Hans de Ruiter: the war
Astronomy Home INAF CPO INAF Other Links Home Hans Cosmology (pdf) ATESP CO Seyferts Galaxy Profiles WENSS Personal CV Articles	The house of my birth and  the war. Long before the second world war my grandparents, grandmother De Ruiter-Daems and (step)grandfather Van der Velde lived already in the house at the Reinier Claeszenstraat 27 (Amsterdam). My parents married in the summer of 1941 and settled on the first floor of the same house, while my grandparents continued to live in the apartment at street  level. The two apartments were connected by an internal staircase. My father's half-sister Suze also had a room at the first floor. She had already been married just before the war, but her husband had escaped to England in the first days of the German invasion and returned only after the end of the war in 1945. Although it was not at all a secret, we would rarely talk about the Jews that had been in hiding in our house during part of the war years. Of course I knew very well about their existence, but nobody thought it necessary to spend many words about it. Actually, one of the persons that had been living in hiding, Rachel Pront, I had known personally, because until long after the war (till the end of the sixties) she would visit my grandfather on his birthday. Only a few years ago I tried to put some of the recollections of my mother on paper. The reason was that she got very irritated when the Dutch government decided to offer a one-time allowance to war victims, i.e. all people, including their descendants, who had suffered persecution or in any way had contributed to the Resistance. In fact there was a shameless run on these benefits, and it seemed that practically the entire Dutch population had been active and had saved millions of Jews from the gas chambers. For the first time I saw my mother upset: my family had never seen themselves as heroes, also because they would have considered that ideologically incorrect, but now there was a general run for war benefits. My sister Freddie was born in August 1942 and not long after that three Jewish persons arrived who went into hiding in our house. How this came about my mother does not know exactly, but it is certain that it was organized by my grandfather through the (underground) Communist Party, of which he was a member. Rachel Pront lived on the President Steynplantsoen in Amsterdam-East and had before the war, in her backroom, an office of Lotisico, which was a rather strange company. According to Wikipedia it still exists, but it is now a normal investment company [In the book "De N.S.B. (by Te Slaa and Klijn, 2009, Boom Publishers; N.S.B. stands for Nationaal Socialistische Beweging, i.e. National Socialist Movement, in the early thirties more fascist-oriented, later in the war year collaborators of the Germans), I encountered the name Lotisico again. One of the first donors of different, usually very small, fascist parties was a certain Alfred Haighton, the rich and very fascist owner of Lotisico. I quote from the book (page 87): "[Coenraad Alfred Augustus Haighton (1896-1943)] was the eldest son of the founder of the First Dutch Society for the Insurance of Lottery Risks-A fantastic name, my comment-, in short Lotisico. After the death of his father in 1919 Haighton obtained the directorship of the company, as well as the family-capital. The family-money enabled him to exert his influence in various facist organisations. Due to his impossible character his involvement was usually short-lived as he tended to quarrel immediately with everybody". Later he played a role in the union of fascists "The broom". In 1933 he became "Rijksleider" (obviously inspired by the German term Reichsführer) of the NSNAP. It is therefore bitterly ironical that Rachel Pront worked for Lotisico.]  Rachel Pront shared a room on the first floor, together with aunt Suze. She is the only one my family saw regularly after the war. If I remember well she worked in the clothes shop of Gerzon in the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam. The other two were a married couple (according to my mother a war wedding, although I am not quite sure what that means) The parents of Bep Jessurun had a shop (lamps and that kind of thing) on the corner of the Maasstraat and the Northern or Southern Amstellaan (which are now called Churchill-lane and Roosevelt-lane, respectively). At least that is what my mother remembers, even if she is not quite certain. Bep Jessurun could go into hiding at my grandparent's house, because she was married with Hans Rabbi: Rabbi's father had been, before the war, supervisor of a number of apartments in the Reinier Claeszenstraat including number 27. They stayed hidden in the cellar, which attracted me a lot after the war. I still remember the not unpleasant smell of coal, deposited there. The only thing one knows about Hans Rabbi and Bep Jessurun is that they left Holland after the