Hidden Like Anne Frank

by Marcel Prins

  After a few weeks, the Theelen family thought the coast was clear and I was allowed to go back to Grubbenvorst. In the evening again, on the bike again, along that railroad line again.

  During the daytime I used to go out into the fields with Farmer Theelen and help him sow corn and dig up potatoes. On the farm, I swept the yard and fed the pig. When the pig had been fattened up, it was slaughtered. It made such a huge impression on me: the piercing screams of the animal before it was killed, the red jet of blood that spurted from the wound in its neck, which they used to make blood sausage, the sickening smell that rose up from the steaming entrails — entrails of an animal that had always been taboo to me, because Jews don’t eat pork.

  I couldn’t go to school. It was too dangerous. So I used to walk to the edge of the village in the afternoon, where the Van den Bercken family lived. I had very good private lessons from Annie van den Bercken, who was a trained teacher, so that I wouldn’t have any problems fitting in at school after the war. I was a quick student. When I’d finished my work for the day, I was allowed to go into her father’s carpentry workshop, where I learned how to work with wood. The atmosphere at the Van den Berckens’ house was different from the farm. It was more like being at home in Amsterdam: There was a bookcase, and they discussed issues that didn’t come up at the farm. I felt at home there.

  Grubbenvorst is close to the border so, from 1943 on, we saw lots of British bombers on their way to Germany. The Germans tried to shoot down their planes. The women and children would head for the air-raid shelters when that happened. Our shelter was at the neighbors’ house. The men of the village usually stayed outside in a ditch during the raids so they could help the British if a plane came down.

  On the night of June 24, 1943, planes were flying over again. We could hear it all from our shelter: the sound of the engine swelling and then the fading roar. Until suddenly there was a brief burst of furious gunfire, and an engine stopped, and everything went absolutely silent for a moment. Then we heard a high-pitched, shrieking sound, followed by such an enormous bang that all the sandbags barricading the basement windows came tumbling into the shelter. The light went out.

  We tried to scramble outside. It didn’t work. We started to panic, particularly the women. We children were really shocked too, of course, but we thought it was more exciting than scary. It turned out that part of the house above us had collapsed and there was debris blocking the door to the basement. We couldn’t get out, so we were stuck in there until the men came back, cleared away the rubble, and opened the door. Then we saw the devastation in the village. Fortunately the Theelen family’s farm was not seriously damaged.

  Once every two months, my mother would come visit. It was a difficult journey on the bus, so she often used to stay the night. Those visits from my mother remain some of the most intense experiences of my entire life.

  In the afternoon we would go for a walk and catch up on everything we’d missed out on while we’d been apart, and at night I was allowed to share her bed, the big bed in the attic. I thought it was wonderful. The next night, after she’d left, I’d sleep with her pillow, which still smelled of her. It was a sweet, lingering scent that I could smell for days.

  After some time, my mother stopped visiting. “Why hasn’t she been to see me?” I asked Father Theelen.

  “She’s sick,” he told me. “She sent a message to say she’ll be staying away for a while, but she’ll come visit again soon.” He kept giving me that answer for a few months, until I began to realize that there must be more to it.

  I know someone gave her away, but I don’t know who it was. What I do know is that my mother was sent to Westerbork. I have never found the scent of my mother’s hair in any perfume since.

  After my mother’s arrest, I was sent to stay at yet another address for a while. This time it wasn’t with my sister, but with the Van den Bercken family, where I used to go for my lessons. But now that I was living in their home, I was no longer allowed to spend time in the carpentry workshop. It was too dangerous. There were lots of raids in those months because the Germans were looking for men to do forced labor.

  One of the carpenters made a partition in a big wardrobe on the first floor of their house, so there was a small space behind the clothes, where I had to sit in the daytime. I was allowed out in the evening, and at night I slept in their son Leo’s room, who was away at school, studying for his exams.

  I sat there on a stool, all day long. It was hell. It was impossible to lie down because the space was too small. Occasionally I was allowed to open the hatch for a short while, but all I could see was the clothes. I was really scared that I was going to be discovered.

  After a few weeks I went back to the Theelen family’s farm, where it was getting more and more crowded. During the last months of the war, the Germans made the Theelens take in a number of soldiers. Most of them were tired of Hitler and just wanted to go home. The Theelens were also sheltering two more Jews, a young married couple, Piet and Hennie.

  Father Theelen and Piet hid in a space they’d dug out behind a wall in the barn in the courtyard. Hennie and I just walked around the house as usual. One of the soldiers was on our side. He told us that he was thinking of taking a bicycle and deserting, and he warned us about one of the other Germans in the house, who he said was still a committed Nazi. Having those German soldiers in the house had its advantages: When the German police were searching the area, they always left our farm alone.

  On the night of November 25, 1944, the Germans evacuated the village. The day before, I’d heard at the Van den Berckens’ that British soldiers were carrying out reconnaissance near Grubbenvorst. Some people had even spoken to them. That night, German soldiers came and took us from the shelter. They ordered us to leave the village because they were going to blow it up. About an hour later, we were on the move, the priest with his cross leading the way, followed by the residents of Grubbenvorst. Taking only the most essential of our belongings, we headed toward the front line,39 to Sevenum, which was about four and a half miles away.

