dangerous situation. If I was stopped, they’d send me straight back to the Schouwburg. Then I remembered that I had relatives with a butcher’s shop on Kinkerstraat, not far from Orteliusstraat. As far as I knew, Uncle Karel and Aunt Martha hadn’t been deported yet. They were exempt from deportation because they ran a Joods Lokaal, a store for Jews run by Jews.

  The shop was open. My aunt and uncle thought I was a ghost when I walked in, because they knew I’d been taken away. Somehow, they managed to reach my parents. They came over and we spent some time together that afternoon on the floor above the butcher’s shop. It was the last time I saw them.

  When I went to Orteliusstraat again at six that evening, Truus and Floor had returned from work. They were pleased to see me, and I felt very welcome. Floor went to my parents’ house a few times to fetch things, and my mother and father used the last of their money to buy a fake identity card for me. People from the resistance had inserted my photograph and a thumbprint onto the card, so now my name was Nancy Winifred Altman, born in Indonesia on August 22, 1924, and currently residin
g in Epe.

  Floor and Truus lived in a three-room apartment. I was given one of the rooms to myself, which was a real luxury. Of course I had to keep to the rules of hiding: Only flush the toilet when someone was at home, go straight to my room when there were visitors, and never answer the door. Truus and Floor worked for the resistance and were involved in distributing illegal newspapers. One evening they were expecting a large delivery. Truus had gone out for a while and the doorbell rang, and then again a little later, and again, so I was almost certain it was the man with the newspapers and of course I knew someone had to accept the delivery. But I wasn’t allowed to open the door, ever. Whatever I decided to do, there was going to be trouble. I didn’t go to the door, and that meant a resistance man had had to wander the streets with his dangerous delivery.

  With all the illegal work that Truus and Floor were doing, it became too risky for me to stay at Orteliusstraat. “If we get caught, they’ll get you too.” So they looked for a new address for me. What followed for me was a list of over fifteen addresses. Every time I moved, I wondered how I should behave, what the family thought was polite, and what would annoy them.

  I was very lucky to have a fall-back address: my boyfriend Freddy’s house on Rijnstraat. In an absolute emergency, I could go there. Freddy had a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, so the family was exempt from deportation for the time being. Although Freddy’s mother was clearly nervous about it, they always made me feel welcome, and I could stay there for a few days. I used to have Freddy’s room, and he would sleep in the drawing room.

  One morning when I was there, I was awakened by strange noises. Going to investigate seemed like a bad idea. Freddy’s father was a diamond cutter. The Germans suspected him of having diamonds in the house, which should have been handed over long ago. They searched the place very thoroughly, but somehow they forgot the room where I was anxiously waiting for them to finish. It was such an incredible stroke of luck. Why didn’t they come into my room? It was a series of lucky incidents like that that allowed me to survive the war.

  I was able to seek refuge on Hobbemakade, in a house that had been abandoned but was still fully furnished. The Jews who had lived there had already been taken away. Someone from the resistance brought me food every day and stopped for a quick chat, but it was such a lonely place. I felt sad and abandoned.

  I didn’t stay at that address for long either. We knew that the house might be emptied at any moment. They called it “Pulsing,” after Abraham Puls, the owner of the removal company that came to take everything away. And that’s how I ended up staying with Tine and Herman Waage-Kramer, who were also in the resistance. They had other Jews hiding in their four-room apartment on Bronckhorststraat, including an invalid. There was always enough room for emergency cases too.

  One day Tine said she thought she’d found a job for me in the town of Amersfoort, about thirty miles from Amsterdam. I was going to work as a maid for two elderly ladies. Tine took me to their house and told me to wait in a separate room while she talked to them. Tine came back a little later, “We’re going back to Amsterdam, Nancy.” When we got outside, she told me that the women didn’t want me because I looked too Jewish. Soon after that we heard that there was going to be a raid at the house on Bronckhorststraat. We packed up the entire house in half a day and fled to an empty house on Merwedeplein. And sure enough, there was a raid that night.

  During that period, Steven, one of the resistance workers, had spent hours talking to my parents, trying to persuade them to send my little sister, Via, into hiding. Finally they agreed, partly because they’d been promised that Via would be with me at first. Steven was going to pick her up on the evening of June 19, 1943. He got home late, without my sister. He’d had a bad day, and he was exhausted. “Tomorrow morning,” he said. “I’ll go fetch her tomorrow.”

