The Dutch Orphan, page 22
Thirty-Four
Johanna Vos
September 12, 1943
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
The prison cell was cold and bare. I sat on the stool next to the bucket I was supposed to use to relieve myself and curled into a ball. I’d never felt so small, so useless. For days, I’d replayed the events leading to my arrest, examining every detail, trying to figure out where I’d gone wrong. Each pathway inevitably led to my sister, my personal Judas.
Now, I was too weary to think back on it all. All I could see was Aletta. Would she be confused when her mother wasn’t there to feed her, to rock her to sleep? Would she notice?
From what I’d gathered, they were holding me at the Weteringschans detention center in the middle of Amsterdam. It was strange to think that Willem might pass by the building on his way to work. Sometimes I swore I felt his presence on the other side of the thick concrete walls.
I tried to imagine all of us together, the whole family in Zierikzee, celebrating the end of the war. Aletta bouncing on oom Cor’s lap, Gerrit climbing onto a chair to make a wisecrack, Liesbeth sketching the scene from the shade of the magnolia tree. No matter how much I wanted it to be real, there would never be a celebration like that again, so happy, so careless. There couldn’t be. Unless there was some other explanation for why Dirk had known to expect me, my own sister had betrayed me, had chosen that vile leech of a man over her own kin. Just thinking about it left a bitter tang in my mouth.
Someone approached in the corridor: loud, booted footsteps, like all the guards. You could tell when they had a prisoner with them because some footsteps were softer, resigned to whatever fate awaited them: a concentration camp, a firing squad. Sometimes, the prisoners were dragged back to their cells kicking and wailing. More often, they were dragged because they could no longer stand.
I watched the entrance to my cell, wondering if it would open, but the footsteps passed. Names and dates were scratched into the heavy iron door, other Resistance fighters who had suffered before me.
Harmina Janssen, March `43.
Greetje van Lier, weeks |
June `43. Truus Cox—I will get you, traitor, if it takes the rest of my life.
Who had betrayed Truus? And where was she now: in another, grimmer cell, or rotting in a shallow grave in the sand dunes? Was it noble to be here, one of many who had risked their lives for a cause? Or was it all in vain?
I recalled that afternoon at the zoo, when Willem had taken my hands and begged me to step back from the Resistance. Now I saw that it had been reckless to ignore him, to put everything else before family.
Lies had told Dirk to expect me—I could assume that much—but what about Ida? I couldn’t bear the idea that what Dirk had implied was true—that Ida was playing informant. Maybe the De Graafs had revealed Aletta’s hiding place when they were interrogated, but then the Gestapo would have come after her months ago. Still, it was easier than accepting the alternative, that what Dirk had said was true, that Ida had given up countless people in hiding, including Aletta. What would possess her to do that?
* * *
That night, I woke to a commotion in the corridor. The cell next to mine clanged open and the guard roused the prisoner inside. “Tomorrow is judgment day for the rest of your crew. You have five minutes—say your goodbyes.”
There was a shuffling in the hall and a yelp, like a hound who’d been kicked, followed by muffled, teary goodbyes. “Ik hou van je, sterkte!” I love you, stay strong.
When the door clanged shut, I lay back on my cot and stared into the abyss, that phrase circling my thoughts. I stayed like that for the rest of the night.
Thirty-Five
Liesbeth de Wit
September 14, 1943
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Liesbeth and Willem stood by the tram stop on the Plantage Middenlaan, watching the early-morning traffic. “Here comes another one,” Willem said, gesturing to the oncoming tram and then to his pocket watch. “It’s a small window, but that grants us more chances if something goes wrong.”
They pretended to be absorbed in conversation and watched from a distance while the tram lurched to a stop. As they’d hoped, it blocked the view of the Jewish nursery. Passengers filed out and then on, and a bell clanged when the tram switched back into gear and carried on down the track.
“Remember,” Willem said, “I’ll be there for a diversion should you need one.”
