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“I have no memory of a family with father and mother. During the evacuation I saw him once at a hotel in Lunteren. I only remember that he had delicious eel with him. Mother did not go along, I think she had already decided that she did not want to continue with a man who worked for the Germans.”
The evacuation
Kiek was only 4 years old when, in her words, the “beautiful” airborne landings took place. “I saw all these colored parachutes.” Not much later they moved in a column to Schaarsbergen where the family spent the first night in the straw. “Out in the backyard, German soldiers were peeling potatoes.” While the potatoes popped into the water, the soldiers handed out chocolate to the curious Kiek who had gone to watch with her sister. “Mother called us in. We were not allowed to talk to the Germans. Of course we didn't understand that!”
They could not stay in Schaarsbergen, so the journey continued. I walked across the Ginkelse heath, guided by my eldest brother. Every now and then he would pull me into a foxhole.” English planes on their way to the Ruhr area dropped bombs. The family, together with their neighbors from Arnhem and their two teenage children, were able to stay for a night in Ede. “No longer, because there was no room for us.”
The Netherlands was divided into right and wrong, we were wrong. On the way to school, children sang: 'Dirty NSB children, we are not allowed to play with you'.
Lunteren
An estate in Lunteren became the residence for a longer period of time. A house with 40 other evacuees, “together with mother, my brothers, sister and the teenage children we slept on the floor.” During the day, Kiek gathered wood with her sister. “When we got cold, we went to the stable, where it was nice and warm among the cows. There was an old groom, Fluit, who had very small pig eyes, I remember. He gave us chicken corn. We ate that nicely.”
When flags were hoisted everywhere on April 16, it was Kiek's birthday. “We spent the morning in the air raid shelter. Fellow residents had made presents. A green doll furniture and a painting.” Outside, 'There is a house in Holland' and everyone gathered on the forecourt. “So much joy and dancing people, we danced around the flagpole.”
While the Netherlands was liberated, an unpleasant time began for Kiek. “If you were wrong, then you were really wrong. And that was us.” The house in Arnhem was uninhabitable, bombed and looted. Finding a new home was quite a struggle for Kiek's mother, because the wife of someone who had chosen the wrong side was not loved. “Eventually mother managed to acquire a house in Lunteren.”
The family was poor. “The things we still had were confiscated. Except for a sewing kit from my mother.” Kiek's father was arrested immediately in 1945.” She did not see him until 1948. “I don't know whether the government, or my mother, was not allowed to do that.” She always lied when children asked her about her father. “At the beginning I said, he is in a camp. I didn't know much what a camp was. No further questions were asked about this.”
The first memory of him after the war is a trauma that still makes Kiek emotional. “I remember a very cold, draughty station where we were waiting for a train. The vague image of a man in a raincoat who picked me up and just gave me a kiss!
A shared fate
“Now that I am 82, I finally dare to say: my father was wrong in the war.” Both parents never talked about their past. “You share that fate with many descendants of the war. And that hurts.” Images of children fleeing from the Ukraine come straight to Kiek. “Then I think: that's how my mother walked there too. Not knowing where to go.”
