WALLY VAN HALL | The Resistance Banker

Tilly and Wally van Hall,
married, March 1, 1932

March 28, 2021—I have seen "The Resistance Banker" three times. The first time was in Zaandam, in April 2018, a month after it first came out in Holland. It was then available only in Dutch with English subtitles. It was a great movie even when seen in Dutch. I was impressed.

It was the most-watched movie in Holland in 2018. It won the Dutch equivalent of the Oscar, the Golden Calf, and it grossed $4 million, which is good for a movie in Dutch.

The main heroes are Walraven (Wally) van Hall and—in real life and in the movie—his wife Tilly den Tex van Hall. Netflix dubbed the Dutch movie in English. It is available to anyone with a Netflix account here: https://www.netflix.com/title/80244019.

I watched the Netflix version twice this week, once alone and two days later again with my wife Alice. This movie is excellent for two kinds of people: (1) Those who think they know a lot about World War II, and (2) Those who don't. It gives a vivid idea of what Resistance in Holland meant, and this is not something that World War II buffs generally know much about.

The movie has great value as a reminder of what the Greatest Generation in Europe faced on the home front—for Europeans, World War II in Europe was not just, or even primarily, about the battlefields. As a military force, the Dutch did not last long. The Nazi Occupation took them by surprise (they had been promised the right to remain neutral, as the Dutch were nominally in World War I) and the war played out in homes and workplaces. 

A True Hero

There were many who would like to be remembered as heroes, but the documented heroes are few in number. Mostly people put their heads down and just tried to survive, which was not easy. Many collaborated in one way or another, usually because they were afraid of their lives and the lives of their families. A few felt they had to do their duty as Dutch citizens, which meant resisting the Nazi occupation.

Wally and his brother Gijs van Hall succeeded in raising today's equivalent of one billion dollars. He did this in part by counterfeiting Treasury bonds and substituting the fake bonds for real ones in the vaults of the Dutch central bank. The proceeds of the sale of the real bonds went to Resistance groups and people entitled to pensions and salaries that the Nazi government would not pay. He also borrowed money from prominent Dutch people, giving them out-of-date stock certificates or one-guilder notes, keeping track of the numbers so they could be redeemed after the war. 

When the Queen returned to Holland after the war, she repaid every obligation. All the money was accounted for. We know all this because of the meticulously documented work of the late Dr. Louis (Loe) de Jong (1914-2005). He wrote—in Dutch only, alas—a formidable 14-volume history of World War II in Holland. 

Dr. de Jong was not given to lavish praise of many of the Dutch Resistance leaders.  But because the Nationaal Steun Fonds (National Support Fund, NSF) enabled so many other activities of the Dutch Resistance, de Jong considered Wally to be Holland's most important underground worker during the war. 

In his Erasmus Lectures on the Dutch Resistance given at Harvard in 1988, de Jong was cautious. He quoted Dutch historian Johan Huizinga: "History, like good sherry, should be dry" (de Jong, Erasmus Lectures, Harvard, 1988, 30). However, on the subject of Wally's stewardship of Resistance funds, de Jong is sweet:

[T]he underground movement in the Netherlands was unique insofar as it numbered one secret organization whose sole task was to collect the money needed to keep all other groups in action and to provide financial support to many of the thousands in hiding. [...] The total expenses of this financial organization alone amounted to a [1988] value of perhaps $500 million [i.e., more than $1 billion in 2021 using the BLS inflation calculator], and when liberation came, all expenses were accounted for, not a single dime having been misappropriated, and all the people and companies from whom money had been borrowed were repaid by the government (de Jong, 46-47).

Coming from a dry historian who is careful with his words, such high praise of Wally is astounding.

The Dutch put "The Resistance Banker" up for an Oscar as the best foreign film of 2018.  It did not win. At the end of this post I suggest a few reasons why not, and why the world needs an American version of the movie.

The Resistance and the Holocaust

The horror of the Holocaust in Holland is told in the movie in three ways:

• First, near the opening of the movie, Wally's fellow banker Isaak Meijer, who is Jewish, misses an appointment with him. Wally is concerned and walks to Isaak's  house. He finds Isaak hanged and his wife and daughter dead in front of cups of tea.  On the table is the Occupation's instructions for them to leave their home and turn off utilities. Their house has been taken over, as happened to all Jewish Amsterdammers not living in the confined ghetto. Knowing what they faced, the family chose to end their lives. At this point, Wally is recruited by a Resistance leader with a naval background to raise money for Dutch merchant-marine pensioners whose stipends have been cut off.
• Later, a freight car filled with people passes a passenger car. These are prisoners headed for the deadly concentration camps.  The passengers, realistically, averted their eyes. Tragically, social-service records in Holland were kept by religion, since welfare was distributed through church institutions. This made it easy for SS trackers in Holland to pursue their genocidal mission. In other occupied countries, the Wehrmacht was in charge; they were more interested in waging war than racial extermination. 
• The movie alludes briefly at the end to how much Wally and the Resistance did to hide or find safe passage for Jewish targets. He received a posthumous Yad Vashem award after the war, and these have not been given out lightly.

