The World at War Episode 18 - Occupation - Holland (1940 - 1944)
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00:00Anne Frank, in her diary, June the 6th, 1944.
00:23Would the long-awaited liberation, which still seems too wonderful, too much like a fairytale,
00:27ever come true?
00:29Will we be granted victory this year, 1944?
00:33We don't know yet, but hope is revived within us.
00:37Now more than ever we must clench our teeth and not cry out.
00:42The people of Holland had lived under Nazi occupation for four long years.
00:59The people of Holland had lived under Nazi occupation for four long years.
01:14The people of Holland had lived under Nazi occupation for four long years.
01:41On May the 10th, 1940, without a declaration of war, Germany struck against neutral Holland.
01:53Paratroopers and panzers overpowered the Dutch peacetime army with its obsolete weapons.
02:07Using Holland's excellent roads, Hitler's columns raced across the flat countryside
02:11before the Allies could come to the rescue.
02:15At lunchtime on May the 14th, 50 Heinkels attacked the port of Rotterdam.
02:22In 15 minutes they started fires which destroyed the city centre and struck terror into the
02:27population.
02:32Rotterdam capitulated, and only a few hours later Holland decided to surrender to save
02:38other cities from a similar fate.
02:42At night, as Rotterdam blazed, the Dutch people were leaderless.
02:50The Queen, with her cabinet, had escaped to Britain to carry on the government in exile.
02:55Faced with the prospect of Nazi rule, more than 300 Dutchmen, mainly Jews, preferred
02:59to commit suicide.
03:01People were stunned, bewildered, fearful.
03:07You see, Holland hadn't been involved in a war since Napoleon.
03:12We were completely stunned and psychologically broken.
03:19We read what Hitler said, and as to the Jews, I had a firm belief in what he prophesied.
03:37I actually believed that, yes.
03:41He would do away with us.
03:44I believed that.
03:46We were not so very alarmed.
03:48We didn't believe all the things that he did, no.
03:51My brother, I mean Eddie, the oldest one, came to our house in the days the war started,
04:00and he said, come with me to, let's try to escape.
04:05And I remember that my mother said, escape, why?
04:09I must wait for the man who brings the laundry.
04:12What would you want me to escape from?
04:14Maybe they were the enemy to us, but really true, I mean, they didn't saw us as an enemy
04:19on that moment, at least.
04:22You see, because we are just hotel employers, and so long we not bother them, they accept everything.
04:33Like the doorman opened the door for anybody, like he do today, like he did years before.
04:40I mean, and the bellboys did the things they had to do.
04:43The porter did the things he has to do.
04:45Anybody, I mean, from the highest till the smallest did his job, but he did.
04:53Germany imposed a new administration headed by a Reich Commissioner
04:58personally responsible to Hitler and empowered to rule by decree.
05:03The new supreme ruler of Holland was Dr. Artur Seyss-Inquart, a Viennese lawyer.
05:10He had helped organise Austria's absorption by Germany in 1938.
05:15In the ancient Hall of Knights at The Hague, he addressed German officials.
05:19The 12 most senior Dutch civil servants were also present.
05:37He tried to reassure the Dutch by declaring that Nazi ideology would not be imposed.
05:42Germany had no imperialistic designs on Holland.
05:49Dutch laws would remain in force until further notice.
05:53Seyss-Inquart made it clear that the country would still be administered by Dutch civil servants.
05:58Anyone who wished might resign.
06:01Few were to do so.
06:08He called for cooperation between two Germanic peoples of the same blood.
06:20GERMANY, 1938
06:33As a conciliatory gesture, Hitler ordered the release of all Dutch prisoners of war.
06:43People started to relax.
06:45The Germans promised to maintain living standards and to cure unemployment.
06:50The occupation might not be so bad after all.
07:01The Reich Commissioner Seyss-Inquart himself
07:04saw off a trainload of children on a free holiday to his native Austria.
07:16GERMANY, 1939
07:21For the Dutch Nazi movement, the NSB,
07:24this was a moment of jubilation as they gathered to welcome the invaders.
