大象传媒

It was cold and drizzly as Kathleen and I stood on the quay at Rotterdam. This was not surprising as the month was November. The year was 1945, and war damaged buildings added to the general sense of gloom. Clad in our new grey uniforms, with our rucksacks, kit- bags and camp-beds beside us, we felt a little forlorn. Before leaving London to join a Quaker relief team in Holland we were instructed to travel on a ship repatriating Dutch citizens. 'Transport will be laid on to take you to your destination',we were told.

On first landing at 9am we were surrounded by a joyful hubbub of expatriates, some of them reunited with family and friends after war time separations. They had long since been whisked away and we were left awaiting our transport. After about four and a half hours a little firemen's truck without a back, arrived for us and a Dutch officer,
going in the same direction. Eventually after a very rough and uncomfortable ride over the potholed roads, we arrived at Slijk-Ewijk where the rest of the team were based. We found that, in the team of nine, there were six British, two Dutch and a Dane.

Before setting out I had a rough idea about this part of Holland. It was agricultural land, rich in orchards of cherries, apples and other fruit. The people in the farms and scattered villages were having to cope not only with the results of Nazi occupation, but in addition, actual
warfare and the aftermath of flooding. The Germans and Allies had attacked and counter-attacked across the area, finally the Germans had breached the dyke holding back the Nederrijn, [just as the RAF had breached a dyke further west and flooded the island of Walcheren on which another Quaker team was now working]. Military tactics had little regard for the civilian community.

When peace came at last in Europe in May 1945 the Dutch accepted an offer by the British Quakers to send supplies and volunteers to help with rehabilitation. The team worked from its base in the large house [known as the Castle] and I was based with two other team members in the village of Zetten, about five miles away. We three were to help in the Mother and Baby Home at Zetten which was one of several church institutions in the village and it was being used as an emergency hospital for country folk, to relieve the overcrowded town hospitals.

Kathleen and Helen were both trained nurses, but I, untrained except for a little auxiliary nursing, helped the cook. There were many shortages fuel, shoes and wellingtons, as well as rationing of food like bread and vegetables, but the milk ration was two litres, more than we had at home. The church institutions grew their own vegetables, so although the range was limited, our meals were quite acceptable.

The team ran clinics in the surrounding villages for the treatment of scabies and lice infestation. I was learning about this itchy skin disease which often starts between the fingers and spreads elsewhere unless treated. It's common when washing facilities are scarce and the Dutch had been, and still were, short of soap so it had a hold on some of the villages. Scabies, like war was no respecter of persons. Those afflicted by scabies had to strip and stand on newspaper, while we, clad in overalls and wielding paint brushes covered them from neck to foot with benzyl benzoate. They had to leave it on a week to be cured. The reward for their ordeal was a cake of soap.

As my knowledge of Dutch improved I heard vivid stories of the war years, of Jews hidden from the Nazis, some of whom escaped, others who were carried off to concentration camps. A Jewish girl told me that she, her two sisters, brother and father had all'dived under'as the phrase was for going into hiding and they all survived. She peroxided her hair and worked as a farm hand. One of the nurses told me that while the grenades were falling, there were no deliveries of bread or milk at the Mother and Baby home so two courageous young women went to the village to collect them in a pram. If the shells were very close thay ran, but they were never hurt.

Non Jewish citizens who opposed the Nazis also had to go into hiding and sometimes they spent long periods in ditches and cellars. A Dutch member of the team with brochitis came to stay in the hospital and I heard some of her experiences. Her fiance, a student, had been in the Resistance Movement and could never go out by day for fear of the Gestapo. 'The students looked terrible' she said,' like old men'. Her father was one of those forging ration books for submergers, at great risk to himself. One day they heard that some of his friends had been arrested. They feared that one of them might be forced to give him away but not one of them did. She went to live on a farm and cycled or walked through floods at week-ends, to her home 50 kilometers away, loaded with vegetables for her family.

