Dutch Girl Page 6

  As the day wore on, the spectacle continued. “Then came the rumble of trucks,” said Audrey, as troop carriers drove through, their bays full of German soldiers hunched forward, rifles between their knees.

  “And the next thing we knew was that they had taken complete charge of the town.”

  6

  Dancer

  “I started studying ballet very soon after I arrived in Holland,” said Audrey. “I had taken various lessons in England and loved dancing, and once I’d started in Holland, I decided I wanted to be a ballerina.”

  Before and after the Germans marched in, the desire for ballet burned within the heart of the eleven year old. Around her was a world in chaos. The Netherlands fell to the German invasion in five days. The Dutch army had been preparing for the possibility of war for years, and the troops of Gen. Henri Gerard Winkelman, fighting shoulder to shoulder with French and Belgian forces, mauled the vanguard of Hitler’s Sixth Army and panzer divisions. Dutch fighter planes supported by the RAF took down scores of German aircraft, but there were simply too many and the Dutch air forces were overwhelmed. On Tuesday afternoon, 14 May, a formation of fifty German Heinkel He-111 twin-engine bombers attacked central Rotterdam with incendiary bombs. In twenty minutes a two-square-mile section of the city blazed. Water mains were hit, so there was no way to fight the fires, and up went Rotterdam in an all-consuming inferno that nearly vaporized 11,000 buildings and killed hundreds (according to the Germans) or thousands (according to the Dutch). German high command threatened to repeat the process in Amsterdam, The Hague, Arnhem, and every other major Dutch city unless the nation surrendered. With no options left, General Winkelman offered his sword that evening.

  Hitler’s attack plan had also included an attempt to drop paratroopers on the airfields of The Hague to capture the Dutch government—fifty-nine-year-old Queen Wilhelmina of the House of Oranje, her daughter, Princess Juliana, and Juliana’s husband, Prince Bernhard, along with Prime Minister Pieter S. Gerbrandy and other authorities, and one of Juliana’s staff, Ella’s sister Marianne, Baroness van Heemstra. But this plan was foiled. The Germans had underestimated Dutch resourcefulness, and Queen Wilhelmina and her government escaped to London, where the House of Oranje set up camp and remained free to provide leadership from afar to a people who had been demoralized by the unexpected aggression of their neighbor.

  Despite the savage bombing of Rotterdam, once Winkelman capitulated, the Germans offered Holland a firm hand in friendship. Truth was, Hitler respected the Aryan roots of the Dutch, along with their prosperity, ingenuity, and warrior traditions; he was certain they would see the value of and profit from a unified European empire. In a show of good faith, the Germans released all Dutch military prisoners taken in the five-day war on condition that the Dutch army would disband and all captured German soldiers and Dutch Nazis in the Netherlands would be freed.

  Alex had survived the fighting and returned to Arnhem, but rumor was that Dutch soldiers would soon be conscripted into the German army. Alex had no intention of letting that happen, even if his mother did support the Reich. He gathered some belongings and then said good-bye to his family. Many of his mates were going into hiding, and he would join them. Adriaantje took the separation hard and Ian even harder, but at least Alex was alive and determined to remain that way.

  After one day of excitement in Arnhem and a few more in other parts of the country, life settled down for the Dutch population. The sun continued to rise in the morning and set in the evening, and shops continued to operate. The trees were green, spring blooms were out, and soon people of all ages were cruising around on their bikes as if nothing had happened at all. In Arnhem proper, the only major changes to the landscape were the missing bridges, the magnificent Arnhem Road Bridge and the nearby railroad bridge, both of which lay as twisted and partially submerged piles of rubble in the middle of the Rhine. But the Germans set the Dutch right to the task of rebuilding both, and before too long the big steel road bridge and long railroad bridge were back in place. It seemed that life wouldn’t be so bad under the new regime after all.