  It was a clear, cold night. The moon shone on the white ribbons that the British scouts had put up to guide the troops over a mine-free route the next day. A group of men from the village walked ahead, because we had to make sure the British knew that it was not Germans who were approaching but Dutch people from Grubbenvorst.

  The first thing we saw — it must have been about four in the morning — was British artillery under big camouflage nets. Our liberators welcomed us. I can still remember thinking: I don’t need to keep myself hidden anymore, I don’t have to pretend to be someone else, I’m safe, the war’s over for me. And it was true. In Sevenum we were put up with a family on a farm beside the railroad line.

  We roamed around in the countryside during the daytime and looked for explosives along the railroad line, which we found lying around all over the place. Shells, cartridges, grenades — we found all kinds of things. We turned the war into a game. The British soldiers gave us chocolate and other good things to eat. One day, when we were playing beside the track, some British jeeps that were driving along the railroad line got bombed. After the bombing, we went to take a look. We were really shocked by the sight of the dead and wounded British soldiers. There was heavy fighting in the area around Sevenum for months. It was actually far too dangerous to play there. We weren’t allowed back to Grubbenvorst until the spring of 1945.

  After the war I stayed on the Theelen family’s farm for a while. For the first time, I went to a regular school. Finally I ended up in the same class as friends I’d been playing with on the street for years. We studied together to prepare ourselves for high school.

  The newspapers printed lists of survivors. My parents, my grandfather, and many other relatives did not appear on the lists. My sister and I did. At first, we didn’t believe that both of our parents had been murdered. We kept on hoping. Gradually we became used to the idea that they would never return.

  I am now much ol
der than my father was. I’m old enough to be my father’s father. He was forty-three when he was taken away, and I’m now seventy-six. My eldest sons are already older than he ever was. When I stop to think about it, a strange feeling comes over me. Occasionally I try to imagine what my parents must have been through, on the train to Auschwitz, when they arrived at the camp. And after that. But then I get so angry that I think: This isn’t good, I mustn’t do this. That’s why I’ve never visited Auschwitz or any other concentration camp. I’m afraid that the emotions would be overwhelming.

  My feelings from back then are very distant. I can still see myself as a boy of six, seven, roaming around Amsterdam, ringing doorbells, getting into mischief. I can think about that boy, about his relationship with his father, with his mother, and with his grandfather. But I can’t feel the emotions I had back then — it doesn’t work. I just can’t reach them anymore. Maybe I’ve automatically kept the past at a distance because I had to hide away for years and deny my background. Or maybe it’s just that it’s impossible to relive those feelings from the past, and so I have to make do with memories.

  Lowina de Levie, 1937

  I was always a nervous child. I wasn’t really teased or anything, but I never joined in with the other children in the school yard. I just used to stand and watch. My parents were always fighting, so I was too scared to take my friends home too.

  We weren’t poor but we weren’t rich either. For lunch we had one slice of bread with some sort of topping, and the rest with plain margarine. My sister and I got a new dress twice a year. We thought that was plenty. I never minded that others in my class were better off. What I did mind was the bad atmosphere at home.

  When war broke out, I was fourteen. I remember standing with my father and my eldest brother on the porch at about four or five in the morning. It was a beautiful night, a beautiful morning, but we could hear the drone of airplanes in the distance. I didn’t understand what was really happening for a long time — not when the war started and not even when we went into hiding in 1943.

  One day my eldest brother was picked up. Fortunately he came back home, but it gave my parents a terrible scare. That fear infected me, and it only became worse as the war went on, particularly after we were made to move to a small apartment in the Rivierenbuurt neighborhood of Amsterdam. The Germans housed the Jews in two or three areas of the city to make it easier for them to carry out raids. During that same period we were made to leave school. I didn’t mind that so much. I’d just been held back a grade because I never did anything in school. All I did was draw. I used to draw pictures of happy families.

  I had to walk half an hour every day to the Jewish School with my brother. I had a boyfriend at school, Jacques. We went skating together just once. He brought me home on his bike, and it was so windy that my eyes filled with tears. Oh God, I thought, why am I crying now, at this moment, when I’m so happy to be on the back of Jacques’s bike?

  Then we were no longer allowed on bikes, or into shops, and we had to wear a star — but none of that made much of an impression on me. The worst thing was the fear. I was particularly scared in bed at night. If I heard any noise at all, I thought it meant Jacques was going to be taken in a raid.

  Then, one day, the Gestapo appeared in the doorway of our classroom at school. They read out his name: Jacques B. He stood up and said, “I’m young and I’m strong. I’ll survive.” He was wearing a good pair of walking boots and he had a backpack with him.

  I knew at the start of the war that I was Jewish and that it was mainly Jews who were being taken away, but I still felt safe at that time. I was more scared that other people would be arrested. That made sense, as my father had secured a job for me with the Jewish Council. Anyone who managed to get a job with the Jewish Council was temporarily exempt from deportation.