07:29The NSB had been holding rallies here in Lunten for years,
07:32but now for the first time, instead of protesting against the regime,
07:35they were its champions.
07:41The NSB membership quadrupled to 80,000,
07:44although still only 1% of the population belonged.
07:48Like Hitler's Nazi party, the NSB was born of the economic depression,
07:52fear of Bolshevism and the promise of a revived Europe.
08:00It stood for order, discipline and an authoritarian state.
08:14Patriotic in their fashion, the Dutch Nazis extolled ancient traditions,
08:18glorified the fatherland and promised national self-respect.
08:36Saluting the Dutch flag and singing the national anthem were part of the ritual.
08:40All references to the royal family, the House of Orange, were, however, omitted.
09:01Anton Mussert, the NSB's leader,
09:03was an engineer with an outstanding record in the civil service.
09:06He saw this as the moment for the rebirth of the Netherlands as a great power.
09:12Mussert moulded himself on Mussolini.
09:15Hitler was the messiah sent to save Europe.
09:37With our love for the people and the fatherland.
09:45The Germanic tribe has many notes.
09:47We can form one of the strongest,
09:50if we are cut from the wood.
09:53It is necessary to show later
09:56that a Dutch people can still march.
10:00We will protect it.
10:07A German bomber flew low over the crowd in salute.
10:12It was just six weeks
10:14since the Luftwaffe had spread fire and death in Rotterdam.
10:37We will protect it.
10:40A German bomber flew low over the crowd in salute.
10:43It was just six weeks
10:46since the Luftwaffe had spread fire and death in Rotterdam.
10:55But there was another Holland.
10:57Astonishingly, on Prince Bernhard's birthday,
10:59only one week after France had fallen,
11:01thousands of ordinary Dutchmen spontaneously demonstrated their defiance.
11:07Soldiers saluted as people sang the Orange Anthem
11:10and placed white carnations, Bernhard's favourite flower,
11:13on national monuments.
11:23Some saw no point in open opposition.
11:26A new German-approved political organisation,
11:29the Netherlands Union, was formed
11:31to unite patriots in loyalty to the occupying power.
11:34With most other parties gagged,
11:36it seemed to be a respectable alternative to the NSB.
11:3915% of the population joined.
11:46Holland was a religious country.
11:49Despite Hitler's claim to be the saviour of the Christian West,
11:52the churches were hostile to Nazism because it placed man above God.
11:57In some churches, Dutch Nazis were denied communion.
12:05Everyone had to be fingerprinted and photographed and registered.
12:09The Dutch government had left instructions for civil servants
12:12to stay at their posts as long as they thought it was in the best interest of the people.
12:16Now they were systematically issuing identity cards to the entire population.
12:24The Germans introduced a racial questionnaire.
12:29Very shortly after the occupation,
12:32two men from the German security police came to me and asked,
12:35are there any Jews in your municipality?
12:38I told them it was true, there are no Jews in my municipality.
12:42But that was my first mistake.
12:49Because by answering that question, you accept racial discrimination.
12:53And you had to fill in a form.
12:56One passage was, if you had any Jewish grandparents.
12:59No, I had none, so I said no.
13:02And you went home and didn't realize that you helped cornering the Jews
13:07and making them vulnerable and bringing them in a position
13:11where they could later on be transported and cast.
13:14You didn't realize.
13:16After a year of being politicized a little bit better,
13:22you got more hesitations on what such a declaration really meant.
13:26But the first impression is, your age, your address,
13:30grandparents from Jewish origin, oh, okay.
13:34See, it was a process.
13:37Step by step, the process of infiltration of this Nazism in the society was there.
13:46All Jews were dismissed from public office.
13:49The Germans began to segregate Jews from other Dutchmen.
13:53They were banned from cafes and parks.
14:02In Amsterdam, black-shirted NSB men marched into a working-class area,
14:06pulled Jews out of pubs and beat them up in the streets.