The theater guard stared straight ahead, like a gargoyle that might spring to life at any minute. Only his finger moved, while he rubbed the trigger of his gun, back and forth, back and forth.
“Thank you,” Willem said. “Thank you for doing this.” In the past few days, his face had sunk inward. She wondered if he had faith in her ability to find Aletta and get her out safely.
“You’re doing everything you can,” she said, as calmly as she could. If only she’d decided to take a Pervitin that morning, something to give her that boost she was trying so hard to fake. They walked farther out of sight, and she removed her coat to reveal the uniform she’d hastily sewn, with the yellow star pinned at her breast. She’d managed to get some light blue fabric through the editorial staff at Libelle. The shade was slightly off and it wasn’t cotton, but she had to make do. Still, the matter of the blue fabric had cost them a day, a delay that could mean everything for Aletta’s safety. Willem had monitored the comings and goings at the theater, and as far as he knew, no transports had left, but neither of them could be sure.
She kissed Willem on the cheek, raised her chin to bolster her confidence, and set off across the road with her big, quilted carpetbag. Before the war, the strip of sidewalk in front of the nursery must have been crowded with mothers filing in and out to drop off their children on the way to work. Now the nursery felt like a prison looming in front of her.
She opened the main set of doors and entered a small vestibule, remembering only then that the nurses had used the side entrance. A noise came from inside the nursery. It sounded like someone rustling through papers, tossing open drawers, sounds that brought her back to that night in Zierikzee, when the Gestapo had turned the bedroom upside down in pursuit of her brother. Her nerves picked up, thrumming inside her, urging her to turn back while she had a chance. But when the noise subsided, she forced herself to push through the second set of doors. She hurried forward, past the office to her right, giving the person inside no time to register her face.
Farther down the corridor, she tried opening a couple of doors, but they led to a kitchen and a laundry room with washing vats that reeked of soiled diapers. The sound of laughter brought her up the stairs to a large, sunny room where children sat drawing at several tables. These children looked four and older. One of them waved a hand to ask her a question. “How long until lunchtime?”
“Well,” Liesbeth said, “not much longer. Once you’ve finished your drawings.”
“Who are you?”
Liesbeth spun around. A nurse stood in the corner of the room, holding a little girl by the hand.
“Well? What are you doing here?”
Liesbeth chose her words carefully. Hopefully this Jewish nurse would understand, unless she feared for her job, her own safety. “I’m looking for my niece.”
“Your niece?”
“My sister’s been arrested. She was doing everything she could to help.”
The nurse studied her, frowning. Then, she let go of the girl’s hand and beckoned for Liesbeth to follow her to the corner, where they were out of earshot of the children. “Your niece is Jewish?”
Liesbeth held up a photograph to show the nurse, one of her and Aletta playing in the park, and told her, in as few words as possible, what had happened. The nurse glanced at it and grabbed Liesbeth by the elbow, leading her back down the stairs.
“What are you doing?” Liesbeth asked. “Please, I need to know if she’s here.”
“Keep your eyes low,” the nurse whispered. She didn’t say anything else until they entered some sort of waiting room on the main floor with the door shut behind them. “I don’t know what you expected, breezing in here with this outfit. But everyone here knows everyone else. You’re lucky I’m the one you ran into.”
“Can you help me? Have you seen Aletta?”
“I’m not sure. If she’s here, she’ll be in the front room, beside the main entrance. But it’s too risky to go there right now. You saw the SS officer?”
“He was searching for something, turning the room on its head.”
“That’s the director’s office,” the nurse said. “Well, was. Who knows what he hopes to find, but we’re not dumb enough to keep the records of our efforts in there.”
“You mean?”
“You can’t look for your niece now. I have my suspicions about the girl who is supervising the nursery. Come back at three o’clock. I’ll see what I can do.”
“And if they come for Aletta?”
