The Sisters of Auschwitz

by Roxane van Iperen

  When the time for spring-cleaning arrives, almost all villages surrounding The High Nest have been declared judenrein, cleansed of Jews. Jewish citizens have been forced to move to Amsterdam and were sent to Westerbork from there. Jewish residents of national institutions, such as the foundation for mentally handicapped children and the sanatorium in Hilversum or the children’s home in Laren, have all been deported. As the noose around The High Nest tightens, the sisters find an unexpected ally close to home.

  As the months go by and the number of guests increases, Janny and Lien have to bend over backwards to feed everyone without attracting attention. Almost every day they take it in turns to cycle to their suppliers in surrounding villages and cities. Some stores or farms are less than a mile apart, others several miles away.

  The sisters, like workhorses, do their rounds and to avoid suspicion, they never buy more than one family’s needs per shop. They can navigate the paths around the house with their eyes closed. They plough across the heath in all weathers, their face close to the handlebars, back bent, toes stretched to reach the pedals.

  They buy their yoghurt at a wholesaler in Blaricum, vegetables and potatoes in two or three different shops. Meat is hardly available any more and the milk is delivered to the house. Soap and detergent come from Bochove, the chemist in Huizen, only a few minutes’ cycling from The Nest. One day Lien has gone there to buy toiletries. She is gathering the items on her list; there are no other customers in the shop.

  ‘You have people in hiding, don’t you?’

  It is a soft voice, but Lien jumps as if someone has beaten a gong right next to her ear. Her hand, reaching for a shelf, freezes in mid-air and she tries to swallow. Then she slowly turns around and stares into the friendly face of Bert Bochove. His head is the shape of an upside-down egg; a wide, high forehead tapering off like an oval into a narrow chin. He smiles at her without a touch of irony.

  ‘You always buy so much toilet paper.’

  He points at her basket and Lien feels her cheeks begin to glow. She could drop everything right there and run outside. The man sees the fear in her eyes and changes his tone. He puts his hand on her arm, looks around and leans towards her.

  ‘Don’t worry. So do we. Above the shop.’

  From that day on they are friends and resistance comrades, just as the darkest hour comes near.

  Not long before the German occupation, Bert Bochove lived miles from Huizen. He was running a mill in Finland until, in 1939, his family asked him to come back and take charge of the family business with his brothers. Which he does – for a while. He soon decides he wants to be independent and free, manage his own place. His fiancée, Annie, works as a pharmacist in Amsterdam and in May 1941, one year after the Nazis invade the Netherlands, they marry and move into De Zonnehoek – The Sunny Corner – in Huizen. On the ground floor they open a chemist shop; upstairs they have a spacious apartment.

  Chemist Bochove soon becomes a household name in the area. In this time of scarcity, luxury goods such as soap and detergent are rationed. Each family is allowed half a pound of soap per month. Not nearly enough for a former fishing village like Huizen. The creation of the Afsluitdijk dam and causeway may have robbed the village of the sea and its fleet, cutting it off, but the no-nonsense work ethic remains. Hard skin on the hands of the housewives of Huizen reveals their fondness of scrubbing. Bert Bochove quickly realizes: ‘In a village like Huizen the women don’t just clean their kitchens, they scrub and wax their worktops, make everything shiny and spotless and then keep everyone away so it can stay clean.’

  When Bert moves to Huizen in 1941, he starts a business that instantly makes him popular among the reserved community of the village. Jaap van Rijn, an old friend, owns a paint factory. His stock is confiscated by the Germans, but he manages to bury some barrels with thousands of gallons of linseed oil in his garden, just before they arrive. And with this oil, Jaap has a plan for Bert and Annie’s pharmacy. Jaap makes highly concentrated twenty-pound blocks of rock-hard soap and delivers these to Bert. Bert then turns the blocks into some 120 pounds of soft soap, which he breaks into pieces to sell. The news on Bochove King of Soaps travels fast and people from the entire area come to his shop to buy it. It is testimony to their kind nature that Bert and Annie never charge anything more than the pre-war price for their soap. This is very unusual at the time and the working class of Huizen love them for it.

