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00:00Anne Frank in her diary June the 6th 1944. Would the long-awaited liberation, which
00:24still seems too wonderful, too much like a fairy tale, ever come true? Could we be granted
00:30victory this year, 1944? We don't know yet, but hope is revived within us. Now more than
00:38ever we must clench our teeth and not cry out. The people of Holland had lived under Nazi
00:46occupation for four long years.
01:24On May the 10th, 1940, without a declaration of war,
01:52Germany struck against neutral Holland.
01:56Paratroopers and panzers overpowered the Dutch peacetime army with its obsolete weapons.
02:12Using Holland's excellent roads, Hitler's columns raced across the flat countryside
02:16before the Allies could come to the rescue.
02:19At lunchtime, on May the 14th, 50 Heinkels attacked the port of Rotterdam.
02:27In 15 minutes, they started fires which destroyed the city centre and struck terror into the population.
02:37Rotterdam capitulated, and only a few hours later, Holland decided to surrender to save other cities from a similar fate.
02:45At night, as Rotterdam blazed, the Dutch people were leaderless.
02:53The Queen, with her cabinet, had escaped to Britain to carry on the government in exile.
03:00Faced with the prospect of Nazi rule, more than 300 Dutchmen, mainly Jews, preferred to commit suicide.
03:07People were stunned, bewildered, fearful.
03:10Fearful.
03:11You see, Holland hadn't been involved in a war since Napoleon.
03:19We were completely stunned and psychologically broken.
03:24Such a chord that was from T
03:26we had read what Hitler said, and, as to the Jews, I had a firm belief in what he prophesied.
03:44I actually believe that, yes. He would do away with us. Yes, I believe that.
03:54We were not so very alarmed. We didn't believe all the things they did, no.
03:59My brother, I mean Eddie, the oldest one, came to our house in the days the war started.
04:08And he said, come with me to, let's try to escape. And I remember that my mother said escape. Why?
04:18I must wait for the man who bring the laundry. What would you want me to escape from?
04:23Maybe they were the enemy to us, but really true, I mean they didn't saw us as an enemy on that moment at least.
04:31You see, because we are just hotel employers and so long we not bother them, they accept everything.
04:42You see, like the doorman opened the door for anybody, like he do today, like he did years before.
04:50I mean, and the bellboys did the things they had to do, the porter did the things they had to do.
04:55Anybody, I mean, from the bus, the highest till the smallest did his job, but he did.
05:01Germany imposed a new administration headed by a Reich commissioner personally responsible to Hitler and empowered to rule by decree.
05:13The new supreme ruler of Holland was Dr. Arthur Seiss-Inquart, a Viennese lawyer.
05:22He had helped organize Austria's absorption by Germany in 1938.
05:28In the ancient hall of knights at the Hague, he addressed German officials.
05:31The 12 most senior Dutch civil servants were also present.
05:35He tried to reassure the Dutch by declaring that Nazi ideology would not be imposed.
05:55Germany had no imperialistic designs on Holland.
05:58Dutch laws would remain in force until further notice.
06:06Seiss-Inquart made it clear that the country would still be administered by Dutch civil servants.
06:12Anyone who wished might resign.
06:15Few were to do so.
06:18He called for cooperation between two Germanic peoples of the same blood.
06:26Six!
06:27Fire!
06:49As a conciliatory gesture, Hitler ordered the release of all Dutch prisoners of war.
06:54People started to relax.
06:59The Germans promised to maintain living standards and to cure unemployment.
07:06The occupation might not be so bad after all.
07:09The Reich's commissioner, Seiss-Inquart himself, saw off a trainload of children on a free holiday to his native Austria.
07:26For the Dutch Nazi movement, the NSB, this was a moment of jubilation as they gathered to welcome the invaders.
07:45The NSB had been holding rallies here in Lundtunen for years, but now for the first time, instead of protesting against the regime, they were its champions.
07:58The NSB membership quadrupled to 80,000, although still only 1% of the population belonged.
08:05Like Hitler's Nazi party, the NSB was born of the economic depression, fear of Bolshevism, and the promise of a revived Europe.
08:15It stood for order, discipline, and an authoritarian state.
08:22Patriotic in their fashion, the Dutch Nazis extolled ancient traditions, glorified the fatherland, and promised national self-respect.
