Shushu stayed with us that first night because it was already past the 12 o'clock curfew, and too dangerous to leave. The Germans imposed the curfew so they could come for Jewish families in the middle of the night, when the neighbors wouldn't see them. In the morning everyone in the neighborhood would find a seal on the doors of the Jewish houses. Then they knew that the people were gone.
That night Shushu told us, "I will not go to the concentration camp again. You should know that we won't all be alive when the war is over." Early the next morning he said, "Shalom," and that was the last time I saw him. When he was caught by the Germans, he took his own life.
Mirjam knew Leo, the man who had the key to this place. He came the next day to ask us if we needed anything. Leo didn't have any food coupons for us, but he brought whatever he could buy without ration cards--endive, cucumbers, and other vegetables. He told us we were not to leave the flat, not even to go downstairs. We did what he said, and stayed there. The conditions were terrible, but we knew it was for only a short time. "People will help you," they had told us, and it was true. Sometimes you had the feeling that they forgot you, but they never did.
We had been there about nine days when, without saying a word, Paul went down to another floor. He had a dark complexion--immediately recognizable in Holland as Jewish. Somebody must have seen him and told the landlady, because at 10 o'clock that evening she came up to our flat, with her broom. "I'm very sorry, but you will have to leave this house immediately. If you don't, I will phone the police. This is a war, after all."
We picked up our rucksacks and left the house. We were in the center of Amsterdam, and didn't know what to do.We were speaking rather poor Dutch, with a strong German accent that Dutch people immediately recognized. They hated Germans and the German language, and that made our situation doubly dangerous. We had an address of a cousin, but didn't know if it was safe to go to him, or even if he could help us--he was Jewish too.
Everything was forbidden. We couldn't stay on the street after midnight. I looked less Jewish than Ruth or Paul, so I volunteered to go to one of the ships in the harbor, to ask if we could spend the night. The captain said no, I must go to the police station. "Oh, that's a good idea," I said, "Why didn't I think of that before?"
Then Paul said, "It's not good for us to stay together. Everyone must go on their own. If we're alive tomorrow we will meet at the train station." He knew the emergency address where we could make contact with someone from the Loosdrecht group. We were told that only one of us in a group should know it, and since Paul was the oldest and a boy, he was the one. He left us, taking the secret with him. It was nearly midnight.
I said to my sister, "Look, if we stay on the streets they will pick us up. Let's hide under the bridge." We crept under the railroad bridge next to the Amstel river. All through the night we heard the church clock strike, every half hour, and trains rumble by overhead; babies cried, and the sound of soldiers seemed to be everywhere. We were sure in the morning it would be our turn.
But in the morning the station was crowded with ordinary workers in work clothes, and we didn't stand out too much. We waited and waited there for a long time, looking for Paul, but he didn't come. Finally we decided to go by tram to find Hanna, one of our Loosdrecht leaders; she had left several months before we went underground. My sister remembered her address, but we didn't know if she was part of the underground network. With our dark hair, we felt conspicuous among the Dutch people on the tram; it seemed as if everyone was looking at us.
When we found her address, Hanna opened the door, saw it was us, and immediately said, "Come in!" We began to cry--we were still kids. She put us in a room upstairs and brought us food. She was living with her husband Harry, and her parents.
"You can't stay here," she said. Yesterday they took my brother, and my father has had a heart attack. He must not know that you are here, even for a few hours. Harry will bring you to another address." We found out later that Harry was very actively working with our Loosdrecht leaders.
From that day in August 1942, until the end of the war, I was hidden in eighteen different homes in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Doorn and other towns and villages in Holland. Some places I could stay for a month or two, others for only a few days. Throughout that time I was always protected and looked after by the group formed by Mirjam, Menachem, Shushu, and Joop Westerweel.