We rented a furnished apartment on the first floor in a secluded, modern square in Amsterdam, Niew Zuid at 46 Merwedeplein. Although life was full of uncertainty and fear because of the war, I felt much more content and secure because we were together again as a family. That, for me, was the only thing that mattered.
I was growing fast. As soon as we arrived in Holland Pappy stood Heinz and me up against our bedroom wall and drew pencil marks of our heights.
‘Now you have made your marks here,’ he said, ‘so this room is yours.’
When he measured me a month later, I was delighted to discover I had grown half an inch – and so had Heinz.
My brother and I shared the back bedroom which led out on to a small balcony with an icebox in the corner. Once a week the ice man came round and Heinz would have to carry up a huge block of ice wrapped in sacking to place at the bottom of the fridge where Mutti kept milk, butter, cheese and meat. Sometimes we would creep out in the middle of the night and help ourselves to a sausage for a midnight feast. We would sit on our beds munching and whispering and having fun. After the formality of the boarding house it was wonderful to have our own home.
Residents in the square had to take part in fire and air-raid drills, so Mutti and Pappy soon made friends with other Jewish families. There was a spirit of comradeship between them, with neighbours helping to keep each other cheerful. Pappy made good friends with a neighbour, Martin Rosenbaum. He was a kind man, married to an Austrian Christian, Rosi. They had no children but he often complimented Pappy about us.
‘What delightful children you have, Erich,’ he would say, ‘and so talented.’
This was certainly true of Heinz. Mutti had been delighted to find a baby grand piano in the lounge of the apartment. Both she and Heinz played well and Heinz was soon taking piano lessons again. He would practise Chopin exercises followed by jazz music which he could play by ear. ‘Bei mir bist du sheyn, again and again, bei mir bist du sheyn means you’re grand.’ I loved dancing round the room whilst he played, pretending I was on the stage while Mutti or Pappy applauded me.
Mutti found a cellist and violinist amongst her new acquaintances. They came up to the apartment once a week to practise chamber music. It was too much for Pappy. As the squeaky violin started he would say he was ‘just going out to get some fresh air’ and nip over to Martin’s apartment to escape. I would see them strolling away together.
Once again I was sent to the local primary school and I resigned myself to having to learn yet another tongue. It was Dutch but easier this time because the Flemish I had heard in Belgium once a week was similar. At least I could understand a little: most Dutch primary schools taught French and by now my French was almost fluent.
This had its drawbacks because I thought I was better than the teacher. Whenever she mispronounced a French word – which was often – I corrected her. It made me feel very important but she was furious and took it out on me during the rest of the lessons. She was really nasty to me but I didn’t care because it made me a great success with the rest of the class.
The daily routine at home gave me the security I had not experienced for a long time. In the early spring evenings I could hear the sounds of children playing outside in the square below. It seemed a perfect place for games – a no-through road in the shape of a triangle with a grassy space at one end edged with newly planted bushes and trees. All the youngsters from the surrounding flats and streets gathered there to size each other up and play together.
Many Jewish families had been living in that area since 1933 so by this time the Jewish children were in tight cliques which tended to keep newcomers out. I would stand around waiting for someone to talk to me, anxious to join in, but they did not want me. I was glad when some of my Dutch schoolfriends came into the square and asked me to be their friend. I suppose I was a novelty but before long I was playing marbles with them, marking out patches for hopscotch or playing skipping games. Then Pappy bought me a black second-hand bicycle to ride and do tricks on like everybody else. In the early months of 1940, as I rode around with my friends wearing the required uniform of navy raincoat and Wellington boots, I felt at last that I really belonged. Often, when it wasn’t raining, there were enough children to make up teams for games like rounders. That was the best part because it required the process of picking sides and as I was a good batter and runner everyone suddenly wanted to pick me, which restored my self-esteem.
Gradually I began to recover my natural high spirits. Life seemed to be improving all round. Birds sang in the lengthening April evenings and, after reporting home from school, I would dash out into the square to join in the games and become one of the gang. At six my mother would call me in for supper but I was always reluctant to leave and would protest loudly – after all, some children were still outside after eight! – but Pappy insisted that I was not to be out later than supper time. Unlike Mutti, I was not gentle and docile: I had inherited Pappy’s strong character and he enforced many ‘house arrests’ on me for stubbornness. I was so brimful of verve and energy that I always wanted to be outside in the thick of things.