08:41Saluting the Dutch flag and singing the national anthem were part of the ritual.
09:00All references to the royal family, the House of Orange, were, however, omitted.
09:05Anton Mussert, the NSB's leader, was an engineer with an outstanding record in the civil service.
09:27He saw this as the moment for the rebirth of the Netherlands as a great power.
09:31Mussert molded himself on Mussolini. Hitler was the messiah sent to save Europe.
09:38Mr. Valvade, our fellows, we have remained the same in all these months.
09:45The same were we looking for 31, so we were in 33, in 35, in 37, in 39 We are now now!
09:59with our love for the people and the people.
10:08The German state has many benefits.
10:11We can form one of the sterks,
10:14until we have been cut out of the wood
10:17that needs to see
10:19that the Netherlands can still march.
10:24Well, let's go!
10:29The German bomber flew low over the crowd in salute.
10:36It was just six weeks
10:39since the Luftwaffe had spread fire and death in Rotterdam.
10:51And now,
10:52are you now in war with Germany?
10:54Yes or no?
10:55Yes!
10:56Yes!
10:57Yes!
10:58Yes!
10:59Yes!
11:00Yes!
11:01Yes!
11:02Yes!
11:03Yes!
11:04Yes!
11:08Yes!
11:15But there was another Holland.
11:24Astonishingly, on Prince Bernhardt's birthday, only one week after France had fallen,
11:28thousands of ordinary Dutchmen spontaneously demonstrated their defiance.
11:35Soldiers saluted as people sang the orange anthem
11:37and placed white carnations, Bernhardt's favourite flower, on national monuments.
11:45Some saw no point in open opposition.
11:55A new German-approved political organisation, the Netherlands Union,
11:58was formed to unite patriots and loyalty to the occupying power.
12:02With most other parties gagged, it seemed to be a respectable alternative to the NSB.
12:08Fifteen percent of the population joined.
12:15Holland was a religious country.
12:18Despite Hitler's claim to be the saviour of the Christian West,
12:22the churches were hostile to Nazism because it placed man above God.
12:27In some churches, Dutch Nazis were denied communion.
12:29Everyone had to be fingerprinted and photographed and registered.
12:41The Dutch government had left instructions for civil servants to stay at their posts
12:45as long as they thought it was in the best interests of the people.
12:48Now they were systematically issuing identity cards to the entire population.
12:52The Germans introduced a racial questionnaire.
12:59Very shortly after the occupation, two men from the German security police came to me and asked,
13:09are there any Jews in your municipality?
13:11I told them, it was true, there are no Jews in my municipality.
13:15But that was my first mistake.
13:22Because by answering that question, you accept racial discrimination.
13:27And you had to fill in a form.
13:29One passage was, if you had any Jewish grandparents.
13:32No, I had none, so I said no.
13:35And you went home and didn't realize that you helped cornering the Jews
13:40and making them vulnerable and bringing them in a position
13:44where they could later on be transported and gassed.
13:47You didn't realize.
13:50After a year of being politicized a little bit better,
13:55you got more hesitations on what such a declaration really meant.
13:59But the first impression is, your age, your address,
14:03grandparents from Jewish origin, oh, okay.
14:06See, it is so, it was a process, step by step,
14:13the process of infiltration of this Nazism in the society was there.
14:22All Jews were dismissed from public office.
14:26The Germans began to segregate Jews from other Dutchmen.
14:29They were banned from cafes and parks.
14:36In Amsterdam, black-shirted NSB men marched into a working-class area,
14:43pulled Jews out of pubs and beat them up in the streets.
14:53Jewish self-defense groups fought back.
14:56A Dutch Nazi was killed.
14:58A Gestapo man injured.
14:59As a reprisal, the Germans snatched 400 young Jews at random off the street,
15:08beat them up
15:08and sent them off to Mauthausen, already known to be a death camp.
15:16A communist street cleaner, Piet Nack,
15:19following his party's instructions,
15:21stood up in the street and urged Amsterdammers to protest.
15:24Now, what my shield was, for my personal, then, indirect.
15:30What drove me personally, but I think all the other people, too,
15:33we were filled with an overwhelming hate.
