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Oral history interview with Dolf Ringel and Dottie Ringel

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1991.A.0117.6 | RG Number: RG-50.044.0006

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    Oral history interview with Dolf Ringel and Dottie Ringel
    Transcript
    Mr. Ringel, please tell me when and where
    you were born and something about your family background.
    I was born on December 23rd, 1910,
    in Mainz, a city in Western Germany.
    And after a few years, my parents moved to Frankfurt.
    My parents came from what is now Poland.
    I believe that my mother was born in a little town
    by the name of Radomysl in the western part of today's Poland.
    Around 1905, my parents, who were married, then,
    for only two or three years, moved to Germany
    and settled in Mainz.
    Why did they move to Germany?
    My father was a partner in an export business,
    in that little town, exporting eggs and butter.
    And as I remember from my father's stories, about 1904
    their warehouse was destroyed by a fire.
    And at that time, they were uninsured.
    So they lost everything they had.
    The business then was restarted by my grandfather and an older
    son.
    There was not enough for three families.
    That may have been the reason why
    they moved to the west, where they had always done business
    with importers, German importers.
    What did your father do in Frankfurt?
    He continued the same business.
    In other words, he became, instead of an exporter,
    he became an importer and agent importing eggs, no butter.
    But as I recollect just eggs, which
    was an important item in those days.
    Where did you live in Frankfurt?
    We lived in the southern part of the city.
    And--
    Do you remember the street and house number?
    Yes, It was Lindenstrasse 20, a residential area,
    where we lived from, approximately, 1923 till 1933.
    How many members were there in your family?
    I had two sisters and one brother.
    Did your father have a business place in Frankfurt
    or was it outside of Frankfurt?
    No, it was in Frankfurt.
    As a matter of fact, we had a large apartment.
    And one of the rooms was an office.
    And my father conducted the business from the apartment
    where we were living.
    You went to school in Frankfurt?
    Yes, I went to school.
    Can you describe that background?
    Yes.
    It was, to my knowledge, the only Jewish gymnasium
    in Germany.
    And it was called Philanthropin.
    It was founded by the secretary of the Rothschild, famous
    Rothschild family in Frankfurt around 1860 or so.
    How many students were in the school?
    Oh, the school had--
    there were two parts, the boys' schools,
    which had about 400 to 500 students, including
    the high school, and a girls' school,
    in a different part of the building--
    perhaps 250 girls.
    Where was the school located?
    I can't remember this.
    Hebelstrasse.
    Now I remember, Hebelstrasse in Frankfurt.
    Did you walk to school?
    No, on bicycle.
    How far was it to the high school?
    About 15 minutes ride from our house to the school.
    As you were growing up and going to the school,
    did you ever encounter any act of antisemitism or anything
    personally that happened to you?
    I remember one incident.
    I must have been, at that time, maybe 10, 11 years old,
    my brother eight.
    And when I went with my father, on one
    particular Jewish holiday, to the synagogue--
    What synagogue was it?
    That was the synagogue called Unterlindau, a German Orthodox
    synagogue.
    We were about to cross the street.
    But before we were reaching the sidewalk, a man,
    a workman pushing a cart hastened to reach my father,
    to give him a push with the push cart.
    Because he saw, obviously, that we were Jewish.
    And he must have been an antisemite.
    Other than that, I cannot remember any antisemitic act.
    But I was, after all, in a Jewish school,
    with Jewish teachers and a couple of non-Jewish teachers.
    So I personally have never had any antisemitic utterances
    or acts.
    Where were you in school when Hitler came to power?
    I wasn't in school.
    I had already entered the Wolfgang Von Goethe University
    and was a student, a medical student at that time.
    And in 1933, I had just made my preclinical exam
    and passed it, quite well.
    Could you tell us what happened after he came to power?
    It was March 1933.
    And the Easter vacation had just started
    when my father, after discussions with his Dutch
    and Belgian business partners or business relations,
    decided to make a business trip to Spain,
    to examine, there, the business possibilities.
    Since my father didn't speak any foreign languages
    and since he knew that French was required--
    at least French was required in Spain
    to converse with business people--
    he suggested I come along.
    I was delighted.
    I had never been abroad.
    So I was quite glad with this trip to foreign countries.
    We visited first Holland, then Belgium, and, from there,
    we went to Barcelona, Spain.
    About three or four weeks--
    three weeks after we had left Germany,
    we received a letter from my brother,
    wherein he told us of the first antisemitic excesses
    of the Hitler regime.
    He'd wrote that windows of the largest department
    store in Frankfurt had been smashed,
    that the Jewish owner had been forced to clean the sidewalk
    and was humiliated, while a crowd of cheering youngsters
    were standing there.
    My father had always had the conviction
    that Hitler was not merely uttering
    empty threats against Jews, but that the Nazis meant
    every word they said.
    My father was shattered by this letter.
    And my brother informed me, in that letter,
    also, that one of the new decrees
    had ordered all Jewish students to be thrown out
    of the universities and colleges in Germany.
    And that Jewish professors also had to leave universities.
    With that, my career was simply terminated.
    And we decided, at that time, that we would not
    go back to Germany anymore.
    Instead we asked our family members--
    in the first place, my mother and brother,
    who had stayed behind, but also my two married sisters,
    their husbands and children, to think of coming to Spain.
    And they all did.
    And by July 1933, I had no close relatives in Germany anymore.
    They were all, by that time, in Spain.
    And we had settled down and started a new business.
    However, I as well as my brother,
    who also was in medical school in Frankfurt,
    were unable to continue the medical career.
    We didn't speak Spanish.
    And no German diploma, high school and college,
    were accepted by the Spaniards, because the Germans didn't
    recognize any of the Spanish.
    So besides, our lives were rudely interrupted, not
    only culturally but also materially.
    So my brother and I, we had to help to make a living.
    So we gave up the career and became partners
    in my father's business.
    Then, in the summer of 1936, the Spanish Civil War broke out.
    My father was not a strong person.
    He was asthmatic and had a stomach ulcer.
    A year later, 1937, it became rather intolerable
    for my father to stay in Spain.
    Food became scarce and living conditions, in general,
    had greatly deteriorated.
    So we decided, that is our whole family decided,
    that the time had come, that my mother and my father
    should leave that war-torn Spain.
    Bombing attacks had already been made on Barcelona
    by the Franco air force.
    But the question was where to go.
    By that time, it was already very
    difficult for Jews, with German passports, to go anyplace.
    Fortunately, we had a bank account in Holland,
    in Amsterdam, because of the business relationships that we
    had with Holland and Belgium.
    And we still had our original German passports
    from the pre-Hitler time, which allowed us to enter Holland
    without a visa.
    And so I believe it was early April 1937,
    I took my parents to Amsterdam, where we found a furnished room
    for them to live.
    After a couple of months, when they had settled down
    in Amsterdam, I returned to Spain
    and stayed there for another year,
    until my father became very seriously ill
    and was taken to a hospital in Amsterdam.
    When I got the news--
    when we got the news, I rushed to Amsterdam.
    And I stayed, there, with my parents.
    I did not return to Holland anymore.
    I'm sorry, I did not return to Spain anymore,
    except for a brief interval.
    The rest of your family remained in Spain?
    The rest of my family remained there until late 1937,
    when my two sisters, with their children, left for Belgium.
    So my brother and my two brother-in-laws
    remained in Spain.
    How did you make any money?
    It became more and more difficult in 1938
    and later on, the end of 1938, to conduct any business
    with Spain or from Spain.
    There was little to do.
    And I had plenty of free time on my hands.
    And I was looking for some friends,
    because I was very lonely.
    And somehow, I heard that a young man,
    who had been my brother's best friend, lived in Amsterdam.
    I found his address.
    We met.
    And he introduced me to another young man, approximately
    my age, who, as it turned out, lived only a block away
    from where I was living.
    So slowly, I made some friends.
    They introduced me-- one of them,
    Heinz Mona was his name, also from Frankfurt,
    from the same school, Philanthropin.
    He persuaded me to join a sport club, a Jewish sport club,
    Maccabi, Maccabi Amsterdam.
    By that time, it was already 1939, late fall.
    And he said to me, let's go to a Hanukkah--
    I think it was a Hanukkah evening, Hanukkah 1939--
    to play ping-pong.
    There I saw a young, very pretty girl, apparently or obviously
    also a member of that club, going around
    on a tray selling things--
    let's say chocolate bars and other items--
    to make money for the Zionist movement in Holland.
    She was to become, later, my fiancee, Dottie,
    as she was called in Holland.
    Mrs Ringel, could you tell me when and where you were born?
    Yeah, now comes the truth, huh?
    [LAUGHTER]
    No more lying.
    Yes, I was born in Amsterdam, Holland, in January 1920.
    What was your maiden name?
    Parfumuer.
    It's a French name but with Dutch origins.
    Way back, it must have come from a French part.
    Could you tell us something about your family?
    Yes.
    My parents were born in Holland, too,
    my father in the northern part, in the province of Friesland,
    town of Harlingen. It was a shipping town, lots of sailing
    ships in the beginning.
    Later other ships came into what we consider,
    now, a small harbor of Harlingen. And my father,
    as a boy, was fascinated by all these sail ships that came in
    from Denmark and England--
    mostly Denmark.
    And he learned Danish from the crew,
    when he was sitting there, in the harbor
    all the time, just trying to catch a glimpse of these ships.
    And so, as children, later, in Amsterdam, we
    were taken to the museum that specialized in everything that
    had to do with shipping, and not shipping so much as maritime,
    I think you would call it here.
    And your mother?
    And my mother was born in Amsterdam.
    And my grandparents came from Holland.
    What did your parents do for a living
    Or your father's business?
    My father had a business in filling for furniture,
    that included filling for seats in cars, taxis, airplanes,
    trains.
    So we had a wholesale business delivering
    to factories that made planes, trains, cars, and mattresses,
    and furniture, too.
    Where did you live?
    Amsterdam.
    No, specifically, what street?
    I was born and I have very faint recollections, now,
    because I was five years old when I moved from there,
    but I was born in Brouwersgracht.
    That was one of the canals in the old part of Amsterdam.
    And then, when I was five years old,
    we moved to the southern part of Amsterdam, Bonnstraat 56.
    When I was five years old.
    And we lived--
    Where was your father's place of business?
    That was on also one of the canals, Prinsengracht 532.
    Funny, I can say that only in Dutch.
    Was it a large operation?
    Yes, it was.
    There were four floors.
    The offices were downstairs.
    And we had three floors of stock of all kinds.
    How many people worked?
    Well, I would say five or six depending how busy we were.
    Tell me about your years growing up and school.
    Well, I had a very carefree childhood.
    I went to school in the neighborhood where I lived,
    just two minutes away from where I lived.
    Nicolaas Maesschool is the name of the school in the Nicolaas
    Maesstraat.
    And that was the elementary school.
    And I went to high school.
    That was called [DUTCH] in the same street as the other one.
    All very close to where I lived.
    But when I was 13 years old, we moved away from that area,
    and we stayed in the southern part.
    But it was about half an hour from school.
    So I needed a bicycle.
    And I drove myself back and forth to school.
    What street was that that you moved to?
    That was Zuider Amstellaan.
    The name has changed since, but, at the time,
    it was Zuider Amstellaan.
    After the war, they changed the name to Rooseveltlaan,
    honoring President Roosevelt.
    How many members were there in your family?
    Five, we were two brothers and myself and my parents,
    of course.
    And what happened after high school?
    After high school, for a short time,
    I worked in my father's office.
    And then I worked somewhere else.
    And I took classes in commercial correspondence typing
    and all kinds of office and administrative skills,
    shorthand and all that.
    And then the war broke out before I had a chance.
    Well, I did work in one or two offices after I left my father.
    But soon after that, the war broke out.
    And I was still working somewhere when that happened.
    Did you experience any antisemitism
    when you were growing up?
    Not really, except in high school, once.
    There was a young man.
    I must admit that he was the most stupid one of the class.
    Isn't nice to say that, but he really
    happened to be quite dumb.
    He happened to sit next--
    not next to me, behind me.
    And then when we talk after class [INAUDIBLE]
    to answer some questions.
    I heard him, say, oh, that's one of those.
    But at least she's pretty.
    So he was definitely referring to my being Jewish,
    because I knew he was connected with the NSB, which was
    the National Socialist Bund.
    I think that was the constellation.
    They were the ones who later collaborated with the Germans.
    All this was very shortly before the war started,
    before the invasion, the German invasion in Holland came.
    But that was the only thing.
    I never, never encountered any sign of antisemitism.
    Were you aware of Hitler's coming to power
    and what was happening in Germany?
    Oh, I was very much aware, since 1933, as young as I was.
    Because there were very heated and very excited
    conversations going on in the living room of my house.
    And it affected me a great deal.
    I couldn't get over the fact that innocent people, who
    happen to be born in a religion or in a race,
    had to be punished and persecuted for something
    they couldn't help.
    And I was very much affected by that.
    But that was still seven years before the invasion.
    And my father was very suspicious of the situation.
    He didn't trust it.
    And we, as children, didn't realize how good
    his insight was, really.
    And so he applied for a visa, for all of us,
    to America in 1937, I think.
    And the reason?
    In Holland, it was easier to get a visa
    to America than in some other countries.
    Apparently, because there were not that many applications.
    I think the visa came through within a year.
    But my father was not quite ready to go.
    And so we thought about it for a while.
    And the embassy, in Rotterdam, sent us some summonses
    to let us know that, if we don't use the visa within the year,
    they may expire.
    Well, we as children, of course, didn't
    feel like leaving our country and our school.
    And so we were against it.
    And my father was not too keen on the idea, himself,
    although he saw the need for it.
    But he was easily talked out of it.
    So we left the whole idea go.
    And the visa expired, unfortunately,
    with the result that, two years later, the German invasion
    came.
    And then we very badly wanted to get out, we couldn't anymore.