What did the Resistance do about the Holocaust? It found hiding places for some Jewish families. It forged papers for them. It managed to get some out via train to Belgium and France; they had a connection in Paris who would meet the trains. It provided information to the Jewish community. It bombed record centers where the Nazi administration was preparing its systematic genocidal program. It targeted Dutch collaborators and S.S. officers. These are some of the activities of the Resistance that Wally van Hall's money financed. The total amount that Wally obtained was one hundred million Dutch guilders, or half a billion euros in today's money.

The moment when Wally is captured in a roundup of Resistance workers is economically captured by his son Aad falling out of a tree and Tilly dropping a plate. Tilly is credibly played by Fockeline Ouwerkerk. Wally's brother Gijsbert ("Gijs") van Hall is well portrayed as less brave than Wally, but someone who came through for him in many ways. Gijs survived to tell the story and was elected Mayor of Amsterdam after the war. 

Family Connections

When I was in Holland in 2015 and 2018, I visited with two of Wally's three children (Adrienne, Aad and Mary-Ann). All three are now deceased. The two older ones, Adrienne and Wally, are shown at the beginning of "The Resistance Banker." All of them are shown as children in a photo of Wally and Tilly and family, posted by a Florida-based blogger named Toritto.  https://toritto.wordpress.com/2018/10/10/banker-to-the-resistance-walraven-van-hall/. I mention also in my 2015 visit with a van Hall daughter relative, Ellen van Wurpel. https://inezmb.blogspot.com/2016/03/boissevain-american-descendants-of.html.

Also, I have previously posted about Tilly van Hall. Her maiden surname was den Tex (in Dutch it would be hyphenated with the husband's name first: Tilly van Hall-den Tex). My 2015 post about Tilly is here: http://nyctimetraveler.blogspot.com/2015/07/anna-mathilde-tilly-den-tex-1907-1988.html. It shows, with help from my cousin Charles Leidschendam Boissevain, also alas deceased, how the children of Charles Boissevain the newspaper editor, my grandmother Olga's father, are related in multiple ways to the van Halls and den Texes, on both sides of the marriage.

My mother, Hilda van Stockum, had many Dutch relatives who wrote to her about Wally and Tilly van Hall. These letters were used when she wrote her two books on the Dutch Resistance and the Holocaust, The Winged Watchman (Farrar Straus 1962 and Bethlehem Books/Ignatius Press, 1995) and The Borrowed House (Farrar Straus 1975 and Purple House Press, 2016).

Need for an American Version of the Movie

As someone said to me, "for a Dutch movie, this is a great production." I agree. Also, to my mind, Netflix did an excellent post-production job getting the film ready for an American audience, although there were a few lapses, as when the American-English-dubbed voice of Wally (played by Barry Atsma) refers to Jaap (pronounced Yaap in Dutch) using the English pronunciation of "J".

Here is a review that suggests some reasons. The first half is a bit slow in building, and for an American audience the movie might be puzzling because the things Americans  remember most about World War II are the U.S. military intervention and the encounters such as the Normandy landing. The concept of Nazis being put in charge of institutions, and how that works out in practice, might be more understandable in 2021 than it was in 2018, as we better understand the extent to which a misinformation campaign can capture people's minds.  https://readysteadycut.com/2018/09/12/the-resistance-banker-review/.

The Dutch movie misses the full potential of the story for American and British film audience. It would be helpful to elaborate on connections that the historical characters had with the rest of the world. For example, Wally and Gijs went to work for Wall Street in the period before and after the Crash of 1929. This is not mentioned and is a glaring omission. Imagine what that must have been like for them. How much they must have learned about downsides to the stock market...

Something about that year could usefully substitute for the fuzzy-boat images that the Dutch version uses—they might be heart-warming for some, but for others they might seem lazy. A blockbuster American feature film could be made out of this idea of a banker risking his life to help the Resistance, under the nose of the Nazis. The Anglo-American view of bankers as benignly addicted to acquisition could do with this portrait of someone at a bank selflessly serving his country. I posted something along these lines in 2018: http://nyctimetraveler.blogspot.com/2018/05/wally-van-hall-movie-in-english.html.

HOLLAND | The WW2 Honorary Graves Revisited

This is the section (33) of the cemetery that includes the executed
Resistance fighters who were referred to in Jan Campert's poem,
"De achttien dooden" ("The Eighteen Dead"). The graves of Gi and
 Janka are at the far end of the row. I have posted the poem at the end.

When I visited the Honorary Cemetery, the Eerebegraaf-plaats, in 2015 with Charles Boissevain (b. 1934), few other people were in the cemetery.

Yesterday, I went with many others to the cemetery, because it was May 4, Remembrance Day.

New Stories – Hans Nieuwenhuijzen

Since 2015, Charles has passed on to me during the period since he and I visited.

In particular, he wrote to me about a talk that Hans Nieuwenhuijzen gave to the Verzets Museum.

Starting Point to Cemetery. Road closed
to motor traffic.

Like Charles (and my eldest sister Olga), Hans was born in 1934. His father was in the Resistance together with Walraven "Wally" van Hall, about whom a Dutch film has just appeared. It won a prize, Aad van Hall told me on Thursday (May 3), for the first Dutch movie in 2018 to sell 100,000 tickets. He thinks they are now past 350,000 tickets and closing in on 400,000. That is a lot of tickets in Holland.