14:16Jewish self-defense groups fought back.
14:19A Dutch Nazi was killed, a Gestapo man injured.
14:27As a reprisal, the Germans snatched 400 young Jews at random off the street,
14:31beat them up and sent them off to Mauthausen,
14:34already known to be a death camp.
14:39A communist street cleaner, Piet Nack, following his party's instructions,
14:43stood up in the street and urged Amsterdamers to protest.
14:52What drove me personally, but I think all the other people too,
14:55we were filled with an overwhelming hate.
14:58We'd never seen anything like that in Amsterdam.
15:01Lots of people, just because they were Jewish, men, women and children,
15:05there were no exceptions, people just arrested and beaten up.
15:10You see, well, what would you do if you saw someone in the water?
15:14Of course, you'd dive in and get him out.
15:17You don't ask if the water's clean or dirty, you're filled with anger.
15:21There was nothing we could do but go on strike.
15:24I wouldn't have known what else we could do. There was no other way.
15:29Thousands, in a tightly packed column, marched through the streets
15:33in the centre of Amsterdam, while the Germans circled round them in tanks.
15:40Of course, the demonstrators weren't armed.
15:43Yet they found a weapon in marching and singing,
15:47so they marched along the Rosenhoek,
15:50and the Germans marched through the streets.
15:53Yet they found a weapon in marching and singing,
15:56so they marched along the Rosenhoek,
15:59singing the International.
16:03The second day of the strike we held a meeting at the cleansing department.
16:11The boss there wanted us to start work again in the afternoon of the second day,
16:14but we had already decided we would only go back on the third day.
16:24The trams, which had signalled the start of the strike, signalled its end.
16:30The Germans had shot down nine people to continue with Mina Bladba.
16:34For 48 hours, workmen, shopkeepers and businessmen
16:37had staged a unique strike in defence of the Jews.
16:45My personal opinion is, put yourself in the place of the Jewish people of Amsterdam.
16:54They felt they'd been deserted, left on their own.
16:57But because of this strike, there must have been many Jews.
17:00Well, you can't really say many.
17:02But if you ask if it did any good, I say this.
17:05If just one Jew in the gas chamber felt that the workers of Amsterdam had not deserted him,
17:09then it wasn't for nothing.
17:14Faced with such bold opposition,
17:16the Germans now abandoned what was left of conciliation.
17:19The mayors of three towns who had been lenient with strikers
17:22were replaced by Dutch Nazis.
17:25NSB leaders, though not allowed to form a government,
17:28were installed in positions of power.
17:31The head of the Netherlands Bank was Rost van Tonningen.
17:35My husband joined the NSB in 1936.
17:40He was very interested in the work of Hitler, what he was doing in Germany.
17:46In Holland, the situation was quite different from Germany.
17:51We have big poverty here in Holland.
17:54We have no buildings.
17:56Three quarters of the population has no work.
18:01And they have bad clothes.
18:04So it was really not a very good situation in Holland.
18:08Before I joined the NSB, there was a youth movement.
18:12The only difference between the NSB and the youth movement was
18:15that it was not a political movement.
18:18The youth movement was to bring the children
18:22who came from poor parents together
18:26to give them an ideal to work in a teamwork for another person.
18:32Of course, we looked to the youth movement in Germany.
18:36It was quite different because Germany has a German character
18:40and the Dutchman has a Dutch character.
18:42So we chose the movement of the NSB
18:46because we saw the ideal, we saw the danger of the Bolshevism,
18:51and our thinking was to work there, to make them a big movement,
18:57to try to help Europe as a big united Europe
19:02from several kinds of countries who work together.
19:09Another Dutch Nazi, Woudenberg, was put in charge of the trade unions.
19:13My father, I think, worked and he lived from a religious base
19:20without calling it God or some other religion's name.
19:26My father was a well-known man, but a hated man.
19:30And there was a possibility for me to go to Germany
19:34to this National Socialistic Educating Institute.
