LIMBURG PROVINCE, THE NETHERLANDS
October 1944
Abel Groot was king of potatoes in the Heibloem area. But, since the occupation began, every one of his harvests was taken to feed German forces, and every year, in a small defiance, Abel invited his neighbors to take their chances and scavenge what they could. One early October morning, I joined others in a field surrounded by trees and shrouded in fog, feeling safer than I had in a long time, safe enough to focus on the hunt, chapped fingers scrabbling to pry small potatoes out of the near frozen dirt. A few boys shared news of Allied successes as they worked the rows, their words clear in the space between the ground and the blanket of wet air.
While Normandy had changed everything for some, it changed nothing for us. So much hope on that bright day in June when the radio quaked alive to the excitement of the Allied landings and promises of liberation by Christmas. Bombing raids at the German border with Limburg came closer to the farm, and we wrapped up in blankets to wait out the long nights in the cellar, empty jars rattling like skeletons when the bombs dropped close. But when the Allies finally entered Holland in September, they managed to liberate only a small corridor from the Belgian border to Nijmegen, Radio Oranje reporting failed tactical and strategic planning and huge Allied casualties. And we knew the war would not be over in time for Sinterklaas.
“Hallo.”
I looked up to see blue eyes, deep as sky and flecked with cloud. She smiled, her lips full, teeth slightly gapped, an upturned nose. Her brown hair was bobbed and held back from her face with barrettes. I took her in with a breath, standing awkwardly to offer my hand before remembering how dirty it was and rubbing it on my pants. She laughed, looking me up and down, her open face inviting me to do the same. She wore overalls cinched at the waist with a man’s belt, pant legs rolled so her wooden shoes peeked out. When I looked at her face again, her head was cocked.
“Hallo,” I stuttered.
“I’m Petra,” she said, glancing around. “Are you from around here?”
“Yes.”
“I’m from Arnhem.”
“Oh.”
“Do you always speak in single syllable words?”
“No.” My face flamed, stupid, such a relief when she laughed. “I’m Sam.” It felt like my whole body was awake to the girl.
“Aren’t you afraid to be picked up?” she asked suddenly.
“Well, yes actually. But I’ll leave before the fog lifts.”
“Where do you hide?” She carried on like she hadn’t just asked the unaskable question, looking at me with raised eyebrows. “Oh, come now, would I be here picking potatoes in the fog?”
Her whole face smiled, nose crinkling, cheeks lifting under laughing eyes. I wanted to trust her, wanted to keep this beautiful girl talking. I looked around. No one was paying any attention to us.
“I’ve heard things are bad in Arnhem,” I said.
“They are. Abel’s my uncle.” She crouched to dig again, and I joined her, our hands inches apart. “I was sent here because it’s safer. But my mom stayed. My dad and brother. I should be grateful, but all I want to do is go home.”
I wondered if I’d ever feel such desperation to be with my family. Perhaps if Mom had lived, if Dad gave a shit. “They say the Allies will take Arnhem soon.”
“I don’t know. The resistance is helping, but . . .”
“But what?”
“Well they wrecked the airport, so the Germans shot the mayor. Someone always pays, but it’s never anyone from the underground. And then the onderduikers ask us to hide them.”
“And do you?”
It was her turn to hesitate, watching me through a silence thick as the gray mist around us. Her shoulders relaxed like she’d made a decision. “It almost happens without knowing it. They come and say this neighbor boy will be drafted in the next razzia. Or that Jew is headed for transport. What else can we do?” She looked at me like I had the answer.
I didn’t. Courage was hard to define: a bed for a stranger, a forged document, everyday acts of defiance sometimes more dangerous than blowing up a bridge. Because what else can we do? I thought of Marie walking out to meet the Gestapo, Anika’s tired, determined eyes. Perhaps all women were brave.
“I wish my brother had found someone like you to help him,” I said quietly. “Last we heard he’s in Lager 21. More than a year now.”
“I’m sorry. I really can’t imagine.”
“I try not to let myself imagine.”
“What’s he like?”
I felt a sudden panic. I couldn’t quite conjure Leo and frantically searched my memory for fragments — red-blond hair, the blue of his eye, the scar above his lip — until finally the parts began to congeal into a face, a voice. Relief flooded in and I looked up to see her watching. She reached across the gap between where our fingers rested in the dirt to cover my hand with hers.
I looked into her sympathetic eyes. “Leo’s a good man.” It came out a whisper.