15:36We'd never seen anything like that in Amsterdam.
15:39Lots of people, just because they were Jewish,
15:41men, women and children, there were no exceptions.
15:46People just arrested and beaten up.
15:49You see, well, what would you do if you saw someone in the water?
15:52Of course, you dive in and get him out.
15:57You don't ask if the water's clean or dirty.
15:59You are filled with anger.
16:01There was nothing we could do but go on straight.
16:04I wouldn't have known what else we could do.
16:06There was no other way.
16:07We hadden wat anders hadden moeten kunnen gaan doen.
16:10Dat is niks anders.
16:10Dat er duizenden zich in een gesloten kolonne door de straten in het center van Amsterdam voortbewegen.
16:17Thousands, in a tightly packed column, marched through the streets in the center of Amsterdam,
16:23while the Germans circled round them in tanks.
16:26Typisch is dat die demonstranten...
16:29Of course, the demonstrators weren't armed.
16:32Yet they found a weapon in marching and singing.
16:36So they marched along the Rosenhaft,
16:38singing the Internationale.
16:41The second day of the strike, we held a meeting at the Cleansing Department.
16:51The bots there wanted us to start work again in the afternoon of the second day.
16:55But we had already decided we would only go back on the third day.
16:59The trams, which had signaled the start of the strike, signaled its end.
17:11The Germans had chopped down nine people to continue with Mina Bloodbar.
17:16For 48 hours, workmen, shopkeepers and businessmen
17:19had staged a unique strike in defense of the Jews.
17:22My personal opinion is, put yourself in the place of the Jewish people of Amsterdam.
17:36They felt they'd been deserted, left on their own.
17:39But because of this strike, there must have been many Jews.
17:42Well, you can't really say many.
17:44But if you ask if it did any good, I say this.
17:46If just one Jew in the gas chamber felt that the workers of Amsterdam had not deserted him,
17:52then it wasn't for nothing.
17:56Faced with such bold opposition,
17:59the Germans now abandoned what was left of conciliation.
18:02The mayors of three towns who had been lenient with strikers
18:05were replaced by Dutch Nazis.
18:08NSP leaders, though not allowed to form a government,
18:11were installed in positions of power.
18:12The head of the Netherlands Bank was Rost von Tonningen.
18:19My husband joined NSP in 1936.
18:24He was very interesting in the work of Hitler,
18:26what he was doing in Germany.
18:30In Holland, the situation was quite different from Germany.
18:36We have big poorness here in Holland.
18:38We have no buildings.
18:41Three-quarters of the people for the population have no work.
18:47And they have bad clothes.
18:49So it was really not a very good situation in Holland.
18:53Before I joined the NSP, there was a youth movement.
18:58The only difference between the NSP and the youth movement was
19:01that it was not a political movement.
19:04The youth movement was to bring the children
19:08who came from poor parents together
19:12to give them an ideal to work in a teamwork for another person.
19:18Of course, we looked to the youth movement in Germany.
19:23It was quite different,
19:24because a German has a German character
19:26and a Dutch man has a Dutch character.
19:29So we chose in the movement of the NSP
19:33because we saw the ideal,
19:37we saw the danger of the Bolshevism,
19:39and our thinking was to work there,
19:43to make them a big movement,
19:45to try to help Europe as a big united Europe
19:50from several kinds of countries who work together.
19:54Another Dutch Nazi, Vaudenberg,
20:00was put in charge of the trade unions.
20:01My father, I think, worked,
20:04and he lived from a religious base
20:08without calling it God or some other religion's name.
20:15My father was a well-known man,
20:18a hated man,
20:20and there was a possibility for me to go to Germany
20:23to this National Socialistic Educating Institute.
20:28It was a school,
20:30like an Eton School or something,
20:33that we were uniform,
20:36and we had the feeling that we were a selected group,
20:41better than the others,
20:42and, you know, you feel happy when you have that feeling.
20:46And in a very short time,
20:50I was educated in this SS thinking,
20:53a great Germanistic empire,
20:56and there was no reason for me to think about Holland
21:00and the Netherlands and so on.
21:02I knew there should be one thing done.
21:06This war had to be won.
21:09When I had the age,
21:10I had to be a soldier to fight
21:14so that we could leave behind
21:17that little small country,
21:19and we came to new situations,
21:22this great Germanistic empire.