The movie, which is in Dutch, shows how Wally and his brother Gijs had two main ways of raising money.

One was borrowing money from Dutch people and giving them worthless old bonds – there would have been many of them after the Occupation – in exchange, keeping careful track of the numbers for use after the war. The Queen promised on Radio Orange to honor these debts and after the war every penny was repaid.

The other way they raised money was to rob the Nederlandsche Bank (the Dutch Central Bank).

They stole for the Resistance an enormous amount of money, perhaps the largest bank heist in history, by printing up counterfeit money or bonds [I am still trying to find out exactly what was done], and substituting them for those in the bank vault, while taking out the genuine cash or bonds for distribution to Resistance workers and onderduikers (literally "under-duckers" or "under-divers") such as Jewish refugees.

Dutch flag at half mast, before
 the silence.

Wally, along with the father of Hans and others, was caught in January 1945 and they were shot on February 12, 1945. They are buried at the Eerebegraafplaats Bloemendaal, which although named after nearby Bloemendaal is accessed only from the long road from Overveen. Charles and I visited the graves together in 2015.

Hans knew Charles Boissevain’s uncle Jan “Canada” Boissevain and his aunt Mies and their five children, who were living at Corellistraat 6, base of the deadly CS6 armed-resistance unit. His sons Janka and Gi, caught working for CS6 on Oct 1, 1943 and shot by the Nazis.

Hans told the story that Janka and Gi tried to escape to England on a home-made boat in the summer of 1940. At the Waddensea, just west of Friesland, they were caught by the Germans. They could have been killed for this.

Bell ringing started the remembrance. The
participants stood in silence for several
minutes. At the end, the nationally observed
minutes of silence. (Trains were stopped.)

Fortunately, their uncle Tom de Booy (married to Hilda Boissevain, sister of my grandmother Olga and Charles' grandfather Charles E. H.)  worked for the Dutch Boat Rescue Society at the place where Janka and Gi arrived as prisoners.

Uncle Tom had the presence of mind to tell  the Germans, laughing loudly, that this was just a student joke, that the boys had a bet that they could reach one of the Wadden islands on their home-made boat. Now they had lost the bet, and would have to pay for a lot of beer for their friends. The Germans saw this was plausible and they let Janka and Gi free.

Visiting the Eerebegraafplaats in 2018

On the way from the Overveen station to the Eeregraafplaats, I met a well-known Dutch (and German) actor, Chiem van Houweninge, and his wife Marina. Chiem is writing a script about another Resistance leader, Cees de Jong. He is a friend of Cees's son Jan. I wondered whether Loe de Jong, who wrote the 24-volume history of World War II in Holland, was related, and was told not to their knowledge.

Flag restored to top of the mast after the
minutes of silence.

Chiem wrote several film scripts that were made into movies, including:

• "Storm en Mein Hoof" (Storm in My Head)
• "Die Inbreeker" (The Burglar)
• "Dear Boys" (about Central Heating[?])

Chiem also wrote perhaps 500 situation-comedy scripts for Dutch and German television, many of them centered around a female doctor.

Chiem and Marina's son is also named Chiem and is also an actor. He played the part of the bad guy in the Walraven van Hall movie, Ross von Tonningen, the collaborator who headed the Nederlandsche Bank for the Reichscommissar Seiss-Inquart. After the war, von Tonningen was hanged and his wife was called the "Black Widow."

Two Brothers (Gi and Janka) and Their Co-Worker,
Walter Brandligt. Under Janka's name is the family
motto, which he scrawled on the wall.
"Ni regret du passé, ni peur de l'avenir."

Then I met Dr. Hildebrand de Boer, who gave me a lift up to the Eerebegraafplaats and also gave me a copy of his fine book of poems, one for each year he has been volunteering to drive older people some or all of the 4-km. trip to the Eeregraafplaats.

At the cemetery, I took a lot photos and show some of them here. In front of the graves of Gi and Janka, I was informed that the grandson of Walter was there, and we shook hands, took some photos and said we would be in touch!

The Poem by Jan Campert – Song of the Eighteen Dead

The poem by Jan Campert (1902-1943) is probably the most famous poem in Holland about World War II. He was a journalist and did theater reviews. After his country was invaded in 1940 and occupied by the Nazis, he helped Jews in trouble. He was arrested and taken to the Neuengamme concentration camp, where he was killed or died in 1943. 

With the grandson of Walter Brandligt.

Published illegally in 1943, his poem, “De achttien dooden” (“The Eighteen Dead”), tells of the execution by the Nazis of eighteen resistance fighters. These Eighteen, I was told, refer to those shot with Gi and Janka Boissevain. 

Jan Campert was the father of today's  popular Dutch novelist and poet, Remco Campert, who said: "Resistance starts not with big words but with small deeds."

The following English translation of Jan Campert's poem is by Cliff Credo; it is the only one I could find.

A cell is but six feet long

and hardly six feet wide,

yet smaller is the patch of ground,

that I now do not yet know,

but where I nameless come to lie,

my comrades all and one,

we eighteen were in number then,

none shall the evening see come.

