Among the Reeds

by Tammy Bottner

  Her job was to transport children from their families’ homes to their hiding places. This was a dangerous job, and an emotionally wrenching one. Andree was given an address and some brief instructions. She arrived at a home and had to take a child, or two, often very young, away from their parents. Always she arrived to a scene of tearful separation. The little children would cling to their mothers. The older ones would often be the ones comforting their parents.

  The pathos of these scenes can only be imagined: terrified parents sending their little ones into hiding alone, knowing they might never see them again. Yet parents were desperate to try to save their children if they could. Knowing the Gestapo could arrive any day to round them up, and that even babies would be taken, mothers and fathers hoped that by hiding their children they would save their lives. “Claude” never told the distraught parents where she was taking their children. She simply appeared at their door, and left again as quickly as possible, holding the child by the hand and walking briskly to the streetcar. She could not bring suitcases with her, as that would arouse immediate suspicion. So she sometimes made an earlier trip to pick up luggage, stowed it at the train station, and later returned to pick up the child. The parents had no idea who would take care of their child, or how they would manage, but anything was preferable to seeing them sent to a concentration camp.

  A few times Andree arrived at a Jewish home while a roundup was in progress. Stunned neighbors watched in horror. Nobody could intervene. If a roundup was happening when she arrived she had to think fast, inventing excuses. More than once she had been questioned by Nazi soldiers, who demanded to know what she was doing in a Jewish neighborhood. So far she had gotten away with breezy responses and flirty looks. After all, she was an “Aryan” and allowed to move around the city freely. Sometimes she had to duck into a cafe in order to avoid confrontation with the German troops. If she had a child with her she pretended to be its mother or aunt.

  At these times she experienced real fear. If the Nazis realized she was escorting Jewish children, not only would the little ones be seized and killed, but she would be captured and, as a member of the Resistance, brutally interrogated. But Andree was good at maintaining her cool.

  Once they were away from the children’s homes, Andree immediately started coaching them about their new identities, making them memorize their new names, emphasizing how dangerous it would be to slip up.

  Once, while on a train, she had a six-year-old Jewish girl with her. She had coached this child: Your name is now Simone. You are not Sarah anymore, you’re Simone. As it happened, another woman traveling on this train was taken with the cute little girl, and tried to engage her in conversation, asking the child her name.

  The little girl turned to Andree. Do I tell her my real name or my new one? she asked.

  Luckily this encounter did not result in disaster, but it shows how vulnerable the escorts were while transporting little children.

  To distract the children, Andree sang them songs, gave them sweets, and made up stories and games to play during the journey. She would later describe how quickly she formed attachments to these little children, and they to her. It was doubly painful that she had to first wrench them from their families, and then quickly separate from them again when she dropped them off at their convent, home, or school.

  Decades later, Andree would muse that it was her youth and the fact that she was not yet a mother herself that enabled her to carry out her job. Despite feeling deeply for the families giving up their children, it was not yet having experienced first-hand the strength of maternal love that allowed her to carry on with the work. Had she children of her own, she thought later, she would have broken down in the face of so much heartbreak.

  This time, as always, Andree took a few minutes to make notes. The children, once separated from their families, had to remain in secret locations. As few people as possible were to know the child’s true identity, or the parents’ names. Yet if the war ended and the parents survived, there had to be some way for them to be reunited with their hidden child.

  So, using a bookkeeping system she and some of the other escorts had devised – despite the risks – Andree kept a series of notebooks, each with limited information, hoping that it was sufficiently disguised should the books ever end up in the wrong hands. Andree managed to keep records that would ensure parents who survived would be able to find their children after the war. The books were kept in a safe house whose address Andree herself did not know.

  This child, Alfred Bottner, would be given the code number 1068. The address of his family was in Rue des Ménapiens. The child would be hidden at a convent in Charleroi. Each of these demographic clues was kept in a separate notebook so that the information would be very difficult to put together. In one notebook Andree noted “Alfred Bottner – Child 1068,” in another notebook, “Child 1068 – Rue des Ménapiens” in another notebook “Child 1068 – code name Bobby,” in yet another “Bobby – Convent in Charleroi,” and so on.

  Once she had prepared herself, “Claude Fournier” took the streetcar to the address of the family. When she arrived she quickly introduced herself to the young couple and the little boy. She was relieved to see that Child 1068 was blond with blue eyes. That would certainly make him less suspicious-looking should prying eyes be on the lookout for Jewish children. As always, the child was apprehensive, and the parents distraught. While she felt very deeply for the parents, she knew that prolonging the goodbye scene would make everything worse. Briskly she told the boy that they would be taking a little ride on the streetcar. But the child did not seem to understand her.

  She looked at the father. Does he speak French? The father shook his head. No, just Yiddish and German, he said. Andree bit her lip. If the child started speaking in Yiddish on the streetcar or on the train to Charleroi she could be in big trouble. Don’t worry, the father told her. He knows not to talk. The mother looked stricken, tears running down her face.

  The man bent down and whispered something in Yiddish to the boy. The child nodded and repeated the phrase.