    Mr. Ringel, what happened after you
    met your wife, who, of course, at that point,
    was not your wife yet?
    No.
    No.
    I think you knew already.
    We became friendly.
    And we also were friendly with several other members
    of Maccabi.
    What year was this again?
    I'm talking now end of 1939, beginning of 1940.
    I was persuaded, again, by that same friend, Heinz Mona,
    to join the Maccabi tennis club.
    And he mentioned to me, by the way,
    the girl you met, at the time, at Maccabi ping-pong,
    is a member of the tennis club.
    And she is one of the best tennis players.
    That was a great incentive for me to join the tennis club.
    So in spring, April, May 1940, we
    met again, after an interval of maybe three or four months.
    And our friendship began, actually, from that time on.
    Because it so happened that I lived
    almost next door to the building where the family Parfumuer
    lived.
    Next block.
    Shortly after I had joined the tennis club,
    we formed a small group, consisting of perhaps seven
    or eight young people.
    And we started socializing.
    Then came May 10th, 1940, the German invasion.
    Before that time and shortly after,
    I tried desperately to get visa, for the United States or South
    America or any other country overseas I could think
    of-- to begin with, England, where, by that time,
    my brother had settled after he had left Franco's Spain.
    But to no avail.
    I couldn't get a visa anyplace.
    And there was nothing else to do but resign to the fact
    that now the Germans were there and to make the best of it.
    And we did.
    As paradoxical as it may sound, the second part of 1940,
    summer and fall, were the most pleasurable months
    I can remember in my whole life.
    Because I had a girlfriend, for the first time in my life.
    And friends we were close with met very often
    and had a wonderful time.
    But that ended as the year 1941 came around.
    Because by that time, the, let me call it,
    very carefully planned reticence of the Nazis,
    the German occupation forces, in treating
    the Jewish part of the Dutch population, changed.
    A Jewish council of the elders had been instituted in Holland.
    And the concentration of all the Dutch and other foreign Jews
    living in Holland had begun, concentration from sending all
    the Jews, who had been, since centuries, spread out
    over the whole country, was now going
    to be concentrated in the larger cities, especially Amsterdam.
    Amsterdam had a ghetto, a Jewish ghetto.
    Or let me correct myself, a certain part where
    mainly Jews lived.
    There were non-Jews, too.
    And incidentally, that is the part where Rembrandt lived
    and where, today, the Rembrandt house still
    exists as a kind of a museum in Amsterdam.
    The life, our life continued.
    We were restricted in our movements already.
    Specifically, how were you restricted?
    Restricted in the sense that we were not allowed anymore
    to go to movies, to any public buildings, like museums.
    No parks.
    No parks.
    No streetcars.
    No, the streetcar--
    I'm sorry, the streetcar came later.
    --came later.
    That came already end of 1941.
    But I'm still talking now of the beginning of 1941.
    We were still able to play tennis but only
    in a Jewish sporting club.
    We were not allowed to mingle with so-called Aryans
    any longer.
    Were you able to work at this point though?
    Work?
    Beginning of '41, yes.
    Don't you think?
    Yes, in the beginning of '41, it was still possible.
    Although, as far as I'm concerned,
    our business had stopped completely.
    Since we were depending on foreign countries,
    either imports, mainly, it was dead from the day
    on that the Germans had invaded Holland.
    How did you live?
    I beg your pardon?
    How did you live?
    Well, simply from savings and from the bank account.
    Without thinking of what would happen when, one day,
    that would be cut off and used up.
    But life in those days was on short-term.
    You didn't know anymore what was going
    to happen a month from then or two months or six months
    from then.
    We were living from day to day and were
    forced to live from day to day.
    Because, in the year 1941, one decree,
    Nazi decree after another was published.
    Generally published in the newspaper that
    the [NON-ENGLISH] as it was called.
    Jewish council.
    Jewish council, correct.
    And this paper was published to transmit,
    to the Jewish population of Holland,
    all the decrees with regard to Jews,
    that they were not allowed to do this and this and this
    and this.
    Now, as I mentioned before, we were still
    able to meet at the tennis court.
    And it was early June 1941.
    My girlfriend, Dottie, she had pneumonia at that time
    and could not participate.
    No, I'm sorry, let me correct myself.
    At that time, his name was Max Schlesinger, the other friend
    I had met from Frankfurt.
    He also had joined the Maccabi and tennis club.
    We both went to play tennis.
    On that particular morning, when we
    noticed that there was hardly any one of the other players
    there.
    There were a few girls from the central part of Amsterdam
    but not from the south.
    We were wondering about that, when suddenly I
    was paged at that sport club.
    And it was Dottie, on the phone, who
    gave me the message that there was
    a roundup of young Jewish men.
    How did you find that out?
    I'm not sure whether we still had telephone.
    Because I think they may have been taken away already
    by that time, as were many other things, like bicycles.
    And I may not tell you that in the right sequence.
    But eventually, that happened.
    Most of these warning messages, and that one, particularly,
    probably came from our neighbor, who
    was friendly with my mother.
    She was not Jewish.
    As a matter of fact, she was German,
    but a wonderful person married to a Dutchman.
    She probably gave me that message if I recall well.
    And my mother-in-law had heard it somehow, too.
    Or I gave her the message.
    I'm not sure about that anymore.
    But the next thing we know, that I was
    in touch with my mother-in-law.
    And she quickly went over to the tennis courts with clothes,
    I suppose--
    You know better what she was bringing--
    to get Dolf away from there and, perhaps, into safety.
    At that time, women and girls were not in danger yet.
    But I had the conviction.
    I was quite pessimistic, all the way through,
    ever since I heard what Germans were up to doing in Germany.
    I had no illusions.
    So I was quite pessimistic that that would happen.
    And of course, very soon afterwards, it
    did happen that girls were the next target
    and then middle aged and older people,
    then, finally, everybody.
    But anyway, my mother-in-law went to the tennis court.
    And Dolf will tell you what happened to him afterwards.
    What happened?
    Well, to begin with, let me correct my wife.
    She wasn't her mother-in-law yet.
    No, but she was eventually.
    She was to become.
    She was to become your mother-in-law.
    And she, as well as Max's mother,
    rushed to the tennis court, to bring us some clothes,
    because we had left that morning with simply tennis clothes.
    We did have our bicycles at that time.
    And Max had an address of a Gentile family living about 25
    to 30km kilometers outside Amsterdam.
    He suggested that we quickly jump on our bikes
    and make it out to that place.
    It's called Laren, a little town.
    And by that time, my mother and his mother had arrived.
    We took the clothes, went into some bushes,
    changed, jumped on our bicycles, and left for Laren.
    However, we had to cross the river flowing
    through Amsterdam, the Amstel.
    And we were deliberating for a second,
    shall we take the bridge, the main bridge over the Amstel
    or should we ride along the river to about three
    or four kilometers, where a small ferry could take you
    to the other side.
    For some reason, which I can't remember now anymore,
    we decided in favor of riding along
    the river for 10, 15 minutes, and then go across by a ferry.
    And that saved our lives.
    Because the SS had blocked the bridge, Berlage Bridge.
    And any Jewish-looking young man was stopped,
    and his identity card, with the big J in it,
    was enough for them to arrest him and hold him.
    Unfortunately, Heinz Mona, the young man
    who had introduced me, whom I had met,
    and he had introduced me to Maccabi,
    he was one of the many, many victims,
    who were caught at that time.
    In fact, 90% of all young men, members of that Maccabi tennis
    club, were arrested.
    And they were all killed in Mauthausen.
    They were deported to Mauthausen.
    And their parents, after a couple of months,
    received cards, with identical contents,
    that their son had died of pneumonia or tuberculosis
    or any other serious disease.
    They were all killed in Mauthausen.
    So that particular day, our life, for the first time,
    was saved by coincidence or whatever
    else one wants to call it.
    What happened when you got to the house
    of the Christian family?
    We were welcomed there and remained for three days,
    until it appeared that the roundup had ended
    and would not be renewed for the time being.
    I returned or we returned to Amsterdam.
    As soon as we returned, Max and I looked around for a place
    to hide.
    And that meant in a Gentile--
    in a part of the city, preferably not
    in the part where the more wealthy population lived,
    but amongst the workers' quarter of Amsterdam,
    which was in the western part of Amsterdam.
    We managed to rent a small room at the house
    of a widow, who lived there with her son, unmarried son.
    And from that day on, in the afternoon, when it got darker,
    we went to a bedroom, and we slept there.
    I cannot remember the reason why we thought, at that time,
    that the nights were the dangerous part for staying
    in home.
    It could have happened also during daytime.
    But for some odd reason, probably because most arrests,
    by the SS and the Gestapo, took place at night
    to hide it from the Gentile population.
    That may have persuaded us to leave
    our parental home, each late afternoon, after dinner.
    Did your wife know where you were?
    Yes, I know.
    Yeah.
    But I didn't go into hiding--
    I don't know if you want to know this already--
    until about a month later, when it
    became apparent that not just men but women
    were in the same kind of danger.
    So there were razzias in the intervals,
    between the time that Dolf went into hiding
    and when I started thinking about it or doing it.
    There were razzias in our street all during the day.
    Excuse me.
    Razzia is the word--
    A roundup.
    It's an Italian word that was used for the roundup.
    Oh, yeah.
    I'm sorry.
    We saw them out of our window.
    We saw them across the street.
    It was a very wide street.
    But we saw the trucks just going from house to house,
    ringing the bell, coming back with two, one, two, three,
    or more people, loading them into trucks.
    And we didn't need any more explanation.
    Of course, in the meantime, all kinds of stricter rules
    had taken place.
    And it wasn't only--
    I wasn't only the one who was pessimistic anymore.
    Everybody was.
    But not everybody was looking for a way out
    or had a place to hide.
    Some people thought about it too late.
    And others couldn't find any place.
    When that happened in our street,
    I contacted a young man, who lived downstairs.
    Not Jewish-- there were mixed families in the block
    and in our house--
    a very nice family.
    And he helped my younger brother.
    My older brother was not at home at the time.
    He helped my younger brother and me
    to get into the machine room, where the machines
    of the elevator were located.
    But nobody really was allowed to get in,
    and we had to go through the ceiling, through a--
    I don't know what you call it--
    an opening in the ceiling.
    It was really closed.
    But we knew there was that possibility of taking
    this square, large piece out.
    And he seemed to have known that there was a ladder upstairs,
    once the opening became a hole.
    And he took the ladder down.
    And two of us, my younger brother and I-- my brother
    was, at the time, 15 or 16 years old.
    He helped us up there and closed the hole in the ceiling again.
    And that's where we waited.
    We had a possibility of looking out, from that machine room,
    through a small hole, like in a ship,
    where you can see the ocean.
    And we saw the other side of the street.
    And we saw it they continued doing what they were doing.
    When they came to our side, we couldn't see it anymore.
    We heard, later, from my mother, that they
    had rang our doorbell, like they had done to all our neighbors.
    And they had asked my mother, don't you have children?
    And where are you children?
    She answered, I'm so worried about them.
    And she knew that we were up there.
    And she also knew where my older brother was at the time.
    She said, I'm so worried.
    I have no idea where they are.
    I wish I knew.
    And they searched the apartment.
    Couldn't find us.
    And at that time, middle aged or older people
    were not taken yet.
    And they left.
    When everybody was out of the street and the streets
    seemed quiet again, our friend, Dick Hutter that
    was his name, the one who helped us.
    He was about my age--
    he came back up.
    He opened the hole in the ceiling, got us out.
    My younger brother went, on his own,
    to a place where he hoped to be saved.
    It was in a hospital where my aunt
    was head of the household, a Jewish hospital.
    And he hoped to be safe there for the time being,
    because hospitals, at that time, were not attacked yet.
    Soon afterwards, that happened, too.
    But Dick walked me to the western part of Amsterdam,
    to the same place where Dolf had been hiding before
    and where he didn't hide anymore.
    Because he had, in the meantime, received a better address
    where to keep himself hidden.
    So I stayed there, I think, two days and two nights.
    And she made it clear--
    that's the same woman with a son, who was apparently
    slightly retarded.
    At least we had that impression--
    that she was either afraid or couldn't keep me anymore.
    And I found another solution.
    Or she, rather, was related.
    I forgot how the relationship was.
    Mrs Veitz, yes.
    The people--
    Her daughter.
    No, it wasn't her.
    Mrs. Holzberg's daughter.
    Mrs. Holzberg's daughter?
    Yeah.
    This older woman's daughter.
    The son lived with her, but the daughter
    was married and lived, also, in the western part of Amsterdam.
    Her husband had come to my parents house
    and offered, if I couldn't find another place,
    to keep me there for as long as I wanted--
    till the end of the war, as long as I wanted.
    So that was the next step.
    Mr. Ringel, why don't you pick up the Story
    Yes, let me go back to the event at the tennis court.
    Of course, after that, the Maccabi sport club
    was no longer able to continue.
    Besides, in the second half of 1941,
    the Nazi administration in Holland, as it were,
    took off their gloves.
    And it accelerated.
    The events accelerated.
    Jews were no longer allowed to use the streetcars.
    As Dottie mentioned, no telephones.
    They had been taken away, no radios of course.
    The restrictions became more and more,
    until we were put under a curfew.
    I believe, from 8:00 at night till 7:00 in the morning,
    Jews were not allowed to be in the streets.
    Towards the end of 1941, the situation for Jews
    had become extremely precarious.
    The businesses that had Jewish owners
    got administrators, sometimes Dutch Nazis, very often,
    the larger ones, German Nazis, who became the new owners.
    Bank accounts were blocked.
    And only certain small amounts of money,
    barely sufficient to keep a family alive, were allowed.
    All food, everything that you needed to live, actually,
    was on coupons.
    And then 1942 rolled around.
    And in spring 1942, Jews were ordered
    to wear the yellow star on the outermost piece of clothing.
    It had to be sewn on.
