The Sisters of Auschwitz

by Roxane van Iperen

  And off he goes. She smiles when she sees him run as if the morning hasn’t happened. The boy dashes off the path and disappears into the forest, out of her sight.

  Janny plumps herself down on the bag of wheat and waits. It takes long. Too long. Five more minutes. She parks the bags behind some young oak trees, a wall of shrubs between their slender trunks, pulls the identity cards from her bra and hides them underneath the groceries. She notices her hands are shaking wildly.

  She follows the path with brisk steps and then begins to run, dry clods of soil slow her down, she sprains her ankle but hurries on. All her tiredness is gone. The edge of the forest. Not a sign of Robbie. The shell path crunches underneath her feet, the house appears between the trees and her gaze shoots up to the shutters flanking the window, first floor on the right, above the name of the house. The large Chinese vase is gone. Her knees give way and her hand reaches for a grip that is not there. A thought flashes through her mind: if she turns around now, runs into the forest, she has a chance.

  Liselotte. Robbie.

  In slow motion, she opens the gate and walks down the path to the back of the house, where the front door is. The ground beneath her feet is rolling, seems made of rubber foam. She takes giant steps, but hardly moves forwards. Only now does she notice the quiet. All the doors, all the windows are shut. No people in the garden, no music, no one sawing in the shed. Even the deafening birdsong has stopped. The house is on its hill, unaffected, but all the life has run out.

  She is standing in front of the deep red door with the square window and the small white bars. She looks back one more time, scanning the bright blue sky. The kestrel is not there. Then she rings the doorbell.

  The door flies open; a man with a shaven head and piercing eyes is standing in the doorway. It is Eddy Moesbergen, one of the most successful Jew hunters of the Henneicke Column. The group was disbanded in October 1943 when Amsterdam was declared judenrein and Moesbergen has since joined the Amsterdam police, who work for the SD. On his own initiative and the reward of the double rate of fifteen guilders per Jew, Moesbergen has continued the chase.

  One of his informants is a pension keeper from Amsterdam whom he once arrested for hiding Jews. Since her release, Moesbergen has threatened to send her to a camp, unless she feeds him information. The previous day, on 9 July, the desperate lady had given him a crumpled note, which read ‘Bos, The High Nest Villa, Driftweg 2, Naarden’. She had received the address in September 1943 on an Amsterdam terrace, where an anonymous Jewish resistance worker had passed it on as a potential shelter for people in need, but she had never used it.

  Moesbergen took the note and this morning he travelled to Huizen with two colleagues: Harm Krikke and Willem Punt, both SD. At the local police station they asked two officers in civilian clothes to accompany them and set off to have a look. To his astonishment, Moesbergen discovered a whole group of Jews hiding in the remote country house, and now there’s another one calling at the door.

  Janny stares Moesbergen in the face and in a flash she sees Robbie, standing in the hall behind him, a terrified look on his face. Before she can call her son, the man grabs her arm, roughly pulls her inside and barks in her face: ‘Who are you?’

  Janny, in her bewilderment, says: ‘Why don’t you first tell me who you are?’

  The man lashes out – several times – hitting her full in the face with his flat hand.

  Robbie starts to scream: ‘Mummy, Mummy!’

  Janny staggers, the walls are spinning, but she manages to keep standing. Moesbergen drags her to the front room; Robbie grabs her leg as she passes. The door opens and there they are, sat on the wooden floor. When they see Janny and Robbie, they gasp for air. Not them! They had hoped the vanished vase would work.

  They are all here. Lien and Eberhard with Kathinka. Jaap. Red Puck with – thank God – Liselotte on her lap. Jetty. Simon. Loes and Bram, a red stripe right across his neck. No, they are not all here. Janny quickly counts. Four are missing: Father, Mother, Rita, Willi.

  When she sees the distorted face of her younger sister, red from the beatings on one side, Lien puts her hand to her mouth with a loud sob. Eberhard presses her close. Bram Teixeira de Mattos looks at Janny intently, slowly shaking his head. She reads his lips: ‘It is not your fault,’ and then another man hits him to the ground.