  The job my father got for me, as a housemaid, is what saved me. One day I was working at the house of an old lady who lived in the Rivierenbuurt district. Suddenly I heard the doorbell. And then the men from the Gestapo came storming up the stairs in their gray uniforms. My papers were in order, so I didn’t have to go with them. The old woman did, though. They dragged her out of her bed and threw her into the back of an open truck. I have no idea if I slipped her anything to take along. Clothes or food. I can’t even remember if I said anything to her.

  At home we had a suitcase full of clothes ready for if we suddenly had to go into hiding. It wasn’t meant for us to take if we were deported to the East — that was something we wanted to avoid at all costs. When I turned sixteen, I was no longer under my father’s protection. As far as the Germans were concerned, I was now an adult and at any moment I could be called for deportation separately from my parents. At that point, we all went into hiding. Non-Jewish colleagues of my father’s arranged the addresses for us. How they found them and how much it cost were subjects that no one mentioned, not even after the war. One thing was clear though: Money was necessary, and it was almost impossible for people without any money to go into hiding.

  A woman who worked with my father took me to stay with a farmer just outside the village of Sint Jacobiparochie in Friesland. The farmer and his family had been living for years in a disused station on an old railroad line. They kept some pigs and a cow in a large room, which had probably once been the waiting room. I had a small room of my own up in the attic, where I could be alone.

  I had no idea what living in hiding was going to be like. What I found most surprising was that there were places outside Amsterdam where a Jewish person could still have a nice life and people would treat you kindly.

  The family had three children, a son who was a year younger than me, a daughter who was ten years younger, and a baby. I was really clumsy but, when the mother was ill, I still managed to look after the baby, cook the food, and run the household. They really needed me. I felt more at home there than anywhere else.

  In Sint Jacobiparochie, where I did the shopping like any regular person, I was known as Loekie de Lange. The story we had to tell was that my sister and I had left Amsterdam because our mother was too sick to look after us. It was a strange story, because if our mother had been sick, we’d have been kept at home, since it was usual for girls of around ten years and older to take care of their mothers when they were sick. But the villagers were good people, not collaborators, and they never betrayed us.

  About once every six months, my father’s work colleague used to visit. She brought letters from my parents, who were in hiding separately from each other. First she came to see me and then my sister, who was with a different family in Sint Jacobiparochie. Then she went to Limburg, where my brothers were in hiding. She stayed only one night, so I had to write like crazy to answer their letters. I told my parents that I was doing the housekeeping, and later I wrote to them about cooking on an electric stove for the first time, and the way the milk boiled over if you left it alone for just a moment.

  It’s possible that the messenger also used to take care of the finances, because we had to pay for being in hiding. My father had already made preparations before the war. He had sold everything: furniture, piano, silver. I’ve always thought it was very clever of him to see what was coming and to take appropriate precautions.

  In Friesland, the man who organized the addresses for people to go into hiding was a minister. One day, he came to the station. “I’ve been assigned to a parish in Bergum,” he said. “It’s some way from here, to the east of Leeuwarden. You and your sister can come and live with us.” It soon became clear that he needed help around the house. He had four children, the eldest of whom was four, and there was another on the way.

  My sister was staying with a grocer and his family. She wasn’t allowed to do anything, so the move might be a good thing for her. But what about me? “Well,” I said to the minister, “I like being here, and they like having me. Perhaps you can find another girl.”

  “But your sister can go to school if you come with us to Bergum.” That argument swayed m
e. My sister was twelve at the time, and it’s important to go to school at that age. I hardly even thought about my own education. I was just happy that I’d been taken in by a fairly relaxed family, where I didn’t have to be scared all the time of being caught and taken away.

  I continued to resist, and he said, “If you don’t come, the family won’t get any more money or ration coupons.” That’s how it worked: With my fake identity card I got coupons that the family could use to buy food. Without those coupons, they could only buy food for their own family. And that wasn’t very much. That didn’t really matter to them, though. “You’re welcome even without any coupons,” they said. “If there’s food for five, there’s food for six.”

  But finally I agreed to go anyway. The house in Bergum was large, and so was the family. They put me to work immediately. My sister was allowed to go to school, which was good. We had to tell that unlikely story about our sick mother in Bergum too, as it was the minister who had come up with it, but once again no one betrayed us.

  Lowina with one of her brothers and her sister, 1935

  The minister often used to get so furious that he would throw his children from one end of the room to the other. His wife had no say in anything. She had a baby every year — and that was it. When he sat in his study on Saturday writing his sermon, we all had to be as quiet as mice, even the really little ones. I was used to discipline at home, but it was really extreme. I ran the household and, although I disliked the family, and I wasn’t free to be myself, I still managed to fit in. I’d learned how to adapt by then. It had become second nature.

  My sister was so nervous that she often used to wet the bed. Then the minister would shake her and hit her. And when he saw me watching, he used to lash out: “Oh yes, you’re the queen, aren’t you?” There was obviously something about my attitude or the look in my eyes that showed how much I loathed him. When she was in her fifties, my sister committed suicide. It must have been connected to all of the stress of our childhood.