    By that time, it was clear to most Jews
    that something terrible was going to happen.
    I would like to go back a little to the late fall 1941,
    so the winter before.
    It must have been around September, October 1941, when
    a second cousin of mine, with whom I had no previous contact,
    came to visit my parents and me in our apartment,
    asking us to help him, financially,
    to escape from Holland to Switzerland.
    I questioned him as to how he thought to be
    able to get to Switzerland.
    And he gave me the name of that little place
    in the south-eastern part of Holland,
    where he would cross over to the Belgian--
    cross the Belgian-Dutch border, continued to Antwerp.
    And there, he gave me the name of the leader of one
    of the Jewish communities in Antwerp,
    who would provide him with a guide to non-occupied France.
    I made a mental note of the places and names
    he had given me.
    And I told it to my parents.
    I told it to Dottie and also to my friend Max's parents.
    And slowly, a plan developed, that Max and I
    should try to get also to Switzerland, to escape.
    Dottie was against it.
    She had the intuition.
    Well, there was a reason.
    You didn't mention that just the two of you
    were planning to go away not me, because he didn't
    see any danger for women yet.
    Not at all.
    Not only did I not see any danger for women,
    but, generally, it was thought, at that time,
    that all the measures of the Germans
    were directed against the men, the possible enemies of theirs.
    It turned out that Dottie's intuition and fear
    were absolutely correct and ours were false.
    But the plan was there.
    And before we left, we became officially engaged.
    Yeah, but you mentioned that I didn't leave with you.
    That's what I'm saying.
    We decided to leave alone, without you.
    And before we left, Dottie and I became engaged.
    My parents came over, went over to the Parfumuer apartment.
    And there was a kind of engagement, a small engagement
    party.
    Although we knew, at that time that,
    a marriage was not possible anymore.
    The rabbis had no longer the authority from the state
    to marry Jewish couples.
    But we didn't worry about that at the moment.
    No.
    And so the first days of December 1941,
    we traveled, by train, to the southern part of Holland,
    crossed over into Belgium, exactly
    the same way as my second cousin had told me.
    And we reached Antwerp without any difficulty.
    What was the name of the town you crossed over
    from into Belgium?
    Putten, a tiny little village.
    The border between the two countries
    ran approximately through the center of town,
    one side was Belgian, one side was Dutch.
    I had an aunt living in Antwerp, and that's
    where we went, next day, to stay with her.
    Next day, we went to the main synagogue in Antwerp.
    We were introduced to the--
    I think he was the president of the congregation.
    We told him we would like to be taken, by a guide,
    to non-occupied France.
    And he said that would be possible.
    It will cost you so and so much.
    We had enough money with us.
    However, one of the transports had just left--
    the transport consisted of the guide and two or three people--
    had just left, and it would take about two or three
    days until he's back.
    So we stayed in Antwerp, mainly in the house of my aunt.
    And three days later, we presented ourselves, again,
    to the synagogue.
    We noticed that a few men were there.
    Amongst them, also, the president
    of the congregation, and they were discussing things
    rather excitedly.
    So we said, we are back again.
    When can you help us to get a guide?
    And he answered, don't you know what happened yesterday?
    We were astonished.
    We didn't know anything.
    He said, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
    That is in Hawaii.
    And the United States, since last night,
    is at war with Germany.
    Everything is in an uproar.
    We don't know what will happen now with non-occupied France.
    There is not a chance that a guide will now
    leave with the refugees to non-occupied France.
    Try again in a week, then we'll see how the situation is.
    We went back to my aunt.
    We discussed-- Max and I discussed the situation.
    And I must admit that, while we were fleeing,
    I had already remorses that I had left without my fiance.
    The words she had said to me somehow remained in my mind.
    She said, I'm afraid we will never see each other again,
    when I kissed her goodbye.
    So I said, Max, are you thinking the same that I am thinking?
    He said, I believe I do, that the best for us
    is to go back home.
    I said, yes.
    And the next day, we went back, exactly the same route
    we had taken before.
    And suddenly, I was standing in front of my fiance, who almost
    fainted when she saw me back.
    It was really incredible.
    People later on said to me, that was God's will.
    Because who is so crazy?
    Who was so crazy to be already in Belgium, having crossed
    already one border, and being in touch with someone who
    could help you escape, to go back
    and into Nazi-occupied Holland.
    Well, we did.
    I never regretted it.
    Why did you decide to do that?
    We prepared.
    If I say, we, I mean, again, Max and myself.
    He knew, somehow, from dealings, a gentleman,
    a Dutch businessman, who was a stockbroker.
    He lived in the central part of Amsterdam on one of the canals.
    He lived alone in a patrician house,
    where he had his offices and also his living quarters.
    We were introduced to him by the family in Laren,
    where we had found refuge after we fled from the tennis court.
    His name was Lex Wellensiek from an old Dutch family,
    Protestant family.
    He invited us to come and see him.
    We asked him the question.
    If the situation should become so critical
    that we can no longer live in our house, in our homes,
    would you be willing to let us in, in your house?
    He said, yes.
    I knew about it.
    I knew why you were coming to us, to me.
    And you are welcome to come here.
    I will show you my attic.
    You can live there, in peace, as long as you want.
    So I ask him, Mr. Wellensiek, as it looks now,
    the war may last for another two, three, or four years--
    God knows how long.
    Won't that be much too much a burden and danger for you,
    that two Jewish young men are living here?
    He said, I thought about it before you came.
    This is my decision.
    When you come, you will stay with me, here,
    if you wish, until the end of the war.
    No matter what the consequences may be for me.
    Don't you worry about it.
    So we were prepared.
    We were prepared, because we knew
    that it would be impossible for us to hide out in that room
    that we had rented, in the western part of Amsterdam.
    The woman was elderly.
    She was unable to cook meals for us.
    And she was very jittery and afraid.
    And altogether, not a place where we could stay.
    As I mentioned before, in April, we had to wear the Jewish star.
    And on July 5th, 1942, suddenly, I, my friend, Max, and--
    sorry, German-born Jewish men and women, under the age of 40,
    got a card from the from the Gestapo demanding or ordering
    those people to appear by the end of that week--
    I think it was the 10th of July--
    at the central station, in Amsterdam,
    with a knapsack containing only some food and one or two pieces
    of clothing, for Arbeitseinsatz, which
    means for "forced labor" in Germany.
    As soon as I received this card, I got together with Max.
    And we decided the time has come now
    to go and hide out at Mr. Wellensiek's
    apartment in that attic.
    I told Dottie of what had happened, that I had the card.
    And it was, at that time, that I urged her to,
    if something should happen, if she should also
    get such a card, that she should go and hide at the address
    that we had formerly had.
    I took off.
    Max left on his own.
    And I took off the star, ripped it off from my clothes,
    from my coat.
    And walked to the house of Mr. Wellensiek.
    Max had already arrived.
    And we entered the attic.
    Why do you think Mr. Wellensiek was [INAUDIBLE]??
    At that time, I was unaware of what Mr. Wellensiek was doing
    other than being a businessman and the secretary
    of the Dutch Reformed schools in the Netherlands.
    That much we knew.
    His other activities were unknown.
    Max and I got--
    we learned it.
    After about a week that we were in hiding at Mr. Wellensiek's
    house, when he expected visitors late at evening,
    after closing hours of the offices,
    he prepared us, that two gentlemen were coming.
    And he informed us, at the same time,
    that one of the two gentlemen was
    the founder of an underground newspaper, Vrij Nederland, Free
    Netherlands, and that he would have certain dialogues
    and discussions with these two men.
    He also revealed that his house, [DUTCH] 18,
    was very often the meeting place for the underground resistance
    movement, that Mr. van Randwijk, the founder of the newspaper,
    had formed.
    We never took part in any of these discussions, of course.
    However, he introduced us.
    Mr. Wellensiek introduced us to these two gentlemen.
    They knew of our existence and knew
    that we were in that house.
    How long did you stay there?
    We stayed until the 27th of September of that same year.
    My brother-in-law, Dottie's elder brother,
    had decided, after he received such a card, around middle
    of July, to try to flee to Switzerland together
    with another friend of his.
    I didn't know about it, because I was hidden.
    However, as Dottie told you before,
    that she had also left her parental home
    after the Germans, the SS or the Gestapo had searched her house.
    So I knew that she was now--
    she was now in Amsterdam, west, hidden.
    That was with a family.
    I didn't tell anything about that yet.
    Because the circumstances were quite different there.
    Yeah.
    I knew that she was hidden ahead.
    I knew her address.
    So we were in correspondence.
    By letter.
    Through the mail, using, always, our friend, Wellensiek.
    Whatever we wrote, whatever I wrote,
    he put in one of his own envelopes
    and mailed it to the gentleman or to the family, where Dottie
    was living and vice versa.
    Of course, our names were never mentioned.
    And our only contact consisted through the mail.
    Mrs Ringel, how did you get to this Family
    Well, I think I mentioned before that the woman--
    The daughter--
    It was the daughter of the old lady where I had been two days,
    and who couldn't do it any longer--
    was married and had two boys, two sons.
    They were at the time, I think, about 12 and 14 years old--
    not quite, 10 and 12.
    And they were, in a way, a danger.
    Because they went to school every day.
    And it was just to be hoped that they would never,
    by mistake or on purpose, for whatever reason--
    they could be mad at the parents--
    and do something nasty or for whatever reason.
    But the father was quite a strict man.
    And he had enough hold over, authority over his sons
    that nothing ever happened.
    And it's really a miracle, come to think of the fact
    that, after I left, and I was there only a few months,
    my parents-in-law, my future parents-in-law,
    came to live there until the end of the war.
    And neither one of the two boys ever
    gave away the secret to their friends,
    to neighbors, to their teachers in school.
    But they continued living a sort of a normal life.
    But this was a couple.
    And as I said, the daughter was the daughter
    of the woman where I was at first.
    He worked in a factory, somewhere,
    like just a blue collar worker, but a very good-hearted, fine
    man, who really did this out of love
    for humanity, to do something good.
    Because he hated the Germans almost as much as the Jews
    hated them.
    I had a little bit of trouble.
    He sometimes stayed away from work.
    His wife always went out to find food, which was already
    getting quite scarce.
    She took her bicycle and went out into the country
    to go to farmers and collect as much food
    as she could to provide for all of us.
    On two such occasions that she, again, went away,
    he stayed away from work, pretending, probably,
    to his boss, that he was sick.
    And he became a little bit too friendly.
    But times were different, from what they are now.
    So I showed him that I really liked him a lot
    but was not willing to go into any affair
    or whatever he had in mind.
    So thank goodness, it stopped.
    There was no guarantee, of course,
    that it wouldn't start again.
    Because this was already towards the end of the time
    that I was going to be there.
    I didn't know, at the time, yet, that I
    wasn't going to be there the whole rest of the war.
    But by corresponding with Dolf, back and forth,
    we decided that his position, where he and Max were, as well
    as mine, for different reasons, were really too
    difficult and impossible to stay there for a long time.
    So we decided, and we organized, by letter, back and forth,
    writing always through the name of the man
    where we were hidden.
    But the letters were never opened by anybody else.
    We received them always unopened.
    And we planned and worked out a plan,
    by mail, to get together and, immediately after that,
    leave Holland via an address that my brother, who
    in the meantime had gone to Switzerland.
    He had succeeded and left me with one name and a description
    of a man who could bring us over the Dutch-Belgian border.
    So that was the beginning of a possible escape for us.
    For the rest, we didn't really know.
    We were hoping and depending on that man
    giving us more information and possibilities how to continue.
    Because you could not be sure, from one minute
    or from one day to the next.
    And now, come to your spot.
    When did you leave?
    The exact date was September 27th, 1942.
    It was, by that time, extremely difficult and extremely
    dangerous for Jews, and for anyone else,
    to try to cross borders.
    Because they were heavily guarded by the Germans.
    We made use of the address that Eddy, my brother-in-law,
    had left behind with his parents and that Dottie
    had given me by mail.
    I discussed it with Max.
    We noticed that the meetings in the house,
    where we were living, became more numerous.
    In addition, the secretary, Mr. Wellensiek's secretary,
    as it turned out, was not simply his secretary,
    but she was also his girlfriend.
    Maybe 20 years younger than he-- he was an elderly gentleman,
    already.
    And she became rather unfriendly towards us.
    We noticed, quite clearly, that our staying in that house
    was an impediment for her, for whatever reasons, maybe
    for the safety of Mr. Wellensiek,
    or because she had no occasion, anymore,
    to be together with him at night.
    For whatever reason, we noticed that she
    wished we weren't there.
    But Max and I also came to the conclusion
    that [DUTCH] 18, being a meeting place for probably the most
    important resistance group in the country,
    made it very, very dangerous for us, in the first place,
    but also for Wellensiek.
    Any day, the Gestapo could invade the house and find us.
    And that would be the end.
    So we became disenchanted with our situation.
    And we were convinced, we will never
    be able to live through this till the end of the war.
    And that started, as Dottie already mentioned it,
    the correspondence between us.
    And we approached Mr. Wellensiek.
    After we had come to an agreement,
    then we faced Mr. Wellensiek, in the evening,
    when he took us down from the attic into his living room.
    We told him we have decided, all three of us, Max and I
    and Dottie, who he knew where she was hidden,
    to try to make it to Switzerland or to non-occupied France
    in any case.
    Would you be willing, we asked Mr. Wellensiek, become
    our go between, to approach that smuggler in Breda,
    that is a city in southern Holland,
    and prepare everything for us?
    He said, of course, if this is what you decided,
    I will help you in any way I can.
    And he did.
    He contacted the man.
    He came to Amsterdam.
    He met Mr. Wellensiek.
    He told him.
    He knew, of course, of Eddy.
    He told him how much money was required-- a quite big sum
    of money to take us, three of us, to Lyon,
    in non-occupied France.
