Betrayed:Bochove installed an electric alarm under the store counter to alert the people upstairs in case of an unexpected Gestapo raid. Later, when there was no longer any electricity, the household devised an alternate plan. Someone would excuse themselves to go to the small kitchen behind the store where pharmaceutical bottles were washed. Passing by the hallway stairwell, they would signal a warning to the people upstairs.
It was just a normal weekday, and very, very busy in the store. I was talking with a customer, facing the counter, when I happened to look over at Joost, one of my helpers. I could see by his expression that something was wrong. By the time I took this in, there was a hand on my shoulder.
"Bist du der hausmeister?" ("Are you the Boss?") It was an officer from the Grunepolizei (German Police). Whew! Then you shrink a little bit.
I didn't understand German, of course; you let them repeat what they said, and by that time Joost had left through the back door into the hallway of the house.
"What is that fellow doing?" the officer said.
"Oh, he is just going to clean the bottles."
He checked it out, and there was Joost in the back kitchen, cleaning bottles. But on his way through the hallway he saw Mrs. Ikkersheim on the landing. He gestured to her, and she took off to warn the rest. There was no electricity anymore, so this was the system, and it worked! Joost was a dependable fellow.
A few minutes later they ordered me upstairs; the room was much more empty than it had been five minutes earlier. Sitting there was my wife, my mother-in-law, who had come to live with us about a year before, and my son Erik, in his high chair. Then there was Ans. She had blue eyes and tinted hair, and had very good papers; she called herself the maid. Her being there didn't worry me too much. But then I looked farther, and there was old Sarah, looking like she was straight out of the Bible! That was wrong. She had had plenty of time to hide, and could easily have done it--she was quick as a bird. Karel and the Ikkersheims were out of sight in the hiding place. It was just Sarah.
One of the Germans walked right up to her and said, "You are a Jew!" She snapped back, "That's an insult!" She got so mad, she jumped up.
"I won't take that!"
The leader of the gang said, "Okay. Okay. Leave her alone."
But they didn't go away. I glanced down at the floor and got a chill. Left there quite carelessly was a bag filled with food ration cards--enough for about thirty people. Why hadn't it been put away? You cannot let things like that lie around. Like making up the beds that we had all over the building, the whole place had to be cleared and looking normal every morning. Mainly, we did pretty well, but this time that bag was there!
Ans was very cool. She said to the fellow, "I was just leaving to shop for the family. Can I go now?"
"Go on," he said.
Calmly, she picked up the bag with all the cards inside, and walked out of the house with it on her arm. Ans had guts. Later on I learned that she went first to find Peter to tell him not to come home. So he stayed away, but Ans returned. For two more hours the Germans were busy looking all over the house.
They ordered me up to the attic. I had to sit there with a fat fellow who was running the busines, while two others were knocking on all of the walls, listening for a different sound.
I had a strong feeling someone told them we had a hiding place. The cellar was very small, so it was natural that they would look in the attic, especially since it was a very big attic, over the whole house. All this time inside the hiding place were old Karel DeVries, Peter Ikkersheim's wife, and their three children, right behind the wall where they were knocking. Just those five. Luckily, the Juliards were away at that time.
I had a dead sure feeling that they would never find the door. But I had a knot in my stomach, thinking about the little kids in there, and my wife and kid downstairs; so there was worrying. Still, I had a strange feeling that it would come out all right. I was not afraid.
In the attic were three big willow baskets filled with potatoes--an unknown luxury--and I had to explain it to those Germans.
One of them said to me, "Look, there is hunger everywhere in this country. What are these potatoes doing here?"
"Well," I explained to the fellow, "to begin with, I am a farm boy. I have relatives who give me food from their farm. There are several people here in town who will be very angry if they don't get these potatoes, because when my family sends me food, then I help them, too." He believed it.
Meanwhile all this time--I could hardly believe it--the fat one was sitting right on top of three or four thousand Dutch flags. They were neatly folded into a package--a bundle about one yard square and one yard high. If they had discovered that, it would have been the end of everybody. Oh, yes. It was about that same time that a church had to pay a $30,000 fine for playing the national anthem. If a radio announcer made double entendre remarks that even slightly touched the Germans, they put him in jail. Flags? Then they had you as a political agitator and you had to go; and the chance that you would come back was very small.
Luckily, they didn't touch the package of flags, and everything went fine; after two hours they gave up. I had to hand over my identity papers, and maybe that helped too: they could see that I had been living in Finland before the war. At that time the Germans still thought the Fins were their friends. Later the Fins were fanatic against them.
Finally they left, and then Annie and I opened the hiding place door. "Everything is safe now," we said to them, "but please stay in for awhile more." A half hour later we let them out.
Peter's wife was never normal again after that experience. When she came out she was more quiet than ever. It was already close to the Hunger Winter, and then that May they were free. By the end of May, Peter was back in The Hague. His store was still there, a lot of his stuff had been saved, and it all turned out pretty good for him. Half a year later I was in The Hague, and we had dinner together. Peter's wife was eating very little; she was staring, and didn't talk at all. I could see by the way the kids and Peter handled her that her mind was gone. I think it started that day. Maybe she had had too much: the hours she was in the hiding place wondering if her husband was caught in the village, afraid that the kids would make a noise. It was enough to help her down, and she never came out of it. About a year later she died.
After the war we never could trace who betrayed us. The people in Huizen pointed to a fellow, but nobody could say for sure if it was him, so we let it go.