O loveliness of light and land,

of Holland's so free coast,

once by the enemy overrun

could I no moment more rest.

What can a man of honor and trust 

do in a time like this?

He kisses his child, he kisses his wife

and fights the noble fight.

I knew the task that I began,

a task with hardships laden,

the heart that couldn't let it be

but shied not away from danger;

it knows how once in this land

freedom was everywhere cherished,

before the cursed transgressor's hand

had willed it otherwise.

Before the oath can brag and break

existed this wretched place

that the lands of Holland did invade

and for ransom her ground has held;

Before the appeal to honor is made 

and such Germanic comfort

our people forced under their control

and looted as a thief. 

The Catcher of Rats who lives in Berlin

sounds now his melody,—

as true as I shortly dead shall be

Graves of Hendrik de Jong and Walraven van Hall.

my dearest no longer see

and no longer shall the bread be broke

and share a bed with her—

reject all he offers now and ever

that sly trapper of birds. 

For all whom these words think to read

my comrades in great need and those who stand by them through all

in their adversity tall,

just as we have thought and thought

on our own land and people—

a day does shine after every night,

as every cloud must pass.

I see how the first morning light

through the high window falls.

My God, make my dying light—

and so I have failed

just as each of us can fail,

pour me then Your grace,

that I may like a man then go 

if I a squadron must face.

Comment by JTM: "Squadron" on the last line doesn't seem to be the right word. It was used of cavalry or airplanes, not firing squads...

DUTCH HISTORY | Johan and Jimmy Huizinga

Johan Huizinga was a founder of the field of cultural history. He
wrote critically about Fascism in the 1930s, was arrested in 1942
for speaking out against the Nazis, and died in prison in 1945.

July 24, 2016—Wally van Hall, who has been called the "Prime Minister of the Dutch Resistance," as a young man in 1929 went to New York to work with his brother Gijsbert (Gijs) van Hall. 

They met up with their Dutch friend Jimmy Huizinga and they had a great time, according to Aad van Hall (son of Wally van Hall).

I emailed Charles "Leidschendam" Boissevain (the middle name is to distinguish this Charles Boissevain from so many others) to ask whether Jimmy Huizinga was the son of the great Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, and the answer came back overnight from him and Marleen van Hall Habraken (daughter of Gijs van Hall, who became Mayor of Amsterdam after the war):

Yes! Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) had two sons Leonhard (1906-1980), author of a humorous book and some articles, and Jacob "Jimmy" Herman (1908-1983), who was a good friend of Wally and Tilly van Hall and often stayed with them when they were living in Staten Island, New York. (Another son, Dirk, shows up on searches.) Marleen has pictures of Jimmy with Gijs, Wally and Emmie (Gijs' wife) in good spirits in their garden. Marleen reports as follows [translation by Charles]:

Jimmy wrote for the NRC (the NRC and Algemeen Handelsblad merged in 1970 into the present NRCHandelsblad). When Emmie went back to Holland he arranged for her to write about American literature, for quite a long time. They were also friends with Jimmy's older brother Leonard Huizinga, his wife and daughter (born in 1930). We have a picture of a summer house that our families rented in Noordwijk, a well-known village on the North Sea, 20 miles north of The Hague. I remember Leonard saying that children should be seen, not heard!

I am grateful to  Charles "Leidschendam" Boissevain, Marleen van Hall Habraken and Aad van Hall for the above information.

Postscript, August 2, 2020: I just heard from T. J. Rider McDowell, who said: "Jimmy Huizinga was my surrogate grandfather. Great guy." 

In his Erasmus Lectures at Harvard, Loe de Jong quotes Jimmy's father Johan Huizinga as saying: "History, like good sherry, should be dry." The following on Johan is from various Internet sources.

Johan Huizinga

Johan was the son of Gröningen Physiology Professor Dirk Huizinga and Jacoba Tonkens, who died two years after Johan was born. He was a student of Indo-Germanic languages, graduating in 1895. He then studied comparative linguistics, learning Sanskrit in the process. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the role of the jester in Indian drama in 1897.

In 1902 he started writing about medieval and Renaissance history, with his first writing a biography of Erasmus. He  became Professor of General and Dutch History at Gröningen in 1905. In 1915, he was appointed Professor of General History at Leiden University, a post he held until 1942, when the Nazis removed him. He opposed Fascism in the 1930s and in 1942 spoke critically of the Nazi occupiers. From then until his death in 1945 he was locked up by the Nazi regime. His body lies in the graveyard of the Reformed Church at 6 Haarlemmerstraatweg in Oegstgeest.

Huizinga, The Play Element of Culture.

