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On November 26th 1940, a Jewish Professor of Leiden University was sacked by German Authorities. After a protest meeting, the university was closed and all the students were sent home.

In May 1942, all Jewish people had to wear a Star of David. My friend’s father wore one, very reluctantly, as his wife was a Roman Catholic and he hoped that he would not have to be sent away. However, he was deported and died in a concentration camp.

Slowly the resistance started. It was like a grey mist. People turned up and then disappeared again. You did not know where they came from or where they were going. One of the members of our swimming group was arrested by the Gestapo and was executed. Illegal papers were printed in secret. I helped to distribute the papers, hidden in my shoes. The Pro-German director of the Labour Exchange, who was in possession of names and addresses of men in Leiden of the ages of 16-60, had been attacked. As reprisal three prominent young men, one a doctor and two head of colleges, were executed and 32 hostages were taken to camps.

Many young men just disappeared. A Jewish school friend of mine disappeared too. We wondered what had happened to her. After the war, she told me that her mother had taken her to a farm and left her there. When in 1945 her mother came back for her, they did not recognise each other. The mother had lost so much weight in the ‘hunger winter’ and her daughter had changed into a teenager.

September 1944. After ‘Operation Market Garden’ in Arnhenm, we expected the allied troops to press on to the west of the Netherlands. The west of Holland was expecting its worst winter (1944 — 1945). Gas and electricity was cut off, so the only way to prepare a meal was on a small stove, in which everything that was burnable was burnt. The Germans were getting more and more desperate. Radio’s were illegal and if found, the owner was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. Many people were listening to Radio Orange and the B.B.C in hidden places. My mother was getting very worried in case my father would be arrested and urged him to hand in our radio, which he eventually did, albeit reluctantly.

Story continues - What I Remember of the War in the Netherlands - Chapter Three

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Cheryl Phillips of the Stoke CSV Action Desk on behalf of Wilhelmina Slight-Metselaar and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

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