“I think you must be too.” She squeezed my hand and something fluttered in my stomach. She looked around and started. The fog was lifting, the scavengers heading for the nearby forest to make their way home, pockets heavier with half-rotten potatoes.
Abel came to where we lingered. “Better get going,” he said, glancing back and forth between us, a small grin on his face.
My ears grew hot and I smiled at Petra, desperate to say something and drag out my leaving.
“Good-bye then,” she said, her smile shy again as she turned to walk across the field to the house.
A dog barked in the farmyard. I turned just as camouflaged paratroopers emerged from the haze like ghosts, as though the fog in my brain and the shadows of the men walking were an illusion. Worse, I couldn’t tell if they were Allied or German. A hail of warning shots and guttural shouting and I hit the ground, face in the potato dirt, Abel thumping down beside me.
His eyes peered into my own. “I think we should run.”
Which war did the man witness to think this crazy thing? The paratroopers had their guns ready, but Abel jumped up anyway and ran toward the trees behind us, slowed by age and dirt-caked wooden shoes. A single shot rang out. He screamed and clutched his thigh, staggering a few more steps before collapsing at the edge of the bluff.
The paratroopers hollered for everyone to get up slowly and put their hands over their heads. Two went to Abel moaning in the bush, grabbing me and gesturing to bring the wheelbarrow sitting at the end of the field. Reaching Abel, the troopers were surprisingly careful with the older man, twisting a tourniquet above the hole in his bleeding leg, bracing the side with a stick before wrapping the whole mess round and then heave-ho into the wheelbarrow. I helped push it round the edge of the field and to the house.
His wife opened the door, hand to her throat as Abel started to mutter and then to cry, gesturing to his leg and shouting they were animals, wounding an old man. I was embarrassed for him. So was his wife. She cuffed him and told him to shut up, that he shamed her acting like a baby in front of the Germans. Still shouting, she pulled Abel inside, dragging his leg and silent now while the paratroopers laughed. Past them, I caught a glimpse of Petra’s stricken face. I stood tall as our eyes met, her smile small and sad as she raised her fingers to her lips, sending the kiss toward me just as the door closed.
They lined us up. Dread was gone. Instead I was numb, my body certain this was happening to someone else and I was just a spectator. There was little noise, no talk. Eventually, a German officer walked down the line, calmly telling us we were going to a prison camp where we’d pay for our evasion of the draft. The lucky ones might eventually make up for their sins working in a factory or on a farm. We left the field, and I was taken home to collect some things, allowed one small suitcase.
Marie and Anika met me at the door, whispering questions to one another about what a person might need in a camp, scurrying ahead to hand me things. Underwear, socks, a shirt and pants, a belt. Marie shoved a thin blanket on top before I closed the latch. She put her hand on mine and squeezed. I couldn’t look at her. But Anika caught my eye, hers wide and too honest, saying what we were all thinking: I would disappear like Leo. At the door again, Anika hugged me hard and stood tall.
“You’ll come back,” she said.
I smiled at the sky glistening in her eye. Nodded. Marie didn’t speak. Her hands shook as she looked from me to the soldiers on the porch and back again, the heavy brow over her square face arched, nose flaring with the effort to stop from shouting, perhaps from lashing out. She gave me a piercing look. Nodded once. Yes.
We were loaded into a cattle wagon, young men and boys, some of them neighbors, reaching down to help me up as though we were going on a Jonge Wacht trip and this would be an adventure. The grind of gears, and we grabbed at the stock rails and each other to stay upright. I was near the tailgate, watching my sisters watching me. As I slid my fingers through the slats, I thought of Daniel’s anguish. Now the reaching hands were mine and I had a sudden rush of anger, wishing Dad was there to see that all his terrible efforts had made no difference. I didn’t want his imagination to console him, to lend the moment some kind of hope it didn’t warrant.
The truck passed the barn and I saw Rudy standing with arms crossed, face unreadable. For the briefest moment I wondered if he would stop the truck and save me like he had Leo. But Rudy lowered his eyes, turned and walked into the barn. I let go of the rail.
