Chapter 4

In May 1940 after the Netherlands government capitulated, Arthur Seyss-Inquart became Reich Commissioner of the Netherlands. Born in Austria he saw action in the First World War and when he was discharged he qualified as a lawyer. He served in a variety of Austrian government posts and when Austria was taken over by the Nazi's in 1939 he became a minister without portfolio in Hitler's cabinet.

As Reich Commissioner his far right wing views and Jewish hatred were pressed into the administrators of various Dutch government departments. Hitler believed that the Dutch were true Aryans and that the enemy, the Jews, should be removed from the Netherlands for the good of the country. Seyss-Inquart made sure that Hitler's views were perpetrated in the Netherlands.

Gerry rested for three days finding it easy to avoid Lien when she sat with his mother in long talks and drinking coffee. Often he found himself thinking about their love but he tried to shed these thoughts from his mind but they kept returning to torment him.

His father, Marius was anxious to get him working in the bakery to begin his apprenticeship, fearing that informers would have the SS or the Gestapo whisk Gerry away to internment in Germany.

Marius provided him with white overalls and a circular white cap that the Department of Health regulations required must be worn while working in the bakery. Gerry kept a journal recording important lessons that his father taught him.

His presence in the bakery slowed Marius's work so that when the shop was packed with customers he called on his wife Sofie to help him. Often Lien would take her place but soon she became the person who served the customers and this added to his angst. He found that avoiding her presence was difficult because when there were no customers, she would linger in the baking area watching Gerry and his father at work.

On Sundays, the only day that Gerry was freed from his duties, he and Kees would walk into the city center and would watch the crowds surging around the market places and they would meet with their friends from school.

It was mid afternoon on one of those Sundays when they were returning home and they saw a work gang installing a traffic gate on the bridge over the canal nearest their home. They mingled with the small crowd whose curiosity had also been aroused.

The work gang manhandled a one-man guardhouse onto the footpath adjacent to traffic barrier that they had just installed. Their work completed they were climbing into their truck when a motorcycle and sidecar pulled up at the barrier. A soldier climbed out of the sidecar and entered the guardhouse, he left his rifle inside and inspected the traffic boom raising and lowering it.

With the barrier lowered he sat inside the guardhouse and waited for traffic. A German army truck driver beeped his horn and the soldier rushed to raise the barrier to allow it to pass over the bridge, saluting as the truck passed him.

The actions of the soldier looked comical to Gerry and Kees who cheered loudly. The soldier eyes searched the crowd trying to see who was being disrespectful. The crowd fearful of violence started dispersing and Gerry and Kees moved away with them.

After school Kees would drop in before proceeding up the stairs to his apartment and bring Gerry up to date with school gossip.

"I've been watching that guard on the bridge after school and he's an arrogant, abusive bastard. He checks everything in every vehicle trying to cross the bridge, and when it's a Dutch vehicle he gives them hell," Kees said.

"Maybe we should teach him a lesson."

"How would we do that," Kees asked.

"I don't know yet but why don't you watch him after school. There must be something that we can do to upset him," Gerry said.

Kees took seriously his task of spying on the bridge guard. He noted that at precisely four in the afternoon he would lock the barrier and the guardhouse then walk eighty metres to a nearby shop where the shop owner had allowed him the use of his premises to relieve his bladder. Everyone in the district knew that the shop owner was a Nazi sympathiser.

A few days later Kees called into the bakery obviously unsettled, "Today we were told that the German language has now become part of our studies. Failure to get a pass in German will mean that we will have to repeat the whole year."

"The whole year?" Gerry looked incredulous.

"When I complained the teacher caned me and told me that people of my race are the reason for Holland's troubles. Then he took me to the principal's office. I think that he's going to expel me, he gave me a letter to give to my father when he comes home."

Gerry called his father over and had Kees repeat his story.

"Get your father to see me tonight, I want to talk to him about this," Marius said angrily.

Later that day Kees's father Frans Reutenberg entered the shop, the bell on the door jingled announcing his entry. He was dejected, his furniture business was failing and it showed on his face. In these troubled times people were not buying furniture anymore. Marius was alone in the shop and he smiled at his friend as he entered.

"Marius, what do think about Kees's teacher and the way he treated him?" Frans asked.

"I think that you..."

Marius did not finish as the bell on the door jingled again and a portly woman entered, she had a harsh face and her hair was drawn up into a tight bun on the back of her head. Her taut skin accentuated her humourless features. He frowned at Frans warning him to be silent. He served the woman and she departed.

"You will have to be more careful Frans; that woman and her husband are Nazi informants."

"What has happened to Holland, informers everywhere, we're afraid to talk in public. You're right of course, let's talk after dinner. I'll come down with Kees and we'll talk."

After dinner that night Frans had more news.

"Look at his letter from Kees's principal, this is most unjust," he thrust the letter at Marius, he breathed heavily, he was angry.

'Mr Reutenberg, ' the short letter began, 'you are hereby notified that your son Kees is no longer a student of this school. I have expelled him for dishonourable conduct and offence to his teacher.'

"My God. That's disgusting. What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to the school tomorrow. I want justice for my son."

"I'll come with you for support," Marius said.

"Thanks, I think I'm going to need all the help I can get."

The next day Frans, Kees and Marius were admitted to the principal's office and Kees's teacher was called to the meeting. They argued for an hour but they were not able to change the principal's mind about Kees's expulsion. Marius could see the zeal that Kees's teacher used to bolster the principal's action.

