大象传媒

This is an interview with M.E. van der Hijden by Henriette Wood- Grossenbacher.
Els is my mother鈥檚 90 year old sister. She spent the war time in Heemstede near Haarlem in Holland at her parents鈥� house. The Interview took place in October 2005 at her flat near Arnhem where she has been living for about 15 years after living abroad for a long time. She gave her permission to add her stories to the 大象传媒 peoples war website
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One day my sister who was a nurse came home crying they that had shot dead van Tongeren last night. He was walking in the Haarlemer Wood and was shot in his neck. When he arrived at the hospital he was already dead.

He was the boss I was working for and he was shot by the GESTAPO (the secret police). I do not know why they shot him but I believed he was working for the resistance. When we got to the office in the morning we had to get rid of all incriminating evidence like pamphlets, and we burnt it all. He used to work in Germany as he was selling dust extractors to factories. After that I stayed at home to help the parents and my main job was to go out and find food.

The ordinary German soldiers behaved in a civilised manner, they did not kill the people. They would not just go out to shoot people. In fact I had once seen a German shot by another German. I was walking in the street going to Haarlem, and there were more people in the streets the war having just finished. A German soldier was trying to take a bicycle from a Dutch boy. I guess he wanted to cycle back home to Germany. The boy made a great racket and German officers came along and asked what is going on here and then the soldier was shot by one of the officers. The Germans were very disciplined they were not allowed to do as they liked and pick on people and murder them. They were also very organised where we were living.
If someone had told me, that I was going to witness somebody being shot, I would have been in a terrible state, but when I saw this I just thought that I had to run to get home. When you see something like that it is as if it doesn鈥檛 get through to you. That is very strange, truly. It was all so wasted, senseless.

We at one stage had a German officer stationed in our house with his 鈥淏ursche鈥�(batman) and they were very civilised to us and correct. The officer slept in the big room, that used to be dad鈥檚 and the 鈥淏ursche鈥� slept in the attic. There was no fighting where we were living; we were under German occupation. That was towards the end of the war. There was also an order that nobody was allowed within 10 km of the shore. They wanted to prevent the Dutch helping anybody arriving by boat for example from England or helping people set off.

At the school behind our house, The Bos en Hove School on some afternoons the German soldiers were practising marching songs. Mother used to say: 鈥渉ere they go again鈥� Songs were:鈥� Und heute gehoert uns Deutschland und morgen die ganze Welt鈥�
[And today we own Germany and tomorrow the whole world] , 鈥淲enn die Soldaten durch die Stadt marschieren schauen die Maedels aus Fenster und Tueren, warum, ei darum鈥漑when the soldiers march through town the girls look out of windows and doors] or 鈥淯nd wir fahren gegen Engeland鈥漑And we are riding towards England].

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