The truck wound its way to Roermond, where we were herded onto the station platform, a gathered crowd watching. I looked into their eyes, recognized no one; absurd to think I would. The onlookers watched, expressionless under the scrutiny of the guards, just as I’d watched the new arrivals a few months ago. No one could do anything for me now. Prodded into a box car, I was pressed up so tight against others that my feet almost left the floor. The stench hit me and I threw my head about, searching for a way out, but there were only two tiny barred windows at the top of one wall. Lungs crushed, I couldn’t breathe, started to shake, felt my eyes bulge, elbows thrashing so I jabbed the ribs of the man next to me. The world spun. Strong arms came round from behind and held me hard. A voice, coaxing. Focus on the voice. Breathe. Slower. My chest stopped heaving and I stood, still crammed, but calm.
“I’ll let you go now,” the voice said, and the arms faded away from me. “Name’s Pete.”
I couldn’t turn, my body controlled by the actions of the others, an appendage to the mash of flesh. Cranking my head, I caught a glimpse of red hair at my shoulder, a collar. A small man then. And a priest. I was suddenly aware of myself.
“Thank you, Father,” I stuttered. “I don’t know what came over me . . .”
“It’s alright,” he said quietly and patted my forearm where it rested against his own. “This is a hell of a thing.”
“Yes.”
“Keep your wits about you and don’t give them an excuse to send you to Vught. Nobody comes out of there.”
The train lurched and, as one, the carload of men almost toppled backward and then swayed upright, shuffling until we were a stable mass again. I was stuck fast, the priest behind, my nose almost pressed between the shoulder blades of a tall man in front. Surveying the little I could see, I caught my confusion and fear mirrored in the wide eyes of another boy from my school. I tried to smile reassurance as the train rumbled. Some of the men murmured, but mostly it was a group lost in silence.
Fifteen minutes later there was shouting as the train slowed and stopped with the sharp crunch of the couplings. Wailing from outside, and we were suddenly drenched in daylight as the door opened. Scuffling and cries of fear and more men were pushed into the jammed car. They were skin looking for flesh to wrap itself around, their cheekbones ridged through translucent skin, eyes swallowed in sockets, heads shaved.
“Escapees,” the priest said behind me. “When they catch them, they shave their heads to show everyone else what they have attempted is impossible.”
I had a terrible image of Leo.
The sun was cut off as the door closed. We waited an eternity, watching the shadows shift against the dark interior. Again without warning, the train started up and I was thrown into the back of the man in front, the priest’s body pressed hard into me from behind. The car rattled and shook, swaying round a bend, the whole group writhing like snakes in a pit, claiming space. Moaning and more cries, angry now, and I felt the priest’s chest expand and push into my back.
“Everyone, shut up.” The voice boomed in my ear. More angry shouts and the priest yelled again. “Shut. Up.”
“Who the hell are you?” The question came from the other side of the railcar.
“Father Pete, here.”
A hush fell. The only sounds were the small, pained moans that had been coming from the far end of the car since I boarded.
“It looks like we’ll have to get along in here if we’re hoping not to suffocate one another,” the priest said with the slightest hint of humor.
“Tell that to the goddamn Jood shitting in the corner!”
The reek of it hit my nose and I heard others sucking in breath through their mouths.
“All right, no need for that.” Father Pete’s voice was sharp. “Imagine he’s been in here longer than us. Sick too. I suppose we still have room for a little pity.” His voice lightened. “Besides, we’ll all need to shit at some point, so we’ll just save that spot for it.”
More grumbling, but our full bowels reminded us it was true.
“Just cooperate a little. It’ll all be fine.”
“Fine? How the hell is this fine?” The tall man in front swung his head around to direct his quiet question at Father Pete, catching my eye and lifting his brow like the priest must be crazy.
I shrugged. “Not much else we can do.”
“It’s not that, kid,” Father Pete’s voice was soft in my ear. “We could throw the poor bastard off the train so we don’t have to put up with his stench. It’s not like anyone would notice. Or care.”
The stunned faces of people emerging from the train in Roermond, the little girl reaching for her father.
“But it’s what the Nazis want us to do.” The priest paused. “It’s what they’ve been having us do all along.”
I was suddenly filled with a terrible awe. “They run on time.”
“What’s that?”
“The trains. They run on time. Always leave Roermond station on Tuesday at ten. Filled with Jews. And now us.”
Silence.
“Why hasn’t the resistance bombed the tracks?” The question hung there in the spaces between the men.
“Shut up, kid.” The shoulders of the man in front were suddenly taut. “You’ll get us all shot.”
I lowered my voice. “And the men running the trains, they’re Dutch.”
“Everyone’s afraid.” Father Pete’s voice was tired. “They keep us afraid so we forget how to trust our best instincts. We do their dirty work and pretend we don’t know. But we’ll all pay something in the end.”