    He needed pictures, passport pictures of ours,
    because we were to get false Belgian identity
    cards, which would allow us to travel through Belgium, up
    to Paris.
    A date was arranged, as I mentioned, September 27th,
    that we should take the train up to Breda.
    In Breda, he would be at the railroad station,
    with three bicycles.
    And he would take us to a farm not far from the border.
    When the 27th arrived, it was a Sunday.
    Max went to meet with his parents.
    I left to see my parents, who, in the meantime,
    had been forced to leave their house, too,
    and also took up residence in Mr. Veitz's house,
    where Dottie had been living already.
    So they shared this little, small apartment, now,
    with the family of four, my parents, and Dottie.
    There, I met my parents.
    And Dottie and I took leave from my parents.
    And we went to the Jewish hospital
    in the southern part of Amsterdam, CIZ, Centraal
    Israelitisch Ziekenhuis, in Amsterdam,
    where we took leave from Dottie's parents and aunt
    and, perhaps, her younger brother.
    I have no recollection anymore, but he was there, too.
    All that, naturally, without this yellow star,
    the Jewish star, and using public transportation.
    We knew that we were taking a risk.
    But from that moment on, once we had made up our mind
    that we are fleeing, we knew we are playing with our lives.
    It is a roulette.
    We had to do it.
    And we did it.
    Max went his own way to the central station
    and had arranged, with Mr. Wellensiek,
    that he would also meet at the central station
    and would buy the ticket for Max.
    While Mr. Veitz, on his own, also went to the station
    to meet the two of us, Dottie and me.
    Tell them who Mr. Veitz is.
    Separately.
    Mr. Veitz--
    The man where I was.
    Yes.
    Let me call him, the landlord, where
    now my parents were housed.
    He had bought tickets for us to Breda.
    And each of us got the ticket, surreptitiously,
    from Mr. Veitz, a short goodbye, and we
    went towards the train, met in the same compartment,
    and road to Breda.
    Or let me correct myself, it wasn't Breda.
    It was the city of Tilburg--
    much smaller than Breda.
    We arrived without any incident.
    Excuse me, we were sitting in different compartments,
    I think.
    We were not all three sitting in the same compartment.
    I'm not sure about that.
    It is quite possible what you say.
    But we arrived in Tilburg.
    Across this little station, we saw a man standing there
    with three bicycles.
    So we knew that that was our man.
    We crossed over.
    He simply said, get on the bike.
    I will lead you.
    And we drove.
    We rode for perhaps 30, 40 minutes,
    until we came to a small road.
    We didn't know where the road was leading to.
    We were in the middle of the country.
    And we saw a farm.
    He said, here we are.
    Let's get into the farm.
    Then he said, I'm going to instruct you, now,
    what you have got to do.
    You will be fed here.
    And you will wait until dark.
    A young man will come on a bicycle.
    His name is Jean, a Belgian.
    And he will take you over the border.
    I give you, here, the identity cards.
    Sit down.
    Use the time to learn, by heart, your name, your new name.
    The birth dates are the same, the real ones of you.
    But you must be familiar, now, with all the data
    that are on this card.
    What did you have with you, clothing?
    A satchel, I had a satchel.
    And you had a briefcase.
    I had a large briefcase and so had Max.
    Unfortunately, what happens perhaps once in 50 years,
    it was a very warm September.
    And the sun was shining brightly.
    And we were dressed in winter clothes.
    We had heavy overcoats and heavy clothes,
    because we were going towards the fall and winter, which
    is nasty, cold, and windy, generally, but not in 1942.
    So that was all we had, plus money, quite large sums
    for that time.
    Because we didn't know how long it will take us
    until we reach official representation
    of the Dutch government in London,
    the government in exile, as it was called.
    There, they, we hoped will help us further.
    We had to pay him the full amount to that smuggler.
    He left.
    And after dark, it may have been about 10 o'clock or so
    at night, there was a knock.
    And there was a young man, standing.
    And he told us to follow him.
    He instructed us to stop and to throw ourselves down
    if he whistles.
    Because he said, sometimes we may meet people.
    I don't want anyone to see you.
    He didn't say anything of Germans.
    We did not expect to be.
    We were totally-- we felt totally safe
    as long as he was guiding us.
    And he did.
    We marched through the dark night.
    You know, of course, that practically all Europe
    was blacked-out, no lights anywhere.
    So we followed him.
    And we marched, perhaps, an hour and a half or so.
    At that time, we heard some noises, kind of music.
    And he waited for us.
    When we reached him, he said, you are already in Belgium.
    We have crossed the border.
    And what you hear are sounds coming
    from a bar restaurant that is about 100 yards from here.
    I will lead you to a shed that belongs to that restaurant.
    And I want you to stay there until all these visitors,
    in that shed, have left for the night.
    The curfew starts at midnight, because it was a Sunday.
    It was pitch dark in that shed.
    We were sitting there for perhaps half an hour
    and had become very restless, because it took so long.
    Then we heard the noises dying down.
    And a few minutes later, he came,
    took us into that restaurant.
    We had something to eat there.
    And then the owner said, I have prepared
    some blankets and a pillow.
    Lie down and sleep a few hours.
    And Jean told us, I will pick you up,
    tomorrow morning, at 7 o'clock.
    Please be ready by that time.
    We ask him where will you take us?
    He said, you have to go to the other part of Belgium,
    all across.
    We go first to Antwerp, from Antwerp to Brussels, there
    we change trains.
    And I take you to a place that is by the name of Menen,
    M-E-N-I-N. There, the border between Belgium and France runs
    straight through the town of Menen.
    What happened once you got over the Belgian border?
    The guide took us to a shed, which was pitched up,
    and said stay here until I come back
    and tell you that it's all right to enter the restaurant,
    or the bar, actually.
    And we found ourselves in a place
    where we couldn't even see our own hand in front of us.
    It may have taken half an hour, maybe 45 minutes,
    until the noise that we heard coming from maybe 100 yards
    away died down.
    Not long after that, our guide, Jean, returned, and said,
    now, follow me.
    He took us to that little house where the bar and restaurant
    was.
    We entered there was the Belgian guy there.
    And he greeted us.
    And apparently he knew all about us.
    We ask him where are we, actually?
    He said, you are now in [PLACE NAME],,
    a village just across the Belgian border, in Belgium.
    We knew already that we had we would
    have to take a streetcar to the first city or town,
    from where we would take a train to Antwerp,
    change trains in Antwerp to Brussels, and then
    from Brussels on to a place where the French border crosses
    through the middle of the town, by the name of Menin
    in French, Menen in Dutch.
    The owner of the bar told us-- they
    brought us some blankets and pillows, and said,
    you can lie down here.
    It was in one of the corners of the main room.
    You can sleep here, pass the night here,
    and Jean will return tomorrow to take you to Antwerp.
    Jean left and said, I'll be back at 8:00 in the morning.
    Please be ready.
    He returned the next morning, after we'd
    had a short breakfast, and we continued our trip.
    The streetcar was not far from that house.
    We got to Antwerp without any incident, which
    took us to the central station.
    We boarded the train, which was very crowded,
    because it was Monday.
    Were there German soldiers around?
    We didn't see-- we saw perhaps soldiers, but no SS or--
    No Gestapo.
    --or Gestapo.
    People out to catch you.
    Just soldiers.
    Yeah.
    We got to Brussels, changed in Brussels.
    We again saw some uniformed Germans there,
    but the trains were not checked.
    We felt secure by having Belgian identity cards,
    so we were not actually worried or any kind of anxiety.
    What date was this when you got to Brussels?
    That was now the--
    28th.
    28th--
    28th of September--
    Correct.
    28th of September.
    --1942.
    Right.
    We reached Brussels, changed trains.
    It took us almost all day to travel
    from the one side of Belgium, the northeast,
    to the southwest.
    We passed Ghent, or Gand, and Courtrai--
    Courtrai, or Kortrijk.
    These places I knew from before.
    And towards the evening, we reached Menen.
    Jean took us through that little town to a small hotel,
    and we got in there, and he registered.
    We didn't speak a word.
    He did everything for us.
    He spoke to the owner of the hotel,
    registered us, the three of us.
    And then he turned to us and said, I'm leaving now.
    I stay here with my relatives.
    I don't want to become too known here.
    So use you will be--
    everything is paid for you, and you will be sleeping here.
    And I come tomorrow again at 7:00 to pick you up from here.
    Well, we had no suspicion at all that it would not be so.
    We went to bed and got up very early next morning,
    came down to have breakfast.
    Must have been 6:30 or so.
    And 7 o'clock passed, but Jean wasn't there.
    It got 8:00, and we became restless.
    By 9 o'clock we not only were restless.
    We were highly uncomfortable.
    And it was clearly visible to others
    that we were uncomfortable.
    I approached, or one of us approached the owner
    and ask him, do you know why Jean hasn't come yet?
    He said, I don't know Jean.
    I have seen him for the first time in my life
    yesterday, when he came with you.
    Who is he?
    So we said, he's a friend of ours,
    and he is to accompany us to Paris.
    We said Paris, because the Belgian identity card allowed
    us to travel up to Paris--
    not further.
    So we could say that without endangering ourselves.
    So we still waited.
    A man who was having breakfast together with us
    suddenly came over to us, and he said to us,
    I noticed that you people have Dutch accent.
    You speak Dutch.
    You must be from Holland.
    I said, yes, that's correct.
    I assume you are trying to get to non-occupied France.
    I said, no, that's not the case.
    We are going to Paris to visit relatives.
    And we are waiting for our friend to come.
    He completely ignored my answer.
    He said, if you want to, I can bring you to Lyon,
    and you would be there by tomorrow morning.
    Again, we thanked him, but we were not sure
    whether this man could be--
    was a good or bad Belgian.
    So by now, we not only were sure that Jean had abandoned us,
    but that our staying any longer was quite dangerous.
    So we got up and left.
    Where'd you go?
    We had no idea.
    No place.
    Just out into the street.
    You tell now how you came to--
    please, continue now.
    [INAUDIBLE] et cetera.
    I think you do better.
    Because you remember the details better.
    All right.
    Sorry.
    We were--
    I'll fill in, if that's OK.
    Sure.
    We were wandering the streets, through the streets of Menen,
    which was much larger than we had expected to.
    We didn't know where to go.
    We may have walked for perhaps half an hour,
    an hour, maybe, in circles, just to keep on walking, discussing
    all kinds of plans.
    Should we return to Amsterdam?
    We said that doesn't make sense at all.
    Dottie said, because we are-- then we are running exactly
    the--
    or more of a risk to be caught than if we
    try to find a solution here.
    But why?
    How can we find a solution?
    Suddenly, Dottie stopped, and she said, wait a minute.
    The card that my parents had received
    from Eddie, her brother, from Switzerland,
    didn't the card mention the following?
    I passed through Menen, and I met that nice man, Josh--
    the guy with the jewelry all over him.
    Lots of rings--
    Lots.
    --of jewelry on this hands.
    [CROSS TALK]
    Of course, we didn't know any such person,
    but my brother was probably thinking of the possibility
    that someday we may follow his footstep, in his footsteps,
    and perhaps could use him or find him somehow.
    So we looked out and thought now he
    was going to look for someone like that,
    like a needle in a haystack.
    By that time we had reached the main street,
    and the main street was crawling, as it were,
    with uniformed German and Belgian Nazis.
    So we figured it is much better if we get off the main street.
    We saw what is called, in French, patisserie.
    Patisserie.
    Pastry shop.
    Pastry shop, and a café.
    We entered that.
    There was a Flemish-looking woman alone in that store.
    We entered and ordered something.
    And that lady looked quite confidence-inspiring to us.
    So I believe I approached her and ask her
    in French whether she would be willing to help us.
    And I told her we come from Amsterdam, from Holland,
    and we are trying--
    we are going to Paris, but our guide who was to take us
    has disappeared.
    Do you by any chance know anyone, a man here in town?
    His name is Josh.
    Josh is a first name, in French.
    By the name of Josh, who is apparently
    known for the lots of jewelry this man
    is wearing on his hands and fingers.
    She said, no, I don't.
    But if you go up main street, to the second pub
    on the same side, the owner of that pub,
    he knows practically everyone in town.
    He may be able to help you.
    But remember, I said the second pub, not the first one.
    We decided that I would leave and try
    to find that mysterious Josh, who
    must have had some kind of connection
    with my brother-in-law because there was a purpose.
    There was a-- intentionally, he mentioned that name
    and the place, apparently thinking
    that if we want to flee, that we could use that man.
    That could have been his only reason.
    I ignored the first pub.
    When I passed it I saw it was crowded with Belgian Nazis, all
    in their black uniforms.
    I got to the second one, set down in a corner,
    ordered a beer, and motioned the owner, who came over to me.
    And then I said to him, we have lost a friend of ours
    here in town.
    We don't know where he is.
    And we have got to go to Paris.
    But I have to give a message to a man by the name of Josh.
    He is known for wearing a lot of jewelry.
    I don't know his last name.
    Could you help us?
    Could you help me locate this man?
    He smiled and said, you must mean
    Josh Creupelandt, because that is
    one who wears a lot of jewelry.
    And he said it's about 10 minutes walk.
    I was elated.
    I quickly left and reached the house.
    He wasn't home, but his wife let me in.
    And she said, wait a few minutes.
    He is on an errand.
    He will be soon back.
    That "soon back" took almost 45 minutes.
    And I became not only nervous, but extremely, extremely
    agitated, because I knew that Dottie and Max were
    waiting in that café, not knowing
    what had happened to me.
    I could have been arrested.
    And I was afraid that they may get into panic,
    and leave, and then where would we meet again?
    Finally, Josh Creupelandt walked in.
    I quickly told him the whole story.
    I had nothing to lose anymore.
    Besides, I knew from Eddie that this man apparently
    can be trusted.
    I said, do you remember Eddie Parfumeur.
    He said, of course I know.
    Where is he?
    I said, he is in Switzerland.
    Oh, wonderful.
