The Sisters of Auschwitz

by Roxane van Iperen

  Decades later, just before she died, the former nurse reads the name she never forgot in a newspaper and contacts the man to tell him about his parents. She can also finally hand him the albums with photos capturing his entire murdered family, which she took from the house at the time and kept for him ever since.

  The assignment Jan Hemelrijk has for Eberhard is less complicated but no less dangerous. It concerns sixteen-year-old Herbert Spijer, a Jewish boy who lives with his parents in Amsterdam. With the deportations and raids in the city, the family fear for the life of their son. They want him to go into hiding before it is too late.

  With a moustache and a hat as poor disguise, Eberhard travels to Amsterdam by train and takes the anxious teenager back to their home in Bergen to hide with them for the time being. It is a miracle it goes well. The checks at Centraal Station have increased considerably since the calls started and Eberhard sees ‘mutes’, in civilian clothes, everywhere. They stare expressionlessly at the narrow stairs with the crowds coming down from the platforms, making their way towards the central hall and, from there, outside. Eberhard suspects the mutes always position themselves right underneath the stairs to take in the stream of passengers properly. Anytime he accompanies children, he makes sure they walk right behind him, hidden behind his tall figure, which is perhaps no longer as impressive after the failed starvation cure but still good enough.

  In November, Eberhard goes on a new mission for the Spijer family. Their seventeen-year-old daughter, Elleke, is hiding somewhere in Amsterdam and has to be moved to Velsen. After Eberhard has brought the girl safely to her new address, it appears that his tram from Alkmaar to Bergen is no longer running. Eberhard does not know the way, just roughly the direction, and he walks into the darkness with the curfew breathing down his neck. To reach the summer cottage he must, at some point, take a road running between a pond and a soldier’s camp; there is no other route. It is already well past ten; no one is allowed outside, certainly not a German deserter. He steals through the bushes like a spy and finally arrives safely back with Lien, who is waiting for him, crying. She had almost resigned herself to the fact he had been taken by the Gestapo.

  It almost goes wrong on a few more occasions, when Eberhard is stopped at Amsterdam Centraal Station. As soon as the train doors open, he walks along in the stream; out of the train, onto the platform, down the stairs, head low, don’t do anything suspicious, don’t hide yourself, but don’t draw attention, either.

  ‘Ausweis, bitte!’ (‘Identity card, please!’)

  In the few seconds that follow, everything seems to happen excruciatingly slowly; reaching for the pocket, showing the paper, eagle eyes scanning from top to bottom, looking at him, then back to the paper, his attempts to swallow, his heartbeat banging inside his ears, heavy and drawn-out, like a steam locomotive heading for a concrete wall in slow motion, he sees it happening, cannot avert the crash.

  ‘In Ordnung!’ (‘All right!)

  The sudden relief, the syrupy blood slowly flowing again, walk on, take off almost, melt into the masses, until his heart is back in its place.

  Even at an advanced age, Eberhard cannot descend the stairs at Amsterdam Centraal Station without an acute terror taking his breath away. It takes a few minutes at the station square, sheltered by the city, to recover before he can continue on his way.

  12

  Mushroom Steak

  Each time Janny hears loud explosions blowing over from the sea, she runs outside, pricking up her ears, hoping it is finally happening. Hoping that here, on the land, the Allies have opened the second front Stalin spoke about on the radio. Hitler’s troops, as has become clear, cannot be beaten with a counter offensive from the sea and the sky – to stand a chance, the Allies must create a front on the European mainland.

  Operation Barbarossa came with brute force and, in the first instance, great speed. But towards the end of 1941, Hitler had lost 750,000 men and the morale of the German troops was lower than the wintry temperatures. In December, Minister of Propaganda Goebbels gives a patriotic speech on the German radio, in which he calls on the people to send the army warm gear. ‘The homeland must not have one quiet hour as long as there is a single soldier left at the front, who is not as yet equipped to withstand the rigor of winter cold.’

  Although the Germans themselves have been suffering under rations for two years, the call yields over seventy-six million warm items of clothing – but the war has lost its lightning speed. First, Moscow unexpectedly holds out until January 1942. Then, after a long and reasonably successful new German offensive in spring 1942, follows the infamous Battle of Stalingrad, from August 1942 to February 1943. This bloody battle symbolizes the culmination of the duel between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, both sacrificing millions of people.