  There were, however, minor changes to the scenery: All signs and placards were now printed in German; below in smaller letters were any Dutch translations needed. German eagles started to appear on documents and posters, and red flags with swastikas. Most interesting, a new color of uniform appeared on Arnhem streets: green uniforms, worn by men who seemed to be watching everything, everywhere. These were the German Ordnungspolizei, or order police. To the Dutch they quickly became known as the Green Police.

  “The Germans tried to be civil and to win our hearts,” said Audrey. “The first few months we didn’t know quite what had happened…. A child is a child is a child; I just went to school.” It was here that she noticed new and obvious changes to the curriculum. “It is impossible for Americans to understand the extent to which the Nazi occupation invaded our lives. In the schools, the children learned their lessons in arithmetic with problems like this: ‘If 1,000 English bombers attack Berlin and 900 are shot down, how many will return to England?’”

  At the beginning of June 1940, Nazi armies were working on arithmetic problems of their own, as in, how to finish off the 400,000 French and British troops they had pushed up against the English Channel at Dunkirk. It turned out they couldn’t execute final maneuvers in time, and all but about 40,000 Allied soldiers escaped in a miraculous evacuation. However, France and the finest army in Europe had fallen to the Nazis, who now raised their flags all the way to the North Sea.

  In Arnhem changes were subtle at first. The American movies starring Clark Gable, Ginger Rogers, and other Hollywood stars disappeared from the Rembrandt, Luxor, and Cinema Palace theaters, and only German features and short subjects were available for viewing. The Arnhemsche Courant stopped publishing for a short time and then restarted with some of the staff replaced by new writers chosen from the ranks of the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging, or NSB, the Dutch National Socialist Movement. Official numbers showed that about 100,000 Dutch citizens joined the NSB, but more than ten percent of the population was openly supporting the German occupiers and using the raised-hand greeting to salute the Führer and his symbol, the swastika.

  Terms like “Germanic brotherhood” and “people’s community” were seen in print and heard on radio. A German ruling government was established in The Hague, with Austrian attorney Arthur Seyss-Inquart appointed Reichskommissar of the Netherlands. According to his own description of his mission: “I was responsible for the civil administration, and, within this administrative task, I had to look after the interests of the Reich. Apart from this I had a political task. I was to see to it that while Dutch independence was maintained, the Netherlands should be persuaded to change their pro-British attitude for a pro-German one and enter into a close economic collaboration.” He reported directly to Hitler.

  The German army of occupation was placed under Nazi Luftwaffe Gen. Friedrich Christiansen, a winner of German aviation’s “Blue Max” for downing enemy planes in the Great War. This former aviator was an unlikely choice for the command of ground forces in an occupied country.

  All police units in the Netherlands, including the SS and the security police, were placed under the supervision of Hanns Albin Rauter, a tall, square-shouldered man with scars on his face courtesy of student duels with the Mensurschläger, a heavy German saber. Rauter reported directly to Berlin and the ruthless head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler.

  This was not an administration that would devote even a moment’s effort to winning the hearts of Dutchmen. They didn’t even try. It seemed they cared about Dutch independence only because it took a while to put the mechanisms of brutality in place. This is what some Dutch mistook as a quiet period of relative normalcy. To them, for a short time it seemed the Nazis might not be “so bad.”

  Seyss-Inquart made it a priority to hand-pick people for the top spots in government, the courts, the cities, the banks, and the railroads. Among his initial
orders was one that set the tone for many that would follow: He decreed that German men in uniform be served first at Dutch restaurants and shops in all circumstances. This established an ominous tone, because gray-uniformed occupation troops and green-clad German police were all over the streets of Arnhem. Initially, local shopkeepers found the added foot traffic to be a boon to business; the Germans spent freely and sent Dutch goods to their families back home.

  Baron van Heemstra of Huis Zijpendaal had been a proponent of German business in the 1920s, and he tried to keep an open mind now. He even shared his passion for stamp collecting with the local German officer corps, some of whom were avid supporters of the hobby.