21:25June 1941.
21:32The NSB called for support
21:33for Germany's attack on Russia.
21:36Mussat urged Dutchmen to unite
21:38for Hitler,
21:40against Stalin,
21:41against Churchill.
21:44For Hitler!
21:44Against Stalin!
21:46Against Churchill!
21:46First it would start,
22:09beep, beep, beep,
22:11and radio orange,
22:12and there you were,
22:13sitting in the dark.
22:14You could only have a little light,
22:15a candle or something,
22:17and we would listen.
22:22Hundreds of thousands risked arrest
22:24to listen to Dutch broadcasts from London,
22:27their only trusted source of news.
22:29The radio urged patriots
22:31to daub up signs,
22:32OZO,
22:33orange will win,
22:35and V for victory.
22:37Goebbels started
22:38a not very convincing counter-campaign.
22:40V stood for German victory
22:42on all fronts.
22:43Early in 1941,
22:45we decided to start
22:46a political cabaret.
22:48We looked in all the
22:50gramophone shops in London
22:52for old Dutch records,
22:54because we used the tunes
22:56of these records
22:57and put new words
22:59to the tune,
22:59so that every Dutchman
23:01could whistle the tune,
23:02and then every other Dutchman knew,
23:04oh, he has heard that
23:05from Radio Orange.
23:07The music
23:08And,
23:11like this news
23:12sounds like
23:12a night,
23:13no see we
23:14too swar.
23:15Denk er
23:15maar,
23:15na regen
23:16And after this dark time of willekeur, of shame and terror
23:23There will be a day of joy and of seeing time again
23:27We are proud and full of joy
23:29Because the people of New England keep so good
23:32The small Holland's world is dapper as a rose
23:36It is orange, it is orange, it is the solution
23:40For you, for me and for the watergeus
23:45There were two boys who came over to England in a canoe
23:49And they were introduced to me
23:51And they realised all of a sudden who I was
23:55And they looked at me in such a strange way
24:01And they said, is that you, this girl, this voice?
24:07And I said, yes
24:09And they said, may I touch you?
24:13And I said, well, certainly
24:16They were, something happened, something strange
24:20And all of a sudden I realised what I meant
24:24Not I, but what this voice
24:26And this, the whole thing we meant to do with it
24:31What happened in an unoccupied country
24:40On the surface, life in Holland seemed to go on as usual
24:43Under the patronage of Seiss Inquart, Holland's most famous conductor
24:47Willem Mengelberg still gave dazzling performances
24:50With the Concert Cabal Orchestra
24:53But all the time, the Germans were steadily tightening their grip
25:09By 1942, the invaders began to fortify the coast
25:14They evacuated resorts where people had holidayed only two years before
25:18The Germans conscripted more and more workers for forced labour
25:23Those who resisted, they imprisoned and shot
25:30There was no sign of an Allied victory
25:37No sign of when Holland would again be free
25:41German promises not to impose their ideology were now forgotten
25:56All performing artists, writers and painters
25:59Had to join Nazi controlled cultural guilds
26:02Only music approved by the censors could be played
26:26Jewish composers were banned
26:28And players of Jewish origin sat
26:31Slowly, resistance was organised
26:36Weapons and explosives were sabotage
26:39An underground press printed and distributed a terrible risk
26:47The few thousand men in resistance groups became Holland's conscience
26:51The illegal papers urged people not to attend German sponsored all Aryan sports meetings
27:10But attendances rose, people wanted to escape the war
27:13The resistance also urged people not to listen to German controlled radio
27:29Which poured out pop songs and propaganda
27:32Popular entertainers like Eddie Christiani walked a tightrope between collaboration and resistance
27:38You must live
27:40You must live
27:41So to listen to music
27:43I know it's maybe collaboration
27:46But then the whole Dutch people have collaborated on
27:50You couldn't listen to another station than the German station
27:54You see what I mean
27:56You see what I mean?