  But Janny has no idea what is happening at the Eastern Front. She is not aware that Hitler’s Lebensraum plans don’t make the leap from drawing board to territory that easily. All she knows is that the Allies still haven’t landed and daily life in Bergen is becoming increasingly hard.

  Given the circumstances, Robbie is doing reasonably well, but Liselotte still cries all the time and Janny doesn’t know what is wrong with her. Kathinka is not doing well, either – she is listless. There is a dysentery epidemic, and Janny and Lien are very concerned about the little ones. Rumour has it the outbreak occurred in the soldiers’ camp down the road and the bowel disease spreads to the nearby families, where it mainly affects children.

  Kathinka falls ill. The little girl runs empty until all the baby fat has gone and her ribs press against her skin. When nothing but blood comes out of her, Lien is close to despair, but Jan and Aleid Hemelrijk arrange for a doctor friend to come and examine Kathinka. He prescribes medication and a diet of rice with cinnamon. Jan makes sure they get everything and for over a week they sit by her bed, anxiously praying she gets something down. The family next door, Catholic with eleven children, loses two of them. Just as Lien and Eberhard are about to lose hope, Kathinka begins to eat and recuperate, and when she even takes some bites of normal children’s food, her parents, for the first time, dare to smile again.

  The winter of 1942 is a severe one. Food is scarce and where that was problematic at mild temperatures, with nature in bloom and animals looking after themselves, it now causes major problems. The sisters find chanterelles in the forest and, thankfully, fried and seasoned, the mushrooms are a huge success with the children. To be on the safe side, they preserve baskets full of chanterelles and keep them in jars. Janny has also heard that a reddish bracket fungus is very nutritious and those final weeks of the year they mainly live off various mushrooms. Thankfully, they can laugh about it.

  ‘What are you having for dinner tonight?’ Bob asks Eberhard when he drops by.

  ‘Mushroom steak. And you?’

  ‘Mushroom steak.’

  In December, the temperature drops further below zero; the freefall will end at a record of minus 27.4 degrees Celsius in the following weeks. The frost creeps into the walls and it becomes impossible to heat their homes. Jaap Brilleslijper asks Jan Hemelrijk to bring him a saw and an axe, and he fills his days with cutting trees, chopping logs and lugging wood to both of his sisters, who let the stoves glow day and night.

  Janny and Eberhard regularly travel up and down to Amsterdam for their resistance work and there they learn new raids have taken place – the largest so far. In October the SD, helped by the Dutch police, has arrested around 15,000 Jews in Amsterdam and in the rest of the North Holland province. In November, they do the same with some hundred Jews at various places in the east of the country.

  All detainees are transported to Westerbork, where panic and chaos arise upon the arrival of so many. Not only because the barracks become overcrowded, but also because of the presence of numerous women, children and elderly people; the remains of belief in ‘labour camps’ quickly evaporate.

  A streamlined deportation can only succeed with peace and order, and the right camp c
ommander plays a crucial part in creating those. Two previous camp commanders of Westerbork, Erich Deppner and Josef Dischner, were sadistic, unpredictable men who only caused panic with their behaviour. Prisoners reasoned: if this is how we are treated in Westerbork, a former refugee camp, what on earth is awaiting us where we go next? A new camp director has to bring calm, so the Dutch quota for deportation can be met.

  In October 1942, SS-Obersturmführer Albert Konrad Gemmeker is appointed, a man with the symmetrical features of a film star and the aura of a principal. He comes from Beekvliet hostage camp in the village of Sint-Michielsgestel in Brabant, where the Dutch intelligentsia are kept as living security; no hair on their heads will be touched as long as the Dutch people obey.

  With velvet gloves, Gemmeker re-establishes the order in Westerbork. He moves into the beautiful commander’s house at the camp entrance, a stately wooden villa with pointed roof and a rectangular conservatory extension. Gemmeker lives there as if he is a proper mayor and Westerbork his city, letting himself be served by Jewish staff. He organizes the daily activities in the camp, making things as normal as possible, with work, a lot of sports, and cabaret and music performances in the evenings. There is a laundry, a sewing studio and a large garden with crops to make the inhabitants self-sufficient.

