11 May 1944
It was my fifteenth birthday and this year it fell on a Tuesday. I woke early, snug in my little bedroom in the Reitsmas’ house. I could hear the birds chirping, the sun was streaming through the window and I lay for a long time with my hands behind my head watching the trees outside the window and feeling good to be alive. The knowledge that Pappy and Heinz were safe nearby in their new quarters added to my happiness. We had visited them on Sunday and I was hoping, as it was a special day, that I would be able to see them today too.
At half past eight in the morning the Reitsmas sat down with us in their dining room to have a celebration birthday breakfast. Mrs Reitsma had placed a vase of hyacinths and tulips in the centre of the table, and Floris, their twenty-year-old son, solemnly handed me a small parcel as I sat down. ‘Keep this as a surprise,’ he said, ‘open it after breakfast.’
How charming he was to me, I thought, blushing. I set the package carefully before me on the table. The wrapping paper had delicate pink roses painted on one side by the talented Mrs Reitsma. I was enchanted by it. I could hardly wait to open it, and the anticipation added to my excitement.
A sudden ring on the doorbell startled us. We were not expecting anyone. Who was calling at that time in the morning? Mr Reitsma got up from the table and went downstairs to open the door. To our sickening horror we heard the Gestapo storming in. Floris immediately sprang up, jumped over the table straight out of the window and disappeared over the rooftops. Within seconds the Gestapo officers had run up the stairs into the room and now stood there, eyeing the rest of us. Petrified with fear, we gazed at them and at the guards behind them who were pointing guns into the room.
‘Verfluchte Juden! It’s them!’ they shouted.
We were numb with shock. Without giving us time to take anything with us they pushed us roughly downstairs and outside into the street to be marched to the Gestapo Headquarters a few streets away.
As the four of us were marched along, Mutti, who was desperate to save me, grabbed at the arm of the Dutch Nazi beside her and tried to convince him that I was not wholly Jewish. He pushed her to one side but she kept blurting out anything she could think of to get me released.
‘My daughter is not Jewish,’ she said. ‘I had an affair with a non-Jew – my dentist... she is really his... she is not really Jewish at all.’
But it was no use. The faces of our captors were hard set and implacable. They had got what they had come for and had triumphed at last.
When we arrived at the red-brick secondary-school building that was now the Gestapo Headquarters we were pushed into a detention room where there were already some other people who had been caught in this roundup.
Armed guards stood at the door, the windows were shut, and wooden chairs had been placed around the walls where forlorn captives sat staring at the ground or out into space. Our hearts sank in misery as we joined them. No one looked up or tried to communicate with us. I was much too tense to cry. I sat in a corner next to Mutti who whispered to me ‘How?’ We simply could not grasp how it had happened. We had not expected it at all – we had felt fairly secure. Despite the Nazi hatred of the Jews, we had trusted in the expertise of the Dutch underground. We sat for hours and waited.
One by one people were called out and taken away. Some were returned to the room to go on waiting, others were not. Nobody said a word. Occasionally one or two women cried quietly but no one comforted them or asked those who returned what had happened... we did not dare.
Sometimes we could hear screams coming from the room next door. We heard the sounds of beatings, of people weeping and crying out in pain and of German voices raised in anger. We sat frozen to our chairs sickened by the noises of terror.
Eventually it was Mutti’s turn. She squeezed my arm before they led her away. I strained to hear any sounds I could from the room next door, listening for her cries, but I heard nothing. I sat alone for about half an hour.
Then they came for me.
A policeman in green uniform (Grune Polizei) took me into a sparsely furnished room that had a picture of Hitler hanging on the wall. I was made to stand in front of two Gestapo officers seated at a large desk. They both looked at me intently for several seconds until one of them spoke to me in polite German.
‘Tell us everything we want to know and you will see your mother,’ he said.
‘You will be able to see your father and brother as well,’ said the other.
I gasped. I had not realized Heinz and Pappy had also been caught.
‘My father and brother?’ I blurted out, and then I was angry with myself for talking. Tears burnt behind my eyes but I was not going to let them see me react again if I could help it. I was determined not to tell them anything.
‘Of course, we have them as well,’ the officer smiled coldly at me.
I suddenly began to tremble violently. I could not stop myself as they started to interrogate me in German, one after the other firing questions at me in quick succession. I was absolutely terrified of them.