In time I began to make special friends. I developed a crush on Suzanne Lederman. She had luminous violet eyes, peach skin and thick dark plaits that reached halfway down her back. I hung around her all the time but she wanted to be with two lively girls called Anne and Hanne. This selective group of three went around together. We nicknamed them Anne, Hanne and Sanne because they were an inseparable trio, each of them a little more sophisticated than the rest of us – more like teenagers. They did not want to join in with our childish games and would sit together watching us and giggling over the boys, which I thought was silly. They were always looking at fashion magazines and collecting pictures of filmstars.
I could look across to Suzanne’s bedroom window from my room and sometimes we would send messages to one another. One warm Sunday afternoon when I was sitting with Suzanne on the steps of our apartment, she confided in me how much she admired her friend Anne Frank because she was so stylish.
It was quite true. Once, when Mutti had taken me to the local dressmaker to have a coat altered, we were sitting waiting our turn and heard the dressmaker talking to her customer inside the fitting room. The customer was very determined to have things just right.
‘It would look better with larger shoulder pads,’ we could hear her saying in an authoritative tone of voice, ‘and the hemline should be just a little higher, don’t you think?’
We then heard the dressmaker agreeing with her and I sat there wishing I was allowed to choose exactly what I wanted to wear. I was flabbergasted when the curtains were drawn back and there was Anne, all alone, making decisions about her own dress. It was peach-coloured with a green trim.
She smiled at me. ‘Do you like it?’ she said, twirling around.
‘Oh, yes!’ I said breathlessly in great envy. I was not up to that standard! Anne appeared so much more grown-up than me, even though I was a month older. She attended the local Montessori school and was a whole year ahead of me in her school work.
Anne’s apartment was opposite ours in the same square. I often went over there because I wanted to be near Suzanne. The Franks also had a large tabby cat that purred appreciatively when I picked it up. I longed to fondle a pet of my own but Mutti firmly refused to allow me one. I would wander into the sitting room to cuddle the cat and find Mr Frank watching me with amused eyes. He was much older than Pappy and very kind. When he realized how little Dutch I knew he always made a point of talking to me in German. Mrs Frank would prepare lemonade for the children and we would sit drinking together in the kitchen.
Heinz had developed a crush on two girls, both of whom lived in the same square as us. One, Ellen, was a Jewish immigrant like ourselves but the other, Jopie, was a pretty Dutch blonde. I resented the attention he paid them – in fact, I did not like the idea of my brother paying attention to any other girl. I became quite jealous. After all, I was his little sister and I was intensely proud of him, of his musical gifts and brilliant mind. Apart from this nothing much else troubled me. Spring was here and I loved Amsterdam where my life was at last returning to normal.
10 May 1940 German invasion of Holland and Belgium
We had thought that we were safe living in Holland and were settling down to enjoying our new life when, to everyone’s shock, the Nazis invaded Holland.
On 13 May my family with thousands of others went down to the port trying to get on a ship to escape to England. We queued for hours but in vain. All the ships had either left or were full and we were eventually turned back and told we were too late.
14 May 1940 German Luftwaffe bombs Rotterdam to force capitulation of Holland. After five days Holland surrenders.
The country was now under the total control of the Nazis. German soldiers were everywhere. Although the Germans announced at first that nothing was going to change, each week new regulations to restrict us were announced over the radio and on posters.
Hitler decreed that Jewish children had to go to Jewish schools that were to be opened specially for them. They were not to be allowed to mix with other children in Dutch schools and Jewish teachers had to be found as Christians were not allowed to teach us.
Until that time Heinz had attended the lyceum (secondary school). He now had to go to the Jewish School where he met Margot Frank, Anne’s elder sister, and they became quite friendly, often doing their homework together. They had a lot in common – both were academically gifted and ambitious to do well in their studies. My parents managed to find a private tutor for me and I attended his home with some other children to continue my school work.