27:57And you can say maybe
27:58I don't like the German music
28:00I never listened during the war to music
28:03But if you one week are in your own home
28:06And it is an absolute silence
28:08You don't hear nothing at all
28:10Then in a one week moment you put on your radio
28:14And you hear music
28:16And you don't care if it's German or Chinese
28:18It's much better than to hear still the bombing or the airplanes
28:22Or the shouting of the Germans
28:27It was allowed for the Dutch people to sit down
28:29Just listen to music but no dancing
28:32It was also forbidden to make show with your orchestra
28:35It was not allowed for a trumpet player to play a muted trumpet
28:39You see what like let's say Duke Ellington
28:43To crawl
28:44It was forbidden for a trumpet player or for a saxophone player
28:49To make a movement with his instrument
28:51Like swaying
28:54It was forbidden to play a higher note than a C
28:59A written C
29:01Because it was all Negro music
29:03And they say in Germany
29:04Negro music was music of the devil
29:07And we are now a cultivated people
29:09And so were the Germans
29:11So we have to play proper cultivated music
29:16In that time of course you had some officers
29:18Who are looking for nice girls
29:20I mean today you have customers in the hotel
29:22Who are looking for nice girls
29:24If they want some nice girls
29:26You could find some nice girls
29:28I still can find some nice girls today for them
29:30If they ask for it
29:31You know
29:32But I must say
29:34There was
29:36He was
29:38How do you call it
29:39He had his office at the Museum Square
29:42And he was
29:43You may say
29:44Town commander of Amsterdam
29:47And he was a guy you know
29:49I mean
29:50Today they would say him playboy
29:52You know
29:53But he was then a German playboy
29:55In uniform
29:56He had his own two seats
29:58In one of the cinemas
30:00In the city theater
30:01And
30:03Later on
30:04I have been many times to the city theater
30:06With his card you know
30:08Because those seats
30:09Was not allowed for anybody to sit down
30:12But two employers
30:13So like me
30:14Youngsters you know
30:16Sat down there you know
30:19An invitation of the commander
30:21So we had fun about it
30:23One film which had to be shown in every Dutch town
30:26Was the eternal Jew
30:28The eternal Jew
30:29They trekking the earth as parasit people with a parasite.
30:34They are in Asia.
30:36From there they come from Russia via Russia and the Balkan countries to Europe.
30:42In the middle of the 18th century, they have been spread over the whole Europe.
30:47In the last of the 19th century, they have used to use the use of equipment for America.
30:54When rats are flying, they bring death and death into the land.
31:01They lose human rights and life.
31:04They spread diseases, pests, lepra, typhus, cholera.
31:08They are false, laugh and wreathe, and most of them are in large groups.
31:13Made in Germany, the film was part of the carefully prepared campaign to foster fear and loathing of the Jews.
31:28In each occupied country, the film's message was sharpened by inserting local material.
31:35In each occupied country, the film's message was sharpened by inserting local material.
31:54The Germans were now putting into effect their plan to destroy all the Jews in Europe.
32:13The local population had first to be won over to cooperation or at least to acquiescence.
32:20There were 140,000 Jews in Holland.
32:23In May 1942, they were ordered to wear the Yellow Star of David.
32:28By that autumn, they were being rounded up and on their way to concentration camps.
32:34It was forbidden for Jewish people to go to the movies, to go to the parks, to go to anything.
32:39But my brother discovered that it was for a long time possible to run the boat and do some sailing on the Amstel.
32:47And one Saturday, a little boy fell in the water and immediately my brother jumped after the boy and brought it out.
32:54And that was the son of a fascist living in our street.
32:58And the mother of that little boy was very, very thankful to that Jewish boy who saved her only child.
33:08And she said, she said to him, if I ever can do something for you, then come to my house.
33:16And he went away, but he was not yet downstairs.
33:21Immediately he went back and he said, you said something, maybe I can use that.
33:28Please write me a note that I saved your son.
33:31That's the only thing I ask you.
33:33She said, oh yes, I do that for you.
33:34And I remember her letter, which she wrote that that boy saved her only child.
33:40This German greetings, Heil Hitler, she wrote under that letter.
33:44And I remember my mother, she was so mad at him.
33:47She hit him, she said, you're crazy.
33:50Why did you do that for?
33:51Now they know your address.
33:53And maybe they're coming tomorrow.
33:55She didn't realize they had all the addresses.
33:59And, well, one day we were actually hold, all of us, and were brought to the theater.