  ‘No talking!’

  Janny is thrown on the floor too, Robbie quickly nestles against her. She sits up, cross-legged, gives a reassuring nod to Liselotte and Puck, staring at her with large eyes and trembling lower lip, her arms wrapped tightly around the little girl.

  The sound of heavy footsteps is all around the house; on the stairs, in the rooms, while the police are turning everything inside out with great force. The lamps above the dining table are shaking. They watch in silence, then quickly avert their eyes. One of the SD men, Detective Punt from Amsterdam, has been put on guard with them and after the nasty blow to Bram’s head, they don’t want to provoke him.

  Through the hatch to the kitchen they hear Moesbergen and another colleague eat their provisions. They shout at the officers upstairs, chuck something to eat at them, eat noisily, laugh and continue their house search. They are yelling obscene threats to drive any remaining others out of their hiding places. Janny closes her eyes and thinks of Father and Mother, lying underneath their hatch without knowing what is happening and who has already been caught. With her fingertips she brushes her cheek, which is slowly swelling.

  While she sits on the ground and tries to remain calm, she listens to the noise of the men, repeating their names like a mantra:

  Moesbergen

  Krikke

  Punt

  Hiemstra

  Boellaard

  Had they ever believed they were untouchable? That the hill where The High Nest stood had its own atmosphere, off the radar during raids, overlooked by the authorities, time and again? No, they did not live in a fantasy world. They had always been watchful and very aware of the risks of their work; they had conducted a drill with the emergency button and the hatches only a few days ago.

  Everybody had told them it was madness; Jews running a hideaway for Jews. Bert and Annie Bochove from the village. Mik, each time they saw him. Frits and Cor, Jan and Aleid, Karel Poons and numerous others. But to Janny and Lien it was always beyond question: not only would they themselves and their families survive, but they would also help as many others as possible. They had done what they had to do, what they could do.

  Inundated with people seeking shelter, resistance members passing by, they really had taken security measures. People had relocated, they no longer accepted guests they did not know and they developed a protocol for underground contacts visiting the house. They had a secret alarm, hiding places for each resident, an underground tunnel, a web of informants with the authorities. The vase in front of the window was a good enough sign to warn people that something was amiss from afar. But they could not arm themselves for betrayal.

  Lien, Eberhard and Kathinka had just finished breakfast in their room, downstairs at the forest side, when suddenly they heard loud noises outside. It was just before nine – Bob and Janny had already left, but the rest of the house was still waking up; most people stayed in their room for some peace and quiet before immersing themselves in the noise of the day. Lien and Eberhard froze and looked at each other, and from the corner of their eyes they saw the picture that had often haunted them in their sleep: strange men walking across the grounds.

  Eberhard immediately came into action. He rolled up the carpet, opened the hatch and shoved the chest with prohibited goods into the hole underground: illegal newspapers, Yiddish lyrics, resistance pamphlets, books on Jewish Culture Lien studied with Leo Fuks and much more. Kathinka was watching, a puzzled look on her face, and Lien quickly whispered: ‘Don’t tell anyone, darling!’ Shut the hatch, cover it with the carpet, put table and chairs on top.

  Banging on the front door.

  ‘Open up!’


  Eberhard squeezed Lien’s hand and opened the door from their room to the hall. He walked towards the front door, pressed the emergency button, praying everyone upstairs was awake and would do as they had so often practised. As the banging and shouting persisted, he fumbled with the lock to buy time. As soon as the door opened, a man stormed in, red-faced and wild like a bull.

  ‘Sicherheitsdienst!’

  A second man followed on his heels and behind him, Eberhard saw another three standing in the garden, attentively looking around. Their civilian clothes frightened him; for some reason he found men wearing uniforms less threatening, as if their task was imposed and could therefore be put aside again. The men spoke Dutch.

  ‘Where are they?’ the leader of the pack shouted straight to Eberhard’s face. A fountain of spit accompanied his words.

  Eberhard looked surprised. Lien tried to make herself small, pushing her back against the wall of the hall while she held Kathinka close so she wouldn’t have to see.