  Business is thriving until one day Bert arrives at his friend’s house to pick up a new load and finds only his wife there. The accountant of the paint factory has betrayed Jaap and reported the missing stock to the Germans. That morning, Jaap had received a phone call – he had to report at the police station for questioning. He put on his coat, got on his bike and told his wife not to worry; the day he would let Germans scare him was yet to come.

  Bert is alarmed by the news but not surprised. Jaap has always been a proud man. From day one of the German occupation, he had waved his finger disapprovingly at each passing Dutch Nazi, warning them their despicable behaviour would have serious consequences! But Jaap’s wife is frightened and distressed. They have a couple in hiding, wanted for being active members of the resistance. She worries the Germans might come to their house after questioning her husband and she asks Bert to take the couple with him, to Huizen.

  Bert instantly agrees and takes the man and the woman home. They are the first people hiding in Bert and Annie’s upstairs apartment in De Zonnehoek. Many more will follow.

  Jaap van Rijn never came home again.

  Bert and Annie Bochove become faithful friends and associates of the Brilleslijper sisters in The High Nest. Janny provides Bert with information from the resistance, often from Amsterdam; Bert gives her news from the village. They even exchange people seeking shelter, such as Hennie Juliard and his wife, Pam, who is heavily pregnant in 1944. For the Bochoves to be accepted into the former fishing community, it is not only exceptional, but it is also, above all, very valuable. The villages of Naarden and Bussum are full of Germans and wealthy pro-Nazis; fear and ambition have turned a great number of dignitaries into National Socialist doormats. But in Huizen the Fascists are met with distrust – just as any new arrival is met with distrust. This curious divergence doesn’t surprise Bert. Many people in Huizen help Jews, Bert thinks, because this was a village of fishermen, stubborn by nature, workers who know how to fight their own battles.

  In Amsterdam, the hunt for Jews is in full swing. Streets are blocked in the early morning and a superior force of policemen comb the houses looking for hideaways. The raids quickly extend from Amsterdam to smaller cities and villages, also around The High Nest. The information they receive from Bert Bochove suddenly becomes vital.

  When they had first moved to The High Nest, Janny would wake up in the night, alarmed by the deep silence. For a fraction of a second, she thought she was gone: vanished from the face of the earth, sunken into a bottomless pit where no one could hear her, not even Bob and the little ones. She would reach for Bob’s warm body beside her and wait. After a few minutes there was always the owl calling from the back of the garden; the piercing screams of the foxes who, sometimes curious, came all the way from the forest to their front door, where Eberhard and Lien, returning from a house concert at Grietje’s, found them one night.

  Then she would think back on Amsterdam, her old bedroom with Lientje lying next to her, the sounds of the city like a mother, humming, lulling them to sleep, their own mother working in the store downstairs. The canals, the market, Carré Theatre, the tram accelerating. Would she ever walk there again? And Father, Mother, Japie? Would they ever be welcomed back in their own city? Was there even a place for them in this world?

  It is the most peculiar mechanism: when you hear something often enough – even something as absurd as your entire existence being unwelcome – it eventually plants itself in your head. The only one awake in the large house, with warm, sleeping bodies around her, the smell of burnt wood slowly blending with fr
esh air, Janny sometimes wondered if she had made it all up: the war, the oppression, the violence. But then the raids reach their area and there is no longer any doubt – not in the night-time, either.

  The Bochoves keep them informed. Bert has contacts at the Huizen police who participate in each raid and are given notice one day before a new one is scheduled. As soon as Bert knows, he calls The High Nest and simply says: ‘Don’t hang out the laundry to dry tonight!’ And they know what to do: make sure everyone is ready, suspicious items stowed, hiding places made accessible so they can dive right in – as if they never even existed.

  It usually starts at four in the morning. No matter how hard they try to stay awake, be ready when it begins, the approaching convoy always startles them, drowsy and confused. Except for the children, who just sleep through it. The rooms in the rest of the house are packed with people lying stock-still in bed or on their mattresses, holding their breath as they follow the rattling jeeps, the screeching tyres of police cars, with utmost concentration. Sometimes a siren announces them from a distance. They narrow their eyes, clench their fists, prick their ears. Which way are they going? Are they coming nearer or do they turn off? Should they raise the alarm, so everyone rushes to their hiding places, or should they give it a few more seconds? But the column does not drive up the hill. The High Nest is too remote.