    Then I told him what has happened to us.
    I said, can you take us to Lyon?
    He reflected a minute, and then he said, yes, I could.
    It will cost you each 10,000 francs.
    You have to mention that Lyon was in non-occupied France.
    Yeah, I believe I--
    He said before.
    I believe I mentioned that before, at the beginning,
    that our goal was to reach non-occupied France, Lyon,
    where we would find a representative
    of the Dutch government.
    Did you have that kind of money?
    I said to him, we have paid the other guy already
    more than half what we took along.
    We don't have that much anymore.
    Well, in short, we agreed on half the sum-- that is,
    15,000 Belgian francs--
    for taking us to Leon.
    He said, half?
    I will take you to Paris.
    In Paris you will stay for three days,
    until my colleague picks you up.
    I will get in touch with him.
    I have my own ways of communication.
    Francois will call for you and take you to Lyon.
    To Francois you will have to pay the other half of the money.
    I said, OK, that's fine now.
    Please, I have to leave.
    Where do I meet you?
    He said, take your friend and your fiancée and your friend.
    He come back right away.
    I rushed to the café.
    And when I entered, I found Dottie in terribly excited.
    And that is really an understatement.
    She was all alone.
    Max wasn't there.
    I said, what happened.
    Where's Max?
    She said, he went to look for you.
    I didn't--
    Ready?
    OK.
    I entered the café, and saw Dottie
    sitting alone, and terribly excited,
    which is an understatement.
    She was almost in panic.
    And rightfully so, because she was now all alone.
    I said, where's [Max.
    She said he left to look for you, and I was against it,
    but he was panicky, and he left me alone here.
    So I said then the only thing--
    she asked me, did you find that Josh?
    I said, yes, I did, and we have to go there immediately.
    But first I have to look for Max.
    At that, Max returned, to our great relief.
    I said, for god's sakes, why did you leave,
    and how could you look for me?
    You didn't know where I was.
    I could have been arrested.
    And then you leave Dottie alone, then you are alone
    and she is alone.
    That was a very dumb thing to do.
    He said, well, I didn't know anymore what to do,
    and I said, to which bar did you go?
    He said, to the first one.
    I opened the door and I saw all these black uniform Belgians,
    and I quickly left.
    I said, you could have caused all three of us
    to be now in German hands.
    But quickly, let's go.
    I tell you the story why.
    We thanked the Belgian lady, and we rushed to Josh,
    and I told him what I have been arranged.
    When we got to Josh, he said, rest here for a minute.
    Catch your breath.
    Offered us some wine, et cetera.
    Then I will take you still tonight
    over the French border, because the border guard is
    someone I know quite well.
    And you won't even have to talk to him.
    After about half an hour we left the house.
    He took us through side streets.
    And suddenly, we reached a street
    where there was a barrier across the street.
    He said, this is the French border.
    There was a little--
    what is it called?
    A guard house.
    He walked over to that man, whispered to him,
    took our three identity cards along, showed it to the men.
    The barrier went up.
    We walked through.
    He said, now you are in France, in occupied France.
    Again, we walked for maybe 10, 15 minutes.
    And we stopped in front of a house.
    He rang the bell.
    A man opened.
    And the two greeted each other like old friends.
    They were relatives, by the way.
    And he said, here I have three friends.
    I would like them to stay here overnight.
    Please give them dinner and a room,
    and I pick them up tomorrow morning.
    So he said, please be ready, early, by 8 o'clock.
    I pick you up and take you to--
    I myself take you to Paris.
    What town were you in at this point?
    Now we were in French Menen.
    It's the same name, but it's the French side
    and the Belgian side.
    The next morning, he took us to the station.
    Had a railroad station, that is.
    We took a local train.
    In about an hour we were in--
    wait a minute.
    I have to think what the name of the city is.
    Luik.
    Liege.
    Liege.
    I believe so.
    Liege is right, but I don't know if he went through there.
    I don't think he did.
    No, no.
    It was a-- well it may come back to me.
    It's in northwestern part of France,
    close to the Belgian border.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    No, no, no.
    We were already in France.
    There Josh said to us, stay close to me,
    because this train will be very crowded.
    That is the train that takes workmen to Paris.
    They commute from here.
    Indeed, it was not only crowded, but we had even some difficulty
    getting into the train.
    We managed to be in the same compartment.
    We traveled for about two hours and reached Paris.
    All three of us were elated that now we
    were in that big city, Paris.
    I knew it, Paris, quite well.
    Dottie and Max went there for the first time in their lives.
    But while we were crossing the train station,
    moving towards the exit, first the guide, Josh, behind him,
    Max, then Dottie, and I as last one,
    I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder.
    I froze and swirled around, and I was
    looking at a French gendarme.
    I had my briefcase stuffed with our clothing, and other--
    Your clothes.
    I beg your pardon?
    Your clothes.
    My clothes.
    We each had one.
    Yeah, my clothes and other paraphernalia in there.
    And the gendarme said to me, in French,
    may I see this bag of yours?
    Please open it.
    I opened it, and he went inside with his hands--
    both hands.
    And he said, bon, merci.
    In the meantime, Max and Luke and I were ahead of Dolf,
    and we looked back, and all of a sudden
    we see that he was stopped by a man in uniform.
    And we thought this is it.
    That's the end of it.
    What are we going to do?
    Go back to him, talk to him?
    Or we just pretend not to know him and continue walking?
    Just try to keep an eye on him?
    So we thought this was really the end of--
    What did you do?
    And we slowly walked on, and tried to, corner of our eye,
    to see what was happening.
    And we saw that he was-- that Dolf was opening his briefcase.
    And apparently we were hoping that it was just
    a matter of checking what he had with him.
    But it looked-- when you see a uniform,
    and you were used to all these German uniforms-- see,
    we weren't even sure what the French uniform looked like.
    And also, we didn't know how far the French
    were to be trusted, which they were not.
    But it all ended well.
    There was nothing in his briefcase
    that was objectionable.
    And he closed it, and Dolf followed.
    But it was a few minutes of terror for us,
    and I'm sure for Dolf just as much.
    Sure.
    Josh told us that they are looking for--
    what do you call it-- food, all kind of smuggled food
    from outside Paris.
    That's what they did, fortunately.
    Josh took us by a metro--
    that is the subway in Paris--
    to Montmartre, which I could say is the red-light district
    of Paris.
    Very famous.
    Infamous.
    Or infamous.
    Both.
    We got off there, and Place de Clichy, the heart
    of Montmartre.
    He guided us through some side streets,
    and stopped in front of a strange-looking, illuminated,
    with an illuminated sign, neon light sign, Hotel Eden--
    Eden.
    The Eden Hotel.
    Well.
    Paradise.
    It was a, more or less, a brothel.
    Josh took us in there, and a woman,
    a French woman, elderly French woman, heavily made up,
    greeted him like a lost girlfriend,
    which apparently she was.
    And he told-- he whispered to her,
    and she greeted us very warmly, assigned two rooms to us,
    and said, my children, you can stay here,
    and you will be safe here.
    We paid Josh then and there half of the agreed amount.
    He left us and said it will take three days until Francois will
    come to pick you up from here.
    He is now in non-occupied France,
    and he will return after tomorrow.
    Then he will accompany you to Lyon.
    So he left, and we were on our own now.
    We went out.
    We felt so secure that after we had been fed,
    we went we went to the boulevard.
    It's very strange how you can feel secure just because you're
    in another country, as if the fact
    that nobody knows you there gives you more security.
    But that was, in my case, at least, another factor.
    In Holland I definitely looked Jewish.
    I had dark hair, and somewhat curly.
    And I knew I looked Jewish in Holland.
    But in France, all of a sudden everybody had dark hair,
    and I felt less Jewish than the French who were not.
    And so I personally felt more secure,
    and I asked Max the other day, and he said, yes,
    he felt that way too, because he definitely looks very Jewish,
    but not in France anymore.
    At least he felt that way.
    And so did I, because no one knew me here.
    What struck us--
    And of course, we didn't have the stars on,
    which gave us quite an advantage.
    Obviously.
    And we no longer were wearing our heavy winter clothes.
    We had left them in the hotel.
    And another factor was that we had Belgian identity cards
    without the J. We didn't have in Holland.
    You know, we have infamous J on our identity cards.
    What struck us in Paris was that we saw so many French women
    walking arm in arm with German soldiers,
    that a fraternization which was totally unknown to us
    in Holland, because there was a hatred, such
    a hatred between the far greater majority of the Dutch
    and the Germans, that there was no fraternization at all.
    Also we saw that the stores in Paris
    still had some wares to offer.
    There were still things to buy, and one could buy.
    We didn't see any food stuff in the windows,
    but many things that had disappeared from the shops
    in Holland for at least a year already.
    After a walk we, we bought some papers, newspapers,
    and went back to our hotel.
    The next day, Max said to us, my father and I,
    we have done business for many years, when we still
    were in Germany, with a firm here in Paris.
    And my father visited him, visit the owner many a time
    and became quite friendly with him.
    I looked up.
    I looked at the telephone book.
    The firm still exists.
    What do you think?
    Should we go and visit this man who knows,
    of course, of my name, my father's name, and of our firm
    we had?
    Maybe he can give us some tips.
    And if, god forbid, it should happen to us again,
    that Francois does not show up here,
    maybe he will be able to help us to get to [INAUDIBLE] friends.
    It sounded very smart and logical.
    So we did.
    We walked through the ground the Grand Boulevard,
    and we found the address.
    We went up there to that.
    They were located on the first floor.
    We went upstairs.
    And a receptionist asked Max, can I help you?
    He said, I would like to see Monsieur--
    I forgot the name of his business relation there.
    She said, what is your name?
    So he gave the name.
    She said, one moment, please.
    She went to another room and called someone.
    A man came out, approached us.
    Again, spoke to Max, and said, I heard that you
    asked for Monsieur So-and-so.
    We all three noticed immediately that this man spoke
    with a heavy German accent, and that he
    must have been a German.
    So Max said, yes, I did.
    He said, what is the purpose of your visit?
    Max said, my father is a good friend of his,
    and I just wanted to give him--
    bringing my father's greetings.
    So with this, he invited us to come to the next room
    and ask Max what kind of business did you do.
    He said, well, I, as well, of course, as my father,
    are numismatists, and we have done business
    with Monsieur for at least 15 years.
    Oh, he said, that's interesting.
    Well just one minute.
    Excuse me one minute.
    He left the room.
    We looked at each other, and we knew exactly what
    was going to happen.
    With this, we opened the door, and passed, rushed--
    Bolted out.
    --bolted out past the receptionist,
    who looked at us with surprised eyes.
    We ran down the stairs, out in the street, around the corner
    to the subway station, to the metro station.
    And we didn't stop until we were inside the train
    taking us back to Montmartre.
    It could have, if we would have waited another few minutes,
    it would have cost us our lives, probably.
    From that moment on, we decided, we'd better stay indoors.
    It is not as safe to go out in Paris as we thought it was.
    The next morning, there was a knock at the door,
    and there was Francois, who said,
    I have been in touch with Josh.
    Look, show me your identity-- the Belgian identity cards.
    We showed it to him.
    He said, I want you to know that from here
    on they will be doing you no good as soon as we leave Paris.
    However you don't have to worry.
    I will not take the express train, Paris-Lyon.
    That one is always checked by the Germans and by the French.
    We will take locals, and reach the demarcation line
    in a roundabout way.
    So we ask him, where will you take us?
    He said, I take you to Le Creusot.
    That is a town not too far from the demarcation line.
    There we have to take a bus to a mining
    town called Montceau-les-Mines.
    Coal mines are there.
    And through, or just outside Montceau-les-Mines
    runs the demarcation line.
    We will stay in Montceau-les-Mines in a bar,
    restaurant, hotel that I know.
    And the next morning I take you over the demarcation line,
    where we bought a train to Lyon, because then you
    are in non-occupied France.
    Sounded fine to us.
    He said, tomorrow morning, early, I
    come here and take you to Gare de Lyon,
    and we bought the trains there.
    I want you to do one thing.
    Don't be on my side.
    Just walk behind me as inconspicuously
    as you can make it.
    And don't ask me any questions.
    Just follow me.
    Didn't we send our luggage, or the luggage-- the, you know--
    Not yet.
    Not from Paris.
    No, not from Paris.
    That we did from from Le Creusot.
    Yeah.
    But we still had our briefcases and, Dottie had her tote bag.
    Next morning, we took--
    we met him at the Gare de Lyon, where
    he was waiting outside, and lots of people
    in and out that station, railroad station.
    He had tickets already.
    We walked behind him, followed him through the--
    to the entrance, and boarded the train.
    He had also asked us, please, don't talk to me.
    Do as if I don't exist.
    You have foreign accents.
    It is too dangerous.
    Fine.
    We did what he had told us.
    The train was a local Paris-Dijon, a town in--
    more to the southwest of Paris.
    After about an hour's time, we were now alone
    in the compartment.
    He said, now you have to pay me the other amount,
    the other half of the amount that you
    had agreed upon with Josh.
    I said, excuse me.
    The agreement with Josh was that we
    pay you the half of the amount once we reach Lyon.
    We are still far from Lyon.
    He said, oh, no, I said to Josh that as soon as I take you
    on the trip, I want to be paid, because I'm risking my life.
    I said, but so are we.
    Nothing doing.
    Unless I get paid now, I get off the next stop,
    and you are on your own.
    You can continue alone.
    He had us over a barrel.
    I consulted with Dottie and Max, and we came to the conclusion
    we have no choice.
    We have to trust him.
    We paid him the amount, and we continued.
    We changed trains in Dijon, took an express train.
    We did see some German soldiers walking along that station,
    but they were not interested in checking
    any identity of anyone.
    We boarded that express train to Dijon, and--
    to Le Creusot, and we reached Le Creusot in the afternoon
    at about 2 o'clock.
