As a 2-month-old baby, Flory went into hiding: “I was the youngest person in hiding in Hoorn”

It is 1942 when Nel and Cees Woelders move from Utrecht to Hoorn. On the train journey there, a special meeting takes place at Amsterdam station. “There I was handed over as a package by my biological parents,” says Neter.

She was never told how the meeting came about and how the ties were made. Flory has suspicions. “There were mutual acquaintances, it is almost inevitable that they played a role.”

“Flory is taken in as a child of the neighborhood on the Drieboomlaan. A new family with a baby. There is nothing to indicate that Flory is of Jewish descent. Although her appearance suggests otherwise. “I was not a typical West Frisian child. I didn’t look like Nel and I didn’t look like Cees. I have dark brown eyes and my foster parents both blue. It can’t help but that the neighborhood knew, but kept their mouths shut.”

It never came out. And the danger was close. “An NSB member lived diagonally across from us. But he was warned by the neighborhood: ‘Don’t do anything with that child, or we’ll get your children’†

cuckoo cub

Flory knows no better than that Nel and Cees are her parents. Until a year after the war. When her biological parents are at the door to pick her up. Flory is then 4 years old. She goes back to Amsterdam with her parents, both tailors. But the relationship always remains complicated.

“My biological mother had already gone through a whole grieving process when she had to give me up as a baby and had actually already said goodbye for good. But that also applied to my foster mother, who had to let go of me as a 4-year-old.”

She grows up feeling like the cuckoo chick. It marks her childhood. “I always told later in school that I had two fathers and two mothers.” Her biological father was grateful to the foster family and maintained the most contact with them. When Flory is 8 years old, he dies.

“After that it became even more difficult to see my foster parents. I sometimes secretly went by bike from Amsterdam to Hoorn when I was about 11 years old. My mother never accepted the situation and I always had the idea that she would not unconditionally loved me.”

About twenty interested people gathered on Drieboomlaan this morning to listen to Flory’s life story. In an intimate setting in the living room, everyone hangs on her every word. “Of course I am very happy that I can and can tell. And still when I pass by the house again, this is the house of happiness for me. I really think that.”