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15 October 2014
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THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR IN HOLLAND

by CSV Solent

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Contributed by听
CSV Solent
Background to story:听
Civilian
Article ID:听
A8154362
Contributed on:听
31 December 2005

This is an interview by Henriette Wood-Groosenbacher with my mother Henriette Grossenbacher-van der Hijden who grew up in Holland and was studying Indonesian law at the University of Leiden when the war broke out. She eventually trained as a nurse to make herself useful during the war and in 1946 married my Swiss father. She now lives in St.Gallen, Switzerland where she gave the interview in December 2005 shortly after her 85th birthday, permitting to add it to the 大象传媒 peoples war website.
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When I think of the war, I think of how it started. We were carefree and studying at Leiden, when suddenly at 6 o鈥檆lock in the morning Felie (a German lady who had fled Germany and later got picked up in Holland and was sent to a concentration camp for having a Jewish boyfriend) comes: 鈥淪ie sind da, sie sind da, furchtbar, sie sind da (they are here, they are here, awful, they are here) 鈥 Now, there they came with aeroplanes. She was outside the door and of course I was in bed and woke and what was going on? And then we heard it all, the banging and goings on. But we only knew what happened there(in Leiden), we didn鈥檛 know what happened in Rotterdam. We didn鈥檛 really expect this, they (the Germans) of course always toyed with the idea to attack the country (Holland) it was all very sudden, they suddenly came. They came with aeroplanes, they landed in Valkenburg. We saw them all fly by to Valkenburg where they occupied the airport. My friend Ellie had a car, I can鈥檛 remember why. We took Felie with us and we went to Heemstede (where my parents lived) and my friend Ellie, who came from Friesland later, went on to there. We were living together with other students in a house in the 鈥渒loksteg鈥.

The university at that time was still open. They closed it when this professor Mr.R.P.Cleveringa who was the deacon of the law faculty gave a speech against the Germans. It was straight away finished then and he went to a concentration camp. They waited for him at the door and arrested him. They closed the university there and then and nobody could enter any more. He did get out in the end, he was an uncle of my friend Jola. I still have the pamphlet and the speech of Tuesday the 26th of November 1940 to all students of the university. All the Jewish lecturers were ordered to leave the university and this speech was to say that he was not prepared to accept the dismissal of his former tutor and fellow professor E.M.Meyers, who was an internationally celebrated capacity in establishing law and researching history of law.
This happened when Holland was occupied by the Germans and that started on that day I began telling you about.

We than packed some things and headed for Heemstede. We took a bit of time and first of all we did not believe this attack/occupation was happening. On the way, we drove past a bus full of Dutch soldiers that had been bombed by the Germans, this was on the outskirts of Leiden near Valkenburg near the airfield. You saw all and that there were parachutists who had landed there. I don鈥檛 know if all soldiers in the bus were dead, we didn鈥檛 stop, we drove on. What could we have done? Nothing.
We did go back to Leiden later to get more of our things but the the Germans had all in hand they took away everything like bicycles, cars and houses. First the belongings of the Jews but than everybody鈥檚. The Jews got sent to concentration camps, they gathered them up on a square in Amsterdam.

I had also lost everything, as I could not go to university any more. I then went and worked in a plant nursery but moved on to a nursing home in Wageningen. I was only 18 and knew nothing. When everybody had to be evacuated from the coast strip the Dutch had to open emergency hospitals in manor houses or hotels for example like the one I worked in afterwards, which was in a place called 鈥淲aterland鈥 near Velsen by the North Sea Canal. I didn鈥檛 live in the hospital; I lived outside and cycled to work every day. There was a doctor who was very fond of me, not really my type, but he had a car and sometimes he took me out, which was not allowed at all. He had to go to places on his job and than he would take me along. This place was not a proper hospital but had a barrack for tuberculosis patients in the garden. That gave me the idea to train as a nurse, which I got accepted for. We didn鈥檛 have any leisure like playing tennis, hockey or parties any more. You had the occasional day off but then you were just tired. It was hard work but when you are young you don鈥檛 mind.

When I was working in the diphtheria barracks there were some Dutch male doctors there in hidding. They were hanging around and nobody would come in to search them there. (Diphtheria was very contagious and often fatal and therefore strictly segregated) I don鈥檛 know what they did all day long but I didn鈥檛 have time to think about it. All Dutch men of use to the Germans were taken away by them to do work for them in work camps, and many tried to escape to England, Canada or the States or hid in the country. My brother Pim was hidden at home. In the bathroom where the lavatory was there were loose floorboards and he had to go under them. He also had to go in the garden into a water well, which was dry. He had to go there if somebody came. They would ring the bell and hold a search.

When asked how she was affected by the war Jettie said:
鈥淚 do not enjoy thinking about all this at all鈥. She also said, that the war had sort of passed her by because she was so closed up (in the hospital where she was working).

My friend Mar who worked with me in the same hospital said also to me not long ago:鈥漜an you remember that Jewish lady who had a baby and a SS German was sitting outside the ward to make sure that she could not get out. The nurses lowered the baby out of the window in a basket to be taken by Dutch people to save it getting deported with the mother.鈥 I didn鈥檛 know anything about it. You just couldn鈥檛 know what was going on when you were in a different ward. Mar knew a doctor in her hometown who found a baby on his doorstep and took that in too.

We were not allowed to have a radio. My dad who was frightened thought that we didn鈥檛 have one but we knew that in the attic in a wardrobe we had a radio hidden. Dad used to say, where do you know all that from, he would not have had a peaceful minute if he had known. He would have just given the radio to the Germans. We took turns in listening. We did not pile all the four of us into the wardrobe. In a way in the war life just went on. In Amsterdam of course it was a lot worse. We did not have much bombing, once a small incendiary bomb in the garden and the windows of the lounge broke.

Sometimes we had sirens and always there were the searchlights of the German occupiers to find the English planes that flew over to Germany. I always thought when only this is over ...... and all that is now over and what has come instead now, also misery and now we have terrorists.

I can still see myself going for a walk in the dunes in Zandvoort with a friend. There were some 鈥渇ilthy鈥 Germans there and we turned our backs to them where upon they said:鈥漞in schoener Ruecken kann auch entzuecken鈥(a beautiful back can also delight). I must say they didn鈥檛 harm us, but they were annoyed that we did not go out with them. Later nobody was allowed to go near the coast any more. Lots of Jewish people had tried to leave Holland from IJmuiden to get to England and would beg the people with boats and offer them all their jewellery.

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