Huizinga founded a whole field of study, cultural research. His knowledge of languages led him to examine the role of playing, of games, in the formation of culture. He believed that games preceded culture, that animals instinctively know how to play and that playing leads to culture. Huizinga attempts to classify the words used for play

Greek

παιδιά — pertaining to children's games

ἄθυρμα — associated with the idea of the trifling, the nugatory

ἀγών — for matches and contests

Sanskrit

krīdati — denoting the play of animals, children, adults

divyati — gambling, dicing, joking, jesting, ...

vilāsa — shining, sudden appearance, playing and pursuing an occupation

līlayati — light, frivolous insignificant sides of playing

Chinese

wan — is the most important word covering children's games and much much more  cheng — denoting anything to do with contests; corresponds exactly to the Greek ago. sai — organized contest for a prize

Japanese
      asobu — is a single, very definite word, for the play function

Semitic languages

la’ab (a root, cognate with la’at) — play, laughing, mocking

la’iba (Arabic) — playing in general, making mock of, teasing^[13]

la’ab (Aramaic) — laughing and mocking

sahaq (Hebrew) — laughing and playing

Latin

ludus — from ludere, covers the whole field of play

Huizinga's study of culture stood him in good stead in the 1930s when he started to research and write critically about the culture of Fascism. He studied it as a game. He said:

You can deny almost everything: the beauty, the truth, the spirit of God. You can deny seriousness. But you can never deny the game.

WW2 | 4. Months 1-9–The de Booij Dilemmas

The General Strike of February 25-26 in the Amsterdam region was
 the Dutch answer to nine months' wooing by the Nazi occupiers.
 Gijs van Hall was Wally van Hall's older brother, who survived
WW2 and was elected Mayor of Amsterdam.

(Updated Jan. 27, 2020) 

The Nazi invaders of Holland suffered a brief initial setback from the fierce fighting of the Dutch defenders.

But then, for nine months, from May 10, 1940 to February 23, 1941, the Dutch Occupation seemed to be going according to the Nazi plan.

The Public Face of the Nazis

The Nazis tried at first to administer Holland with the appearance of benevolence, while steadily turning the screws on its Jewish population.

Jews in Amsterdam were better informed about the Nazis than the rest of the population, since many of them had fled from cruelty in Germany and other countries, thinking Holland was a safe haven.

The non-Jewish population was ambivalent. They were surprised that life was continuing to go on apparently as usual. They were given the impression that basic democratic institutions such as political parties were going to survive. Deprivations in the first year were not crippling for most Dutch people, especially outside of Amsterdam and a few other large cities.

But the Nazis were relentlessly pursuing the identification of Jews and were then quietly taking action. In Amsterdam, Jews were herded into a ghetto. Gradually their lives became more regulated, and a few deportations started. The horrific extent of the Nazi "final solution" was steadily unveiled to Jews. Jewish families in particular were stunned when they realized that they were trapped in Holland under a venomous régime. The Verzetsmuseum (Dutch Resistance Museum) handbook, English version, quotes from the diary of a housewife living in the Hague about the fear that overtook them all:

Especially for the Jews. Oh, that tormented race. The arrival of the Germans filled them with fear, fear about the fate that was now awaiting them. Many of them preferred suicide to awaiting their fate. Entire families together. (Het Verzetsmuseum, 24, emphasis added.)

But for the next few months the occupying Nazis played a clever game, trying to reassure non-Jewish Dutch people that they were benign rulers.

The occupiers behaved properly, hoping to win over the Dutch, as part of the “Germanic brotherhood”, to National Socialism. As a gesture of goodwill, after the Dutch army was disbanded, they released the Dutch prisoners of war. … Many Dutch people thought they ought to reconcile themselves to the situation. (Het Verzetsmuseum, 24.)

Hilda Boissevain de Booij

My grandmother Olga's sister, Hilda
Boissevain de Booij, wrote on Oct.
14, 1940. The photo is from about
 1897.

A letter from my great-aunt Hilda de Booij in Amsterdam captures the mood of the Dutch in the first few months, and the problems that suddenly confronted residents, as well as problems that did not appear right away.

It was sent to her sister, my grandmother, who was living with my mother at 3728 Northampton Street, NW, in Washington, D.C. It was translated for me by my cousin Engelien de Booij, Hilda's daughter, with the expectation that I would use in in my research on the Boissevain family. Some of these letters were given to me after Engelien died, with instructions to the executor to deliver them to me.

The letter below notes that the first reaction of Dutch people to the departure of their Queen on May 14, 1940 for England was one of catastrophe.

My grandmother Olga Boissevain van Stockum, sent three letters to her closest relative in Holland, her sister Hilda Boissevain de Booij, after whom my mother is named, in April and August 1940.

None of the letters reached Amsterdam until the fall of 1940. Hilda de Booij's response is dated October 14, 1940. According to her daughter Engelien de Booij:

“We could not write to relations in Britain, but we could write to Canada and the USA. Still, we had to take care, the letters were censored [by the Nazi-run post office].” (E de Booij, abbreviated EdB, Note, Nov. 17, 2001 on Hilda de Booij, abbreviated HdB, Letter to Olga van Stockum, abbreviated OvS, Oct. 14, 1940.)

Her letter shows both hope for the future, a sense that the wartime situation had stabilized, and that the Dutch people were finding a way to coexist with the Nazis. (This view was to change greatly in 1941.)

Dear Olga, 

Just now we got your letter from April 22 and 27, also from August 23. Don’t be anxious about us. We are very calm. It is funny how very different everything is from what you would think. Nearly every day bombs fall on the city, last week quite near to where Engelien in living. [The Carlton Hotel in Amsterdam was bombed, a 10-minute walk from Engelien, she writes in 2001, suggesting that bombs were being dropped by the RAF on German-occupied targets in Amsterdam, in retaliation for the bombing of London.]