All Jews now had to be inside their homes before eight every evening and were not allowed to attend cinemas, concerts or theatres. We were not allowed to use the trams or trains. We could only do our shopping between the hours of three and five in the afternoon and we could only use Jewish shops. All Jews had to wear a bright yellow Star of David (Magen David) on their clothes so that they were instantly recognizable.
On 19 February 1941 400 young Jews from Amsterdam Zuid aged between twenty and thirty-five were rounded up. On 25 February, the Dutch trade unions organized a General Strike in sympathy and all transport and services in Amsterdam came to a halt for two days. The Germans threatened to take hostages and kill them if normal life did not resume immediately. Even then some brave Dutch Christians started to wear the yellow star in sympathy with us and to confuse the Germans.
Mutti had to buy the stars for our clothes. Every outside piece of clothing had to show a yellow star.
‘Never take off your coat if your dress has not got a star on it,’ Mutti warned me as I watched her sew them onto my navy coat and jumper. ‘If any Jew is stopped and is not showing the star the Germans will arrest them.’
As time went by, during 1941 and 1942, we began to feel increasingly frightened. Pappy was at home with us now because he had been prevented from travelling to the factory in Brabant. He came up with the idea of manufacturing small round snake-leather handbags from cast-off snake-skins and soon the business became a flourishing cottage industry giving work to others who had lost their jobs because of the Nazi decrees. It gave him the means to support us and save for a time when he himself might not be able to work.
He went out to many meetings to discuss the worsening situation with other Jews. One evening he sat us down together and warned us that we might have to go into hiding. He felt we would have a better chance if we separated and went into two hiding places. When I started to cry at the thought he explained that continuing the family line was important to him, that people achieved a kind of immortality through the memories of their children and grandchildren, and that we would double our chances of survival by splitting up. Meanwhile he was going to acquire false identity papers for the time when we would be forced to conceal our Jewish identity.
The Dutch had organized themselves to form underground resistance groups to fight the hated Germans. Pappy made contact with them and they provided him with false papers which identified us as true Dutch citizens, not Jewish, with quite different names and background.
Mutti was to be Mefrouw Bep Ackerman but although I remembered my new name, which was Jopie Ackerman, I kept forgetting my false date of birth and where I had been born, so Mutti had to keep coaching me.
Naturally Heinz knew his part off by heart. By this time he was fifteen, tall, and rather Jewish-looking which worried him. I did not need to worry because I was born with bright blue eyes, fair skin and fair hair so that I looked exactly like any other little Dutch girl. Mutti had the tall, elegant stance of a Scandinavian and her looks would not give her away either. She sold some of her jewellery to have some ready cash on hand.
Another concern was our health. Mutti and Pappy knew that if we went into hiding it would be very difficult to get medical assistance if we became ill. For several weeks I had been suffering from severe tonsillitis and it was decided that I would need to have my tonsils taken out.
By that time it was too dangerous for a Jew to go into hospital, as many who were admitted were arrested and transported directly from the wards. A local doctor agreed to operate on me in his surgery where I was strapped into a chair and given laughing gas. The gas had a strange effect on me. As I began to regain consciousness I dreamt that the whole room was on fire and everything around me was burning. I woke up in terror. My parents carried me home and I lay in bed for a week, unable to speak and only able to eat ice-cream. Mutti and Heinz were very attentive and Pappy told me how brave I had been. But when my throat healed and I was able to eat properly again I began to develop fast and I grew up, both mentally and physically. None of the children in the square talked about their family secrets. We trusted our parents to cope with whatever situation might arise. In any case I did not want to think about the future too much because I was happy as I was. I could not face the thought that it might mean separation from Heinz. I adored him and wanted to stay with him. In fact, I wanted everything to go on being the same but Mutti and Pappy knew this was not possible and had planned carefully for what they felt would be the inevitable outcome of the Nazi persecution of the Jews.
I can recall walks along sunny streets that were beginning to feel threatening. I remember Heinz returning from school one afternoon very agitated. His friend Walter had taken off his jacket because it was a warm day and since he was no longer showing the yellow star SS men had stopped them and arrested Walter. I felt that an immense evil was about to engulf us.