19:39It was a school, like an Eton school or something,
19:43that we wore uniforms and we had the feeling
19:49that we were a selected group, better than the others,
19:53and you feel happy when you have that feeling.
19:57And in a very short time I was educated in this SS thinking,
20:03a great Germanistic empire,
20:06and there was no reason for me to think about Holland and the Netherlands and so on.
20:12I knew there should be one thing done, this war had to be won.
20:18When I had the age, I had to be a soldier, to fight,
20:23so that we could leave behind that little small country
20:28and we came to new situations, this great Germanistic empire.
20:34Heil die Führer!
20:37June 1941, the NSB called for support for Germany's attack on Russia.
20:44Mussert urged Dutchmen to unite for Hitler, against Stalin, against Churchill.
20:51For Hitler, against Stalin, against Churchill!
20:55Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!
21:15First it would start, beep, beep, beep, and radio orange,
21:18and there you were, sitting in the dark.
21:20You could only have a little light, a candle or something, and we would listen.
21:24Hundreds of thousands risked arrest to listen to Dutch broadcasts from London,
21:32their only trusted source of news.
21:35The radio urged patriots to daub up signs, O-Z-O, Orange Will Win, and V for Victory.
21:42Goebbels started an not very convincing counter-campaign,
21:45V stood for German victory on all fronts.
21:48Early in 1941, we decided to start a political cabaret.
21:53We looked in all the gramophone shops in London for old Dutch records,
21:59because we used the tunes of these records and put new words to the tunes,
22:04so that every Dutchman could whistle the tune,
22:07and then every other Dutchman you owe, he has heard that from Radio Orange.
22:11Orange Will Win
22:42Orange Will Win
22:49There were two boys who came over to England in a canoe,
22:52and they were introduced to me, and they realized all of a sudden who I was.
22:58And they looked at me in such a strange way,
23:04and they said, is that you?
23:07Is that you, this girl, this voice?
23:10And I said, yes.
23:12And they said, may I touch you?
23:16And I said, well, certainly.
23:18They were, something happened, something strange,
23:22and all of a sudden I realized what I meant, not I,
23:27but what this voice and this, the whole thing we meant to do with it,
23:34what happened in occupied countries.
23:41On the surface, life in Holland seemed to go on as usual.
23:44Under the patronage of Seyss-Inquart,
23:46Holland's most famous conductor, Willem Mengelberg,
23:49still gave dazzling performances with the Concertgebouworkest.
24:05But all the time, the Germans were steadily tightening their grip.
24:10By 1942, the invaders began to fortify the coast.
24:14They evacuated resorts where people had holidayed only two years before.
24:18The Germans conscripted more and more workers for forced labor.
24:25Those who resisted, they imprisoned and shot.
24:34There was no sign of an Allied victory,
24:37no sign of when Holland would again be free.
24:50German promises not to impose their ideology were now forgotten.
24:54All performing artists, writers and painters
24:57had to join Nazi-controlled cultural guilds.
25:00Only music approved by the censors could be played.
25:22Jewish composers were banned and players of Jewish origins sacked.
25:28Slowly, resistance was organized.
25:31Weapons and explosives for sabotage.
25:34An underground press printed and distributed at terrible risk.
25:42A few thousand men in resistance groups became Holland's conscience.
25:47The illegal papers urged people not to attend
25:50German-sponsored all-Aryan sports meetings.
25:57But attendances rose. People wanted to escape the war.
26:17The resistance also urged people not to listen to German-controlled radio
26:21which poured out pop songs and propaganda.
26:24Popular entertainers like Eddy Christiani
26:27walked a tightrope between collaboration and resistance.
26:30You must live.
26:33So to listen to music, I know it's maybe collaboration,
26:38but then the whole Dutch people have collaborated.
26:43You couldn't listen to another station than the German station.
26:46You see what I mean?
26:49And you can say maybe I don't like the German music.
26:52I never listened during the war to music.
26:55But if you one week are in your own home
26:58and it is in absolute silence, you don't hear nothing at all,
27:02then in a one-week moment you put on your radio and you hear music
27:07and you don't care if it's German or Chinese.