    We sat down in a outdoor restaurant, ordered something
    to eat and to drink.
    And Francois turned to us and said,
    you see across this place?
    It was like a marketplace.
    You see across there is the bus stop where the people are
    waiting for the bus.
    As soon as the bus comes, that's the one
    we are taking to Montceau-les-Mines.
    But no bus came.
    We were sitting there for half an hour,
    for an hour, maybe an hour and a half.
    In the meantime, Francois got up, became nervous,
    went over, talked to the people, came back, and said to us,
    I don't know.
    They don't know why the bus is delayed to such an extent.
    But it ought to be here any minute.
    Again, he went over.
    And when he came back, he said there is a delay.
    They don't know how long it will take.
    It may take at least another hour or more.
    Why don't you give me--
    and he turned to Max and me.
    Why don't you give me your bulging briefcases which
    are so conspicuous, and I--
    For all three.
    Mine too.
    Yours too?
    All three of them.
    Why don't you give me your luggage that you are carrying,
    and I will go to the railroad station and send it ahead of us
    to Lyon.
    Give me an address in Lyon.
    We said we have no address in Lyon.
    Then we can send it [FRENCH].
    That means it stays there in depot until you come.
    We looked at each other, and we didn't like that at all.
    Why should he do it?
    Maybe he wouldn't come back?
    We said to him, one of us said to him, we have nothing to do.
    We have to wait.
    Let's all four go to the station,
    and let's walk a little.
    He said, OK, fine, if you want to.
    We all walked to the railroad station
    and parted with our luggage, got a receipt,
    and slowly walked back.
    The bus hadn't arrived yet.
    But after another half hour or so, it already began to--
    dusk was falling.
    There was movement in the crowd that was standing there
    across where we were sitting.
    And we heard someone calling out voila, le bus.
    The bus was there.
    It was an old dilapidated vehicle.
    We got up, and before we went over, he said to us,
    you get in first, and please go to the rear of the bus,
    and don't talk to each other.
    And I will sit in the front.
    When we reach Montceau-les-Mines,
    I will get off first, and then I will wait at the corner
    until you come out, and you join me.
    And then you walk behind me.
    All right.
    That's what we did.
    The bus left.
    At that time it was already dark.
    And it was chugging along the road.
    We didn't know where to.
    Everything was dark.
    We had traveled for perhaps 30 minutes
    or so when the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere.
    And the bus driver got out with flashlight.
    Someone else, one or two passengers, followed him.
    And they were talking in French.
    We couldn't hear in the back what was going on.
    But finally they came back, and the bus
    turned around and returned from where it was coming.
    And all three of us, we thought, now what are we going to do?
    Staying in Montceau-les-Mines?
    Is he going back to Montceau-les-Mines.
    But that wasn't the case.
    We heard from-- that the conversations
    that some passengers had that the road had become impassable
    by British bombs.
    The British had bombed Le Creusot,
    which was a one of the most important towns in France
    with armament factories.
    Schneider, the large French armament industrial concern,
    was located in that town.
    So the British had bombed the town
    and had damaged the road to Montceau-les-Mines.
    So the bus driver had to take a roundabout way, which
    took at least another hour to an hour and a half.
    It must have been about 10 o'clock
    at night when the bus finally came to a stop somewhere.
    Everything, everyone got out.
    We were the last one to leave the bus.
    And we barely saw, still, the outlines of Francois.
    We hastened and reached him at the corner just when he
    turned around the corner.
    You don't know up to this day whether the man tried
    to just run away from us, or whether he was so cautious
    that he turned the corner.
    Anyway we caught up with him and walked behind him
    through the darkened streets of the town.
    Then he stopped.
    He saw an entrance to a courtyard.
    There was a shed in the back.
    And to the right of that entrance to that yard,
    we saw a small building standing, a low building.
    We could barely see where we were.
    Francois turned to us and said, this
    is the back entrance of the pub, and to a little hotel.
    I don't know if he even told us that.
    He said, wait here till I come back.
    Yes, you are right.
    Yes, correct.
    Yes, yes, yes.
    He didn't know where we were, and he didn't even tell us.
    Yes, that's correct.
    He didn't tell us.
    We just found it out later.
    He said, just wait here for a moment.
    I have to see whether everything is OK.
    Yeah.
    That's what he said.
    And he disappeared--
    Everything is--
    --somewhere in the dark.
    He opened a door, and for just for a second,
    we could see light coming out from a room.
    What kind of room, we didn't know.
    And he went in there.
    We waited five minutes, 10 minutes.
    We became restless.
    Then 15 minutes.
    After 15 minutes, we knew something was wrong.
    It couldn't be that he had to talk so long.
    So Max said, maybe there are still persons in that pub,
    and Francois doesn't want to take us in there.
    So Dottie said, but at least--
    We didn't even know it was a pub.
    We didn't know.
    But at least, he said, then, if some people
    he doesn't want us to meet are in there,
    then he would come out and let us know.
    After another few minutes, we decided we cannot just stay
    there in the street.
    Any person passing us could become suspicious.
    Besides, there was a curfew.
    There was a certain time that you are not
    supposed to be out anymore.
    So anybody out in the street was suspect.
    We didn't know where the curfew would start.
    So finally, we decided, we are entering that same door
    where he had disappeared.
    We opened the door.
    It was some kind of a kitchen with a stove to the left,
    and a wooden table in the middle,
    and there were six or seven people, four men and two women
    sitting around the table.
    They all looked at us in amazement.
    I addressed the lady, who asked me--
    who had ask us, who are you, in French.
    Since I was the most fluent in French, I answered her,
    we are three fugitives from Holland.
    We had a guy by the name of Francois who took us here,
    and he said we could stay here overnight.
    He entered about 15, 20 minutes ago, and said to us
    we should wait outside, and we call us,
    and he hasn't called us.
    With this, a man, apparently her husband, owner, said,
    this damned--
    yeah.
    Some kind of a scoundrel.
    Scoundrel or his traitor, scum.
    He had he-- he betrayed you.
    That is one of those who betrays people.
    We have had more of those.
    You know what he did?
    He hoped that the Germans, who always patrol
    and check the buses from Le Creusot,
    they usually wait at the bus-- where the bus terminal is,
    and they check all the identity cards,
    because we are close to the demarcation line.
    He wanted you to be arrested, but your bus
    came two hours late, so the Germans didn't wait anymore.
    Otherwise, you would now be arrested by the Germans,
    and god knows what's going to happen to you,
    would have happened to you.
    With this, I said, please let us stay.
    Here we cannot go outside.
    We don't know where to go.
    We don't know what to do.
    The woman turned around and said, I'm very sorry.
    I can't do that.
    I have been in trouble once before.
    The Germans come here every day to check.
    And I can't risk my life and that of the other people.
    There were chairs.
    We sat down without being asked to.
    And I said, madam, if you send us out from your house,
    we will die.
    You know that.
    You can't do that to people.
    We are innocent people, and we are fleeing to save our lives.
    I beg of you, don't send us out.
    Everyone was looking at us.
    We had no choice.
    We had to tell them exactly how things were.
    With this, the man, her husband, got up and said,
    let me try to find that scoundrel.
    I have a suspicion where he might be.
    With this, he left.
    But we really didn't want him anymore,
    because we didn't trust him.
    Of course we didn't trust him.
    Went through the back entrance and walked out
    the front entrance.
    But the other man said let me try and--
    No, not yet.
    Not yet.
    That was later.
    Don't remember that he went up to find him.
    No.
    Yes, that the owner left.
    I know it.
    I remember that very clearly, because of the fact
    that when he left, he had practically given us permission
    to stay until he came back.
    And his wife no longer insisted that we leave.
    The other people-- there was a young pregnant woman
    sitting there, her and three men, apparently coal miners,
    the way they were dressed.
    They ask us some questions, and we told them
    about what has happened to us, and that we had been
    betrayed in Belgium already.
    Suddenly, there was a knock at the door.
    And the door opened.
    Two German soldiers with rifles were standing
    in the opening of the door.
    All of us froze.
    But most of all, the three of us, because to our minds went,
    this is the end.
    Goodbye.
    Just was no doubt.
    I can only remember how the other two looked.
    I've never seen them look that way.
    Their eyes were just as large as--
    as cups.
    And they looked like they popped out.
    And that there was just panic written all over their faces.
    And I must have looked to them exactly the same way--
    You did.
    --in my despair.
    I picked up the cat that was on the floor, and I started--
    I picked it up on my lap and started
    petting it and petting it, just to give ourselves,
    in a desperate position, as a sort of a casual air.
    And then we were just hoping for the best, I think.
    You take it from there again.
    The woman jumped up and greeted these two soldiers, especially
    the one corporal, effusively.
    Ah, my chers amis, and then grabbed the corporal
    by the arm.
    Please sit down and sit down.
    I bring you beer.
    And in a second she was back with two bottles of beer
    and filled the glasses of these two guys.
    The older of the two, the corporal
    looked around and smiled, and saw the pregnant woman sitting
    close by.
    And he started making obscene jokes about her belly,
    and in broken French, half-German, half-French.
    And everyone was laughing about these stupid jokes.
    Everyone was really putting up a good act.
    Perfect actors.
    Max and I, we turned away from--
    our faces away from the Germans.
    And looking at the other men so as not to face them.
    back was the woman immediately and filled the glasses again.
    And they continued.
    The corporal continued talking, and joking,
    and speaking to another man who understood a little German.
    And--
    And we made believe we didn't understand German.
    Not a word.
    And meanwhile they kept on drinking and drinking,
    and the glasses were filled three, four, five times.
    Suddenly, the corporal, he was already red
    in his neck and face, he turned to the woman and said, who?
    Pointed with a finger to the two of us, Max and me.
    Who are these-- who are these people?
    Again, our hearts stopped.
    The woman said very nonchalantly to, ils sont des voyageurs.
    They are travelers, which could mean 1,000 things and nothing,
    without protecting us.
    It was a totally neutral, ingenious answer.
    Ils sont des voyageurs.
    Some travelers.
    He was satisfied, apparently, and he
    kept on joking, and drinking, and talking.
    And then the door opened, and the owner returned.
    And he immediately knew, overlooked the situation,
    knew that nothing bad had happened,
    and sat down next to me.
    There was a seat free next to me.
    And while the German soldier was babbling, I ask him--
    we spoke to him, any news?
    He looked at me and said, not now.
    So I kept quiet.
    Finally, after an eternity--
    it was at least an hour--
    the soldiers got up, auf wiedersehen, and left.
    Well, we started breathing again,
    and everybody started talking at the same time.
    It was the most incredible relief, that none of us
    really thought this was going to happen.
    They didn't ask us for our papers,
    and didn't doubt her words.
    Just left.
    But a minute later, there was a knock, and the door opened.
    There were the two again.
    And again--
    So then we knew, now they're going to ask for our papers,
    because they talked to each other outside,
    and one must have reproached, probably
    the older one who looked more serious and more suspicious,
    suspicious of us, he probably told the younger
    one, what did we do?
    We should have found out who these people are.
    That's what went through our mind.
    That's what went through our mind, all three of us,
    probably, separately here.
    But we have more or less the same idea,
    that this definitely is it.
    But what really happened was they had forgotten
    their-- well, one of the two had forgotten his--
    Rifle.
    --rifle in the corner, because he
    had a little bit too much to drink, and remembered later,
    came back just to pick up his rifle, and left again.
    That was definitely the end of that episode.
    We waited a few minutes, but fortunately, they
    didn't return.
    And that's when the owner said, I couldn't find the guy.
    You see, he said, this is the back room of our pub.
    The pub is there and closes at 8 o'clock.
    He must have known that, because he came in and ask us--
    gave us a fictitious-- it's one or the other name.
    Do you know whether he was here?
    So we said, no.
    So he left through the front and disappeared.
    So what are we going to do now?
    Did you have any money left?
    We still had some money left.
    Not much, though.
    Very few.
    A few hundred francs, which wasn't much, really.
    And one man, with a miner cap on his head,
    he suddenly started talking to us.
    He said, look.
    I know in what predicament you people are.
    I cannot do anything for you.
    But I have a cousin.
    He is also a miner, mine worker.
    He has a German permit to a--
    hunting permit in the area.
    He knows this whole area like the pocket of his trousers.
    I'm going to talk to him.
    Wait here.
    I'll return.
    So he came back after maybe half an hour, and said,
    I spoke to my cousin.
    He's willing to do it.
    Tell me, people, do you still have some money left?
    We said, very little.
    He said, do you think that each of you could,
    for the risk this--
    my cousin is taking, that you could spare--
    might you spare 100 francs each.
    That was like asking for $2, $2 each.
    We said, oh, yes.
    That we still have.
    He said, if you can't, he will take you without money.
    But he will take you over the demarcation line.
    So we knew that we were now with the good French people.
    He came back and said, my cousin is willing.
    Please take off your shoes, because the curfew
    is on already, since quite a while.
    It was after 12:00 by then.
    After midnight.
    The curfew was 10:00 or 11:00.
    And--
    We went barefoot.
    Silently, through the darkened street,
    for maybe 15 or 20 minutes.
    Tiny little houses, very poor neighborhood.
    He knocked at the door.
    And a youngish man opened the door,
    and he greeted us very friendly, and he
    said, you poor people, what you went through, come in, come in.
    And then his wife came and greeted us.
    His cousin left, wished us good luck.
    And he said, you must be hungry.
    You haven't eaten all day.
    Did you?
    We said, no, we didn't.
    So his wife--
    Please, continue.
    Because you know better what happened there.
    I can't remember.
    Well, she offered to give us something to eat.
    We didn't even realize that we were hungry.
    We had other things on our minds.
    But she quickly put together sort
    of a dinner in a one or one and a half room little house.
    But before she-- or while the potatoes that she had peeled
    were boiling, she got both of her children--
    or were there three?
    I'm not sure anymore.
    Two, two.
    Two.
    Two children on a bed.
