Dear E.,

I have hesitated during some days, whether I should write this to you or not, because "all cases are different and every comparison is faulty". However, I decided I should do so, because this story of my father hiding explains in a way why I have put much time into our Rzegocin page, and why it is so difficult to put memories on paper (or on a web page), when you know you cannot really trust them.

[I am not looking for anybody connected to this, and I do not think anyone can provide more information -- and in this case it is clear, who was hiding and what happened to him later, so this perhaps should not be a web page!]

My father was hiding for about a year in the bicycle-shed behind our house in Zeist, near Utrecht [the second place we had been evacuated to -- I was born, January 1942, in Driehuis near IJmuiden, in the dunes near the coast -- people were expelled from there, because the Germans were fortifying the coast against an attack from sea -- my parents, my older sister and I were "quartered in" with people in Rheden near Arnhem -- until soon afterwards everybody was expelled from there too -- then they found a place in Zeist]. Probably in June 1944 my father had been rounded up for forced labour. When they noticed, that the train they had been put on, was going to Germany (and not to another place in the Netherlands), he and a few others managed to jump off when it slowed down somewhere; they hid in the woods and he found his way back home. There he hid in the bicycle-shed behind the house (where there were no bicycles, because those had been requisitioned for the German army, but where things were being kept, for which there was no place in the house [in '42 and '43 people who were being evacuated could still take most of their belongings with them]). I was two years old then.

Now there is a problem with my memory of what I heard about the hiding. There is one memory that says, my father hid on the loft of the bicycle shed. But there is another, very clear, memory, that one could see light between the roof tiles of the shed. In other words: there was no loft. About that I am quite certain, because we lived in that house until 1954, and, when I finally got a bicycle (for riding to school, after the tram (streetcar) which I used to go to school had been abolished -- I must have been nine or ten), I certainly put it there hundreds of times. There was however a trap-door in the floor of the shed, which usually was covered by boxes and things. So I conclude that my father had been hiding under the floor. But that clearly is not a memory of things heard! A strange thing is, that as a child I never hid in that place (as children normally like to do), so I have no idea, what there was there under the floor of the shed.

Now I realize that in our family we hardly spoke about things of the past (the normal phrase was "it was a hard time"). Not about the details of my father's hiding. Not about how we managed to survive the winter of '44/'45: my father did of course not get ration coupons or wages (I heard nothing about coupons or money provided by the "underground", which in other cases was able to provide those to hiders) -- and at that time there was in fact hardly any food to buy, even with coupons [in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in that winter, people died of hunger by the thousands]. (I suppose there were vegetables instead of flowers in the garden*). Nor about how his hiding could not have been noticed by the couple "quartered in" in our house, who lived on the GB:first/ US:second floor (with whom the relationship was not friendly -- they were "people not to be trusted": they wanted the house for themselves, and were "not anti-German", as my mother put it later -- so they preferably should not know). While the house and shed were searched a few times, my father was not found and he lived to be 97 years old (in 2000), so one could say we had many years to talk about it ... but it simply was not a subject that was talked about.

* I remember how I saw from our window (when I was about eight), that an unknown lady picked some flowers from a garden at the other side of the street -- I shouted to my mother: "that woman is stealing flowers" -- my mother said, quite angrily: "do not say that -- maybe she asked -- maybe she needs them". I did not really understand, that someone could take flowers from someone else's garden without asking because she "needed" them. Now I suddenly see a possible link to my mother's possible attitude towards someone taking vegetables from the garden (with only a 50 cm fence) during '44/'45!

The only "real" memory from WW II that I think I have, is that on a certain day I was not allowed to continue eating. I was sitting in a high (baby-)chair and could not get out, and was very much upset because of what happened around. Later I have been told, it was because there had been glass in my plate, from a broken window, caused by a bomb that had exploded quite nearby. Everything else (and maybe even this one) is a memory of things said. But it all is only fragments, and I am aware of the danger of making a story out of it.

The same is true about Rzegocin and Janina's memories about things said. That is why I have tried very hard, not to put into the web page any conclusions. Someone who would see the page, could comment that so many things are vague and (presented as) uncertain -- and come to his own conclusions. Even if some of those conclusions seem to be logical, I thought it would not be right to put them on paper or in the web.

I would like to finish with a more amusing memory (first or second hand):--
Very shortly after liberation (May 1945), my parents and I (three years old) were walking in the woods near Zeist. We saw some soldiers (later I was told: Canadians) sitting and eating. They offered part of their canned meal to us -- something white with orange and red pieces, a kind of mashed potatoes with meat and vegetables, I suppose. After the first bite, I refused to eat it, "because of those things in it". Such an uncompromising vegetarian I was already at the age of three! (My parents were vegetarians, but, when hungry, apparently not as strict ones as their son, indeed a born vegetarian...)

Dear E., thanks that you held out up to here. I hope you understand now, why I grasped the opportunity to write a web page that might help to clarify some points about another case of hiding, in Poland, in Rzegocin, at Janina's parents' farm -- and why I wrote it in the way I did. I do not want to imply any parallels between the two cases (except for "in/under/over the stable" and "in/under/over the bicycle-shed"), but I do see parallels in the way that memory works.

Wouter
September 2002