1942 Germans push towards Stalingrad
Pappy rented an empty room in a storehouse on the Singel alongside the canal where he put trunks to be filled with provisions for our hiding. By now food was already rationed so we had to make every effort to save from our weekly allocation.
I remember I had a brown paper parcel to carry. Heinz had pushed it into my satchel, helping me to loop the strap over my head so that the bag sat on my right hip. It was heavy for me, containing six tins of condensed milk and six tins of sardines, a packet of rice and a tin of cocoa. I watched Heinz fill his school case with tins of tomato puree, a bottle of olive oil, sugar and some chocolate bars. Mutti and Pappy were also preparing parcels of food to put into their bags.
By now it was springtime, April 1942, when yellow and pale green buds tipped the branches of the willow and plane trees alongside the canals. Mutti and Pappy walked together in front, Pappy with his attache case and Mutti carrying her basket; Heinz and I walked behind them along cobbled streets beside the canal, over little bridges and down towards the warehouses. My satchel was heavy and my shoe lace came undone. As I leaned against a stone wall to tie up my lace the tins clanked and I suddenly felt terribly afraid. But Heinz was there to put his hand under my satchel to steady it for me. I loved him for it. It was Sunday with fewer people about but there was a market further along the lanes so we pretended we were going there.
As soon as we arrived at the wooden door to the warehouse we entered quickly and climbed up two flights of stairs to our storeroom. Pappy unlocked the door and we went inside to unload our packages and tins.
‘Put the tomatoes in this suitcase with the olive oil and rice,’ he instructed us efficiently, ‘and the sardines and chocolate over here.’
‘Shall I put the condensed milk with the cocoa?’ I said. These were important issues to me and I wanted to help in any way I could.
After we had packed the goods away we covered them with clothing and sprinkled mothballs on top. We were to return there many times. In the event our secret hoard did provide the nourishment to help people survive the terrible privations of the war – but not us.
On the morning of 6 July a card arrived by post for Heinz. It gave instructions for him to report with a rucksack in three days’ time to the old theatre nearby. From there he was to be sent to a labour camp somewhere in Germany. Mutti was desperate but Heinz tried to comfort her.
‘I’ll go, Mutti,’ he said bravely. ‘After all, my friends will be there too. Henk, Marcel and Margot had their cards too so we will all be together.’
‘It will be slave labour,’ sobbed Mutti.
‘They won’t harm me if I work hard,’ Heinz said, looking to Pappy for agreement.
‘Young people will be useful to them,’ muttered Pappy, ‘but I think it is time we disappeared.’
Within twenty-four hours all the appropriate arrangements had been finalized. Pappy and Heinz were to make their way to a separate hiding place. It had all been organized by the Dutch underground. Mutti and I were going to an address of a teacher, a Mrs Klompe, on the other side of Amsterdam Zuid.
We spent the last few hours together as a family. When it was time to part I clung on to my tall, handsome father.
‘Pappy, I don’t want to go without you,’ I cried. I could not bear the thought of being parted from him again.
‘Evertje, be a grown-up girl now,’ he said. ‘You must look after Mutti for me.’
My arms were around his neck and my toes were off the ground as he hugged me. And then, when he set me on my feet again, he held my shoulders and looked at me very seriously and whispered as if in prayer, ‘God bless and keep you.’ Suddenly I felt a great strength flow into me and I stopped protesting and stood quietly.
Heinz stood beside me with tears running down his face. He brushed them away with his hand, put his arms around me and kissed me goodbye.
I remember walking away from the apartment with Mutti. This time we wore jackets without yellow stars and I held a magazine self-consciously over my chest to hide the fact that I was not wearing it. I looked around the square where the children used to gather. In the early morning light everything seemed deserted and forlorn. We had not been able to say goodbye to anyone and I was worried that I would be missed by my friends that afternoon because they would not know what had happened to me. Our friendly milkman was standing outside with his milk-float but he turned his head away, pretending not to have seen us as we hurried out into the square.