We are fatalistic or religious. We think: “Well, if we are hit by a bomb, so what? We shall hope to see each other again in this life, but … we are in the middle of a war!

I thought it would interest you to hear something about the life we are having at the moment. Our home has been “blacked out” magnificently, so we can have all our lights on as long as we still have electricity.

Hilda and Hendrik (Han) de Booij

Our central heating is still functioning; our landlord, who is also the owner of the four apartment buildings near us, looks after this. Hanna and Maurits [son of Hilda’s sister Mary Boissevain and Cor van Eeghen] live in one of these buildings, with their sweet daughters -– the second one, Maria, has the same wonderful curls that her grandmother Mary must have had.

After sundown, Han and I take care of the blackout chores and stay home for the rest of the evening, except when the moon is shining. Next Saturday we shall try to go to a talk about Tchaikovsky in the Concertgebouw from 7 to 8:40 pm.

Often I sit next the window knitting and see the soldiers exercising. We hear them as well. In the morning at 7 am or earlier we are awakened by the singing of soldiers as they pass by. They have loud voices; we hear them all day long.

Han had to leave his office because the “Gruene Polizei” took it over for their own use. Han and Tom [their son, who continued in the same nonprofit work as his father, rescuing sailors lost at sea] now have an officer on the Keizersgracht, which Tom very much prefers because it is more in the center of the city.

Han has packed a suitcase for himself in case there are “reprisals” [hostage-taking of people like Han de Booij who had been in Dutch service in Indonesia] because of the “brutal treatment” of the Germans in Indonesia [where they are shunned by the Dutch and are left to native Indonesians for service]. They took Fredrik van Asbeck already and many of our friends and relatives. Those they took went to Germany, so I heard. [Others stayed in St. Michielsgestel, where they were well enough treated, except when five of them were shot by the Nazis as a warning to others.]

Jenne den Tex [daughter-in-law of Nicolaas den Tex and Hester Boissevain, twin sister of Charles the newspaper editor] stayed a week with Hessie [Hester Boissevain van Hall, daughter of Charles], who is in bed with an inflammation of the ear. I cannot leave Han, so I could not go for so long. We have had lovely days with her. It is so quiet there [in Hattem], one does not know there is a war on. The same is true of Mary [daughter of Charles] and Mies [daughter-in-law of Charles] in Bussum.

[In Amsterdam, however] we have nights when I hardly sleep at all. Han can’t go to sleep until the noise [bombs and anti-aircraft fire] stops. We stay in bed during the noise. During the first days of the war [May 10-14, 1940], we used to get out of bed, but you can’t keep doing that. One gets accustomed to anything. When the shooting stops, we fall asleep again till the noise starts again.

We have buckets of sand in every room to empty onto a fire bomb. Supposedly it takes half a minute before it explodes. Han has met people who have extinguished before it exploded. In our bedroom we have a spade with a very long handle to pick up a bomb and throw it in the garden below.

Han and I still have enough to eat. Ot [her daughter-in-law] does not have enough bread, so we give her some of our coupons. It is difficult for children, and men who take food to work, to have enough bread. At home one can make do with something else. I don’t know how it will be this winter. I have no worries for Han and me, but what about families with growing children?

Please ask Alfred about Jimmy’s daughter Lisbeth, and Victoria and Frances.

Every Thursday, Han takes violin lessons in the morning from Dick Mesman. On Tuesdays I take singing lessons from Fiep Kwast. They both stay for lunch.

We see a lot of Frans and Engelien. They are very happy and they do not worry too much about the future. Time will tell.

The NSB (Dutch Nazi Party) has given themselves beautiful uniforms - black with a cocky hat, black and orange. The Netherlands Unie has no uniform - they sell their party newspaper in the streets. We are members of the Netherlands Unie - everyone in the party is free to have their own ideas about what should be done. [The Nederlandse Unie was a new party, not anti-German, but pro-Dutch; it did not last long.]

When our central heating fails, we have other fuel, made from the remains of coal and pressed with tar. We have a small pot-belly stove, so we won't freeze.

All the grandchildren are well. This evening we are going out to eat in town with John [van Marle] and Olga [de Booij van Marle], and Inez Hissink [daughter of Nella Boissevain Hissink], who is staying with them to recuperate from a bronchitis attack. We will have to go home at 8 p.m., because we are not allowed to be outdoors after 10 p.m., even in our own gardens.

Robert Boissevain [son of Alfred and Mies Boissevain?] has a new job with Economic Affairs, but you will have heard about this from Kitty [engaged to Herman Boissevain, son of Alfred and Mies Boissevain, but escaped the Nazis by going to America; Herman remained unmarried]. Jo H. [??] is of course deeply unhappy not having any children.