  ‘Who?’ Eberhard asked.

  ‘To the front room with you!’

  The man walked back to the front door, leaned outside through the doorway and beckoned to the men on guard. In the hall they received their orders.

  ‘Punt: guard those three. Hiemstra: come with me.’

  And off he went, up the stairs. Hiemstra, a fragile-looking man with cold eyes and pale scaly skin, ran after him with large steps. The SD-officer who had entered earlier was searching the ground floor.

  Eberhard, Lien and Kathinka were sitting in the front room, with Detective Punt as their guard, anxiously awaiting what the men would find upstairs. Puck and Liselotte were brought into the room first. The little girl had a fever and crawled onto Puck’s lap like a kitten. The men continued their search.

  ‘I would swear I saw a young boy standing at the window just then, when we were outside,’ they heard somebody upstairs say through the wooden ceiling.

  Lien held her breath – it must have been Willi. When he saw the alarm lights flash on, he must have glanced outside, curious to see what was happening. They had urged each other never to do that. Alarm meant: hide, now!

  From time to time, Moesbergen came downstairs to yell at them. He took them out of the room one by one to threaten them into talking – but they kept their mouths shut and so far the men had not discovered anyone else in the house. Lien was glad at least Bob, Janny and Robbie were not at home, and then she suddenly remembered their sign. The vase in the window on the first floor, it had to go! She did not know what Janny was up to today – they deliberately never told each other – or what time she would be back. Perhaps she was already on her way home.

  When Punt briefly left the room, she whispered into Kathinka’s ear: ‘Run upstairs, to the large front room. I’ll follow you. Go!’

  She gave the child a push and Kathinka ran into the hall, up the stairs, into the room at the front, her mother close on her heels. The SD-officers started shouting, at her and at each other, but Lien faked a nosedive for her daughter and swept the vase from the windowsill with her arm. The deafening tinkle of porcelain shattering on the floor was drowned out by Moesbergen roaring at his men. Kathinka had no idea what was happening – she burst into tears as Lien quickly scooped her up in her arms.

  Officer Hiemstra drove them down the stairs, where he handed them back to an embarrassed-looking Punt. Lien, quieting Kathinka, shot Eberhard a triumphant look. The vase was gone.

  ‘This is your very last chance: where are the others?’

  Lien was staring at the face of Moesbergen – a vertical vein was bulging in his neck, a horizontal one on his forehead. He leant towards Lien.

  ‘I know there are more people hiding here. Where are they?’

  Lien turned pale with fear. Had they been watching them? Had they known all along they were here? In that case they were lost. One of their resistance contacts must have been arrested, must have talked. Or perhaps one of their former residents. Hardly anyone could endure the torture; they knew, they understood. But who on earth was it?

  ‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ she answered calmly.

  Neither Eberhard nor Puck said anything either, but when Moesbergen took Kathinka out of the room, they panicked. Five minutes later the girl came back and proudly said: ‘He said I could have chocolate, but I said no. I said nothing, Mummy, only that he is a very bad sir.’ Lien pressed her daughter to her chest.

  After another hour had passed, they heard stumbling on the stairs. The door flung open and Bram and Loes Teixeira de Mattos were thrown into the room, bowed heads and lowered eyes. Moesbergen briefly stared at the group gathered before him on the ground, then ordered Bram to get up again and come with him. The old man rose with difficulty and followed him to the hall. The door was shut, but they could hear every single word.

  ‘So, you are a Jew?’ Moesbergen screamed as if he were shouting down a crowd.

  ‘No, sir,’ they heard Bram say, his soft voice muffled by the heavy walls. Loes lowered her head and cried, covering her face with her hands.

  ‘Here we have a Jew who doesn’t even know that he’s Jewish!’

  Laughter. Then there was stumbling in the hall, disturbing sounds, furniture moving, a scrimmage perhaps, and they all stared at the door, their faces tight with fear.

  ‘Are you still not a Jew? Do I have to make you a Jew?’

  The group in the front room flinched at each word.