  Sometimes, when a convoy has stopped close by and the residents of The High Nest are waiting anxiously, they hear gunshots and barking rend the silence. Staccato and piercing, the sounds echo across the heath. When the engines start and the noise slowly fades away, the house breathes out as one and everyone gets ready to rise. The sun announces another day won.

  This pattern repeats every few weeks and afterwards Bert, who has been informed by the police, tells them whether anyone has been found or not. In Huizen there seems to be an invisible web of people looking away at the right moment. After Lien sings at Annie Bochove’s birthday one evening, Bert runs into his neighbour on the street the next day – the man grumbles they really ought to be quieter with those people they are hiding.

  It is nerve-wracking, but each time Janny or Lien reports at the shop inside The Sunny Corner unscathed, they have a laugh with Bert and Annie. ‘At least we need a lot of toilet paper again!’ And with the latest news and their panniers filled, they cycle back to The High Nest.

  Mik is on the train to Naarden looking out of the window, watching Amsterdam fade in the distance. He feels less light-hearted than the last time he was travelling to The High Nest. Much has changed in a short while. Sides have been chosen – neither action nor wait-and-see can keep fluid decisions from turning irreversible and solid. Resistance members are facing the harsh reality too. The initial naive ad hoc approach has given way to an organizational structure and ambitious plans. The Germans have become more violent, but the call for counter violence has grown louder too. First, the resistance mostly focused on forgeries, hiding places, underground presses and acts of sabotage, but the number of liquidations of Germans and collaborators rises – and the number of retaliations as well.

  They are losing more and more people, and the choices Mik is facing weigh heavy on his mind. How far is he prepared to go? He still has a lot of discussions with his comrade Gerrit van der Veen about a potential assault on the register – an action with huge consequences. The other resistance group he is in close contact with, CS-6, has shifted its focus to assaults since the deportations started and his friend Gerrit Kastein drew up a list of collaborators to be killed by the group.

  Mik knows the sisters will be very upset by his news.

  From Naarden-Bussum station, he walks through the ochre-coloured fields to The High Nest without seeing anyone. There is no noise, no traffic, no danger appearing unannounced, but he doesn’t manage to keep his dark thoughts at bay. Turn left for the final stretch, into the forest. He has stopped looking around, his gaze focused on the weathered caps of his boots. He marches without following the twists in the path, treads mindlessly, or perhaps on purpose, on mushrooms and grass, his presence leaving a trace, until he stops in his tracks and looks up. Between the trees the shutters of The High Nest are reflecting the light.

  Janny is sorting identity cards and Eberhard is playing the piano in the front room when Mik enters the kitchen, greets them curtly and asks them to come outside. They walk into the garden, where he comes straight out with it: ‘Gerrit Kastein has jumped out of the window in The Hague. Parliament Square. Head on the cobbles. Dead.’

  Gerrit Kastein was a neurologist with nerves of steel – headstrong, but sadly not strong enough to escape his fate. Janny and Gerrit had been friends since their early twenties when both of them worked for the International Red Aid, offering support to the anti-Fascists in Spain. The Spanish Civil War would turn out to be the dress rehearsal for what followed.

  Gerrit and Janny joined the Help for Spain committee, the Dutch department of the International Red Aid. Janny’s primary mission was to collect money for dressing material, which was desperately needed in Spain, while Gerrit became the head of a Dutch field hospital at the front.

  After three months, Gerrit returned to the Netherlands, returned to his life as a civilian doctor and in 1937 obtained his doctorate at the University of Leiden. But his ideological fire had not gone out; he was an editor of the communist monthly Politics & Culture and gave talks on the Spanish Civil War. He wrote articles and in 1938 published a book entitled The Racial Problem. It contained a scientific treatise on class differences and anti-Semitism in Germany, which led to his thesis that racism inevitably ends in war. Evidence followed before long.