Heentie [daughter of Charles E. H. Boissevain] and Dick Mesman and their three children are very happy - a nice family. I greatly miss my Dante evenings - Miss Kuenen, who gave the lectures on Dante, has died. Last year I went to Shakespeare afternoons organized by Gerarda Lely, but I prefer Italian writers. I simply love Dante, and in my old age I have fallen in love with his Virgil. However, it’s best to read it with other people. I worked through the whole Divine Comedy twice with Miss Kuenen and whenever I am going to stay somewhere for a while I take Dante with me. 

Han has packed in his getaway suitcase Don Quixote, something by Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy’s War and Peace. He would also like to take his violin and drawing materials. Then maybe we could get through all this, if only we could go out for walks, which we are not sure we will be able to do. Enfin, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

We don’t hear so much now from family and relations. Everyone has their own problems and fears. It is especially difficult for car-owners. We have gone back to using bicycles. That way we went to see Christien van Even, former housekeeper to Aunt Nella [Brugman Boissevain], who did sewing for me and lives in the Oudekerk neighborhood of Amsterdam. It was a beautiful ride beside the Amstel River. We loved there being not cars – one of the good things about the war.

Cissy [daughter of Willem Boissevain 1849-1925] Crommellin’s husband had a business in illuminated advertising, and now his business is helping people comply with the blackout requirement. It sounds like a joke but it really is true. Cissy came to see me at lunch time. They are poor because business has not been good and the extra income they got from Farmiloe, the husband of Connie [the late sister of Cissy], has stopped [Connie lived in England until her death; after she died, her widower sent money to Cissy until the war started].

Cissy stays with her children and with Tine [van der Warden] den Tex. I have not seen Attie [like Tine, wife of a son of Nicolaas den Tex] since my birthday. She is not well and Paul den Tex says she is not up to receiving visitors. 

Emily [Henn] Cruijs is unbelievably brave, as always. Geraldine [Campbell-Dickinson], her half-sister, is even braver, if that is possible. [Both women are Irish relatives - daughters of Emily Heloise MacDonnell’s sister, Auntie May MacDonnell, who married twice. Geraldine came to Holland with her son Dick, who was a tap-dancer. Her son got away before the Nazis took over, but Geraldine stayed. She died in 1944.] She rents a small room for two guilders a week, and is sewing for friends and relations. She is proud and does not want to depend on charity. She has a problem with one of her eyes and she can’t walk well – something is wrong with her legs. She still doesn’t know what happened to her son Dick – they were both in Rotterdam on May 8, just before the invasion and the bombing.

At a time like this, you see what people are made of. I see only very strong iron or wood. Beautiful to see. In the past I have made jokes about our admiration for the Dutch in the Eight Years War, but now I see that our people have remained steady again. I don’t understand it, the curious thing called the character of a nation. How is it formed? Does climate have something to do with this? Tradition? Enfin, cleverer people than I must ponder these questions.

Dieuke [Boissevain, daughter of Charles E. H.] has had a good review of her detective novel. ... 

Han de Booy and Willem Mengelberg

Mengelberg performed Mahler every year.

Hendrik (Han) de Booij, Hilda de Booij's husband, was a staff officer of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, which hired the world-class conductor Willem Mengelberg, in 2013 and 2014. Mengelberg made the Concertgebouw into a world-famous, immortal institution.

Two of my grandmother's first cousins  were on the board and staff of the Concertgebouw, but not at the same time–Charles E. H. Boissevain was on the Board of Directors for a long time but resigned during the period that his brother-in-law Han de Booij was a staff officer.

Charles E. H. was the eldest child of Charles Boissevain, who was a leading advocate for the Concertgebouw and he helped raise money for it in his role as the editor and publisher of Holland's leading newspaper, the Algemeen Handelsblad.

The Boissevains became very close to Mengelberg, who was appointed conductor at the young age of 24, and through him to Gustav Mahler and there is a famous photo (made into a Dutch stamp) taken by de Booij of them out on the beach.

On the Zuider Zee by Valkeveen, March 1906. Standing (L to R): Alphons
Diepenbrock, Gustav Mahler, Willem Mengelberg. Seated: Mrs. M. Wubbe
Mengelberg, Hilda G. Boissevain de Booij, P. J. Boissevain and Mrs. 
E. H. (Maria Pijnappel) Boissevain. Photo by Han de Booij.

A 1995 New York Times story  acknowledges the high reputation of Mengelberg before World War II:

"What Rembrandt is to the outside world in the realm of painting," the Dutch minister of education proclaimed at the 1920 [Mahler] festival, "you are throughout Europe and America as the leader of an orchestra." In the 1930's, Mengelberg's popularity rivaled and perhaps exceeded that of Queen Wilhelmina.

Mengelberg was born to German parents who had emigrated to Holland. He was a huge fan of fellow-German Gustav Mahler, perhaps Mahler's biggest promoter, and performed him after the invasion of Holland by the Nazis until he was ordered to stop because Mahler's German-speaking parents in Bohemia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) were Jewish. Mahler married a Christian and attended a Christian church, but that was not good enough for the Nazis, although Jews married to Christians were rarely deported.

Hilda Gerarda Boissevain de Booij
with baby (Engelina de Booij?).

The problem for Han de Booij would have been how to advise Mengelberg on performing Mahler. The SS were in attendance at the Concertgebouw and made clear that they disapproved of performing Mahler, but Mengelberg went on with his performances. I do not have information on de Booij's point of view.

