大象传媒

It was the 15th of April 1945. The Germans had been the occupying force in the Netherlands for four years, but since June last year we knew that Allied forces had landed in France and were fighting their way into Europe.On the 17th of September 1944, a call had gone out from the Dutch Government in exile in England , to the railwaymen/women not to report for work and remain hidden. At the same time Allied airborne landings took place near Arnhem, to capture the bridges , and the general idea the people had that it would all be over in about a week.Much information was not available, because all radios had been handed in to the German forces since 1942, and anyone caught listening to a foreign radio station was arrested and send to a concentration camp. But nevertheless there were still people who had hidden their radios , and were listening to the Dutch radiostation "Oranje" which did broadcast via the B.B.C from England a few times every day and especially the 08.00 news broadcast was eagerly listened in to. And it were these people who passed on news ,and so it travelled from mouth to mouth. Yes of course something was added on, and something was deleted , but the main news did go around.In about 7 days time it became clear that something had gone wrong in Arnhem,and the war would not be over that soon , the German forces became a bit more stricter. My father (a stationmaster on the railways) was now advised to leave home and go in hiding, and with the assistance of the resistance movement found a place with a farming family in the province. Little did my mother and myself realise that within a week we would also be told to leave the house and go into hiding.The resistance also found a place for us. We went to a farm near Bolsward ,a very small town about 20 k.m from where we lived. We stayed on that farm till the 5th December1944, when we went back to our own house again.Resistance movements had indicated that it was pretty safe for the wives and children of striking railwaymen to return home. It was totally empty , no windows( all blown out by bombardments). But unknown to us at that time, the resistance had moved all the furniture for safe keeping when we left, and over the next few days they arranged for it all to be brought back.During the time that my father was in hiding I only saw him once.From the time that my mother and I returned to the house in Sneek up to the 15th April 1945 things went its own way ,you just had to be careful, but the German Army soldiers did not bother us, and the German police force/Gestapo did not bother the Railway families either.I may submit another story regarding that particular time.And so we come to the 15th April 1945, that Sunday morning was a very quite day, there were not much people around, but then again every Sunday was usually a day on which a lot of people had a lay-in. What we had noticed the last two days is that a lot of the German soldiers had left, and the schools which over the last three months had been used by the Germans were now all empty, doors were wide open, windows open, the guards had gone,so we had an idea that things were about to change.Anyway that Sunday morning we were just outside in the street playing and fooling around , and some of us like any young boy started to stroll around , and slowly made our way toards the town centre about a 10 minutes walk away. So now and again we met some one walking around , the odd woman or elderly man, and coming past the local gramar school we saw a few men going inside , and one of them a teacher from our own school turned around and told us to go home. We of course promised to do this , but as soon as he went inside the school ,we carried on our way. Funny enough we did not even mentioned to each other the teacher going to the grammar school.Slowly we made our way past the firebrigade"s headquarter and through the narrow shopping street came out near the town"s only cinema in the centre of the town, which had been closed for the civil population for the last 6 months.Again we wondered about the silence . only the few odd person coming past , two younger men came past us and one of them said that we did better if we went home.We told them that we were on our way home and they carried on. Actually a bit strange to see these young men because the young men of town had left months ago to go in hiding , in case they would be deported to Germany for forced labour.Suddenly without any warning a German arned carrier came up behind us , inside about 10 German soldiers in camouflaged uniforms and very heavely armed. We straight away saw that they were not the usual German soldiers which we knew , but they were a different group.They stopped their car outside the old weigh house building which we knew had always been used by the Germans to store things. Whilst a few of them went inside one of them walked over to us and told us that we should make tracks and run home as fast as we could and stay at home , because there was going to be a lot of shooting in the street.At that time the few soldiers who had gone inside the building, came out again, shouted to us and to the soldier with us , who now left us after saying again to us to go home .A split second later we heard a small explosion coming from the building and flames shot out the roof and the whole building went on fire.The Germans waved to us , again shouting to go home and left via the street leading to the West and to the Afsluitdijk (Causeway ) on the way to the West of Holland. We now made our way home . Running away from the now fiercely burning Waag Gebouw, we came across a policeman(named Brouwer) a family friend of us, and he told me to go home as soon as possible, and he mentioned to me that my father had just come home as well. It was quite a few days later that I learned that this police man was in fact a leading member of the resistance forces( code named Bontje), an ex marine who had fought the German army near Rotterdam on the invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. We now realised that things could get serious , and I now had a very good reason to go home. On the way we came across a lot of men wearing blue overalls with an armband around the right arm inprinted with the letters N.B.S.Later in the day we found out that the three letters stood for "Netherlands Interior Forces" (,the Dutch Underground Army). They all had firearms , one of them strange to us , later became known to us as a stengun. Our schoolmaster was one of them , and it now became clear to us why all these men went into the school earlier on.On coming home ,great relief , my dad was there waiting for me , also heavely armed and ready to go with some other members of the underground to the railway station and make it safe. During the afternoon various rumours went around , but round about 4 o"clock in the afternoon we could hear a lot of noise of people shouting and someone came running through the street shouting : The Canadians are here. No horses could have kept me at home , out of the house I run , turned the corner and all I could see where hunderds of people shouting and clapping hands . I squeezed through them , to the front and suddenly, there I saw them , a few military vehicles and men in strange uniforms totally overwhelmed by the people around them .The first Canadians had arrived and after 4 years and 11 months we had been liberated from the German occupation. It was 15th April 1945 . The next few days was a time in my life which I will never forget.I grew up during the occupation, saw a lot of things and yet I stillsay that I had a happy boy hood. I might write some more stories about my boyhood in the second world war, and my experiences during the German occupation.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.