    They were sleeping of course.
    But she was so proud of her children,
    and she wanted to show us her two--
    the two kids.
    And so we ate a salad and some potatoes,
    and slept for a couple of hours, I think.
    Yeah.
    Till very early in the morning.
    Just started getting light.
    I would like to mention something,
    that as soon as we lay down, [NON-ENGLISH] got into shock.
    I didn't go to shock.
    Yes, you started shaking violently
    from the horrible excitement that we had just gone through.
    And I don't know.
    Perhaps Max and I too.
    Because now came the reaction of that awful day,
    that horrible-- these horrible 24 hours
    that we have gone through.
    And we must all three of us be shaking.
    We had about three hours, two or three or four
    hours sleep, when the mine worker awakened us,
    got something to drink, and a short breakfast.
    It was not daylight yet when we left.
    While we were walking, he said to us,
    we will have to walk about half an hour.
    Then we will have reached the outskirts of Montceau.
    I will stop when we reach a kind of a--
    how do you call it?
    A dry riverbed.
    That divides occupied and non-occupied France.
    And the demarcation line runs through this dry river bed.
    You will stop.
    I will tell you where to stop.
    And I will cross it very fast and run up
    the embankment on the other side into that forest
    that you see not far.
    And I won't stop until I have reached the forest.
    I will look out whether it is safe for you to cross.
    Because very often, on both sides,
    German soldiers are watching there with machine guns.
    So after I am safely on the other side,
    I will give you a sign.
    We reached that point.
    He said, stop here.
    Then he looked around.
    Then he raced across that riverbed and up the other side
    and kept on climbing like a quick animal, and stopped.
    Then he signaled us, and all three of us,
    we raced down as fast as we could,
    crossed that riverbed, up the embankment to the other side.
    He kept on running.
    And we followed him for maybe five, six minutes.
    Then we came to a some open part of that forest.
    He stopped, waited until we came nearby, embraced us, and said,
    now you are in non-occupied France.
    Then he continued, non occupée mes pas libre.
    It is the non-occupied part, but not free.
    Remember that, my friends.
    So we continued until we reached a kind of a road, a dirt road.
    He said, I will go.
    I will walk with you until we reach the first village.
    It is called [FRENCH].
    There is no train station there, but I cannot go further than
    that, because I don't want to meet people who perhaps know me
    from--
    that I live in the other side.
    It could endanger my life.
    We reached the-- we could see that little village
    where we stopped.
    And we gave the man 1,000 francs of the maybe 1,500
    we still had left.
    He didn't want to accept at first, but finally he did.
    And we thanked him, and we embraced,
    and he gave us pictures of his children, which Max still has--
    Yeah, he does.
    --up to this day.
    Yeah, he kept it.
    We--
    The village, [PLACE NAME],, did not have a railroad.
    It was about 10 kilometers from the first little town where
    there was a train to be had.
    We were tired from walking, so we
    decided that we stay in [PLACE NAME],, a little village,
    very friendly people.
    And to our surprise, food was no problem.
    We didn't need coupons, which you needed anywhere else.
    And they ask us whether we were refugees.
    We talked freely there.
    Because in spite of the fact that we were told
    it is non-occupied France but not free,
    the people were friendly, full of understanding,
    and sympathetic.
    So we felt almost at home before the war,
    as it was before the war.
    You saw no police, no soldiers.
    It was too small, too insignificant a place.
    There was one little inn.
    That's where we stayed overnight, and had
    a bath, which was the greatest luxury since we
    had left Amsterdam.
    And in the evening, when we had dinner, the owner, a farmer,
    by the way, he said to us, are you leaving tomorrow for Lyon?
    We said, yes, we would like to, only we
    don't know how to get to [FRENCH]..
    He said, I have to do I have to do business in [FRENCH],,
    and I go there by horse and buggy.
    If you want to, you can hop into my buggy, and I take you along.
    We were delighted.
    And strangely enough, once we left in the morning,
    it was a bright, beautiful day, and we
    were riding through the French beautiful landscape,
    we felt so elated, in spite of what we had just gone through,
    that we started singing all the songs that we possibly
    could remember.
    And we were in a elated, happy mood.
    He delivered us to [FRENCH].
    We took the train, a local train, which took forever,
    but we reached Lyon without any incidents.
    First thing we did in Lyon was to go to the depot
    and claim our luggage.
    We got it back indeed, but half empty.
    Things, anything of value, was stolen.
    Very little was left.
    But the main thing is we felt now safe in--
    to be in non-occupied France.
    We walked through the streets.
    We didn't know where the office [NON-ENGLISH],,
    Netherlands office, the unofficial--
    There was no consulate anymore.
    Yeah, the unofficial consulate of the Netherlands,
    where it was located.
    So we saw a couple walking down the street
    with two girls, apparently their daughters.
    We walked up to that family.
    And in our best French we asked, could you please tell us where
    the [NON-ENGLISH] is?
    I think we had looked up the street in a telephone book,
    but we had no idea where it was, so we asked.
    We looked for the [NON-ENGLISH].
    Would you tell us how to get there?
    Well, in the best Dutch, they answered.
    It seemed that you come from Holland.
    It was so obvious from our accent.
    They have fled just a few weeks before us, before we, she said.
    And, well, they showed us exactly the way
    how to get there.
    Next thing we did, I think we immediately went there.
    No, no.
    I want to--
    Oh, you want to tell more about this family.
    --and something else.
    He asked, what's your name?
    So We told our names.
    And When.
    [NON-ENGLISH] said, my name is--
    [NON-ENGLISH].
    Parfumeur, he said, I helped a Eddie Parfumeur,
    a few weeks ago to get to Switzerland.
    Are you related to my?
    That's my brother.
    It was her brother.
    That was the craziest coincidence.
    It just seemed unbelievable, because what they told us,
    we didn't even know yet, that he had gone to Switzerland,
    but was sent back into France by the Swiss.
    Expulsed.
    Expulsed.
    And there was quite a time that the Swiss did not
    take any refugees in.
    So he was sent back, landed somehow again in Lyon,
    met them.
    He had no money with him anymore,
    and he didn't know how to get back and try again
    for Switzerland.
    And they were diamond dealers, and very wealthy.
    They helped them with money.
    And he had promised to pay him back,
    but he said he wouldn't dream of getting back the money.
    But my brother apparently had borrowed that money,
    and planned to give it back after the war.
    And on the second effort he made it to Switzerland.
    But they hadn't heard from him anymore,
    but we already knew that, so we could tell him
    that the end was good.
    He was in a camp for refugees in Switzerland.
    Cossonay, quite well known among the refugees.
    We reached the Dutch office.
    We were greeted by that representative with,
    you cannot stay here.
    There are roundups going on, and there
    are Gestapo agents not in uniform, but Gestapo
    everywhere.
    You cannot go to a hotel, because you may be picked up
    tonight.
    What I can do for you is I give you papers.
    Do you have any papers?
    No, we have nothing.
    The only thing we have are false Belgian identity cards,
    which, of course, are of no value here.
    So he said, OK, I am allowed and entitled,
    by the Dutch free government, to furnish documents to you--
    passports.
    He asked Max and me, are you Dutch citizens?
    We said, no, we are stateless.
    He said, from now on you are Dutch.
    Until you reach safety, you are Dutch.
    I give you passports, a kind of passport.
    So we all got passports.
    We were all born in Amsterdam.
    And we are all of Dutch nationality.
    But he said, you must find yourself a place, a safe place,
    talk to others here.
    There were a lot of--
    quite a number of Dutch young people
    milling around in that consulate.
    See whether you can find a place where you can sleep.
    And as soon as possible, get out of the town.
    So we ask him, get out?
    But where to?
    How about Switzerland?
    He said, oh, no.
    I have no guide, and I can't help you at all
    because it has become almost impossible to get
    into Switzerland.
    The Germans and the French, they are watching,
    and the Swiss, the Swiss throw you out
    as soon as you get there.
    I said, well, then the other border is Spain.
    He said, what do you know about Spain, he asked me.
    And I said, I lived there.
    So he says, what do you want?
    What are you waiting for?
    Then go to Spain.
    That's your best bet.
    I said, yes.
    That's what we aimed for.
    But how do we get there?
    He said we have a representative in Perpignan.
    His name is such and such.
    You tell him that you got the papers here,
    and he should help you to, first of all,
    to be legalized in Perpignan, until you either
    get an exit visa.
    I said what is an exit visa?
    That's when he explained to us that all men, in the age
    group of 18 to 45 must get an exit visa from the Vichy
    government to leave the territory.
    And then he said, if you have the exit visa,
    then you can get a Spanish visa, transit visa,
    to England, that our government will issue.
    You do get a visa for England, but only once you are in Spain.
    Said, can we get it?
    He said, lately, no one has gotten an exit visa.
    It will be no problem for [NON-ENGLISH]..
    But for you, two men, yes.
    But first get to Perpignan, and then you see what happens.
    We spoke to a young woman who was just leaving that same day.
    She said, I have a place.
    There is a fur dealer--
    Furrier.
    --a furrier by the name of Edelman.
    I'll give you the address.
    I have been put up there, and it's a very nice family.
    They are Polish, but they live in France already
    for many years.
    They will definitely take you in.
    That's where we went.
    Immediately we were taken in and fed by these people.
    Next day, we boarded the train to Perpignan.
    Forget where we slept.
    Yeah.
    The night, we were put up on the--
    In the basement, in heaps of--
    Heaps of hides.
    Hides.
    Hides?
    Hides.
    And the smell.
    And jute, the bags, you know, jute, the course material.
    And we got--
    A pleasant--
    --plenty of lice from that.
    Not lice, but-- not only lice, but bedbugs.
    It was terrible.
    We reached Perpignan.
    Perpignan I knew because I had stayed there for several times
    when I traveled from Spain, before the war,
    from Spain to Belgium and Holland.
    I had always, on my way back, stopped in Perpignan.
    I knew Perpignan.
    We went to a hotel that I remembered,
    Hotel de la [FRENCH].
    And we got two rooms.
    We still had a little money.
    And we thought, well, what can we do now?
    So I said to Dottie and Max, I'll tell you what I can do.
    I have a friend who lives in Figueres.
    Figueres is across the Pyrenees, the first town on Spanish side,
    in Catalonia.
    We have been not only doing business regularly,
    business with this man for several years,
    but we had become friendly with him too.
    He was about 20 years older than I am--
    in my eyes, an elderly gentleman.
    I'm going to call Mr. Delfo tell him that we are here.
    I know that he is a big shot now in the Franco regime,
    because he had been a Francoist man,
    and his sons had escaped from Barcelona, had never
    served in the republican army.
    He may be able to help us.
    And maybe we can--
    I can borrow some money from him till after the war.
    Firstly, we got to the hotel.
    And next day, I went to phone him.
    He was happy to hear me.
    I didn't tell him that I was with a friend,
    but I just told him that, with my future wife,
    we have made it.
    I said, could you come over here?
    I have things to discuss with you,
    because I didn't want to speak on the phone about these items.
    He said, yes, I'll be over in three days.
    I am the president of the International Red
    Cross in the province of Catalonia,
    and I can easily travel back and forth.
    No problem for me.
    The next day, we walked around in Perpignan.
    And when we came back to have lunch,
    we were approached by a young man.
    He said, in perfect Dutch, I heard you speaking Dutch.
    Are you a refugee?
    So we told him the whole story.
    He said let me introduce myself.
    My name is Fred Manheim.
    I come from The Hague.
    And tell me-- and we told him everything.
    And I said, you are from The Hague.
    Do you by any chance know Echo and Rita Corman?
    He said, they are my friends.
    They are here in Perpignan.
    I said, what?
    Yes, they are in the Hotel de la Loge.
    By the way, he said in the Hotel de la Loge are far more
    Dutch people, all refugees.
    We have all come from Nice, because the French started
    picking up Jewish refugees, so it was not safe anymore.
    We came to Perpignan.
    And we are all waiting for our exit visas.
    Come over.
    I introduce.
    I show you.
    And your friends will be thrilled to meet you.
    So we met with our friends.
    And there was great jubilation that we had all made it.
    We were told they all waited for their visas.
    Rita, our friend from Amsterdam, she was from Amsterdam,
    she called me from The Hague.
    They got married shortly before they fled.
    She had an exit visa, but he couldn't get one.
    He was still waiting.
    We went to the consul, or rather the Dutch representatives,
    and he gave us a paper for the police,
    and we got a temporary--
    Visa.
    --Dutch visa.
    That permit, permit to stay in Perpignan.
    That is, we showed you the one document that we still have
    from [NON-ENGLISH].
    The condition is that it had to be renewed every month.
    It was given for one month to the other.
    We stayed in Perpignan.
    And our friend Delfo came.
    I told him what--
    the whole story, and said to him Mr. Delfo, we need money.
    He said, you have nothing anymore?
    I said, only Dutch money, which is useless here or in France.
    No one could change Dutch money which we still have,
    maybe a couple of thousand of guilders.
    He said, you can go to the [PERSONAL NAME]
    that we have used before the war.
    Remember him?
    I said, yes, I remember.
    I didn't think of him.
    He said, he will change the guilders for you,
    and then you will have enough.
    Otherwise, I give you as many pesetas as you wish.
    I ask him whether he can do something for us.
    He said, I cannot help you with the exit visa.
    The Spanish visa I can help you, but I said,
    look, it may come to a point where
    we will have to try to get illegally into Spain.
    Can you help us with a guide?
    He was taken aback.
    He said, where do you want to go?
    I said, we want to go to, of course, to Spain.
    And then we want to try to reach England.
    I saw something in his eyes, and I
    regretted that I had said that.
    And it plagued me from that moment on.
    Why was I so dumb to mention that we go to England?
    I knew that the man was pro-Franco,
    and that he may resent that.
    He was against England.
    What year was this?
    What was the date?
    That was 19-- in November 1942.
    I went to the forwarder.