34:06There were tables and there were people writing things and there was sex and there was, it was terrible.
34:13But anyhow, there was that man looking at us, looking, is that your family?
34:21All right.
34:22You can go home, all of you.
34:24And this was really unbelievable.
34:29To walk on the street again at six o'clock in the morning, to be free again.
34:35That's the first time we were, now we were absolutely safe.
34:40We were in their hands and they sent us home.
34:43And we were tired but we never go to bed, no?
34:46My mother made coffee and we felt so safe, yes.
34:50They hold us from our house, you know how many times, eleven times.
34:55They played that game from cat and mice with us.
34:59We know exactly how it went.
35:01Then the man came, he sent us home.
35:03The last time he said it was now long enough.
35:07I hold that game ten times, eleven times for only one child.
35:11The whole family Koopman must go to Fucht now.
35:15Loads of Jews in goods wagons arrived at transit camps at Fucht and Westerbork.
35:34Their names and papers were checked by clerks, some of them themselves Jews.
35:40Then they were sent east, supposedly to be resettled, in fact to be gassed and cremated in Subibor and Auschwitz.
35:52The resistance called for strikes and sabotage.
35:55Railwaymen and police under German control did not respond.
36:01The trains ran on time.
36:07Of Holland's one hundred and forty thousand Jews, one hundred and five thousand perished.
36:14I came there on the platform and there were just twenty-four people.
36:19Young and old, ladies, children, men, chained together in an iron chain.
36:28And they were of course transported to Germany to be gassed.
36:32Four Germans were there.
36:33Three on one side, the stomach guns, and one on the other side.
36:37The group.
36:38I was alone.
36:39It was twelve o'clock.
36:41You were in the midst of a city on a railway platform.
36:45What could you do?
36:47If I could, by surprise, shoot down the three, the other man was there with my pistol, I was helpless.
36:55But even when you got all four, what can you do with twenty-four people who are all linked together in the midst of the day after a shooting party in a place that's crowded with Germans?
37:08So you walk away.
37:10And that is absolutely terrible.
37:14And if you have that experience, you have a new stimulus to risk yourself for the few possibilities we had.
37:23I stayed for a long time in Feucht, till the last Jewish prisoners.
37:30I stayed in Feucht.
37:32And, well, you see, Maurits, the boy who tried to save us, must leave me, which was terrible.
37:43My parents, after four weeks, but he, after nine months, we stayed together and he took care of me like my father should have done on my husband.
37:54I had not a husband at the time, but it was touching the way he tried to take care of his sister.
38:00He worked in the night and he is very left-handed.
38:03He tried to sue, sing for other prisoners just to get a little bit more food, dreadful food for his sister.
38:11And then, after nine months, he had to go.
38:14And I should have gone with him.
38:17But it was not allowed, because I had road funk, I don't know, scarlet fever.
38:23I had that.
38:24And that was one of the dirty things of the Germans.
38:28When you were sick, you couldn't go to the guest chamber.
38:32No.
38:33First you had to recover.
38:34They gave you the illusion, nothing happened, because they don't send you on a transport when you were sick.
38:40So I had to, my brother, he came to say goodbye to me.
38:44And I was looking at him and I was thinking, for heaven's sake, he can't go not in these poor clothes.
38:51And he was small, you see.
38:53And I gave him one of my jackets and I was thinking, it's closing the other way around, but who cares.
39:01And I gave him a pair of my boots.
39:04And I looked at him when he walked away from the barrack to his back.
39:14And on his back he looked like me.
39:16And I'm sure I never will see him again.
39:20I'm sure.
39:21We failed as a nation.
39:26We didn't make one milieu with the Jews.
39:29We did it, a part of the group did it, of the Netherlands, far too late.
39:35We had been neutral in the First World War.
39:39We thought we should be neutral in the Second World War.
39:42All this stupid nonsense.
39:44And then having a sense of protest isn't the same thing as translating it to relevant action.
39:53As the war went on, the Germans stepped up appeals for recruits to fight with them in Russia.
40:09In all 25,000 Dutchmen volunteer.
40:12In proportion to its size, the biggest contingent for many occupied countries.
40:18Only half returned.
40:23At the same time, German decrees forced able-bodied men to report as conscript labour to work in German war factories.