  It wouldn’t take long for the viewpoint of the baron to change. The Netherlands was a bountiful nation based on its rich polderland soil and abundant water supply, and the Nazis were empire building, straining every resource to clothe, feed, arm, and equip armies that now occupied not only the Netherlands but also Belgium and France and threatened England. It would be up to the Netherlands to help keep bellies full for the fighting men of the Reich, and just five weeks after the occupation began, the first appearance of rationing set limits on the amount of bread a family could purchase. Bread! The Dutch prided themselves as bread connoisseurs and arranged their very lives around its consumption. They loved bread, savored it, cherished it. The rationing wasn’t severe at all, but when the quality of white and rye bread began to drop because white flour could no longer be imported, consumption fell correspondingly whether the product had been rationed or not. To a Dutchman, the only thing worse than no bread was bad bread. Over something so basic, discontent began to grow.

  On 10 July the Battle of Britain commenced, with waves of German bombers and fighter escorts attacking England day after day and a ground invasion pending. In the Netherlands that month, butter, margarine, fats, and cream were not only rationed but disappearing from the shops. Without warning all these ingredients that had been sewn into the fabric of Dutch life were being diverted to Germany. And so it went with every commodity as bit by bit, life in Holland changed for the worse.

  On 28 July Radio Oranje staged its inaugural broadcast from London over the BBC—a spine-tingling address by Queen Wilhelmina from exile. She wasn’t skilled as an orator, but she was safe and feisty, and early on she refused to dignify the occupiers by calling them German. She referred to them as “moffen” or simply “moff,” a very old Dutch ethnic slur meaning unwashed and backward people.

  The new Dutch broadcasting network then set to the task of providing a steady stream of information from the Allies to the occupied people of the Netherlands. The Germans had anticipated the establishment of such a communication tool by the Allies and issued the “Measure for the Protection of the Dutch Population Against Untrue Information.” With this act, the occupied people would be kept away from “false news” and given information they could trust from officially sanctioned pro-Nazi stations broadcasting from the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Anyone caught listening to a unsanctioned station, particularly the BBC and Radio Oranje, would be severely punished.

  Still, the Dutch didn’t pay a whole lot of attention; they just went about their radio listening more carefully. Ella added another part-time job to her Pander arrangement by seeking work in Arnhem at the religious hospital Diaconessenhuis, located just a few blocks from Audrey’s elementary school. Ella chose this hospital even though the Germans had begun placing wounded soldiers there because her father, the baron, sat at the head of the board of directors, which she figured would give her an “in.” Ella tried the direct approach via the front door to speak with the facility’s medical director, Willem Frederik Emaus. But Ella wasn’t a medical professional and Emaus denied her request; his administrative staff was, he told Ella, full at the moment; he didn’t need any help.

  At the end of the war, Emaus recalled that shortly after this conversation, he was surprised to find Ella working in the hospital, supervising workers in the kitchen even though he had turned down her request for work. It was clear she had found another way in. The fact that she was speaking German to an all-German kitchen staff in a German war hospital would haunt her in the years to come.

  Work was work, and Ella needed to support herself and two children, especially considering Adriaantje’s burning ambition to begin ballet lessons in Arnhem. The would-be dancer finally got her wish in the autumn of 1940 when she was enrolled at the Arnhemsche Muziekschool at Boulevard Heuvelink 2, the fine two-story brick building with high-arched windows in central Arnhem across the street from the home of Cornelia, Countess van Limburg Stirum, and her girls’ school. Audrey’s enrollment coincided with the arrival of a new dance teacher to replace Irail Gadescov as director of the music school’s Dansschool. The incoming mistress of dance was Ella’s new friend, Dutch ballerina Winnie Koopman who had adopted the romantic stage name of Winja Marova with its implication that she was Russian and not a Dutch Jew. Not coincidentally, Marova was in love with virtuoso violinist Douwe Draaisma, Muziekschool director and a married man. After a quick divorce, the violinist married the new dancing teacher.

  Marova found her new pupil Adriaantje to be far too “round” from poor eating habits but “very eager to learn and possessed by dance. She really had everything to do with it,” said Marova. “She was also very musical: I always taught her with great pleasure. She drank in everything you said. At her first performance I already saw how good she was.”