  The next morning, on June 20, 1943, there was a major round-up in south Amsterdam, and all of the remaining Jews were dragged from their homes. My parents and my sister were picked up and sent directly to Sobibor. Even now, I still find that so hard to live with: just one day too late. Some weeks later, Tine did not come home one evening. We waited and waited. A few anxious hours passed, and then we heard that the resistance group she belonged to had been rounded up. Everyone left the house. Only Steven and I stayed behind. We spent the night in a hiding place in the bathroom. The next morning I went back to my emergency address, with Freddy’s parents on Rijnstraat.

  There were staff shortages because of the war, so I found a job as an assistant in a home for well-to-do elderly people without anyone asking too many questions. I was in hiding there for nine months and during that time I must have mopped hundreds of miles of corridors. But I thought it was wonderful. I was happy to be able to do something useful. I used to take meals to the old people as well, and coffee and tea and glasses of water. On Sunday evenings, we sang hymns together in the main room.

  I slept in the attic, in a room with three other girls. We each had a bed and our own nightstand. Ida, one of my roommates, often used to say, “You’re a Jewess, and I’m going to report you.” I had no idea how I was supposed to react. Whenever she made her threats, I used to break out in a cold sweat. But she never gave me away.

  The superintendent was a small woman who wore a brown nurse’s uniform with a matching cap. She was very strict, and she treated me unkindly. Whenever something was stolen from the old people, which happened frequently, I was the prime suspect. She always made me hand over the key to my nightstand, which I found very insulting.

  Early one morning, the superintendent called me into her office. The Germans had taken a number of Jewish patients from their beds that night. She said I had to disappear because they were going to come back. Once again I had to make use of my emergency address with the Van Moppes family.

  In May 1944, the resistance organizations in Amsterdam made contact with their counterparts in Rotterdam: Aad Zegers and his sister, Mary ten Have-Zegers. One of the women in Mary’s swimming club needed a maid. Mary had said she knew someone in Amsterdam, a decent girl. Mary told me not to say that I was Jewish and in hiding, so we decided to tell her that I was engaged and had decided to work for a year as a maid in order to pick up the finer points of housekeeping.

  Mrs. Lindijer took me on straightaway. She was a widow, and she shared the house with her son, a minister. I was given my own room. I got along well with the lady of the house. She soon started to take me out shopping with her, which I didn’t really like, because it was too dangerous, but it still felt wonderful to be outside for a while. Freddy came to Rotterdam a few times as well, so I was able to introduce my fiancé to them.

  After two pleasant months, Mrs. Lindijer said to me one morning, “Nancy, we’re going on vacation for two weeks and you can have the time off too.” I acted as though I was delighted, but in reality I was terrified. Where could I go? As soon as Mrs. Lindijer left the house, I called Mary. She had no idea what to do either. She suggested that I should spend those two weeks at her house, but that was risky as Mary and Aad were involved in a lot of resistance work.

  Then that warm August evening came. I’d been staying with Mary and Aad for ten days. We spent the last hours of the day on the porch, enjoying the cool of the evening. A couple of hours after we went to bed, the doorbell rang and there was banging on the door. We didn’t open up quickly enough, so they kicked the door down. Three men stormed into the house. It was such a shock. I was completely distraught: It had all been for nothing. We were arrested and were allowed to grab only a few possessions. I was so terrified that I really needed to go to the bathroom. One of the men kept watch as I sat on the toilet, and then they took me to the truck.

  In the Haagsche Veer prison, where they took us, there were another twenty-seven Jews. Mary and Aad had found shelter for all of them, so we must have been betrayed by someone who knew the resistance group and the addresses. Aad managed to exchange a few desperate words with his sister. Soon after that, he was exe
cuted, shot dead. Mary was released relatively quickly — they thought she was unimportant.

  We were each given a bed with a straw mattress, a metal bowl, and a mug. I was in one big room together with some fellow prisoners. We sometimes used to do gymnastics and we made up songs about being in prison and about how much we wanted to go home.

  The food in the prison was tolerable, we were allowed outside every other day, and the guards didn’t mistreat us. We must have been easy prisoners. We rarely spoke about the immediate future. As long as we were in prison, our lives weren’t at risk. In spite of everything, it felt good to use my real name again. It was only then that I realized how difficult it had been to keep using that other name. Bloeme Emden — I savored my own name.

  One day we were told we were going to leave the prison. The Germans put us on a train to Westerbork. When we got there, we saw lots of people at the entrance to the camp, penned in with barbed wire. The first ones I saw were Margot and Anne Frank and their parents. They wanted to see if any of their family or friends were with us. I knew Margot and Anne from school. We were sent to Auschwitz at the same time. Fifty days later, Anne, Margot, and their mother were moved to Bergen-Belsen. I ended up in Liebau with fifty other Dutch women. A fellow prisoner from Auschwitz is still my best friend; she’s ninety-four years old now.