Nobody who lived in the Netherlands during that time will ever forget the 10th of May 1940.V's story illustrates that LifeStory writing can be a path to healing and integration of people at any age. See Adaline Bjorkman's companion article entitled, LifeStory Writing.
We were jarred awake that night by the frightful noise of hundreds of airplanes flying over.
Of course we had known that Europe was in chaos because Hitler had already occupied several countries, but he had promised, just a few days before, not to attack the Netherlands which had always remained neutral.
As usual he went back on his word. That night the city of Rotterdam was completely destroyed by Hitler's bombs. I don't know how many people were killed. It seems in my memory that it must have been thousands.
This of course meant war in the Netherlands. Nobody was allowed in the streets those next days. We were glued to the radio.
It took only 4 days. The Netherlands had to surrender. On May 14, we were defeated and we were devastated, knowing already what might happen to us. We were fearful and very pessimistic.
As soon as we were able to be outside, my husband and I got into our car and drove to Ymuiden, a harbor on the North Sea. We were not the only ones. We found ourselves in an exodus of fleeing people, nearly bumper to bumper.
At the harbor were only some rickety boats still on land. Several we saw further away in the water, German planes flying over and shooting at those unarmed people helplessly trying to save their lives.
How can I describe the scene? Despairing men and women jumping from the seawalls taking their own lives.
There was nothing for us to do but to return to Amsterdam and await our fate. We tried to keep busy and went to work. We lived quietly never sure of what would happen to us, feeling constantly the oppression of the occupation, fearing the worst was still to come.
A movement formed starting in the churches and spreading across the whole country, the Dutch underground, by which we were informed about happenings in the world.
This 'underground' did much illegal work, helped many of the oppressed and did much to boycott the work of the enemy.
February 1941 became a catastrophe for us in Amsterdam. Not far from where we worked was a school for Dutch merchant marines. One day a troop of German soldiers got into a fracas with some marines and 2 German soldiers were killed. The next day, a Saturday, my husband had gone to work and phoned from there that he was on his way home and I could start dinner. We did not know this, but just then the Germans had closed all the bridges in that part of the city with many Jewish residents and arrested 400 innocent Jewish men, all under the age of 30, in punishment for the death of the 2 soldiers. I found out about this by word of mouth late that night. An eyewitness told me on the phone that my husband was among the 400.
It took months before we knew that these men were in the concentration camp Mauthausen in Austria and still months later that they were all dead. This message came only by telephone.
The call that day from work was the last contact I had with my husband.