27:11It's much better than to hear still the bombing or the airplanes
27:14or the shouting of the Germans.
27:18It was allowed for the Dutch people to sit down,
27:21just listen to music, but no dancing.
27:24It was also forbidden to make show with your orchestra.
27:27It was not allowed for a trumpet player to play a muted trumpet,
27:30you see, like Duke Ellington, to crawl.
27:35It was forbidden for a trumpet player or for a saxophone player
27:39to make a movement with his instrument, like swaying.
27:44It was forbidden to play a higher note than a C, a written C,
27:50because it was all Negro music, and they say in Germany
27:54Negro music was music of the devil.
27:57And we are now a cultivated people, and so were the Germans,
28:01so we have to play proper, cultivated music.
28:06In that time, of course, you had some officers who were looking for nice girls.
28:10I mean, today you have customers in the hotel who are looking for nice girls.
28:14If they want some nice girls, you could find some nice girls.
28:17I still can find some nice girls today for them, if they ask for it.
28:21But I must say, there was, he was, how do you call it?
28:28He had his office at the Museum Square,
28:31and he was, you may say, town commander of Amsterdam.
28:35And he was a guy, you know, I mean, today they would say a playboy, you know.
28:41But he was then a German playboy in uniform.
28:44He had his own two seats in one of the cinemas in the city theater.
28:49And later on, I have been many times to the city theater with his coach, you know,
28:55because those seats were not allowed for anybody to sit down,
28:59but two employers, like me, youngsters, you know.
29:04So down there, you know, an invitation of the commander.
29:08So we had fun about it.
29:10One film which had to be shown in every Dutch town was The Eternal Jew.
29:33In the end of the 19th century, they made use of the increasing shipping traffic
29:37to take over America.
29:42When rats appear, they bring death and ruin to the country.
29:46They destroy human property and livelihoods.
29:49They spread diseases, plague, leprosy, typhus, cholera.
29:53They are false, cowardly and vicious, and usually appear in large groups.
30:04Made in Germany, the film was part of the carefully prepared campaign
30:07to foster fear and loathing of the Jews.
30:34In each occupied country,
30:36the film's message was sharpened by inserting local material.
30:50The Germans were now putting into effect their plan
30:53to destroy all the Jews in Europe.
30:56The local population had first to be won over to cooperation,
31:00or at least to acquiescence.
31:02There were 140,000 Jews in Holland.
31:05In May 1942, they were ordered to wear the yellow Star of David.
31:09By that autumn, they were being rounded up
31:12and on their way to concentration camps.
31:15It was forbidden for Jewish people to go to the movies,
31:18to go to the parks, to go to anything.
31:20But my brother discovered that it was for a long time possible
31:24to rent a boat and do some sailing on the Amstel.
31:27And one Saturday, a little boy fell in the water,
31:30and immediately my brother jumped after the boy and brought it out.
31:34And that was the son of a fascist living in our street.
31:38And the mother of that little boy
31:41was very, very thankful to that Jewish boy
31:45who saved her only child.
31:48And she said to him,
31:50If I ever can do something for you,
31:53then come to my house.
31:56And he went away, but he was not yet down.
31:59He was not yet downstairs.
32:01Immediately he went back, and he said,
32:04You said something. Maybe I can use that.
32:07Please write me a note that I save your son.
32:10That's the only thing I ask you.
32:12She said, Oh, yes, I do that for you.
32:14And I remember her letter,
32:16which she wrote that that boy saved her only child.
32:19With German greetings,
32:21Heil Hitler, she wrote under that letter.
32:23And I remember my mother, she was so mad at him.
32:26She hit him. She said, You're crazy.
32:28Why did you do that for?
32:30Now they know your address,
32:32and maybe they're coming tomorrow.
32:34She didn't realize they had all the addresses.
32:37And, well, one day we were actually holed, all of us,
32:42and were brought to the theater.