  Just as orderly as Gemmeker manages daily life, he draws up the deportation lists. The numbers are determined per week in Berlin and passed on to The Hague, from where Gemmeker receives his orders. During a weekly meeting the transport lists are drawn up, with Gemmeker largely relying on the Jewish administrative staff.

  During the first months, trains leave on Monday and Friday. From 1943, it is every Tuesday. People are told who needs to pack their bags per barrack, some with and some without their family members – the question no one dares to ask is which is worse. Everything happens in a despondent but organized atmosphere, right up to pressing together the passengers when carriages are overcrowded. Heads are counted and the amount is chalked on the outside with large numbers. Then, doors are hermetically shut and the train departs.

  Gemmeker thus runs a smooth deportation system which, much to the delight of Berlin, allows him to put the 40,000 Jews on the train from the Netherlands to Poland by the end of 1942. He celebrates with a festive meal.

  Janny and Lien realize how blessed they are to be together while most families in the country have been torn apart – if not deported already. Via the resistance they have sufficient access to coupons and Janny does not think of stopping her activities. She is not reckless or naive but simply sees no other option; when the times call for it, you have to fight.

  For the children they try to let days pass as they normally would. They even celebrate the feast of Saint Nicholas at Janny and Bob’s place at Buerweg. For a moment, everything seems like it was before the war. Which, they suddenly realize, is only two and a half years ago.

  That night, everyone is relaxed and embraces the rituals of the magical feast, for the sake of the children. Liselotte and Kathinka are too young to understand, but when Jan Hemelrijk, dressed as Saint Nicholas, takes Robbie on his lap and speaks to him in a deep voice, the boy stares back, his eyes wide, not stirring a finger.

  ‘Lost your tongue, have you, young man?’ Saint Nicholas grumbles.

  ‘No, Uncle Jan,’ the child stammers, making the entire family laugh.

  Robbie doesn’t understand what is happening and is about to burst into tears.

  ‘The Secret Service should sign him up,’ Jan Hemelrijk mutters from behind his fake beard as he hands the child to Janny.

  When they say goodbye late in the evening, the rain comes pouring down. The heavens are silvery grey with a dark rim, but in the distance a starry sky is glowing, predicting a dry night. Lien and Eberhard leave for their cottage, Kathinka warm inside her father’s rain coat, and Jan and Aleid walk along with them to their own house at Lindenlaan. As they wave to Saint Nicholas, Bob loses his precious bag of tobacco in the pouring rain. In an exuberant mood, he and Janny look for it until wisps of hair stick to their cheeks and their knees shine through the fabric of their wet trousers – in vain.

  Days later, Janny finds the pouch underneath the shrubs. The tobacco is drenched and half perished, but that doesn’t stop Bob from smoking it. These days even imaginary pleasure is welcome.

  13

  The Jansen Sisters

  It does not come as a surprise that they have to leave, but the news hits them hard nonetheless. On 1 February 1943, German soldiers will evacuate the entire coastline from Den Helder to Hook of Holland, from door to door, for the construction of the Atlantic Wall.

  Hitler has ordered this defence line along the coast of Northwest Europe to prevent an invasion of Allied forces – the invasion Janny so hopes for. A line or rather, a chain of obstacles and fortifications, covering no less than 3,000 miles, from the north of Norway to the South of France. Thousands of bunkers will be built in the Dutch dunes, as well as anti-tank obstacles, such as high concrete walls, sand bags and deep trenches. They need extra paths and roads to ammunition depots, anti-aircraft defences and minefields. All villages up to six miles inland must be empty by 1 February 1943. This announcement is bad enough for regular residents of the coastal areas, but for people in hiding it means they are trapped.