The sound of boots echoed down the corridor. The nurse put a finger to her lips and pushed Liesbeth toward another door. “Go!”
Liesbeth did as she was told, emerging in a narrow passageway that opened to the street—the side entrance. When she stepped back outside, she could hardly face Willem. He stood at the tram stop in the middle of the road, pacing back and forth. He turned to her, fixating on the carpetbag. She shook her head, and his shoulders sagged. She was apologizing before she reached him, the words spilling out with choked emotion. She had let him down and failed Johanna once again.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “bad timing.”
“Not here,” he said, hushing her. She winced. Everything she did felt like a misstep, a lapse in judgment.
Willem passed over her coat and took her hand as if they were a couple, leading her away from the theater toward the zoo. He raised a hand in greeting to the ticket booth attendant, who let the two of them pass through the gates. “This way,” he said. They followed the lane lined with lime trees toward a small garden and found a bench between the manicured hedges where nobody could hear them. “What happened?” he asked.
She told him everything, trawling her memory for every detail. As she spoke, the gravity of her situation hit her, and she began to question their chances. The notion of going back in there felt daunting.
“No,” he said, “this is promising. If only we had a guarantee that she was in there.”
“Nothing is certain. Maybe it’s too dangerous to return—for all we know, it could be a trap.”
Willem winced, and she felt the blow of her words, how he took it as an admission of defeat, of giving up on Aletta. And after all, hadn’t she let her own sister walk straight into a trap?
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said.
“Did anyone else see your face?” he asked.
He looked at her impatiently. Much as she wanted to give him the assurance he needed, the promise that they could fix this, she felt her strength dissolving. She had let Jo down once, and now a second time. What was to say it wouldn’t happen again? If she closed her eyes, she saw Dirk showing off his film projector, the clip of the Jewish family at the beach looping over and over.
Liesbeth stared at the hem of her skirt. “I told him,” she said.
“What?”
“I didn’t think it through. I had to warn him. I was afraid, nervous of what would happen. I know that’s no excuse, but I feel horrible.”
“Who? What are talking about?”
“Dirk. A man I was having an affair with.”
Willem flinched and leaned back to study her. “What are you saying?”
Everything tumbled out, the lies she’d been living with, the guilt she’d been trying to stuff down out of sight. She told him about the arguments with Maurits and her affair. She told him about Jo’s determination to uncover the truth, about her own selfish feelings for Dirk, her dread that Maurits would find out what she’d done.
“I’m sorry,” Liesbeth said, her voice crumpling. “I wish I could take it all back.”
Willem sat still, focused on some spot in the dirt. The noise of squawking birds and the shrieks of the monkeys and lemurs filled the unbearable silence between them. He let out a heavy sigh. “Johanna’s heart is in the right place,” he said, “but she often acts before she thinks. We all do sometimes, don’t we?”
Liesbeth nodded, but his dejected tone filled her with shame.
“This time, we think before we act.” He paused. “Are you still prepared to help me?”
She thought of Aletta, crying in a crib somewhere in that imposing building. She thought of her sister, locked in a cell where she couldn’t see the sky. It was up to her to feign some confidence and pull herself together, for Willem’s sake.
“I am.”
“Good. Then we will try at three o’clock. And we’ll just have to hope for the best.”
* * *
A few hours later, they returned to the same spot between the theater and the nursery, waiting for a tram to show up. “You’ll find her,” Willem said. “I have faith in you.”
Liesbeth nodded, but the rush of nerves came back to her. “I’ll find her,” she repeated. When the tram arrived, she adjusted the cap of her uniform and crossed the street, veering off toward the side entrance. You can do this, she told herself, locking Aletta’s cherub face in her thoughts. This was no different than the times she’d gone to pick up Aletta from her sister’s; Aletta would be there waiting, giggling and kicking her tiny feet.
