The Secret Diary of Arnold Douwes

Rescue in the Occupied Netherlands

Arnold Douwes, Bob Moore, Johannes Houwink ten Cate, Bob Moore, Johannes Houwink ten Cate

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780253044211
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Holocaust History
• Index: History

A rare diary by the leader of an underground rescue network during the Holocaust that's "a crucial source for the study of the Dutch resistance" (Ido de Haan, coeditor of Securing Europe After Napoleon ). In the Netherlands, the myth that resistance to Nazi occupation was high among all sectors of the population has retained a strong hold, and yet many Dutch Jews fell victim to deportation and annihilation in the camps of Eastern Europe. How could a country that prided itself on its tolerance, adherence to legal norms, and democratic government have been the site of such an enormous tragedy? Even while Nazi arrests of Jews were taking place, Arnold Douwes, a gardener and restless adventurer, headed a clandestine network of resistance and rescue. Douwes had spent time in the United States and France and was arrested several times by the police after his return to the Netherlands in 1940. Keenly aware that he was doing something important, he started a diary in the summer of 1943. He hid some thirty-five small notebooks in jam jars at safe houses in the vicinity of his base in Nieuwlande (Drenthe). After the war, he dug the notebooks up and transcribed them, adding several postwar sections with scrupulous notations. Bob Moore has translated Douwes's diary into English for the first time, and he and coeditor Johannes Houwink ten Cate have added a historical and contextual introduction, annotations, and a glossary for readers who may not be familiar with Dutch technical terms or places. Organized chronologically, and remaining largely as Douwes originally wrote it, the diary sheds light on the successes—and failures—of this important Dutch rescue network.

The Diary

May 10, 1940

I WAS WOKEN AT 5:00 a.m. by my landlord. [How can you sleep through all this noise!] I was at once fully awake and out of bed. Our work at the tree nursery began at 6:00 a.m. but no work was done this day. The skies were full of airplanes. The radio soon removed any uncertainties. War. The Krauts.¹ That which we could have seen coming but which we didn’t want to believe had become a reality. We were at war. We couldn’t understand it or comprehend it. At war with the Nazi-beasts, because we had known for some time that they were beasts.

In Boskoop people were out on the streets, standing in groups. We could see the antiaircraft gunfire from Woerden and other places attacking the Germans. In Boskoop itself, measures were taken to try and make life as difficult as possible for the expected German parachutists.² In this area with so many locks and canals, we removed all the road and footbridges so that any parachutists would land on islands surrounded by deep water. Steps were also taken to deal with [possible] fires and to create bomb shelters.

[As I was not in the army,] I decided to go to my sister and her family.³ They lived in Cuijck on the river Maas in Noord-Brabant. I left on the morning of May 11, 1940, and cycled via Den Bosch where my brother, who was a pastor in the Reformed Church, lived with his wife and eight children.⁴ I was stopped many times at checkpoints [but I had an easy way to prove that I was Dutch, simply rattling off a string of words with a ch in them, like kachel (fire) or schuur (shed) or Scheveningen. No Germans, or Englishmen for that matter, can pronounce these words properly, so I didn’t have much difficulty in persuading my fellow countrymen that I was also a cheese head.] En route I also collected any number of letters from soldiers to be delivered to their mothers and sweethearts.

In Schoonhoven, I was not so fortunate and was arrested as a parachutist and not released for three hours. I saw a number of Germans, and there were rumors that many more had landed in the vicinity. Arriving in Gorkum [Gorinchem], there was a hive of activity. The town is a garrison and therefore prone to bombardment. In the main square, hundreds of civilians of all ages and of both sexes were digging shelters and building barricades. Suddenly there was a warning and everyone rushed for cover in nearby doorways or, as I did, with a stream of others, into the town hall. It was an air raid with machine guns. A hail of bullets sprayed over the town. We stood against the inner walls of the building. As soon as the “all clear” was sounded, we went back onto the street and the work recommenced. I myself saw at least one woman with a baby in a stroller [among them].

I needed a permit to leave the town, which I received from the mayor, although His Excellency advised me not to go any further because, as he said, “you will only meet the Krauts.”⁵

Between Gorinchem and the Bergse Maas there was land that should have been underwater, but the planned inundation had not taken place.

On the way to the bridge over the Merwede there was an air raid, and another on the bridge itself. I stayed overnight in Raamsdonkveer and the following morning I saw my first Kraut [close up]. He was riding a motorcycle, one hand steering, the other by his side. As I watched, he turned into the road toward the bridge that I had crossed the previous evening. The bridge was still in Dutch hands and being defended. I didn’t see any more Krauts until I got close to Den Bosch. The city itself stank of them, there were thousands and thousands.

[The bridges over the Zuid Willemsvaart, which I had to cross to get to my brother’s, had been blown up, but an enterprising boy of some ten or twelve years of age took me across in his rowing boat for five cents. I gave him ten and he was happy.]