40:52Rather than be separated from their families, tens of thousands now tried to go into hiding.
40:59Police spot checks on papers made draft dodging difficult.
41:07Another problem was the ration card system, administered by Dutch civil servants.
41:14One of their tasks was to keep a vigilant lookout for irregularities.
41:18This was because the resistance, now bigger and better organized, forged stamps and stole Russian books to feed the growing numbers in hiding.
41:27We had special organizations providing people with hiding places.
41:34They knew our address.
41:35They knew our address.
41:36So when they had somebody who had to be hidden at once, they knew they could always bring them to us.
41:46Because we always had two sleeping places reserved for such urgency cases, you see.
41:55And most of the time there were people who didn't stay long, sometimes for a weekend, and then in the meantime they tried to find another safer place for them where they could stay.
42:07Oh, in a small room, I think, well, some four yards, five yards, where there were nine people, I think, sometimes eleven, and people from other surroundings.
42:28And we hadn't to do a single thing, pealing potatoes, that's called a kind of thing you could do, reading books from the Christian library.
42:42I played chess with my wife, I studied chess, where the books my friends sent from Amsterdam.
42:51But it was horribly like hell itself, as Sartre puts it in Viclo, sitting together with people who you get to dislike more and more every minute of the day.
43:14With all tensions, and only one way of escape is going to sleep.
43:29Well, early in the morning you went to the Bureau, we had a Bible Institute as the Bureau.
43:33It was very good, because we were hiding all our explosives and weapons behind the library of the Bible Institute.
43:40And then at 9 or 9.30 you had to be there, and not later, for that would already be, well, uncertainty in the group, where is he?
43:52And then we tried to do what was the program of the week.
43:57The RAF dropped plastics, so we got such a plastic bomb, and found a beautiful German lorry, and put it in, and you have to destroy something inside that bomb, and then in half an hour's time it will explode.
44:19Now, we had no training in that, and we didn't press too fast, and after three quarters of an hour, an hour, it still didn't explode.
44:27So we went back to the Bureau we had, and made another bomb, and pressed that a little bit better, and it was a little bit risky to put it in, because if the other one would trigger off just by a little movement, well, I couldn't tell you the story then, but it didn't.
44:45And half an hour later, the two of them went together, and it was a real fire.
44:50You need some joy to go on, because we had other days also, when some of the friends would never come back.
44:58There were several illegal newspapers in Holland.
45:05Once, the Germans had taken 40 of our people prisoner. They'd been put in Vught concentration camp.
45:13They interrogated one of them, and then released him, and sent him to us with this message.
45:21If you close down the paper, this was near the end of the war, probably in 1944.
45:28If you stop producing your paper, then we won't shoot these people.
45:34We called a meeting, and talked it over very carefully.
45:52We reached the conclusion that we had to go on.
45:59As soon as some of your friends are shot, you take things more serious.
46:13If you know that this man is penetrating in the underground fortress, and you can't shoot him and save so many lives,
46:20it is terribly difficult, and terribly responsible.
46:25We had the order to kill a couple, a dangerous couple.
46:32We were asked to shoot them on the streets.
46:35When they crossed the bridge, to shoot them there and ran away.
46:39But we had a school very near to that place, and there were so many people on the streets,
46:45that we thought, let them, let us bring them in that school and kill them in the cellar.
46:52And as soon as they came in that cellar and the light was on, we saw that the wife was pregnant.
47:01And then we couldn't do that.
47:04So we arranged, the commander of our group and I, that we should threaten them.
47:11And we did so, the man first, and we gave him a hell of a time, I promise you.
47:18But he was threatening.
47:20And then his wife also, but in relationship to her situation.
47:26And we took the risk of their promises, of stepping out of their practice
47:33and waiting till after the war, people could do with them what was necessary.
47:38Spring 1944.
47:43The Second Front leading to the longed-for liberation.
47:47The Germans put up posters warning that Allied invasion would mean death and destruction.
47:52Mother, is this the Second Front Father was always talking about?
47:57But the invasion came.
48:04And by the autumn of 1944, the Allies were racing north.
48:08On September the 13th, the first Dutch city, Maastricht, in the extreme south was liberated.
48:13Resistance fighters arrested Nazis and punished women collaborators.