war, and probably went to the U.S. Nobody has ever heard of them again. My father had another older sister, Annie, who had married a German, Helmut Klinge, a few years before the war. He was a soldier (cook)  in the Wehrmacht, and had got permission to serve in Holland. He was stationed at Amsterdam Airport (Schiphol). Of course he regularly came to visit his parents-in-law, which resulted in the rather surreal situation that he "parked" his gun in the corridor just a few feet away from the Jews who were in hiding below in the cellar. It must have been quite dangerous for him, because (as my mother says) he knew about the people in hiding. I suppose he might have been shot if his superiors in the Wehrmacht had known. I saw uncle Helmut sometimes, because he had been given permission by the Dutch authorities to remain in Holland after the war. It seems there even has been a petition among the people living in the Reinier Claeszenstraat to grant him this permission. He was definitely a "good" German. My mother was a bit cautious with him, since he was a notorious womanizer. However he undoubtedly was a good and decent man. He died in 2005 or 2006 (he was close to 100 years old), but had become senile. The Jews in hiding did not stay till the end of the war. Grandfather Van der Velde brought them to some other place outside Amsterdam (I don't know how), because the situation had become too dangerous for them after a police raid in the house: they were in the kitchen peeling shrimps and had to flee hastily into the garden. Unfortunately my mother doesn't remember exactly when this happened, but it was probably in the summer of 1944. The hiding place in the cellar was not discovered, apparently because the police didn't search for it. The raid, by Dutch police officers, was not intended to catch any people in hiding (they clearly didn't know about them), but to interrogate my mother. A Jewish neighbour of my mother's parents, Isi Allegro, had sent a boy to fetch some ration cards (it is not clear if these cards were intended to be used by other people in hiding, by the Resistance or were for own use). These ration cards had been brought to my mother through an underground resistance group of the University of Amsterdam. The boy got arrested on the "Wiegbrug", a bridge over a canal near the Reinier Claeszenstraat, because he had stolen a bicycle on the bridge; rather stupidly I would add. He mentioned Isi Allegro, who in his turn mentioned the name of my mother (she still gets angry if she thinks about that). In the end the boy said he didn't know her. My mother and grandfather had to come with the police officers to the police station at the Admiraal de Ruyterweg, but the case did not develop any further, probably because the Dutch police officers were all right (yes, there were also "good" police officers). So they were allowed to go back home. Was Isi Allegro himself in hiding? My mother doesn't know what became of him. Some time later, I suppose in the fall of 1944, there was another person in hiding in our house. Her name was Ans Blauw (or Blaauw) and apparently she had been a secretary of the Jewish Council in Amsterdam. However she stayed in our house only for a rather short time (not more than a month or so). During the hunger-winter of 1944-1945 there were no more Jews in hiding. In this period my mother made long trips on her bicycle especially in the northern part of the province of North-Holland, searching for food for the family and especially for my sister. Fortunately a friend of my father's came from a family of farmers, and they practically saved my parents and Freddie.  [Dr. Piet Nobel, a chemist of the University of Amsterdam, who after the war was for many years the Conservator of the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry. In the seventies and eighties Nobel and his wife often used to go on holiday with my parents, and Mrs. Nobel and my mother (the only ones left), are now well over 90, but still talk regularly on the phone] At the very end, just a few weeks before the liberation, there was one other "guest", who was certainly not a Jew in hiding. He was part of the BS (Internal Forces), but had probably been a collaborator of the Germans in the earlier phases (this happened quite often when people realized that the war was going to be lost by Germany). Clearly the Resistance did not want to lose sight of him. No more details are know about him. [Update. My mother talked about this with aunt Suze, who still seems to know a lot about the war years in the Reinier Claeszenstraat. The person who was kept more or less prisoner in the house towards the end of the war was a member of a well-known family that belonged to the ancient elite of Amsterdam, the Heldring family. This person had indeed been on the German side and was guarded by the Resistance.] Back-Terug
	Hans de Ruiter, INAF - Istituto di Radioastronomia Via Gobetti, 101, 40129 Bologna, Italy