As they were walking home Marius explained what he thought about the relationship between the teacher and the principal.

"I think that the principal is frightened, he doesn't want the Gestapo watching his every move, and I noticed the teacher reinforcing that fear."

"Yes I saw that too."

They continued talking about Kees's plight when two men in business suits, light overcoats and hats sitting squarely on their heads beckoned them to the edge of the sidewalk.

"You're identification papers," the taller one demanded, his Dutch was good but he spoke with a broad German accent.

Frans and Marius hesitated but they knew that the German strangers were members of the Gestapo, the German secret police. They passed their papers over.

They quickly examined Marius's papers and turning to Frans the taller man holding his papers firmly in his fist pointed at him, "Frans Reutenberg, you're Jewish aren't you?"

"Yes I am."

"Then why aren't you wearing the yellow star signifying that you're an inferior being?"

Frans's forehead was beaded with perspiration from the terror that he felt, he was mystified and he looked to Marius for guidance.

"We don't know about any star," Marius said knowing that they were in serious trouble.

"What do you mean 'we' Raymer."

"Frans is my friend, we live in the same building," Marius replied folding his large arms across his chest, his height towering over the Gestapo agents.

"You're a friend of this low scum? Then why isn't he wearing the star?"

Marius reached for his papers, "Give us our papers and I'll make sure that Frans conforms with the regulations."

It was a bold move and Marius was hoping that the Gestapo agent would take the easy way out.

He passed the papers to Marius, "You make sure that you do that Raymer; I'll be checking personally to see that you do."

Kees had walked fifty metres ahead fearful of the Gestapo, when he saw Marius grab his father's elbow and steer him quickly away, he followed closely behind glad that they were going home.

When they arrived home Marius had Sofie brew coffee and they sat discussing their close shave. It was Marius's opinion that the teacher had informed the Gestapo and he cemented that idea when he told Frans that the wearing of the Star of David by Jews was a only a rumour although it was required in Germany.

In another eight weeks the wearing of the Star of David by Jews was mandated and any Dutch Jew found disobeying this law could be summarily executed.

The following weekend Kees was still angered by the unfair treatment he had received at school. He had a plan to get revenge and he persuaded Gerry to join him. He wanted Gerry's help to steal the guardhouse on the bridge.

"How do you intend to do that," Gerry asked admiring Kees's audacity.

"Next Sunday we'll wait until the guard goes for his piss and then we'll tip his guardhouse into the canal.

Returning from their walk to the 'Dam they stood watching the guard and at four p.m. the guard started locking the bridge barrier and the guardhouse. As he walked past them with his rifle slung from his shoulder Kees nudged Gerry.

"Are you ready."

"Wait until he enters the shop."

When the guard disappeared into the shop they raced across the road onto the approach to the bridge. Together they slid the heavy guardhouse to the handrail of the bridge, they tried lifting it onto the handrail but it was heavier than they had anticipated. A passing Dutchman saw their dilemma and grabbing the bottom edge he assisted them. They raised the guardhouse until it balanced on the handrail and then they slid it further until it fell into the canal with a loud splash. The man who had assisted them hurried across the bridge and melted into the crowd.

When they looked over the handrail into the canal the guardhouse was floating, their plan had not considered this so they dove into the canal and swam their prize away into a side drain that ran past the back of Marius's bakery. They emerged from the cold water and Gerry disappeared into the bakery. Cautiously he entered the shop looking to find his father and not finding him, he assumed that he was upstairs. He found an axe and a jemmy in the room where they kept their wood and he returned to Kees. Together they reduced the guardhouse to a pile of wood then they stacked it into the woodpile for the ovens.

Over the coming week Marius burned the wood in the ovens; he knew where the wood came from but he refrained from discussing it with Gerry. He listened with interest as many customers gleefully told him with about the disappearing guardhouse. At each telling the story became larger than life, some had even told him that the SS had arrested the culprit and executed him on the spot and it took all of his willpower to suppress his mirth.

Gerry applied himself diligently to the hard work of apprentice baker, hauling bags of flour to the mixing vats adding the correct amount of salt and yeast and other ingredients and then there was the especially tiring job of dough kneading.

He yearned for Lien but he knew that any serious contact was impossible and he took his frustrations out pounding away at the dough. Marius thought that he was applying himself not knowing the intensity of the feelings that drove him.

Toward the end of 1940 the German economy was suffering from a lack of available labour. In order to keep the production of war equipment flowing and the building of strategic border fortifications, the SS in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Holland rounded up males and shipped them back to Germany where they became slave labour.

Many customers told Lien and Marius of the SS swoops on their houses taking their men and boys, some as young as fifteen.

The introduction of coupons for food caused a downturn in Marius's business, he had no control of their supplies of flour. A small number of army officers started taking advantage of Marius demanding bread without coupons.

It came to a head one morning when a blonde, blue-eyed sergeant demanded three loaves of bread. Marius demanded coupons and the officer pulled his Luger from its holster and held it to Marius's head. Customers fled from his shop thinking that Marius would be killed.

"I told you I want three loaves of bread." The Nazi solder said through his tightly drawn lips over clenched teeth.

"And I told you that there is no bread without coupons," Marius said with equal anger.

"You stubborn Dutch bastard give me the bread!"

The bell on the door jingled and an SS Captain that had been a steady customer quickly saw what one of his men was doing and he yelled, "Sergeant! Give me that pistol."