Keith and Jan. Father and son. Nice men and steeled communists at the same time. Journalist Hanneke Boonstra talks about the Schalker family in ‘Kees & Jan − A communist family before, during and after the war’. “I definitely didn’t fall in love with my main characters.”
It starts, as is often the case, with almost nothing. Hanneke Boonstra (71) sees a piece of paper from her husband Rob (76) on the kitchen table. A note with a few words.
‘Kees Schalker, prominent communist, member of the House of Representatives for 4 years, party secretary of the com. party, shot on Waalsdorpervlakte. Son Jan Schalker, 33 years old, became a member of the 1st chamber, fiery and activist communist.’
Top men of the CPN
The journalist Boonstra has long since retired, but the curiosity has remained: “What is this about?” About family. Rob is a Schalker and grew up with those names.
Kees and Jan Schalker are father and son and, what makes them unique, both top executives of the Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN). Both MPs, in the city council and leading figures in the resistance in The Hague during the war. And both are sidetracked by Paul de Groot, the man who has dominated the party for forty years.
Strange daydreamers
The few sentences on the note are enough. Boonstra investigates those two, as she later describes, ‘remarkable daydreamers, who were at the same time as hard as nails. Men who were enchanted by communism and would do anything for it, even death.’
Boonstra: ,,Communism has always intrigued me. I grew up in Dordrecht and a communist family lived in our street. We walked around it in a circle. At school I had a communist history teacher who told us about agricultural policy in Russia.”
Weird types
When she went to study in Groningen in 1969, the CPN had an office in Turftorenstraat. Fré Meis held consultation hours there and women were always waiting on the stairs until it was their turn.
“No, I never became a member. Too fashionable. Everyone on the left did. And I thought they were weird types. There was an air of secrecy surrounding the CPN. Inaccessible. I had the same thing with communism in East Groningen. Also a separate area, which I felt was hidden somewhere ‘behind’.”
Death sentence
The piece of paper is reason to go to the Oranjehotel, the former prison in Scheveningen, where Kees was. And then to NIOD, the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation in Amsterdam. Ten folders are put on the table, with his death sentence on top.
“But it wasn’t a book yet. What did stand out: Kees and Jan were top men in the communist party, but I didn’t come across much about them. Was it because father and son were more involved with the party and were less prominent themselves? Or has the CPN brushed away the memory of both?”
Comintern
She contacted historian Gerrit Voerman, professor at the University of Groningen, who once obtained her doctorate on the Comintern, the worldwide alliance of communist parties led by the communist party of the Soviet Union.
“I received a folder with interviews from him. From, among others, Robby, daughter of Kees and sister of Jan, also a true communist. Until then I knew nothing about the family, about the private lives of the men. She told about that. Then I thought: this is it, I think it’s going to be a book.”
War, rebellion, love, betrayal
Hanneke Boonstra worked on it for 2.5 years Keith & Jan − A communist family before, during and after the war . A story about war, rebellion, love, betrayal and party politics. It is also an image of the time, especially of the first half of the twentieth century.
“Communism is no longer known to everyone. But if it hadn’t been for the Russian Revolution, the world would have looked completely different. Sure, this isn’t the first book about communism, but I’m trying to show what kind of people they were.”
Stalin the hero
Kees and Jan Schalker were completely absorbed in communism. Which led to countless questions. Stalin killed millions of people, but remained their hero. How so? How could they close their eyes to all those horrors?
“It remains a mystery. Although of course you have to see it in time. Communism emerges between 1914 and 1920. A time with a lot of poverty, there is great dissatisfaction throughout Europe about the huge gap between rich and poor, about low wages and poor working conditions and then there is a new policy that will make it all right.
‘He didn’t see it’
Kees Schalker was the first to go to Moscow and returned with nothing but positive stories. People had food, the children were taken care of when the parents were at work, everyone was allowed to go on holiday, there were sanatoria.
,,But he did not tell about the enormous poverty, that people were just shot dead. He didn’t see it. The existence of camps was known, but people were not treated badly there, was the idea. Kees attended Stalin’s show trials, believed it blindly and even defended the dictator. What he wrote, I couldn’t believe it.”
Exhausting bureaucracy
The story of Kees and Jan Schalker is the story of the CPN, which played an important role in the resistance during World War II and then became the fourth party in the Netherlands with ten seats. Boonstra: ,,The CPN was not something to be ashamed of at the time.”
But communism also turned out to be a world of lust for power, backbiting and suspicions against alleged enemies, of lengthy speeches and exhausting bureaucracy. The archive of the Comintern consists of some 55 million pages. The atmosphere in one sentence: communists don’t laugh.
Fantastic idea
“Although communism is not a bad idea, a fantastic idea in fact, the system only works if everyone participates. That’s the basics. And that doesn’t work. Not then, not now.”
Kees and Jan Schalker showed themselves tirelessly for a good cause, a better life for the workers, for social change and the fight against fascism. They remained loyal to communism until their deaths.
Shot
Kees was shot after he was arrested in 1943 with a blueprint of the post-war Netherlands, written on behalf of Moscow. There were more incriminating documents at his home. It meant his death.
His family is then in the concentration camp: wife Hendrica (Riek), daughter Robby, son Jan and also daughter-in-law Meta. Arrested because of their membership in the Nazi-banned CPN and their role in the resistance. A warm family, torn apart by ideals, daring and perseverance.
Attached to the family
Boonstra found it difficult to feel sympathy for Kees and Jan. I didn’t fall in love with the main characters. They weren’t bad people though. Nice, helpful and devoted to the family. They are sympathetic because they had the best interests of the world at heart. They didn’t do it for themselves.”
However, it led nowhere. Not for a better world, not for the liberation of the proletariat, not for the emancipation of the masses.
No more than a dream
Boonstra had the most with Robby. She also came out of the war unscathed, suffering from camp rags, but eventually realized that the family had been following the wrong, violent regime for nothing more than a dream.
“After the war, she sat opposite a young German man on the train. When she took out a cigarette, he wanted to give her fire. She refused, because: ‘It is quite possible that your father shot my father.’ The boy froze. They started talking and he gave her a light anyway. That’s how she is. When Russia invaded Hungary in 1956, she withdrew her membership. She did draw consequences from what she saw. That meant saying goodbye to communism.”