Holding a small bag each, Mutti and I walked silently across Amsterdam to Mrs Klompe’s house. We knocked on the door which was opened by a well-groomed, middle-aged lady. We had never met her before but she said quite loudly for the benefit of any nosey neighbours, ‘How are you? It’s wonderful to see you again,’ and she stood smiling at us repeating, ‘Come in! Come in!’
She was trying not to look conspiratorial but as we crossed the threshold she closed the door quickly behind us, and led us into her front room. Over a cup of tea she discussed arrangements with Mutti, then signalled us to follow her up three flights of stairs to the attic which had been partitioned off into two rooms. One was a small bedroom where I was going to sleep. The other was a living room with a cupboard, table and three chairs. There was also a floral patterned sofa where Mutti would sleep.
Down a few steps was a long room that was a bathroom with a toilet at the far end. We had no cooking facilities but we were to use her kitchen downstairs and Mutti had agreed to cook her dinner as well.
‘You cannot use either the bathroom or kitchen whilst I am out,’ she warned. ‘If the neighbours hear any noise they will become suspicious. You will have to take great care to keep your presence here secret.’
‘How safe are we?’ Mutti wondered aloud.
‘The Germans make frequent raids to search out hidden Jews,’ Mrs Klompe said. ‘They are like ratcatchers intent on exterminating vermin,’ she continued drily, ‘but we in the underground are equally intent on protecting the innocent.’
She smiled at me reassuringly but I began to feel the sickening contraction of fear in my stomach.
That same evening our underground contact, a Mr Broeksma, visited us. He was a teaching colleague of Mrs Klompe and they worked closely together. Being a Frieslander – one of the hardy outdoor people who took part in skating races in the midwinter along miles of frozen canal water – he was a fine and true Dutchman with fire in his belly against the invaders. He was intelligent, tough and reliable and, like the other underground workers, extremely resourceful. We were in his hands and he knew our peril, but we trusted him completely.
He took some time to survey our hiding place and then advised us that we would still need to have another secret place within its walls where we could conceal ourselves if searches were made on our block.
Of course, he had to organize everything. He found a builder and brought him the following evening when they both went over our tiny living space to determine how we might best be hidden. They finally decided that it would be safest to partition off the toilet from the rest of the bathroom.
They agreed to make a tiled wall which would have a kind of trapdoor in it so that it could be fitted back from the toilet side. From the outside it would simply look like a solid tiled wall. That meant we would have to climb through a hole every time we needed to use the toilet but we could hide in there in cases of emergency.
All the materials had to be found then brought to the house during darkness, piece by little piece, but the two men managed to start work within a fortnight.
On the third Sunday of our hiding they worked all day until it was nearly finished. Only the trapdoor needed to be tiled. They were both tired but they decided to stay late into the evening to complete the job. When they asked Mutti to try it out she climbed in, sat herself on the toilet and lifted the heavy tiled trapdoor into place, disappearing behind a seemingly solid wall.
The two men looked at one another in approval and shook hands. When Mutti re-emerged they then shook hands with us and went away satisfied.
I was sound asleep by midnight so that the noises of vans in the street below and the heavy knocking at the front door only slowly penetrated through my dreams to bring me back to reality. Germans were downstairs shouting, ‘Are there any filthy Jews hiding here?’
‘Mutti?’ I was terrified as I felt Mutti grab hold of me.
‘Quick, Eva, cover the bed with the counterpane,’ she whispered as she pulled me out of bed and helped me smooth down the covers as quickly as we could so that the bed did not look as if it had been slept in.
We ran into the bathroom and pushed ourselves into the tiny toilet compartment. We lifted the heavy trapdoor back into position and waited in the pitch dark. I could feel Mutti sitting on the toilet grasping her knees while I squatted down next to her.
We heard the sound of soldiers’ boots stumping up the narrow stairs next to our wooden partition. I crouched in terror, my heart beating so loudly that I was sure they could hear it.
Suddenly the bathroom door was thrown open and Germans were tramping into the room shouting to each other. There was a pause and then we could hear them stamping noisily all over the house. Finally they gave up and we heard them close the front door with a slam.
Mutti pulled my head against her face. I could feel that she was crying with relief. If they had raided the house two hours earlier they would have found us. God in heaven and our Frieslanders had watched over us.