32:44There were tables, and there were people writing things,
32:47and there was sex, and there was...
32:49It was terrible.
32:51But anyhow, there was that man looking at us,
32:55looking, Is that your family?
32:58All right.
33:00You can go home, all of you.
33:03And this was really unbelievable.
33:06To walk on the street again at 6 o'clock in the morning,
33:10to be free again.
33:12That's the first time we were...
33:14Now we were absolutely safe.
33:17We were in their hands, and they sent us home.
33:20We were tired, but we never go to bed.
33:22No, my mother made coffee, and we felt so safe, yes.
33:26They hauled us from our house, you know, how many times?
33:2911 times.
33:31They played that game from Cat and Mice with us.
33:34We know exactly how it went.
33:36When the man came, he sent us home.
33:39The last time, he said it was now long enough,
33:42that game 10 times, 11 times, for only one child.
33:46The whole family Koopman must go to Fürth now.
33:50Loads of Jews in goods wagons arrived at transit camps at Fürth and Westerbork.
34:08Their names and papers were checked by clerks,
34:11some of them themselves Jews.
34:14Then they were sent east, supposedly to be resettled,
34:17in fact, to be gassed and cremated in Sobibor and Auschwitz.
34:25The resistance called for strikes and sabotage.
34:28Railwaymen and police under German control did not respond.
34:33The trains ran on time.
34:39Of Holland's 140,000 Jews, 105,000 perished.
34:47I came there on the platform, and there was 24 people,
34:52young and old, ladies, children, men,
34:56chained together in an iron chain.
35:00And they were, of course, transported to Germany to be gassed.
35:04Four Germans were there, three on one side, with stomach guns,
35:07and one on the other side, the group.
35:10I was alone. It was 12 o'clock.
35:13You were in the midst of a city on a railway platform.
35:16What could you do?
35:18If I could, by surprise, shoot down the three,
35:22the other man was there with my pistol, I was helpless.
35:26But even when you got all four,
35:28what can you do with 24 people who are all linked together
35:32in the midst of the day after a shooting party
35:35in a place that's crowded with Germans?
35:38So you walk away, and that is absolutely terrible.
35:44And if you have that experience, you have a new stimulus
35:49to risk yourself for the few possibilities we had.
35:53I stayed for a long time in Vught,
35:56till the last Jewish prisoners.
36:00I stayed in Vught.
36:03Well, you see, Moritz, the boy who tried to save us,
36:09must leave me, which was terrible.
36:12My parents after four weeks, but he after nine months.
36:17We stayed together, and he took care of me
36:20like my father should have done, or my husband.
36:23I had not a husband at the time,
36:25but it was touching the way he tried to take care of his sister.
36:28He worked in the night, and he was very left-handed.
36:31He tried to sue, sing for other prisoners,
36:34just to get a little bit more food, dreadful food for his sister.
36:39And after nine months, he had to go.
36:42And I should have gone with him, but it was not allowed
36:46because I had rotfung, I don't know, scarlet fever.
36:50I had that, and it was one of the dirty things of the Germans.
36:55When you were sick, you couldn't go to the guest chamber.
37:00First you had to recover.
37:01They gave you the illusion nothing happened
37:04because they don't send you on a transport when you are sick.
37:07So I had to...
37:09My brother, he came to say goodbye to me,
37:11and I was looking at him, and I was thinking, for heaven's sake,
37:14he can't go not in these poor clothes.
37:18And he was small, you see.
37:20And I gave him one of my jackets,
37:23and I was thinking, it's closing the other way around, but who cares.
37:27And I gave him a pair of my boots,
37:30and I looked at him when he walked away from the barrack
37:37to his back, and on his back he looked like me.
37:41And I'm sure I never will see him again.
37:45I'm sure.
37:49We failed as a nation.
37:51We didn't make one milieu with the Jews.
37:54We did it, a part of the group did it, of the Netherlands, far too late.
38:00We had been neutral in the First World War.
38:03We thought we should be neutral in the Second World War.