She headed through the covered passageway and opened the interior door a crack, only to spot a nurse standing at the far end of the waiting room. Liesbeth faltered, but the sound of playing children came echoing toward her. She clenched a fistful of her skirt, her nails digging into her skin. When the nurse had disappeared, she pushed open the door and entered the building, with what she hoped was a confident stride.
She worked her way through the maze of rooms, trying to reorientate herself. The laughter and teasing shouts to the right suggested the older children, the ones she’d seen upstairs earlier. The nurse had told her to go left, hadn’t she? Or was it right? She paused, listening until she picked up another sound: the faint wail of a baby.
She followed the sound down the corridor to the left, toward the main entrance. She stopped and listened before carrying on, entering the room opposite the office. Inside were rows of wicker bassinets and several cribs with babies and toddlers—some sleeping soundly, others grabbing at the bars of the cribs. In the center of the room was a baby girl with tousled brown curls: Aletta. The nurse from earlier approached from the far end of the room, gesturing toward the middle crib. “This is her, isn’t it?”
“Aletta,” Liesbeth said, unable to contain her relief. Aletta grew animated, squealing and flapping her legs. Then the heavy footsteps returned. Liesbeth stiffened, afraid to make a sound.
“Quick,” the nurse said, motioning toward a side door, “in here.”
Liesbeth slipped into the broom closet, closing the door behind her. She stood still, trying to quell the panicked breaths rising in her chest. The footsteps entered the room. Two people.
“As you can see,” a female voice said, “we’re down to half the babies we had last Wednesday.”
A man: “Good, we’ll ship the last of them out in the next week. By Rosh Hashanah, the whole city will be Judenrein.”
Liesbeth bit her tongue, furious. Hearing Maurits and his friends regurgitate Nazi propaganda was one thing, but it felt far worse to imagine those innocent babies loaded up onto a train headed to Poland. She clutched the carpetbag to her chest and struggled to stay still, desperate to burst out and scoop Aletta into the safety of her arms.
The voices faded as the tour carried on down the corridor, but Liesbeth didn’t budge until the closet door swung open in front of her.
“Take her,” the nurse said, “now. We try to smuggle out as many as we can, but some parents cling to the hope that their children would be better off staying with their mothers as they make their way to the camps.”
Liesbeth rushed toward Aletta. “I’m here, sweetheart, I’m here,” she murmured, pressing her lips to her niece’s forehead.
“Hurry out the way you came,” the nurse said. Together, they opened the clasp of the carpetbag and tucked Aletta inside. The nurse grabbed a bottle of milk and wiggled it into position, until Aletta took to it. “Be quiet, little one.”
Liesbeth thanked her. She hurried out of the room, almost bumping straight into the SS man as he headed into the director’s office.
“Guten Tag,” he said, looking her up and down.
Liesbeth returned his German greeting. She tried to hold the bag straight, conscious that any shift in her weight might startle Aletta. A foot kicked the corner of the bag. She prayed Aletta would be quiet.
“You work here? I didn’t see you on my tour.”
“I was taking stock of our supplies. I need to go out to pick up some extra—nappies.” She raised her voice to distract from any noise coming from the bag.
“To pick up what?”
She must have used the wrong German word. She listened, trying to judge if the tram was near. Every second wasted with this man was treacherous.
“You know,” she said, forcing a smile, “the things babies soil.”
“Ah,” he said, slapping his leg, “you mean Windeln.”
“Yes, that’s it, Windeln!” She stopped, midlaugh, at the sound of the approaching tram—her window, her chance to get out. She smiled again, as sweetly as she could manage. “I’m sorry, but I have to run. The head nurse hates when I dally.”
He wished her luck, and she stepped outside as the tram screeched to a stop, blocking the view of the guard at the theater. She darted into the street and saw Willem heading toward her. He grabbed her by the elbow and guided her forward into the gaping mouth of the tram. The doors shut behind them as they crammed in between all the people. When Willem handed her her coat, a cry came from the carpetbag, a loud, single sob. Frightened, she looked up at him.