  Carrying only a small bag, “Claude” quickly left the apartment with the little boy clutching her hand, and made her way to the streetcar. True to his word, the child was silent during the ride. Smiling at him, she offered him a piece of chocolate. The boy’s big blue eyes widened, and he accepted the candy and sat quietly beside her looking out the window. So far, this transport was going well.

  Secrecy was necessary for everyone’s safety. Andree and the other ten or eleven escorts, despite working together closely every day, never knew where their fellow escorts lived, and knew each other only by their Resistance code names. One escort, Paul Renarde, known in the movement as Solange, lived with her mother during the war. She never divulged her role as a child escort even to her own mother, claiming instead to be working for a legitimate Belgian social agency.

  Where were these children hidden? Some went into private homes, joining families with other children, or were given to a young couple who wanted to adopt a baby; some were hidden in orphanages, and many were hidden in religious institutions.

  Belgium is and was a Catholic country. In the middle of the twentieth century, monastic orders were still prevalent, and convents dotted the Belgian countryside. Their cloistered world made the convents perfect hiding places. Moreover, the German occupiers tended to leave these institutions in relative peace, ironically seeming to respect the Catholic convents as relatively sacred communities. Between two and a half and three thousand Jewish children were hidden in Belgium during the war. In addition, downed Allied pilots, Resistance workers, and other adults trying to evade the Nazis were hidden, off and on, within the convents.

  Each convent housed a unique order – the Convent of Mercy, the Sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul, the Daughters of Mary, and others. These institutions were extremely hierarchical, each run by a Mother Superior. The nuns were used to obeying the Mother completely.

  It was the Mothers Super
ior who made the decision about whether to shelter Jewish children when approached by desperate parents, by the resistance movements, or by the CDJ. It is not known what percentage chose to do so, but many did. Their motives seem to have been a combination of humanitarian ones (these children are in danger, they need protection) and a desire to “save” the souls of Jewish children through conversion to Catholicism. Once the Mother Superior had made the decision, the nuns unquestioningly did as they were told, incorporating the Jewish children into the structure of their particular order.

  The Mothers Superior no doubt took their cues from the top. Cardinal Jozef-Ernest van Roey was the head of the Catholic Church in Belgium. Cardinal van Roey hated the Nazis, although his attitude toward sheltering Jews was less clear. He made some supportive statements criticizing the Nazis’ racial laws, but as the war progressed he refrained from openly critical remarks. Still, it was important that the head of the Church was against the invaders and open to helping Jews. It is difficult to generalize about motivation, of course, and it is likely there were many complex reasons for agreeing to hide the children.

  It seems that although the Nazis generally avoided confrontation with the Catholic Church, the nuns nonetheless perceived themselves to be at high risk of imprisonment, deportation, or death if discovered. And they were certainly aware that the children would be taken and deported if found out. The Germans did sometimes search the convents looking for Resistance fighters, or others on their wanted lists. So it was imperative that as few people as possible know about the hidden Jewish children. In the event of a search, a nun assigned to the task would have to whisk the Jewish children out of the building, hiding out in the woods or fields until the danger passed. This was especially important if the children looked Semitic. It was much easier and safer to incorporate fair-haired, blue-eyed children into the community. Dark-haired children with curls were in danger of standing out. There were instances of betrayal, when the children were denounced, but overall most of the hidden children (and occasional adults) managed to survive the war.

  As soon as they were taken from their homes the Jewish children were given new identities and coached by their escorts to reveal only these new names, never their original ones, which were often traditional Jewish names. The nuns only knew the children by these new monikers. The children were forbidden to speak Yiddish or German, as those languages would mark them immediately as foreign and suspicious. As few nuns as possible were aware that some of their charges were Jewish. In fact, it was not unusual for even the children themselves to be unaware of other hidden children in their midst: the less said, the safer, was the philosophy. Bobby's beloved Uncle Nathan, for example, ironically was hidden in the very same convent at Banneux as Bobby would be later in the war. The toddler and the teenager were unaware of each other's proximity. It wasn't until after liberation that they discovered they had both been sheltered in the very same place at the same time.

  Once sent into hiding, the children had to adjust to separation from their parents and families, adopt a new name, and deal with immense culture shock. Some, like Bobby, were plunged into a new language milieu. They went from living in families to residing in institutions, with the loss of privacy and comfort that accompanies that change. No longer did they have a bedroom, for example: they now slept in large dormitories. No longer did they eat meals around a small family table: they were now fed in an impersonal institutional style. Instead of being hugged, kissed, and adored by their mothers and fathers, they now had to take care of their own emotional needs. For the little ones especially, not old enough to comprehend the reason for this world-shattering change, the shock was extreme.

  Added to the culture shock of being institutionalized was the deeply religious, extremely foreign world of the convent. Typically the nuns and their charges followed a strict monastic schedule. Waking early, after making their beds they then embarked on a long series of prayer services throughout the day. Almost universally, the Jewish children were forced to participate in Catholic prayers and to attend Mass. This was necessary to prevent the hidden children from standing out. It was also, at least in some instances, an attempt to convert them. Some hidden Jewish children were baptized, some confirmed – it is unclear whether by choice or against their will.

