In Rotterdam, the family of fifteen-year-old Arie de Keyzer was becoming desperate for food as January 1945 stretched into a succession of bitterly cold days. By this time the daily ration allowed the population of occupied Holland had been reduced by the Germans to 600 calories, a third of what it had been in 1941—which itself had been way under the 3,000 calories of the contents of the three daily K-ration packs used by the troops of the US Army.1
The enterprising De Keyzer family had come through the early days of winter with relatively full bellies. They lived near the Waal harbor, where the Waal River entered the sea at the end of its fifty-mile passage from the Rhine. Here Arie and his two younger brothers daily caught fish for the family table. The boys had plenty of time for fishing because schools had been closed. The previous August, they had gone out to farms and walked behind the mowing machines harvesting wheat and rapeseed. On the orders of the occupation government, the harvest was sent to Germany, but the De Keyzer boys were able to collect sufficient wheat lying on the ground behind the harvesting machines to enable their mother to bake bread through the early part of the winter.2
The brothers also collected a little rapeseed from which their father produced cooking oil using a homemade press. In addition, the De Keyzer boys also had a way of snaring sugar beet. Trains carrying the Dutch sugar beet harvest to Germany passed close by where the family lived, and at night the boys speared beets from passing railroad wagons, using a long stick with a spike on the end. They’d take their catch home for their mother to boil the sugar beet down to create a sweet syrup. She used the pulp to make cookies.
An uncle of Arie’s had a bakery in the city, and one of the few delicacies that he was able to continue to produce through the Hunger Winter was little “meringues,” made using water, sweetener, coloring and baking powder. Not only did they taste good, they helped fill empty stomachs. When Arie eyed a tray of meringues one day, his uncle offered him the job of cranking the old cream-whipping machine that turned them out. Arie’s reward, said his uncle, would be something to fill his stomach. Envisaging a plateful of meringues, Arie cranked for four hours straight until he couldn’t lift his aching arms to crank any more. To his disappointment, his reward was half a loaf of unleavened bread. The loaf was as dense as a block of wood and tasted much the same. Still, it was food, and it was welcome.
But by the new year, with ice covering Waal harbor, the fish were no more. The wheat and rapeseed oil had been used up, and the beet trains were no longer running. All around the De Keyzer family, thousands of Dutch were dying from starvation. Arie de Keyzer decided that it was time to go on a foraging expedition inland. He and a school friend rode into the countryside on bicycles with solid tires. For three weeks they worked on a farm in the province of Drenthe in the northeast of the country, returning home to Rotterdam with saddlebags stuffed with food. Two weeks later, they made a similar expedition, this time east to the Achterhoek region. Again they came back with fresh food. But this time, on his return Arie found that his pet dog was missing. He never saw it again and was convinced that someone had stolen it—to eat.3
It wasn’t only food that had become scarce. With no functioning railroads to transport them, coal and wood supplies dried up that winter, too. Ignoring the German regulation that banned the cutting down of trees in the cities, the residents would nightly sneak out to quietly lop branches and then cut down entire trees for their cooking fires and heating. Once-beautiful tree-lined avenues were quickly denuded and left stark and characterless. After that, the city dwellers turned indoors in search of fuel for their fires. One Amsterdam resident, teenager Bep Haagedoorn, watched her father progressively strip their household of its woodwork, starting with cupboard doors. By cannibalizing the family home in this way, Bep’s father was able to keep a solitary fire burning through the winter.
By February 1945 the Haagedoorn family, like so many others, was embarking on desperate treks to the countryside in quest of food, especially potatoes. Many Dutch farmers would not take the currency circulated by the Germans in occupied Holland so, to get food, Bep’s mother and father began by bartering their gold rings, watches and jewelry. Then they exchanged their best bedding and linens. When that was gone, Bep and her sister Ans slipped out of the house one night after curfew, taking along their mother’s finest embroidered lace tablecloth, which had yellow roses around the border. Using Ans’s bicycle, which had rope for tires, and with Bep riding pillion, they headed out into the country in the pitch dark.
At the nearest farm they woke the occupants and offered them the tablecloth in exchange for food. They came away with a small bag of potatoes. On their way back to Amsterdam, they rode into a massive hole that had been dug in the road, perhaps by the Resistance. Bep never let go of the bag of potatoes even though she and her sister were catapulted through the air like rag dolls. Battered and bruised but otherwise unhurt, the pair managed to find their way home without further incident. The next evening, the Haagedoorn family had the luxury of potatoes for dinner.4
Jantita Smittenaar was another Dutch girl with vivid memories of bartering for food. Her parents had bartered away all of the portable valuables in their house when they had the opportunity to get their hands on five pounds of split peas. The price was Jantita’s favorite doll, complete with all its clothes and an antique doll carriage. As a result, Jantita and her family members had some greens in their diet for a week, but Jantita never forgot that doll. She emigrated to North America following the war but frequently returned to Holland to visit friends, family and familiar places. And every time she saw a rummage sale in Dutch cities and towns, she went looking for a doll just like the one she had surrendered for five pounds of split peas in the spring of 1945.5
It was now impossible for the millions of city dwellers in occupied Holland to buy “luxuries” such as eggs and butter in their local stores. Sometimes they were able to beg, buy or barter eggs and butter from farmers far out in the countryside and then smuggle them back to their families. But first it was necessary to have a bicycle for the long journey—there were no buses or private cars on the roads, and the trains were no longer running. Then they had to pass through numerous German checkpoints to get to and from the farms. Next, a generous farmer was required. And finally the foodstuffs had to be smuggled back into the city—if German troops found the contraband, they would confiscate it and likely arrest the smugglers.
