“This is a photo of my parents after their engagement. My mother is 20, my father 23. They had only met a few months earlier. My mother lived in Usquert. When she was staying with her older sister, she met my father there. He studied at the Agriculture Hogeschool in Wageningen. They were immediately in love.
Shortly after their engagement, my father refused to sign the loyalty statement. And he also did not register for the Arbeitseinsatz. He had to go into hiding. My mother arranged that he could go to her and her family. When it was no longer safe there because of announced raids, he dived somewhere else. But he was betrayed and ended up in Camp Amersfoort in September 1943.
My mother made every effort to get him free. She learned that there was a ‘good German’ in The Hague. One Müller, who went over the students in the camp. She went to him with her father, but it turned out to be the wrong Müller. They were hunted with rough cursing from the sidewalk. My mother still found the good Müller – and he managed to convince him. He signed one Entlassungsschein For Camp Amersfoort.
From that moment on my mother was waiting for five days from the early morning to late afternoon in front of the gate of the camp until he came out. A on duty SS person on watch tried to seduce her to go out with him, but she did not shrink. It was January, foggy and very cold. She was numb to the bone – and nothing happened.
Nobody believed in it, but my mother kept confidence. And she was right! When she returned from another long day of waiting, he had just arrived at her temporary stay address. They had missed each other. They had not seen each other for five months. “I have him!” She telegraphed to her family in Usquert. So many emotions in so few words.
They got married after the war and had three daughters, of whom I am the middle one. My parents had a loving and harmonious marriage, we grew up in a close and warm family. ”