  Suddenly, the door flew open. Bram staggered inside, his hands around his neck, his eyes bloodshot, breathing heavily. With difficulty, he sat down on the ground next to Loes, who moved towards her husband, but he recoiled and stared at the floor, gasping for breath with his mouth wide open. And then there was just silence.

  One hour later: Jaap, Jetty and Simon.

  ‘Look!’ Moesbergen said with a smile and a theatrical gesture as he pushed them into the room. ‘We found the next lot. You will go to prison. All of you.’

  They had torn down the panelling, the wooden floors, and discovered their hiding places.

  Around two in the afternoon, the crushing blow: Janny and little Rob. The broken vase had not averted their fate.

  They have been in the front room for a while and it seems the others are too hard to find. Janny starts to think clearly again. The earlier panic has gone; she feels icily calm. A few things are urgent at this moment. Bob needs to be warned at work. Those who are not yet found must remain in their hiding places. And they have to get the children out of here. She looks straight at Lien and knows she thinks exactly the same. They have been able to postpone it for so long, but now the time has come: they have to part from their children.

  ‘Sir,’ Janny calmly says to Punt, ‘my daughter has a fever.’ She points at Liselotte, slumped against Puck, red cheeks and drowsy eyes, like a little clown. He shrugs and looks at her questioningly.

  ‘She has to go to a doctor. She won’t survive prison.’

  Punt averts his gaze and stares outside. He doesn’t want to hear this.

  Janny looks at Lien and nods.

  ‘Don’t be scared,’ Lien whispers into Kathinka’s ear, and she begins to squeal like a pig.

  Kathinka jumps away from her mother, who falls back on the floor, wildly flailing her arms around, her head shooting from left to right as she keeps screaming.

  Everyone in the room is in shock, including Punt, who looks as if he sees a ghost. He gets ready to lash out, but cannot decide who to target first.

  ‘Not the children! Not the children!’

  Lien screams and cries. She fakes the fit, but her despair is real. She spits, drools, rolls across the floor. Punt has to jump to the side and shouts at her to stop, but Lien just adds a little extra.

  ‘Take me! But not the children, please not the children.’

  Janny’s eyes fill with tears. The rest look on – they understand it is a ruse, but they also feel what’s at stake here.

  ‘Stop it, woman! Where do the children have to go then?
Stop it!’ Punt looks at the door, afraid Moesbergen will come in to establish once more that he cannot handle the situation.

  ‘They can go to the doctor,’ Janny says calmly from a corner of the room.

  Punt turns around. ‘What?’

  ‘There is a GP close by. I am sure he will take the children in. Please. I can call him now.’

  Lien moans like a wounded animal and keeps murmuring: not the children. Punt fears she will have another fit any moment. He briefly nods at Janny, but then Moesbergen enters.

  He gives Punt orders to take the whole group, except for the elderly couple Teixeira de Mattos, to Huizen police station. No one knows why Bram and Loes are not coming – perhaps because they have difficulty walking, perhaps because the officers think they can pry more information out of these fragile people. The two local officers who have helped the SD men all day, Hiemstra and Boellaard, will escort Punt.

  ‘Go. Now.’

  The three men chase them outside and line them up in front of The High Nest. It is clear that their discovery was a complete surprise; nothing is taken care of – no transport, no backup, no plan.

  The party sets off to Huizen on foot, but Lien and Janny keep working on Punt along the way; the children are half-Jews – bring them to the doctor, take us with you. When it turns out we are lying, you can always pick them up later. The doctor lives just around the corner from here, we are almost there, look, there’s his house. Come on, please.

  Punt gives in. He sends one officer to the station with the rest of the detainees and asks the other one to escort him to the doctor. They turn off towards Nieuwe Bussummerweg, where Doctor Van den Berg lives, and ring the doorbell.

  The doctor opens the door and is shocked to see the two women, white as chalk, on his doorstep. They are Mrs Brandes and Mrs Bos, holding their three little children tight; he has helped them before, knows both women are Jewish and have people in hiding at The High Nest. Behind them are two men. Punt introduces himself as an SD officer; his colleague is with the Huizen police. Can they come in? Before the doctor can answer, the men are in his house.