38:06All this stupid nonsense.
38:08And then having a sense of protest
38:13isn't the same thing as translating it to relevant action.
38:25As the war went on, the Germans stepped up appeals
38:28for recruits to fight with them in Russia.
38:31In all, 25,000 Dutchmen volunteered,
38:34in proportion to its size, the biggest contingent from any occupied country.
38:40Only half returned.
38:55At the same time, German decrees forced able-bodied men
38:59to report as conscript labour to work in German war factories.
39:08Rather than be separated from their families,
39:11tens of thousands now tried to go into hiding.
39:15Police spot checks on papers made draft-dodging difficult.
39:19Another problem was the ration card system
39:22administered by Dutch civil servants.
39:25One of their tasks was to keep a vigilant lookout for irregularities.
39:29This was because the resistance, now bigger and better organised,
39:33forged stamps and stole rations.
39:36It was the Germans who had the upper hand.
39:39This was because the resistance, now bigger and better organised,
39:42forged stamps and stole ration books to feed the growing numbers in hiding.
39:47We had special organisations providing people with hiding places
39:52and they knew our address.
39:55So when they had somebody who had to be hidden at once,
40:01they knew they could always bring them to us
40:04because we always had two sleeping places reserved
40:09for such urgency cases, you see.
40:13And most of the time, there were people who didn't stay long,
40:17sometimes for a weekend, and then in the meantime
40:20they tried to find another safer place for them where they could stay.
40:25In a small room, I think, well, some four yards, five yards,
40:34were there nine people, I think, sometimes 11,
40:40and people from other surroundings.
40:47And we hadn't to do a single thing, peeling potatoes,
40:52that kind of thing you could do,
40:55reading books from the Christian library.
40:58I played chess with my wife, I studied chess.
41:03With the books my friends sent from Amsterdam.
41:08But it was horribly like hell itself,
41:14as Sartre puts it in Riclo,
41:20sitting together with people who you get to dislike
41:25more and more every minute of the day.
41:30With all tensions,
41:34and only one way of escape is going to sleep.
41:43Well, early in the morning you went to the Bureau.
41:45We had a Bible Institute at the Bureau.
41:47It was very good because we were hiding all our explosives and weapons
41:51behind the library of the Bible Institute.
41:54And then at 9 or 9.30 you had to be there, and not later,
41:58for that would already be, well, uncertainty in the group.
42:03Where is he?
42:04And then we tried to do what was the program of the week.
42:10The RAF dropped plastics, so we got such a plastic bomb
42:16and found a beautiful German lorry,
42:20and put it in, and you have to destroy something inside that bomb
42:27and then in half an hour's time it will explode.
42:31Now we had no training in that, and we didn't press too fast,
42:35and after three quarters of an hour, an hour, it still didn't explode.
42:39So we went back to the Bureau we had and made another bomb
42:43and pressed that a little bit better,
42:46and it was a little bit risky to put it in
42:49because if the other one would trigger off just by a little movement,
42:53well, I couldn't tell you the story then, but it didn't.
42:56And half an hour later the two of them went together and it was a real fire.
43:00You need some joy to go on, because we had other days also
43:06when some of the friends would never come back.
43:09There were several illegal newspapers in Holland.
43:15Once the Germans had taken 40 of our people prisoner.
43:20They had been put in Voogd concentration camp.
43:24They interrogated one of them and then released him
43:28and sent him to us with this message.
43:31If you close down the paper, this was near the end of the war, probably 1944,
43:37if you stop producing your paper, then we won't shoot these people.
43:54We called a meeting and talked it over very carefully.
44:03We reached the conclusion that we had to go on.
44:15As soon as some of your friends are shot, you take things more seriously.
44:20If you know that this man is penetrating in the underground fortress
44:24and you can't shoot him and save so many lives,
44:27it is terribly difficult and terribly responsible.
44:32We had the order to kill a couple, a dangerous couple.
44:39We were asked to shoot them on the streets,
44:41when they crossed the bridge, to shoot them there and run away.