  When the Communist Party of the Netherlands, CPN, is banned by the Germans in July 1940, the communists go underground to organize acts of sabotage. Doctor Kastein, who lives in The Hague with his wife and two daughters, is present at the inaugural meeting of the illegal CPN branch in his city. Gerrit is also initiator of various resistance groups and takes the lead within Amsterdam resistance group CS-6.

  When the deportations of Jews begin in 1942, Gerrit is convinced the resistance must start taking radical measures; Dutch collaborators have to be eliminated. He convinces the members of the CS-6 group to help him assassinate people eagerly assisting the occupying forces, and draws up a list.

  The first intended victim is Hendrik Seyffardt, the seventy-two-year-old retired general of the Dutch army who, since July 1941, has been commander of the Fascist Volunteer Legion Netherlands, a nationalist vehicle that fights at the Eastern Front as an integral part of the Waffen-SS. He has just been appointed as deputy in the shadow cabinet and it is expected he will soon be Minister of War. He is an obvious target for the resistance.

  On 5 February 1943 the doorbell rings at Seyffardt’s home at 36 Van Neckstraat in The Hague, 200 metres from where Kastein lives. The general walks to the front door unsuspectingly. When he opens it, he sees two young men he has not met before: Jan Verleun and Leo Frijda, both members of the resistance group CS-6. They want to make sure they have the right one and so ask the general for his name; ‘He had such a beautiful voice,’ Frijda would recall later. Verleun shoots as soon as Seyffardt confirms his identity and the two young men run off, assuming their target was killed instantly.

  Seyffardt is critically wounded, but tells the Sicherheitsdienst that the perpetrators were merely ‘two students’ and his death is not to be avenged. He dies the next day and, against his wishes, raids on students are carried out immediately. Eighteen hundred boys between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, including six hundred students, are arrested and taken to Vught concentration camp.

  Verleun goes into hiding, still in possession of the pistol he used for the assault. Gerrit Kastein, in the meantime, has chosen the next target. This time he wants to do it himself, so he has to get hold of a new pistol quickly. He goes to a resistance comrade, Lucas Spoor, who lends him one – a move that will mark Gerrit’s end.

  Two days later, on 7 February 1943, Gerrit commits the seco
nd planned assault, on Hermannus Reydon. This serious jurist is a prominent member of the Dutch Nazi Party and has been named president of the Dutch Chamber of Culture, the state organization for ‘healthy art for Aryan people’ that all Dutch artists had to join.

  In the evening Kastein rings the door at Reydon’s house in Voorschoten. His wife answers. Gerrit shoots her in cold blood, closes the door and waits inside in the dark hall for Reydon to come home. After a while he hears the key in the lock; the front door sways open and he fires instantly. Reydon is hit in the neck and Kastein runs off. Reydon is severely injured and will spend six months paralyzed in hospital before he eventually dies.

  Gerrit Kastein is the one who pulls the trigger, but unknown to him, Reydon and his wife have deliberately been sacrificed by the Germans with the intention of leading Kastein into a trap, in line with the Nazis’ unwritten motto: ‘a dead resistance fighter is more important than a living Dutch Nazi.’

  Kastein has the misfortune of coming up against a man who equals his ambition, but surpasses his unscrupulousness. SS-Sturmbahnführer Joseph Schreieder has, under Heinrich Himmler, risen to the rank of Kriminalrat, and in this role is responsible for counter-espionage of the Sicherheitsdienst in the Netherlands. His primary objective is to round up resistance groups – by any means.

  The so-called resistance friend Lucas Spoor, who supplies Gerrit with the pistol, is in fact Anton van der Waals, a Dutch spy infiltrating resistance groups for the SD – a man who will be remembered as one of the worst traitors ever, in a time where there was no shortage of such people.

  When Kastein asks him if he could get him a pistol the day after the assault on Seyffardt, Van der Waals hurries to his boss, Schreieder, who does not have to think twice: of course they will give Kastein a weapon and when he shoots someone they will have an autopsy carried out and if the calibre of the bullets confirms that their new friend has used their weapon, they may as well assume he shot Seyffardt too.