During the occupation, sometimes defiance of German orders brought the death sentence. For lesser infringements there were punishments. One group of men were ordered after some misdemeanour, to walk to and fro along the dyke above the river for hours. They did as they were commanded having previously filled their pockets with wallflower seeds which they discreetly sowed. The following spring a blaze of orange, the national colour of Holland adorned the bank'

Our Quaker grey designed to distinguish us from the army was not always an asset. We were told that a German women's service had worn grey uniforms. In Greece I believe, the reaction was serious; folk in some of the remote villages fled for shelter when they saw Quaker relief workers arriving; they thought the German air force was back. Nor was grey sufficient to distinguish the Quakers who had refused conscription into the British army on grounds of conscience. When the anniversary of liberation came, in vain the men in the team protested that they had never been soldiers, they were carried shoulder high and cheered because they were British'

A sense of common humanity across frontiers was brought home to us in our village hall when I joined a gathering there one evening. A Dutch woman was to speak about her experiences in a concentration camp. I was afraid that I might not understand her and that she might increase the hatred for the Germans, but my fears were groundless. Her family had hidden Jews during the Occupation and one day they were found out. Her old father, her sister and she landed in prison where the old man died, but the sisters were sent to a concentration camp. The conditions in such places are now well known -not enough food, overcrowding, lice, inadequate sanitation, brutal treatment and for many extermination. What stood out in her talk, was her faith in Jesus and her consciousness of his presence and loving support. She and her sister brought comfort to fellow prisoners. The women had been rounded up from several countries but they got their message across, despite the language barrier, sometimes in the crowded dormitory with hymns, prayers and bible readings, sometimes with a few words in the queue for the toilet. Wherever the chance came they took it.

One incident she described has stayed with me. The prisoners had to shovel sand but the speaker's sister was by then so weak she couldn't keep it up. Out of love or pity for the woman who had brought them so much comfort, the prisoners passed half shovelfuls on to her on the quiet and so saved her from ill-treatment from the guards.

Some years later I read the remarkable experiences in a concentration camp of Corrie Ten Boom in her book 'The Hiding Place'. It was a privilege to have heard her in the flesh years before her book was written. When talking to us she urged us not only to forgive the Germans, but also the Dutch Quislings who collaborated with the Nazis. They were being sent to prison and our young helper in the kitchen, a cheerful hardworking girl, had been taken on because her father was a Quisling and she found it hard to find a job.

In May 1946 the team began to clear up ready to leave, our relief work in Holland was coming to an end. Spring cleaning was interspersed with farewell parties and it was with mixed feelings that we said goodbye to our Dutch friends. But there is a sequel to this as I and two other members of the team were sent to relieve some of the distress in Germany's shattered Ruhr District. We kept in touch with our Dutch friends and as we were only 70 miles away we could visit them now and again. We told them about the war damage we found in Germany - widespread bomb damage, lack of housing with refugees from the East adding to the problem, shortages of food, clothing and medical supplies, and high unemployment. We wanted to do anything to foster forgiveness and reconciliation. Some months later it was arranged for one of the team to tell the villagers about her work among deprived children in Germany. We found 300 people squashed into the village hall to hear her and when she finished many eyes were wet.

On our visits to Holland we were struck by the abundance of vegetables and the bumper crop of apples falling from the overladen branches. How we would like some for undernourished Germans! The church organisation running the Mother and Baby Home and other institutions had enough vegetables and to spare and was prepared to give us some. Farmers agreed that we might pick up some fallen apples, so one morning three or four of us set off in the old army ambulance, stacked with empty boxes. On the way home in the evening when halted at the Dutch customs post at the frontier, our boxes were full of vegetables and apples and the only authority we had for carrying goods into Germany was a letter from the church organisation saying the things were a gift for needy Germans. It bore a big, clear rubber stamp. The customs officer waved us on with a friendly smile.

One of the many letters received from the Kindergarten teachers and distributors of relief, who dealt with the apples in Germany, described the children's joy.

Here are two extracts in translation:

To the generous Dutch Farmers.
In the name of all the children living in O. who received the apples you gave, I would like to pass on their thanks.
For many of our children between the ages of three and six these will be the only apples they receive this year. Their parents highly value the fact that the apples come from what was recently an enemy nation, which suffered greatly through the war. They are heartily grateful for your generosity.

Our heartfelt thanks for the lovely apples. The children were delighted with them because thay are such a rarity. Some wanted to save them and share with a little sister or brother.

Now I look back with love and respect for the sturdy, open, Dutch people I got to know. I am grateful for the friendship and understanding they gave me. When people say that we must keep deterrents to defend our selves or we will be done for, I remember how the Dutch survived the Nazi Occupation. 'You can't kill the Spirit.'

Joan Hewitt has written a small book - now out of print - with the above title - ISBN 1 85072 075 4

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