Jan, my brother, was very surprised to see me. He and his family were fine. I noticed that his neighbor’s house had received a direct hit, a heap of rubble was all that was left, but his parsonage was untouched. [I asked about the people who lived next door, how many victims? Not one! The whole family had been “visiting” in my brother’s bomb shelter!] Jan told me that there had been heavy fighting in and around Cuijck [although my sister and her family were okay], and that it would be stupid to venture into occupied territory and better to go back while it was still possible. [I told him that this was impossible because I had a stack of letters to deliver. I took the bag off my bicycle and showed it to him. Jan would not be my older brother if he did not have a perfect plan. “Clear the round table,” he ordered. “Now pour letters onto the table and we will sort them out. All the letters for Den Bosch on one pile, other piles for Vught, Grave, and Oss. I’ll get the teenagers from the youth club to do this. They’ll love it. The letters will be delivered in no time at all.”]

[I headed back toward Boskoop.] The Krauts were busy moving toward Geertruidenberg. They had huge amounts of weaponry and material with them. The villages in the Langstraat, through which all this stuff was passing, were closed to all civilian traffic. I was forced to turn right and make my way along the river hoping to find a bridge where I could cross before the Germans arrived. However, there was already a battle going on with much shooting and explosions that ended with the bridge being blown up. I went back about a kilometer and stayed overnight with a farmer near Waspik. On the following morning, I was taken across the river in a rowing boat, together with two escaping soldiers in civilian clothes, by the mayor of Sprang-Capelle in the Langstraat [who sported an orange bow on his jacket and a Dutch tricolor on his boat].⁶ As had happened before, the mayor wanted to make sure I wasn’t Kraut, so I said, “Scheveningse scheve schipperschuitjes” (small slanting fishing boats from Scheveningen)—anyone who can say that isn’t a Kraut. After a few other questions and answers, he was satisfied. On the other side of the water I was met by two Marechaussees⁷ and taken to the town hall, but later allowed to go on my way.

I thus continued my journey back to Boskoop, traveling more or less by the same route that I come. This time, I remember, I cycled into a very strong headwind. [On the way between Gorinchem and Schoonhoven I saw the devastation wrought by German air raids; of devastated farmhouses and burning hayricks.] I also saw enormous clouds of black smoke and was showered with half-burned pieces of invoices and other papers. Rotterdam was burning! [When I got to Schoonhoven I made a point of hearing the news. In a restaurant, I heard the news of the capitulation in German. Holland had capitulated because the Nazis had threatened to bomb all the other big cities too and General Winkelman, our supreme commander, thought it wise to give up the unequal struggle in order to protect our cities.]⁸

The wind had shifted a little and between Schoonhoven and Gouda I rode into a cascade of Rotterdam ashes. In Gouda, I stopped for a cup of coffee and then on to Boskoop. Back in the village I volunteered my services and was appointed as a tower watchman or some such—a task I disliked intensely and I never did stand watch in the tower.

[The following day I cycled with some friends to Rotterdam to find out what had happened to friends in the city. I saw with my own eyes what the Krauts had done. It was unbelievable, but there it was in front of me. I could see it, smell it and hear it.] In half an hour the Herrenvolk had reduced Rotterdam to a ruin—a hell. There, where I saw for myself, only then and there did I realize and begin to hate them, and in ways that I didn’t believe I could ever have hated.

My friends [in Rotterdam] had survived as they lived on the other side of the Maas and nothing had happened in their neighborhood. I cycled back to Boskoop with a great feeling of dejection hanging over me. Arriving back with my companions, we all had the feeling that we had been given an incredible beating.

Not long afterward I was stopped by a Kraut on a motorcycle who asked me for the quickest way to Leiden. I directed him to Utrecht.⁹ He clicked his heels, saluted, thanked me, and headed off in the direction of Utrecht. [Lucky for me I never saw him again.]

[Before I went back to work and immediately after the capitulation,] my friends and I made a visit to our relations, including to my sister in Cuijck. She and her family had been evacuated for a few days to a farm outside the village, and when they returned home they’d found their house full of bullet holes. We also went to my hometown of Laag-Keppel, where I was born and spent my youth. The first stop we made there was at the home of the family doctor. He was Jewish and had been there only a few years [and had come fresh from the university. I happened to know him; he was bubbling over with energy. He was very well liked by the villagers, and I had met him because of his garden, which he had planned, laid out, and planted himself. I’ve always believed that one can rate a person by the looks of his garden. We rang the doorbell, but there was no response. It seems that he and his wife had committed suicide the day the Nazis arrived. If we had known of their plans, perhaps we might have persuaded them to think differently. The young couple had hatched the plan sometime before and had swallowed something as soon as they saw the German troops.]¹⁰

There was one other Jewish family in the village who had been there for generations, Sam Jacobs the butcher, his wife, and two children. He was about my age and I well remember being invited to Shabbat meals at their house.¹¹ They invited us to stay, but we said we had beds waiting for us, which were in fact nearby haystacks.

[Within a week, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Prologue
• Editors’ Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Translator’s Note
• The Diary and Its Context
• The Diary
• Aftermath
• Epilogue
• Glossary
• Biographical Sketches
• Index
• About the Author