‘How long have you been with the Reitsmas?’
‘We were just visiting.’ I said.
‘Where have you been hiding?’ They pushed papers around to each other on the desk.
‘I don’t know,’ I lied. ‘We arrived in the dark. It was a house in Amsterdam but I don’t know where.’
‘Where did you get your ration card from?’
‘Where did your mother get her money from?’
‘Who helped you find places to hide?’
I pretended not to know anything. Somehow I managed to flannel my way through without giving anything away. I admitted I had lived in Merwedeplein but they knew we had gone into hiding. I described our landlady as being someone as unlike Mrs Klompe as I possibly could. I said she was short, dumpy and elderly and that I did not know her name.
After a while they gave up trying to get any more out of me and sent me back to the waiting room. Mutti was not there but I sat down feeling quite proud of myself. I was thinking what a good performance I had given when from the interrogation room came voices that I recognized, first of Pappy and then Heinz. Their voices were raised in shouts which soon turned to screams followed by an awful silence.
My immediate reaction was that I was imagining it; that I was not really hearing it. I could not believe that it was happening. I thought the Gestapo were somehow bluffing to make me more afraid and give myself away. I listened intently but I heard no other sounds. I began to feel sick with fear.
After a period of silence they called me in again. Once more I stood alone before the Gestapo. This time the senior officer looked at me scathingly and said. ‘We intend to torture your brother to death unless you cooperate with us.’
I was horrified. I stared at them dumbly not knowing what I was supposed to say.
‘We will show you what we will do to him,’ he continued and nodded to someone behind me.
I was rooted to the spot in terror as the first truncheon blow landed across my shoulders. I suddenly realized that this was all really happening to me, that it was not a nightmare, that it was all true. The impact of the blows shot through me as they struck across my back and shoulders. They were quite relentless. I tried to fend them off with my arms but I could not get out of their way. I knew they wanted me to scream so that they could threaten my father and make him talk. I tried so hard not to but eventually I began to cry out. I could hear screams coming from inside me that I could not control.
As soon as they felt they had got enough noise out of me they stopped. I was pushed roughly into another room with other men and women who had been similarly treated. Some had bruises on their faces, one or two had blood on their clothes. All were distressed and subdued.
Throughout that whole day, my fifteenth birthday, I was kept prisoner in a room without food or water, having to listen through the walls to people being interrogated, bullied and beaten. It lasted until evening.
At long last I was taken out and marched down a corridor to another room. As the door opened I saw my parents standing there together looking towards me. Heinz was with them and the Reitsmas too. No one else was in the room. We fell into each others’ arms, all crying and sobbing together as the door closed behind us and we were left to ourselves. Pappy told us that when we had visited him and Heinz on the Sunday afternoon in their new refuge, the nurse and their seemingly kind hosts had been informers working on both sides. They must have arranged to have us followed to discover where we were hiding and, having betrayed us, had probably received a substantial financial reward.
When we had calmed down a little Pappy said, ‘Mutti has made a deal with the Gestapo. She is going to give them our box of talcum powder and they will let the Reitsmas go free.’ He looked drained, but he had not broken down and he was still calm and dignified.
‘Why can’t they let us all go free?’ I asked pressing my face against his chest as he comforted me.
He looked down at me and shook his head. ‘I suppose that is because they think we are the enemy,’ he said wryly.
At that moment one of the Gestapo officers who had interrogated me entered the room to take Mutti and the Reitsmas away. Mutti told us later that they were driven home and she had led the Gestapo officer up to the bathroom and showed him the large box of talcum powder that stood on the shelf. He undid the bottom of the container and out fell both the powder and all the jewellery that Mutti had hidden there – a platinum watch, diamond rings, gold and silver bracelets and brooches. It was quite a haul and he seemed satisfied.
Eventually the Gestapo brought Mutti back to the room where Pappy, Heinz and I had been waiting with our arms around each other. They told us that the Reitsmas would be allowed to go free but that we were now going to be transferred to the local Dutch prison.
The Germans need not have kept their word over the deal they made with my parents but they did. The Reitsmas were left alone after that and with the help of our secret hoard of food all three of them managed to survive the war. In some respects, amazing though it seems, the Germans behaved honourably.