During the month of commemoration, due to the situation in Eastern Europe, we are perhaps more than ever confronted with the concept of war. The 94-year-old Cees de Haan from Amstelveen experienced the Second World War, and now thinks more and more about his youth because of the war in Ukraine.
Over the past few years, Cees often spends his days puzzling in his apartment on Noorddammerweg in Bovenkerk. He sometimes finds it difficult to distinguish the pieces, but Cees does not run away from a challenge. Despite his advanced age, the man still lives on his own.
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In the 1940s Cees moved with his parents to a farm on the Middenweg in Bovenkerk, which is now the Bosrandweg. “We had a farm here”, Cees begins to tell. “My father slaughtered animals here and sold them.”
Sitting for four months
When Cees was twelve years old, war broke out. Because the family’s home was so close to Schiphol Airport, he was well aware as a boy how serious the situation was. “I remember it well. It was May 10. There were planes everywhere above Schiphol. The Dutch fighter plane the Fokker GI then tried to shoot down the German planes.” That day the Germans bombed a number of strategic places, including the airport.
Just like now, Amstelveen had a large Jewish community at the time. “They were working close to us, with German soldiers there,” Cees says. “I sometimes slaughtered something and secretly sold it to the Jews. But apparently there was one who had betrayed the whole thing. Then the police came to visit and I had to sit at the Weteringsschans for four months. Well, that wasn’t nice.”
“Tomorrow they also have to eat”
Was Cees scared? “No, I wasn’t,” he says. “I didn’t mind it much in the beginning, because I was still young. Eventually I learned more and more about the war. For example, there was also a lot of robbery at home. A defected family would come in an SS suit and my father would be ordered to slaughter the pigs for the Germans.”
It was a time of severe poverty and hunger, but little Cees did not have to go to bed with a rumbling stomach. “There was always plenty of food on our farm, so we couldn’t complain, but my mother was a very Christian believer, so she would let those people in and they would get nice, hot food,” Cees says.
“Then I went to bring a large piece of meat, because we had all kinds of things hanging. In return I got a receipt to get cigarettes”
“I also regularly brought bacon to the larger families,” he continues. “The Brouwers family had eighteen or nineteen children, and I would bring a large piece of meat, because we had all kinds of things hanging. In return, I would receive a receipt to buy cigarettes.”
“I remember well that my mother had a bucket with green peas for the pea soup,” says Cees. When he suggested that he get the bucket back, his mother replied, “No, boy, because they have to eat tomorrow too.” That was my mother, with her eleven children”, Cees says proudly. “But at a certain point I did say: ‘Now you have to stop, otherwise we won’t have any food ourselves.’”
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World War III
When Cees is asked if he still thinks about the past, he responds quickly. “Yes Yes. Absolutely.” Every day he sits on the couch at 7.30 in the evening. “I follow the news as standard via the 7.30 pm news. That is very strange, all those images of the war in Ukraine,” says Cees. I see what happens there, then I automatically think back a lot more often to my own childhood during the war.”
“I used to see all those people in trains departing from Central Station. People who were killed for nothing”
“Look, I used to see all those people in trains departing from Central Station. People who were killed for nothing. Now you see all those shot people lying on the street. I think it’s terrible to see,” he says with a lump in his throat.
De Bovenkerker can’t get his head around ‘what Putin is doing now in Eastern Europe’. “The second Hitler is born”, says Cees firmly.
Not only the victims have an impact on Cees. “You see a lot of people who are hungry. That used to be the case. Those people would come to my mother’s door. I have the same character as my mother. You don’t wish that hunger and that sadness on anyone.”