  Slowly, the final days of 1942 pass. Janny tries to hide her worries from her parents and the children, but the unrest is not just brewing indoors. Around them, people begin to move. ‘Normal’ people, officially permitted to relocate, not people like them: Jews on the run, German deserters for whom death awaits. As the moving vans and cars, loaded up to the roof, leave Bergen, a new stream of soldiers marches into the village each day. The men in the wooden barracks of the encampment nearby and the noise they produce keep Janny awake at night. She lies in bed with her eyes wide open, her hand in Bob’s, staring at the ceiling. Above their heads English aircrafts fly across the dark dunes and open fire on the camp in Bergen, whereupon German soldiers come running outside to shoot back.

  One night they shoot an English aircraft from the sky. It lands on the wooden barracks, burning, and sets everything ablaze. As if by a miracle, Robbie and Liselotte don’t wake up, but Janny, Bob, Jaap, Fietje and Joseph all gather at the window in the front room, which is lit by the sea of flames as if it were a glorious summer’s day. Petrified, narrowing their eyes against the bright light, they stand behind the curtain. Bob and Janny exchange glances: the soldiers are closer to Lien and Eberhard, and to Jan and Aleid.

  The next day they learn that, thankfully, they are all unharmed, but it is clear: each day here is one too many. They must find new homes.

  The sisters gather for emergency talks with Bob and Eberhard. Who do they know? Who do they trust? Jan and Aleid have to relocate too; they cannot move in with them. Should they split up and give the children to strangers? The latter is unthinkable and the idea is immediately dismissed. But then what? They are a large group and they want to, have to, stay together in order to survive this. It is impossible to stay in Bergen, returning to The Hague is no option and Amsterdam is hermetically shut. Moreover, they know with great certainty: if you get into Amsterdam, your only way out is to go to Westerbork.

  In the end, they decide that Janny and Eberhard will each set off on their own into the country, on the off-chance of finding remote places and vacant houses. It is a shaky plan, but it is all they have.

  Jan Hemelrijk, who is constantly looking for hiding places, has told them there are hardly any families left in urban areas willing to take people in – too much risk, too little space, too many Nazis on the lookout, both German and Dutch, and the Dutch police are also eager to accept tips about where Jews might be hiding. The reluctance of non-Jewish Dutch to dissociate from their Jewish fellow citizens has, in two years of occupation, mostly turned into acceptance of their fate.

  Friends in the resistance tell them Amsterdam is crawling with traitors without a uniform. Ordinary civilians betraying their neighbours, for
mer colleagues, even their very own family. Nazi bank Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co is thriving. With the number of deported Jews increasing, more and more houses become vacant and the Henneicke Column always appear like a shot to make an inventory of the home contents. The Hausraterfassung squad becomes increasingly important. The men travel the entire country, drawing up lists in houses people were forced to leave – sometimes sheets are still warm, teacups still on the table; sometimes the residents themselves are still there when the gentlemen neatly perform their administrative tasks. Then, they must witness how a blueprint is made of their daily lives; meticulously, as befits a true civil servant, and in quadruplicate. One copy of the inventory goes to the head office, the Zentralstelle, one travels along with the goods, one stays with the Column member as proof of his work and the final copy is handed to the family itself. A receipt as a last reminder of their normal existence before they close the door behind them.

  Remote areas then, that is where they need to focus. With his Aryan appearance, false identity card and flawless Dutch, Eberhard still dares to travel and Janny will combine her trips to Amsterdam for the resistance with combing out the neighbouring villages. They decide that the wooded area east of Amsterdam is most promising, so each morning Eberhard takes the train to Hilversum to explore from there.

  One day he travels to Hollandsche Rading, a tiny village surrounded by nature. Via the station, he walks down the high street and rings at each door. With his handsome, tall presence, blond hair, light eyes and eloquence, people speak to him with slight suspicion but without any problems.

  ‘Do you, by any chance, let out rooms?’ he keeps asking, followed by: ‘Or would you happen to know a vacant summer cottage nearby?’

  Nothing. Door after door, street after street, until at the other side of the village he finds only trees.

  It is December – the temperature has dropped below zero. He tries to warm his numb fingers and rejects the desperate action crossing his mind in a flash – to camp in the forest in tents with the entire family . . . And yet, he is drawn to the woods – perhaps there is a hunter’s cabin, an empty little home? He thinks of the family in Bergen, steels himself and dives between the tree trunks.