- Contributed by听
- Joris Goedbloed
- People in story:听
- Ren茅 Norenburg
- Location of story:听
- 's Hertogenbosch ,23 Februari 1944
- Article ID:听
- A9000253
- Contributed on:听
- 31 January 2006
Note by my uncle, probably 23 February 1944 or else two days later while he was being transported,under escort of ?? Dutch policeservants ??,on his way to Scheveningen -prison nicknamed 'Oranje-hotel' during the war. The note end with the remark that he will try to say hello to uncle Joh.,his father's younger brother who had been arrested for helping Jewish people. He was a river-policeman in Schiedam near Rotterdam and died 99 years old, I think about ten years ago. In his letters from Scheveningen my uncle writes that he actually did see his uncle. He calls him a 'lean version' of his own father.
In the picture you can see the scan of the first note of my uncle that I found in one of Grandmother's tins [one of her ' harddisks' in those pre-computerised days]that were saved by my father untill his death in 1999.
This is a note that was in an envelope without a stamp on it, while the other note ,the one that was found near the railway at Nuland-Heide in September 1944, had an sender's-address and a stamp on it.
In this note uncle Ren茅 says that he's been arrested at the railwaystation of 's Hertogenbosch for [on the suspect of] having a false ID-card.
(I think that my uncle made a very dangerous mistake by admitting that his ID was a false one. This is what I can conclude from the words of a former member of his resistance-group in Haaren whom I visited last summer.)
He tells his parents not to worry because he'll be safe untill the end of the war at Scheveningen Prison. Scheveningen is very near to The Hague.
From the other letters that I found you can easily draw the conclusion that many people expected the war to be over soon at that time, early 1944. His brother, my father, was kept a Prisoner Of War at that time, kept somewhere in Poland near the Russian border I believe Stanislaw or Langewasser. They were permitted to write their families and I found many letters that were written to or from the POW-camp. In one of the early letters, my uncle Ren茅 also writes a few lines. He says that the German occupier wants them (the Dutch students at the universities) to sign a declaration of loyalty to the occupier. He says that the professors urged them not to sign the declaration. He says practically 99% of the students in Tilburg didn't sign ! He awaits further measurements of the occupier and expects that it will end finally like it ended with him [my father] 'I guess we'll have to go through this like you ! But we cannot know what it is bringing us before we have the experience ourselves !'
The next interesting letter that I found is the one of the occupier.'Express' He wants to know why uncle Ren茅 didn't show up in Amersfoort ,I believe 1 April 1943. There is this calender note of grandfathers' writing, he explains; My son already came of age and I don't have no longer this responsibility to tell him what to do or what not to do.
A few month's later uncle explains to his brother; I'm having a little vacation and I'm staying in the fresh air of the country.
But things are not yet clear to me why he left and Belgium. For some, to me unknown, reason he has to go back to the Netherlands, but he writes that he may better not be seen in Tilburg. Then he gets into contact with Bim van der Klei who offers him a place into hide in Haaren near Oisterwijk, Noord Brabant.(a southern province of the Netherlands together with the province of Limburg)
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