That Mengelberg kept the orchestra going at all during the war was an issue during the postwar hatchet days. The response of his defenders is that he thereby kept the musicians employed, and many of them were Jewish. More troubling is that Mengelberg was reported as toasting in Germany to the invasion of Holland and he was photographed talking with the hated Hitler's Austrian puppet occupation leader Seyss-Inquart. However, Mengelberg also helped many Jewish violinists hide from the Nazis (probably including Theo Olof who was sheltered by the Boissevains) and is viewed by some as having been unjustly stripped of his greatest, well-earned honors. In any case he was exiled to Switzerland for six years and never conducted again after the war. He died in 1951 at 80, after having led the Concertgebouw for 50 years (1895-1945).

Hilda Boissevain de Booij about 1970. She died in
1975, 11 years after her husband Han.

In the 2013 post I noted that Leonard Bernstein was so passionate about Mahler that he was buried with Mahler's Fifth over his heart. Recently I received an email from Riva Freifeld, who is a moviemaker. She said, confirming my account:

What a wonderful connection your family has to Mahler, Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw! And the NY Times quote was correct. [Mengelberg was the] Greatest ever. One afternoon back in the 1990s I was in Bernstein's apartment when we were making a short film about preserving all of his work on digital media, which was rather new back then. There was a photograph of Mahler in the music room, I think it was on the piano. And some scores were lying around. It was like being in a sacred place.

An autodidact-conductor of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, New Yorker Gil Kaplan, was reported in 1984 as promising to leave a score by Mahler to the Pierpont Morgan Library.

Engelien de Booij

The daughter of Han and Hilda de Booij, Engelina (known as Engelien), was a good friend of my mother when she was studying in art school in Amsterdam and stayed with the de Booys. Engelien married a Jewish man , Frans Polak, at the beginning of the war. Hilda shows her worries over the two of them by denying her concerns in her letter to her sister in 1940.

Engelien had to stay in bed because of the threat of a miscarriage. I am convinced it will be all right.

It was not all right – Engelien did not give birth to the baby, although her mother did what she could to make Engelien's life as easy as possible.

We exchanged our help–she now has my daily helper and I have her twice-a-week cleaning lady. I cancelled all my tradesmen appointments and do no cleaning–I only straighten the blankets and cook simple food. I am now the sole mistress of the home and that is wonderful.

Engelien told me late in her life that although the SS was viciously abusive towards gentiles who were married to Jews, the SS put them on a special list and spared the Jewish spouses from deportation to concentration camps. So Polak survived the war, but the couple divorced after the war because, Engelien told me, the burden of her having saved his life was too much for him to carry on a daily basis. However, they remained friends for the rest of their lives–a story confirmed by Charles Boissevain. [See also https://nyctimetraveler.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-first-year-of-dutch-occupation.html.]

The de Booij Housekeeper, H[ilda?] van Rijnbach

Originally in Dutch, this letter from Hilda de Booij's housekeeper H[ilda?] van Rijnbach, translated by my mother, describes  the brave, bordering on reckless, underground activities of the housekeeper of my mother's Aunt Hilda, who was loaned out to Engelien. The letter is  candid about some stupidity by the writer's husband in the early days of the Occupation, when the Nazis had yet to show their full inhumanity; for this, the writer was clearly ashamed. I have summarized, excerpted and annotated this letter. [This letter is the basis of Chapter 11, which could be deleted in favor of a mention here.] The full text of letter is here.

The End of the Goodwill Attempt

Public ignorance or uncertainty about the treatment of Jews in Holland ended in February 1941 and with it ended the period of hope amidst despair. The occasion was a reprisal by the Nazi government. The Dutch Nazi Party leader, Hendrik Koot, died of wounds sustained when he assaulted businesses in the Jewish ghetto. The Nazis decided on an outraged  reprisal on February 22-23, 1941 for the spraying of a police officer with ammonia gas (a cleaning agent) by a Jewish ice-cream-parlor owner. The response was to beat and deport 425 Jewish youths. 

After this, the Dutch Communist Party, which was illegal under the Nazi government, called for a strike, which shut down Amsterdam and nearby communities. This response shocked the Nazis, who thought that what they viewed as a velvet-glove approach to the Dutch had been winning friends. The strike showed 

• Dutch citizens that they were not alone in wanting to fight back, and 
• the Nazis that Holland was no Austria–the German occupiers were mostly abhorred, and the Dutch were not going to be won over.

After February 1941, the situation in Holland changed, tragically.

Notes/Sources:

de Booij, Engelien (EdB), Note, November 17, 2001, prefacing her translation of Letter from Hilda de Booij to Olga van Stockum, October 14, 1940.  

de Booij, Hilda Boissevain (HdB), Letter to her sister Olga Boissevain van Stockum (OvS), October 14, 1940. Translated by Engelien de Booij, November 17, 2001.

Gil Kaplan: Conductor of One Work Buys Mahler Score, by Will Crutchfield, May 13, 1984

Verzetsmuseum. Guide and exhibits.

This is a draft chapter of a book about the Boissevains and the Dutch Resistance; the book outline is here.