The Dutch soon found that their children made the best food smugglers. German troops at checkpoints let children pass through with little scrutiny. And farmers could be expected to be more generous to children than to adults. Many Dutch teenagers excitedly volunteered for smuggling missions; not only would it be an adventure, but it would mean that they and their family would be able to eat relatively well for a few days.
Sixteen-year-old Audrey Hoeflok of The Hague joined the ranks of the bold young food smugglers. Her father was employed as night watchman in an office building in The Hague where German troops worked during the day. These Germans kept their own food stocks in the building’s basement and because he had keys to the entire building, Audrey Hoeflok’s father and an associate frequently “liberated” small amounts of food from this stockpile—small enough for the thefts not to be noticed. But by the beginning of March 1945, the German troops in Holland were also conserving food. Now almost cut off from Germany by land, they were watching their stores carefully. The German military commander in Holland, Generaloberst (Colonel General) Johannes Blaskowitz, knew that, at best, his troops had enough food to last them until September. But the local population’s food situation was much more critical. Many city dwellers didn’t know where their next meal would come from.
In The Hague, the food situation had become so grave for the Hoeflok family that Audrey volunteered to bicycle to the home of a distant relative who owned a farm in the country to try to get hold of a little fresh food for the family. Because the Germans had commandeered 50,000 intact Dutch bicycles for their troops and had taken the tires from others, Audrey’s mode of transport for her exploit was an old bicycle with homemade tires like those used by Arie de Keyzer and many other Dutch—her father screwed thin pieces of wood onto the wheel rims; onto these he nailed strips of rubber from an old car tire. Audrey’s ride was bumpy and exhausting, but it was better than walking all the way.
Setting off from the city early one March morning, Audrey reached the home of the country relative after a four-hour journey. She handed over a letter from her father and some cash and was welcomed warmly by the farmer and his family. They gave her a hot bacon sandwich, washed down with milk. Audrey had not tasted either in years. They filled the leather saddlebag straddling the rear of her bike with potatoes, onions, carrots, a cabbage, a small bag of flour, a sliver of bacon, three eggs and a small bottle of cooking oil.
Well fed, and carrying her treasure with her, Audrey rode all the way back to The Hague without encountering any problems. But as she entered the city, she ran headlong into a German military checkpoint blocking the street. As it was too late to turn back, she dismounted and walked up to the sentries, trying to act as casual as possible, pushing her bike and her luck.
“Papers,” said a fresh-faced German soldier who looked to Audrey to be not much older than she was. Typically, many of the soldiers garrisoning Holland were the quite young and the comparatively old. The former were hastily drafted youths without military experience. The latter were frequently veterans carrying physical and mental wounds from battles fought on the Eastern Front, in Italy, in Normandy and elsewhere.
Teenaged Audrey handed over her identification papers. The soldier inspected the papers, then instructed her to open her saddlebags. With a heavy heart and fearing the worst, Audrey unfastened the latches on the bags. The soldier poked around in the bags. He held up one of the three precious eggs.
“Please let me keep them,” Audrey pleaded. “For my sick mother.”
The young German smiled. “If I do, will you go out with me?” he asked.
Audrey quickly overcame her surprise. To keep her treasures, Audrey would say just about anything. She agreed to a date with the German and also set a time and meeting place in the city center the next day. The soldier replaced the egg and closed the saddlebags, telling Audrey to proceed. She held out her hand to reclaim her papers.
But the soldier only smiled. “Tomorrow,” he said.
So, minus her vital papers—she could be shot for being without them—Audrey went home. The family ate well that night, thanks to her. The next morning, Audrey hurried out on an urgent mission—not to keep the date with the German soldier, but to the local police station. There she reported that her papers were missing. The Dutch police gave her temporary papers and instructed her to report back in a week’s time to see if her original papers had been handed in. Seven days later, Audrey returned to the police station. But there was no sign of her original ID.
Audrey Hoeflok had all but forgotten about the incident when, three weeks later, she was summoned to the police station. With trepidation, she returned and was handed her original papers by the police. The young German soldier had finally turned them in. He never informed his superiors that he had found Audrey carrying contraband.6