I thought of Daniel’s anguish, his words. “No one dies too late,” I whispered.
“Nobody’s dying today, son. Let’s just get through this, okay?”
But the priest was wrong.
Dusk fell. I could just make out the top of a row of trees through the slats. Countryside? A sharp pang seared my ribs imagining I might never see de Kruidenteelt again. Eyes closed, I stretched up toward the small window as though a smell or a sound would help me know where I was. The train jerked to another stop. German voices outside and we were blanketed in darkness, a cover thrown over the car just as the sound of bombers came from the distance. A nearby blast shook the car, forcing me to lean hard into the priest.
“What the hell is this?”
“Allied,” someone shouted from across the car. “They’re bombing the tracks.”
The sound crashed through the car and everyone hunched down as though it would help to be closer to the floor. Fear mixed with the stench to constrict my throat and loosen my bowels. I didn’t care about our destination anymore. I only hoped to survive the journey. I tried to focus on the place between the shoulder blades of the tall man, tried not to think. But pictures flashed through my head: Marie washing dishes, Anika scattering grain for the chickens. The morning walk to the potato field seemed distant already, meeting Petra a dream, and I imagined everything changed at home, that somehow everything familiar was gone. But I knew it was only me that had vanished.
In the corner, the Jew went into convulsions, those around him backing away and jamming everyone else further. Limbs and torsos parted long enough for me to make out the large yellow star still pinned to the breast pocket of a shirt that hung from a skeleton, to witness the man slip into unconsciousness and slump to the floor. No one moved, the silence in the car pulsing.
I felt fear around me. And then I felt something else. The air was bloated with loathing. The sick man had become a creature not quite human, but human enough to remind us we were all one long train ride from the same fate. And the men detested him for it. I detested him for it. Within minutes, everyone had turned away, all of us waiting for him to die so we could focus on survival. I should have felt ashamed, but god help me, I didn’t.
Suddenly Father Pete was squeezing past, grabbing my hand and pulling me along to weave and squirm through to where the man lay in his own shit. The priest crouched, a cross in one hand as he laid his other on the man’s head, wisps of hair poking through his fingers.
“Per istam sanctam unctionem ignoscat tibi Dominus quicquid peccaveris sive deliqueris.”
The men were a wall inches from where the priest administered the sacrament. They eyed me as though I was an accomplice, and I took a quick step back.
“He’s a bloody Jood!” someone muttered from the back.
“This man has nothing. And no one.” The steel of Father Pete’s voice cut through. “The least I can do is to send him off with a blessing. Even if it’s not one he knows.”
The men rumbled behind me. And the man lying on the floor in his own filth took one long staggering breath, and died. Father Pete crossed himself, then ran his hand down over the man’s face to close his eyes and quietly motioned me toward the dead man’s feet. Horrified, I gingerly held the man’s boots, expecting the dead weight of a slaughtered pig. Instead the limbs were thin and fine like a bird’s and we easily set the man just beyond the designated bathroom area, his face toward the wall. Tears prickled the back of my throat.
“It might have been for the best,” the priest said softly. “We’ve been hearing terrible things.”
I pictured Daniel watching as his wife and child were loaded onto a truck. Father Pete pulled me back so we stood behind the tall man again, claiming the spot as if it were home. Another blast shook the rail car and the men hunched further. One man retched not far from where I stood, his vomit staining the boots of another.
“For fuck’s sake!”
It launched something primal in the men, an opening to a chorus of abuse directed first at one man and then at the lot of us, shouts about trodden toes and jabbed ribs and sweat and stink. Before long men were sobbing questions to the air. Someone began to pray. “Hail Mary” rung out across the car. “Our Father, if you are in heaven,” odes to sweethearts, prayers for the protection of those long dead. I stuck my fingers in my ears. I was going to die in this mess, amidst the wailing of these wretched people. Tears streamed down my face and I couldn’t stop the sob belching up from a gulf opened inside. When Father Pete’s hand closed round my upper arm, I imagined it was my mom’s hand, her breath warm in my ear.
“Enough praying,” he hollered. “Let’s sing.”
He drew the rancid air deeply into his lungs and a clear low tenor sounded in my ear, quietly at first, strains that for years had only been hummed.
“Waar in ’t bronsgroen eikenhout, ’t nachtegaaltje zingt.
Over ’t malse korenveld, ’t lied des leeuweriks klinkt.”
