May 5th 2020
Liberation
Day. It means a lot to me. I was born during the war, but have not experienced
it consciously. I just remember all the stories, and the miracle that I
survived those first 1,5 years of my life. The odds were against me. Being born
at the beginning of 1944 wasn’t the best starting position.
It began with my actual birth, midwinter with
temperatures of -11 centigrade. There was no hot water, hardly any heating, no
soap, - not to mention hardly any food, - so deliveries had to take place in
hospital, although the hospital was sometimes a target for bombings. I decided
to come in the middle of the night. The only option was going by taxi, as
nobody had cars and a home delivery was out of the question. I think calling
for a taxi had to be done via a doctor. Taxi’s then ran on gas – not the American
gas which is liquid fuel, - but gas which was stored on top of the taxi’s in
big balloons or bags.
example of a car with a gas bag on top, taken from a war archive
Unfortunately the bag was struck by shrapnel
and the taxi could not drive on. My mother, amongst pains of labour and in the
freezing cold had to wait for another taxi, which were scarce anyway. She
arrived much later at the hospital than expected, and the doctor decided her
labour had stopped and went on to do his rounds. He left my father with her,
unusual at that time. As soon as the doctor had left I decided it was time to
enter this world. Although I was their third child, I was the first whose birth
he witnessed.
That first year I escaped death at least twice.
The town we lived in during those years was Deventer, on the river IJssel, an important
connection between the west of Holland and the east, so a strategic point for
the connection with Germany. The southern provinces had already been liberated in
the autumn of 1944, but Deventer was still occupied and there were many
bombardments on the bridge, the water tower and the railway line. We lived next
to that railway line, as well as near the water tower, and so we had to sleep
in cellars those last months of the war. When we emerged from the cellar one
morning, a piece of shrapnel was lying on the table in our living room. Another
story is that it had landed in the spot where my cot normally was. The peculiar
thing is that as an adult I once met a friend of a friend of mine who had only one
arm. She told me that as a baby lying in her cot she was hit by shrapnel and
lost an arm. She lived east of Deventer.
On another occasion my mother walked with me in
a pram to a baby care clinic, when there was an air-raid alarm. A woman called
her into her shop to shelter from the bombs. The next day my mother walked that
same route and the house of that kind woman was reduced to a heap of rubble and
the woman dead.
Against all the odds, the lack of proper food, my
mother having no milk and my allergy for cow’s milk, I survived and am thankful
I did! Although I remained very tiny for years.
Deventer was freed by the Canadians. I still have
a weakness for Canadians, even if they are only Dutch Canadians(!).
Celebrating Liberation Day. Unfortunately the wind kept messing up the flag
Of course I have heard many stories. My father
kept a diary throughout the war. I have two older siblings who consciously lived
through it all. They were not traumatized, although they went through very
scary periods. In a way I was left with a trauma, which seems very unlikely.
But for years I would dream that I heard soldiers marching through the streets chasing
me and wanting to shoot me. I would try to run as fast as I could but did not
make any progress as somehow I couldn’t lift my legs which seemed glued to the
same spot however hard I tried. It was extremely scary. Also fireworks reduced
me to a nervous crying wreck. Apparently this was connected with the shootings
and the bombings I must have heard as a baby. Which is amazing, for as a baby I
couldn’t talk yet, nor know that the noise I registered were the hobnailed boots
of marching soldiers. Still, I must have made this connection and must have
felt my parents’ fear and anxiety, must have picked up their words. For years I
was scared when I heard propeller planes revving up in Soesterberg, an American
army base. The Americans left for good in 1994. Those planes and the specific
dark rumbling and threatening noise they made brought back the deep rumbling of
the many bomber planes flying over Deventer during those war years, sometimes
dropping bombs, sometimes just passing over on their way to bomb German towns.
Those bad dreams and fears ended when I realized what their source was.
Freedom and peace is something we take for
granted. Perhaps this year we realize more than ever before what it really means,
now that we are very restricted in our freedom, by an invisible enemy, in a time
of peace. We are jolted out of our comfort zone, and realize freedom and peace
are a privilege and not a birthright.
75 years of peace is a long time, a lifetime, a
sure cause for celebration. Preparations had been going on for lots of
festivals and festivities. However, it was not to be. All the celebrations take
place without public gatherings, if they take place at all, and are mainly
online and virtual.
I wanted to celebrate too in a more down to
earth manner, but a virtual piece of cake isn’t at all what I craved for, so I
bought the only true liberation and King’s Day cake, an orange “moorkop” or éclair,
filled with whipped cream. Orange because of the House of Orange. It goes well with black coffee and was delicious. Although
a bit lopsided after transport, the taste had not been affected. I toasted to
freedom and to a quick return to “normality”, whatever that will look like.
The "moorkop" in true patriotic colours
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