48:16But while the southern tip of Holland rejoiced, the rest of the country impatiently waited for their liberation.
48:31Days later their hopes were dashed.
48:33The Allies were beaten severely at Arnhem.
48:43The Dutch government in exile called for a railway strike to deny supplies to German armies.
48:48Railwaymen who had hesitated before now came out in force, bringing all transport to a standstill.
48:54The Germans retaliated by cutting off all supplies of fuel and food to cities in Western Holland.
49:04Soon people were scavenging along silent and deserted railway tracks for bits of coal.
49:09Shops ran out of food.
49:14Prices soared on the black market.
49:17People kept alive by eating tulip bulbs.
49:24Despite the privations, the strikers held firm.
49:28Using forged securities, their wages were repaid by the Resistance,
49:33which was by now also hiding 300,000 men wanted by the Germans for forced labor.
49:38There was no electricity or gas.
49:42Houses left vacant by Jews were stripped of wood for use as fuel.
49:47As the winter got worse, the Germans relented and allowed emergency soup kitchens.
49:48As the winter got worse, the Germans relented and allowed emergency soup kitchens.
49:52As the winter got worse, the Germans relented and allowed emergency soup kitchens.
49:59As the winter got worse, the Germans relented and allowed emergency soup kitchens.
50:06Still, it was clear that many would starve unless Holland was liberated.
50:13I did ask my friend, Beetle Smith, to oust General Eisenhower.
50:14Could they not starve?
50:15I did ask my friend, Beetle Smith to oust General Eisenhower.
50:16Could they not starve?
50:17I did ask my friend, Beetle Smith.
50:18To oust General Eisenhower.
50:19Could they not start a separate action to liberate the rest of Holland?
50:23Where we got up to the mass?
50:24And then up to the border?
50:27To ORG?
50:28Still, it was clear that many would starve unless Holland was liberated.
50:35I did ask my friend, Beedle Smith, to ask General Eisenhower,
50:41could they not start a separate action to liberate the rest of Holland,
50:49where we got up to the Mars, and then up to Nijmegen, and that was it.
50:55And the rest was rarely getting in worse and worse trouble this winter.
51:01Well, at that time, pretty soon, almost simultaneously,
51:05the German counter-attack came in the Ardennes,
51:10which upset almost everything one had hoped for.
51:17Hitler now stripped Holland bare.
51:20From Rotterdam alone in two days in November 1944,
51:2350,000 able-bodied men were rounded up and removed to Germany.
51:34When the doorbell rang, there were two Germans.
51:37They both came upstairs.
51:39One stayed at the top of the stairs, and the other one came into the room.
51:44He looked around the room,
51:45and the two men who were there had to get dressed and go with them.
51:48And we, being women, crying, of course, both of us,
51:52one woman with a baby in her arms,
51:55and another hanging on a skirt.
51:58And I can still remember vividly the one German who was inside the room.
52:03He was crying.
52:05Tears were streaming down his face, and he said,
52:07I am so terribly sorry that I'm not alone.
52:12I'd love to be able to help you,
52:13but I can't do anything because there's someone with me,
52:16and I don't know him.
52:18He couldn't do it.
52:19He'd have tried very hard to leave those two men there
52:22because he thought it was terrible.
52:24That was the first time I'd ever seen a German cry.
52:34He really cried.
52:36Big tears rolling down his face.
52:42At winter, 16,000 Dutch men, women, and children
52:47died of cold and hunger.
52:54Amen.
52:55Amen.
52:56Amen.
52:57Amen.
52:57Amen.
53:24Still, the liberators did not come.
53:31Amen.
53:32Amen.
54:01Amen.
54:02Amen.
54:03Amen.
54:04Amen.
54:05Amen.
54:06Amen.
54:07Amen.
54:08Amen.
54:09Amen.
54:10Amen.
54:11Amen.
54:12Amen.
54:13Amen.
54:14Amen.
54:15Amen.
54:16Amen.
54:17Amen.
54:18Amen.
54:19Amen.
54:20Amen.
54:21Amen.
54:22Amen.
54:23Amen.
54:24Amen.
54:25Amen.
54:26Amen.
54:27Amen.
54:28Amen.
54:29Amen.
54:30Amen.
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