The men sniffed back tears, the spew of angry words and fear-stoked prayers ebbing away. The silence radiated outward as though the song were a stone dropped in water, until there was only the sound of the priest’s voice singing the anthem of Limburg. Our anthem. It rose above us and pierced through the crash of bombs dropping nearby. Others slowly joined him, their voices coming out of the dark until a wave of song resounded through the railcar, the final note suspended an instant before retreating into a profound silence. I reached for Father Pete’s hand still gripping my bicep and covered it with my own, grateful for this man and his courage. He wasn’t ready to quit. I expected a hymn from a man of the cloth, but instead he started up a bar song, the words as rank as the smell around us, all of us laughing and joining in with an energy that kept our minds occupied. And then the priest launched into “Piet Hein”:
“Piet Hein, Piet Hein
Piet Hein, zijn naam is klein.”
Some tried a harmony or two. It sounded terrible, but we sang anyway. We stood and we sang as though life depended on it. Just as I became conscious of the quiet from outside, the cover came off the train and a gust of fresh night air came in through the window. The whole group breathed as one.
“Shut up in there,” a guard yelled. “No more singing.”
The train lurched forward.
“Zijn daden bennen groot
die heeft gewonnen, gewonnen de Zilvervloot!”
We laughed and sputtered and for an hour we swayed and sang together. Even as some dozed, even as the sun rose, the singing continued. Finally the train slowed and our voices trailed away as we sighed with relief. Father Pete continued loud behind me and I wanted to shush the man, his defiance become suddenly dangerous. A long whistle sounded and I caught sight of rooftops through the small windows. The thick metal latches on the car clanged loudly, the door squealing open even as the train lurched to a full stop, commands to quit singing shouted by men I couldn’t see. Stunned by the light and uncertainty, I moved out with the others, slowly at first, finally spilling ragged and stinking out of the car and onto the platform, shielding my eyes from the sun and finding balance on ground that didn’t rock.
Father Pete carried on loudly, purposefully, while the rest of us shuffled, eyes shifting to one another, ashamed to abandon the priest in such an obvious way, increasingly terrified at what might happen if we didn’t. I watched an agitated German guard fix his eyes on the priest whose head was thrown back, singing like he was oblivious to the danger. The guard rushed toward him, gun drawn. I wanted to step forward, to intervene somehow. Before anyone knew what was happening, the guard spun the priest around and pushed the gun into his back, marching him down the steps of the platform. Father Pete stumbled, caught himself and continued to hum, the guard poking him in the back and barking orders.
“Stop,” I whispered as much to the priest as to the German.
Soon I was prodded by the barrel of a gun and swallowed my horror, walking the platform to join more men emerging from other cars, all of us shuffling off the platform to form two lines as instructed. Caught in the surge of bodies, I hustled to do what I was told. A pistol shot sounded. I swung round in time to see Father Pete crumple in the distance, the priest’s shock of red hair sending up a burst of dust as his head hit the ground.
For a moment I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, eyes riveted on the priest’s lifeless body, my vision shrunk to the impossibility of the red hair on the ground. A hard shove from behind finally forced me into the forming line of men. One word reached through. Prisoner. Yesterday morning, I dug for potatoes. A man was just murdered, and I was the prisoner. My shudder caught the eye of the tall man, who had somehow remained at my side.
“Just do what they say,” the man whispered, lightly touching my hand. “That priest was crazy.”
Before I could respond, we were ordered to move out. The sign marking the station said Ommen. I was in Overijssel province, near the German border and far to the north of Limburg. We were prodded forward, expected to march quickly and efficiently. It was nearing noon again and I’d had nothing to eat or drink for a day and a half, but such complaints were puny beside those of the escapees with their shaved scalps and sallow skin. Head down, I concentrated on the boots of the man in front of me and tried not to panic. When I looked up, the sun was a brilliant reflection of the fields of heather, remnants of their fall bloom stretching pink to the horizon. A sheep bleated somewhere in the distance. I was sick for home.
I thought of Father Pete, dead for what? The right to sing? Perhaps the tall man was right. Perhaps the priest was crazy. But I knew it wasn’t true. On the train, in the center of our fear and panic, Father Pete saved us from behaving like animals, saved us from our darkest selves so we could walk as men. Prisoners perhaps. But men. I was swept by an overwhelming gratitude and a wish for such courage. I heard Anika’s words, imagined faint threads of the priest’s tenor floating in the air around me. And I walked forward.