  The new student was equally enthralled with her instructor: “I’d admired many dancers from afar,” said Audrey, “but Winja was the first one that I really got to know and could call a friend. She was a beautiful, world-class dancer. I think that her being Dutch helped this very young girl in Arnhem to believe that she could become one too.”

  Adriaantje gave herself completely to the world of dance. The beginnings of an iron will forged out of Ella’s unique manner of parenting served the aspiring dancer well in this initial season at the Dansschool. Whatever Marova coached or advised about routine, regimen, practice, and focus, the student adopted without question. She would do whatever was in her power to make up for getting such a late start in ballet—considering that Margot Fonteyn gave her first public performance at age four. Luckily Adriaantje was light on her feet and had the internal rhythm necessary for dance. The rest would come from sheer determination.

  Ella watched with excitement as her daughter began to blossom; the baby fat she had carried with her now began to melt away under the rigors of daily instruction, and she insisted on growing out her severe Dutch-girl haircut because everyone knew ballerinas had long hair.

  As the dancer danced, the baroness forged ahead in an Arnhem society just beginning to adjust to occupation. Ella saw that maintaining cordial relations with the ruling German administration in the city was the best way to get ahead in these circumstances. She could turn on great charm when she saw the need, and do it in multiple languages. She was seen with German officers at a tea house called Thee-Schenkerij in the Sonsbeek section of Arnhem, and in particular seemed fond of former AGFA businessman M.H.E. Oestreich, now ortsgruppenführer in Arnhem for the NSB. This Dutch Nazi official was probably the German officer that Ella’s friends in the Christian Science Church, the Heringas, met when they stopped by at the apartment on Jansbinnensingel. Ella introduced the German officer as a relative, although she had no such relatives of record in the NSB. Eyewitnesses swore under oath in a post-war investigation by Dutch police that after the occupation had begun, Ella displayed a German eagle and a flag of the Reich, a red field with a black and white swastika inside it, in the van Heemstra apartment. She may have kept these items on view to impress Oestreich. Ella didn’t deny later that she kept a framed photo of herself standing on the steps of Hitler’s Munich headquarters, the Braunes Haus, laughing with Pamela Mitford, Micky Burn, and British aristocrat Coleridge Hills and his wife, J.C. It was a photo taken the day Ella had met Hitler in 1935, and it remained for her a happ
y memory.

  In autumn 1940, with everything going so well, with the Germans trying to, as Audrey said, “win our hearts,” Ella reciprocated. She began planning a cultural evening in Düsseldorf to benefit German war relief that would presumably involve talent from Arnhem, including perhaps Adriaantje in some capacity. Ella’s beau, Ortsgruppenführer Oestreich, was involved as well, and even invited the civilian police commander of Arnhem, Cornelius den Hartog, to attend. With the near-complete destruction of Düsseldorf later in the war, records fail to indicate whether the cultural evening planned by van Heemstra and Oestreich ever took place, but the fact that they were inviting people seems to indicate that it did.

  Audrey Hepburn never said a word about her mother’s alliances during the war. By spring 1941 Adriaantje was enthralled with dance and making great progress under the tutelage of Winja Marova while also spending time with Ella at Castle Zijpendaal, the home of the baron, Meisje, and Otto. It was a quiet, still place where she could laze on the lawn reading books, her other passion, the one instilled by brother Alex.

  She said, “Before I was thirteen I had read nearly every book by Edgar Wallace and Edward Phillips Oppenheim, who wrote a long series of romantic mysteries about secret international documents, shifty diplomats and seductive adventuresses …. To me as a girl they had far more appeal than books like Topsy Goes to School.”

  Yes, she loved the outdoors and hanging out with her brothers at every opportunity. At the same time, “I don’t think I was a tomboy,” said Audrey. “I’d say I was a rather moody child, quiet and reticent, and I liked to be by myself a great deal—which made me quite an easy child to raise. Nevertheless, I needed a great deal of understanding, which I always got from my mother.”