From our effort of working to save this group of children, grew a resistance movement of Jews and non-Jews laboring equally one next to the other until the end. The end for some of them was death. Many were caught.
Joop Westerweel was shot to death in August '44. Shushu was caught in January '43. When he was in prison he committed suicide--he was afraid he would break down under interrogation and betray his friends. So that was the end for them. In 1944, Menachem and I fell into a traitor's trap and were caught. We went through prisons and ended up in Bergen-Belsen, but we lived. We were very thin and weak at the end, but I'm here, able to tell you the story.
Keeping our fifty Young Palestine Pioneers underground meant finding safe places for them to stay, ration cards for food, money, books, making frequent visits to keep up their morale, and passing on to them letters from their friends, and sometimes from their relatives. The need for places to hide was never ending. People who were hiding one of our children were asked by a neighbor if they had a Jew in the house. They became afraid to keep the child any longer, and we had to look for a new address. It was an enormous job.
Our group grew in numbers. We made contact with other groups that worked on different levels, with different aims. You got to know people who could help you with ration cards or identity cards: we looked for clerks or officials who were willing to collaborate. When somebody died we tried to get his identity card and prevent the death from being recorded, so the card would still be valid. We did all kinds of things, but the most difficult was finding hiding places.
When I came to a house I never knew if I could trust the people or not. The only way to figure it out was to have a talk with them. I always looked them straight in the eye and asked myself, can I trust you? It was a hard decision every time, but I daresay I never found traitors. This was the particular strength of Westerweel. Even people who were collaborating with the Nazis would start to feel guilty when he talked with them. He had an extraordinary gift for touching that good part in everyone; he went straight to it. When he went to a house to ask if they would take a boy or a girl, he never came back with a no.
We were a very close group. While Joop Westerweel was still teaching, we had meetings in his school. After he went underground, we met in other places. Each person had their own contacts. When we came together, we exchanged information and planned how to work together.
A few days later the Gestapo came to fetch them again, but in the meantime I had found a hiding place for them, where they stayed safely until the end of the war. From that day on I slept every night in a different place. I never stayed long at one address because it was too dangerous. That's how it worked.