  Children are great at adapting, however, and this new way of life eventually became the norm for them. At the end of the war, having adopted the Catholic traditions, the children were then again faced with the expectation to change overnight – this time to revert back into Jewish, even Orthodox, beings. Some of the hidden children had embraced the new religion and remained Catholic after the war, especially if they no longer had parents to return to. Others, like Bobby, hated the foreign religious ways, and shed them quickly and permanently as soon as they could.

  The nuns had to find ways to house, feed, and care for an added influx of children, at a time when shortages were already the rule. Sometimes the Resistance sent monthly sums for the upkeep of the children. Sometimes families provided a stipend. This stipend would end, of course, if the parents were arrested and deported. Some of the convents had adjoining orchards or gardens and were able to supplement their food supplies from their own land. The CDJ was adept at forging ration cards, and these would accompany the newly minted identities of the children when they arrived in their hiding places, allowing the nuns to obtain basic rations for their charges.

  To say the nuns worked hard would be an understatement. They had no domestic help. In addition to their daunting religious obligations, they were responsible for procuring food for the entire convent, cooking, cleaning, sewing, teaching, and caring for the children, as well as doing the farm work and taking care of the premises.

  The survivors’ recollections of the nuns are varied, which makes sense as these were individual people. Some recall warm relationships and fond experiences, others remember the nuns as cold, or even as harsh and cruel.

  Bobby, Child 1068, was picked up by ”Claude” in the dreadful late summer of 1942. Just as with the other children, she appeared at his parents’ apartment and whisked him away from everyone and everything he knew. He was a little over two years old. He spoke no French. She spoke no Yiddish or German. But somehow she managed to bring the little child, now completely alone in the world, to his first hiding place, a convent in Charleroi.

  Melly

  The Family Dispersed

  And so my family dispersed. Nathan too was sent into hiding. Everything was arranged by the Resistance; we were told very little. Later we found out that he was sent to a farm, up north, to live with a Christian family. The family needed an extra hand, and for a stipend they agreed to let Nathan live with them. I don’t know if the farmers knew he was Jewish. Probably they suspected but didn’t ask. At any rate, they weren’t very nice to Nathan. They made him live in the barn. His job was to trap the moles that were feeding on the crops in the field. Nathan hated it there. Eventually he ran away.

  Mama left Brussels too. She got a job as a housekeeper for a family she knew. The husband was Jewish – his name was Katz – but the wife was a shiksa. They offered to take Mama with them as a live-in domestic, and they left the city, moving to a village near the Dutch border. I rarely saw her. We didn’t write; it was too dangerous. If letters were intercepted by the Nazis, or if collaborators got their hands on them, they could implicate not just our family but those who helped us too.

  Collaborators were everywhere. You didn’t know whom you could trust. It didn’t matter how well you knew someone, or even if they were Jewish. People were so desperate to stay alive that they helped the Nazis by turning in friends and neighbors. So we lived in fear.

  There was one infamous Jewish traitor, Jacques le Gros we called him, Fat Jacques. All the Jews in Brussels knew of and feared this man. His real name was Icek Glogowski. He was a Polish Jew like Genek. Before the war he had worked as a bouncer at a nightclub in Brussels. We all knew that his wife Eva and three young children had been arrested b
y the Gestapo in the raids in the summer of 1942. Eva, as well as nine-year-old Elka, seven-year-old Simon, and five-year-old Leon, were all sent “east” and killed at a concentration camp. Some said that Fat Jacques had actually denounced his own family, but I found that hard to imagine. What was true, though, was that this Jew switched his allegiance to the Nazis after his family was deported.

  It's hard to believe that a Jew whose entire family had been killed by the Nazis would become a rabid informant, spending all his time hunting other Jews so they could suffer the same fate. Meshugene! This is how twisted our world became living under the Nazis. It wasn’t bad enough that the Germans were hunting us; we had one of our own leading those mumzers straight to our hiding places. It was a hard and bitter life.

  Fat Jacques roamed the streets of Brussels looking for people with Jewish facial features. He went to restaurants, cafes, stores, always on the hunt for Jews to denounce. He led the Gestapo to wherever Jews were in hiding, even assisted in their arrest, hitting Jews, pointing a gun, demanding jewelry and money. Of course the Gestapo paid him, and allowed him to live.

  He was a stocky man in his forties. I guess hunting his own people let him eat his fill. He always wore a hat on his big head – a light one in the summer and a dark brown one in the winter. It was important to know what he looked like. I kept my eyes peeled for him every time I left the house. Sometimes he rode as a passenger in a Gestapo car, searching the faces of the pedestrians on the street, sitting alongside the dreaded Kurt Asche, the Gestapo officer in charge of the “Jewish problem” in Brussels.

  Anyone Jacques suspected of being Jewish was arrested by the Gestapo and brought to their headquarters on Rue Louise for interrogation. Men were forced to drop their trousers. If they were circumcised they were brutally beaten by the Gestapo before being transported to the Dossin Barracks at Malines. Jacques le Gros was responsible for many Jews’ deaths, that’s for sure. I know for a fact that the CDJ tried to assassinate him on several occasions, but he managed to get away every time.