44:46But we had a school very near to that place
44:49and there were so many people on the streets
44:52that we thought, let us bring them in that school and kill them in the cellar.
45:00As soon as they came in that cellar and the light was on,
45:04we saw that the wife was pregnant.
45:07And then we couldn't do that.
45:10So we arranged, the commander of our group and I,
45:14that we should threaten them.
45:17And we did so.
45:18The man first.
45:20And we gave him a hell of a time, I promise you.
45:23By just threatening.
45:25And then his wife also, but in relationship to her situation.
45:31And we took the risk of their promises,
45:36of stepping out of their practice
45:38and waiting till after the war people could do with them what was necessary.
45:45Spring 1944.
45:47The second front leading to the longed-for liberation.
45:51Germans put up posters warning that Allied invasion would mean death and destruction.
45:57Mother, is this the second front father was always talking about?
46:06But the invasion came.
46:08And by the autumn of 1944, the Allies were racing north.
46:11On September the 13th, the first Dutch city, Maastricht, in the extreme south, was liberated.
46:16Resistance fighters arrested Nazis and punished women collaborators.
46:24But while the southern tip of Holland rejoiced,
46:26the rest of the country impatiently waited for their liberation.
46:33Days later, their hopes were dashed.
46:35The Allies were beaten severely at Arnhem.
46:44The Dutch government in exile called for a railway strike to deny supplies to German armies.
46:50Railwaymen who had hesitated before now came out in force,
46:53bringing all transport to a standstill.
46:56The Germans retaliated by cutting off all supplies of fuel and food to cities in Western Holland.
47:05Soon people were scavenging along silent and deserted railway tracks for bits of coal.
47:13Shops ran out of food.
47:15Prices soared on the black market.
47:17People kept alive by eating tulip bulbs.
47:24Despite the privations, the strikers held firm.
47:28Using forged securities, their wages were repaid by the resistance,
47:32which was by now also hiding 300,000 men wanted by the Germans for forced labour.
47:39There was no electricity or gas.
47:42Houses left vacant by Jews were stripped of wood for use as fuel.
47:46As the winter got worse, the Germans relented and allowed emergency soup kitchens.
48:17Still, it was clear that many would starve unless Holland was liberated.
48:24I did ask my friend, Biddle Smith, to ask General Eisenhower,
48:29could they not start a separate action to liberate the rest of Holland
48:36where we got up to the top?
48:38Could they not start a separate action to liberate the rest of Holland
48:45where we got up to the Maas and then up to Nijmegen and that was it?
48:51And the rest was really getting in worse and worse trouble this winter.
48:56But at that time, pretty soon, almost simultaneously,
49:01the German counterattack came in the Ardennes,
49:05which upset almost everything one had hoped for.
49:13Hitler now stripped Holland bare.
49:15From Rotterdam alone, in two days in November 1944,
49:1950,000 able-bodied men were rounded up and removed to Germany.
49:29When the doorbell rang, there were two Germans.
49:31They both came upstairs.
49:33One stayed at the top of the stairs and the other one came into the room.
49:37He looked round the room.
49:39The two men who were there had to get dressed and go with them.
49:42And we, being women, crying, of course, both of us,
49:46one woman with a baby in her arms and another hanging on a skirt.
49:51And I can still remember vividly the one German who was inside the room.
49:55He was crying.
49:57Tears were streaming down his face and he said,
50:00I am so terribly sorry that I'm not alone.
50:04I'd love to be able to help you, but I can't do anything
50:07because there's someone with me and I don't know him.
50:10He couldn't do it.
50:12He'd have tried very hard to leave those two men there
50:15because he thought it was terrible.
50:23That was the first time I'd ever seen a German cry.
50:26He really cried, big tears rolling down his face.
50:34At winter, 16,000 Dutch men, women and children died of cold and hunger.
50:57The End
51:17Still, the liberators did not come.
51:26THE END
51:56© BF-WATCH TV 2021
52:26© BF-WATCH TV 2021