    He changed the money.
    He said, where do you live.
    I said in the Hotel de la Loge.
    He said, it's much too expensive.
    I have a little empty apartment of my brother, who
    is a war prisoner in Germany.
    Why don't you take that?
    I said, how much will it cost?
    He said, nothing.
    We moved into that house, that little--
    One room.
    --one-room house.
    It had an outhouse.
    It had a little kitchen in that large room,
    and it had a bed, and a couch.
    Cot.
    A cot.
    We put ourselves up there, and we were quite happy there.
    And we stayed there for several weeks,
    getting together each day with friends and other Dutch people.
    We had actually a very good time.
    But still active, to try to get out--
    We passed the time in Perpignan getting together,
    playing bridge, and simply waiting and waiting.
    By that time, it was now the middle of November 1942.
    It had become quite clear that the young-- the men who
    were waiting for their exit visa would never
    get it, because they didn't hear from Vichy.
    And an emissary who was sent to Vichy came back with the news
    that it is totally unclear and uncertain when, if ever,
    the exit visas would be given out.
    No, it was not middle of November yet.
    It was the beginning of November.
    I must correct myself.
    We weren't that long in Perpignan.
    Yes, we were there until the 11th.
    But this, I am talking now of the first days of November.
    Rita was urged by her husband, by our friend, and by us
    to leave, not to stay any longer.
    You are legal.
    You have a Spanish visa.
    You have your papers all in order.
    Get out.
    What do you want to wait here?
    She very, very reluctantly left Perpignan, finally,
    but I had to promise her I, the one who had lived in Spain
    and had the friendship with that Spaniard across the Pyrenees,
    that should we ever leave, leave clandestinely, go
    over the Pyrenees, that I would not leave her husband behind.
    I promised her that.
    And she left.
    We had often dinner in a restaurant where
    we didn't have to give coupons.
    We had to pay more money, but the food was also much better.
    The owner was an elderly French lady.
    And somehow a German-Jewish refugee, a little older
    than we are aware, maybe in his late 40s,
    befriended this woman, and he lived there.
    And he started talking to us, and we found out from him
    that he was from Germany, had left
    his non-Jewish wife, et cetera, et cetera.
    And one day, I ask him, tell me, Mr. Ehrlich, you
    live here now since eight month, as you told us.
    Do you know guides that bring refugees into Spain?
    He said, as a matter of fact, yes.
    I do know one.
    I said, would you be willing to give me his name?
    Since we had created a kind of friendship with this man,
    because we had been there very often, he knew our story,
    and we knew his story, he said, I do better.
    This man, who lives in Amélie-les-Bains--
    that is a spa up high up in the mountains
    in the French Pyrenees.
    Once a month he comes to Perpignan doing some shopping.
    He is due any day now to come here.
    When he comes, I introduce you to him.
    Indeed, the man came a few days later, and I spoke to the man,
    and said to him, I have friends in Figueres.
    I don't know whether we can get our visas.
    If we don't get them within a reasonable time,
    can I count on you that you will take the three of us
    over the Pyrenees?
    He said, yes.
    I said, how much will it cost us to do it?
    He mentioned the amount which we still had.
    We were able to pay that.
    OK.
    I said here, I leave you my phone number.
    I have to know when you come, and let me know, because then I
    pick you up from the train station,
    because we continue further to another place, which is,
    in my opinion, safer.
    A few days passed.
    And we needed a certificate from a doctor.
    Yes, yes.
    I know.
    But we got that a little later.
    In the meantime, it was, I believe, the 10th of--
    the 9th or the 10th of November, Echo came from-- our friend
    Echo came from the Hotel de la Loge early in the morning,
    running to our little apartment, very excitedly.
    They had just heard that American forces had landed
    in Casablanca and other place, and that there were rumors
    already that German troops may occupy the rest of France,
    so-called Vichy France.
    And a day later, on the 11th of November,
    that's exactly what happened.
    On the morning of that day, Dotti, Max, and I
    met with our friend, Echo, and we
    decided to try to call the passeur, as he was meant--
    as the smuggler or guide was called in French,
    that I was to approach him and tell him that we
    would come in a day or two.
    We were told we need to move from one place
    to another, especially the frontier area.
    You needed a so-called sauf-conduit.
    That means a safe conduct.
    It's a paper.
    You will see, Dottie still has that original paper,
    which was given out by the prefecture--
    that is the police station--
    which allows that person to travel in that particular area,
    and it gives also the reason why, what the travel is for.
    We were told that you must go to a doctor.
    The doctor will have to certify why
    you go there, for health reasons, if you
    want to go to that spot.
    But how to do it?
    Again, we went to Mr. Ehrlich.
    He said, I know a doctor.
    You can go there.
    Tell him whatever you want.
    All four of us.
    That is what Dottie mentioned before.
    All four of us presented ourself to the doctor,
    and said that we would like to go--
    we would like to go to Amélie-les-Bains.
    And he said, why?
    Is there an epidemic broken out amongst the Dutch?
    He said, you can trust me.
    You want to cross into Spain, right?
    We said, yes.
    He said, wait.
    I give you papers.
    He wrote out for each four of us a medical statement that we had
    trouble with the stomach on account of food poisoning
    or something, and that we needed a stay in Amélie-les-Bains.
    We went to the police, the policeman for foreigners.
    He winked at us, but signed the paper.
    He was a good Frenchman.
    As I must say, at this occasion, we
    found in Perpignan, and in that part of France, only
    good French, helpful French, anti-German French,
    who helped foreigners as much as they possibly could.
    We had the papers now safely in our hands.
    The next morning already-- it was the 12th of November--
    we heard noise early in the morning.
    We quickly got up, and we knew the Germans
    are marching into Perpignan.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    I don't know why.
    I had that urge to see these troops marching
    through Perpignan.
    I went to the main street, and I saw some French citizens
    standing there, tears running down their cheeks, others
    in fury, watching them marching down,
    marching through Perpignan.
    I rushed back.
    By that time, our friend Echo had also come.
    I had telephoned the guide in Amélie
    and told him we are leaving this afternoon.
    There was an electric train leaving Perpignan
    for the mountains, and going to the Spanish border
    high up in the mountains.
    It was largely unknown to any foreigner that such a train
    exists, because the main line from Paris to the French
    to the Spanish border ran through Perpignan,
    further on to [FRENCH],, the last town in France,
    and that connected with the [NON-ENGLISH] on the Spanish
    side.
    I said to my friends, we are not going
    to go through the main line, because the Germans may
    be standing there watching who is leaving or tries to leave.
    Let's go through the mountains with the electric train
    to [PLACE NAME], Spain.
    And that's what we did.
    We were just about leave that apartment we had,
    that little house, when another young guy, the youngest of all
    of us, maybe 19 years old, from The Hague, came rushing to us.
    You can't leave me.
    You can't leave me.
    For god's sakes, you have to take me along.
    I'm going to die here.
    I have no one.
    If you leave, I'm alone here, it's my end.
    So I decided, OK, so can we do--
    take him along?
    So we were now five of us.
    We all had bought some sugar--
    Cubes.
    --cubes of sugar that the guide had advised us to,
    and a few other things that he had said we should buy for us.
    But otherwise, we had simply the thin jacket,
    because our coats were gone.
    We took the train and arrived late afternoon
    in Amélie-les-Bains.
    There, the man was waiting for us.
    He got into the train.
    He said let's continue to Arles-sur-Tech.
    Tech was a mountain stream coming from Andorra
    down to Arles-sur-Tech.
    And that was the end of the line.
    We got off there.
    It was dark.
    And he said to us, we are now beginning to cross the Tech,
    through to Arles-sur-Tech, and then up the mountains.
    Follow me.
    We are not going.
    There are no ways.
    There are no streets.
    There are no paths.
    I find my way.
    I know the mountains.
    But you have to stay close behind me or you will lose me.
    It's too dark.
    How far was it, in terms of distance, over that mountain.
    He never told us--
    Didn't know.
    --what the distance--
    It's a good thing we didn't know.
    --what the distance was.
    My estimate is that it could have been 10 miles.
    But we had to climb over a whole--
    Range of mountains.
    --range, the breadth of the Pyrenees,
    from France into Spain.
    And only so it was the next mountain.
    And he thought that's the last one we have to get over,
    until you were on top, and then you
    saw there was the next and the next.
    And so we never really knew how far and how high we had to go.
    Our guide was really a very well trained psychologist,
    because he never told us what was ahead of us.
    He knew that we were totally inexperienced.
    We had never been mountain climbing.
    Surely not.
    [NON-ENGLISH] was born in Holland,
    the flattest country on earth, or Max,
    who had never been up mountains, nor I, for that matter,
    those high mountains.
    We crossed through that little town of Arles-sur-Tech,
    which is now a well known and famous Dutch spa, and--
    Dutch?
    I'm sorry.
    French spa, and visited by hundred
    of thousands of visitors all over Europe
    because of the natural beauty.
    We had no eye for beauty in those days.
    We just wanted to be safe.
    Besides, it was dark.
    Dark.
    Pitch dark.
    We couldn't see any beauty.
    There was-- it was a clear night.
    We followed him.
    And then we reached the river.
    We had to cross it.
    And it came down with such a force
    that you could hear the sound of that stream a mile away.
    When we got to it, we saw that the bridge consisted
    of a tree that had been--
    A plank.
    --a plank that crossed that river.
    And that was all.
    Dottie has.
    I'm going to have a nightmare.
    So please continue.
    What happened then?
    No, I don't even want to think about it.
    That plank was that wide.
    One foot wide.
    She refused to cross it, because she had--
    [CROSS TALK] just knew it was way down.
    You heard a loud stream.
    And--
    And she has a fear of heights.
    You couldn't even see the other side.
    You just knew that there was another side
    at the end of the plank.
    And I have fear of heights.
    The guide, Max, Echo, James-- that was his name.
    They all had crossed.
    I was the only one still waiting for my fiancée to decide
    to cross, but she couldn't.
    She was too afraid.
    So the guide called back, [FRENCH],, quick, quick, quick.
    Come on.
    And Max came back.
    But no.
    Then Max returned.
    I said to him, Dottie can't make it.
    She can't make it.
    So finally we convinced her to--
    Max would go first, then she followed him,
    and I came behind her.
    And then, slowly, sidewise, we--
    Holding on to each other.
    --holding on-- holding on to each other,
    we sidewise moved over to the other side.
    And that's how she reached the other side of the Tech.
    That was quite some doing.
    Then our climb.
    I still don't--
    I beg your pardon?
    I still don't know why I did it.
    You don't know why you did it, but unfortunately, you did it.
    Then began our climb.
    We followed the man.
    It became bitter cold.
    It was a clear night.
    And we were shivering.
    We walked, or climbed, and fell for maybe four hours.
    It must have been well over--
    later than midnight when he finally stopped and said,
    let's rest here for a short while,
    because we cannot stay too long.
    You will freeze to death.
    You are not dressed.
    And you're not allowed to sleep, because it's too dangerous.
    You will die.
    Because of the cold.
    But he--
    And it's all we really needed to do, close our eyes and sleep.
    But we weren't allowed to.
    There was still some vegetation there, trees.
    We got together some wood, and he lit a fire.
    We ask him, isn't that dangerous?
    He said, if the Germans try to reach this place from where
    they are now in Perpignan, it will take them at least a day.
    So don't worry.
    By the time they come up here, you are long in Spain.
    After a couple of hours, we continued,
    and we climbed the whole night through.
    The next morning, the mountains became less forbidding,
    and we had--
    we could, for some time, we could walk almost,
    instead of climbing.
    But slowly, vegetation stopped, and there were only rocks,
    and some kind of grass or whatever, alpine grass
    or whatever you call that, which made our shoes very slippery.
    Very often, one or the other was falling.
    But mostly our friend, [NON-ENGLISH],, he was plump,
    and had never done any sports, and was really the most
    unsporty type one can imagine.
    At a given moment, after we had again walked and climbed
    for maybe six hours, he fell again for the umptieth time.
    He was so exhausted that he said, let me lie here.
    I cannot.
    I am unable to continue.
    This is the end.
    They kicked him in his behind and said no.
    We won't leave you here to die.
    You come with us.
    So Max and James and I, in turn, and very often Dottie,
    helped him to continue.
    I cannot explain how, but somehow we made it
    into the second night.
    We were not only exhausted.
    We were now completely numb, talking
    had practically ceased, because we didn't have
    the strength anymore to talk.
    It got dark.
    And then we found someplace, that the guide
    found somewhere a place that was protected from the sharp--
    from the sharp wind.
    And we rested there for another hour or two.
    Again, we fell asleep, but he wouldn't let us sleep.
    And he said, look, have courage, because we are not
    far from the Spanish border anymore.
    We have about three more mountains to cross,
    and then you will be in Spain.
    That gave us some--
    a little more courage and strength.
    We continued.
    The sun went up.
    It was again day.
    And after walking and climbing maybe for another two hours,
    he stopped and called us.
    Come here.
    He said, you see that smoke coming up
    from that little house there?
    That is already Spain.
    Here runs the Spanish border.
    You have reached Spain.
    Now I wish you good luck and goodbye.
    You'll pay me the money.
    We gave him the money.
    You cannot miss it.
    You just walk towards that house, and there is Spain.
    And he left us.
    We made it up to that farm, that mountain farm.
    They saw us coming.
    A man came out and looked at us in surprise.
    I spoke to him in Spanish, and he didn't know what to hear,
    because no one had spoken Spanish to him for so far.
    I told him what has happened, that we want to stay in Spain,
    that I have a friend in Figueres, and gave the name.
    He knew it because he was well known.
    I said to him, let us stay in your house.
    He consented, although he said, the Guardia Civil,
    the Spanish police, they are checking here.
    But I keep you hidden.
    He got in touch by sending his son down to phone Mr. Delfo,
    came back with the message.
    We should the next day, go down to the next--
    to the first village and present ourself to the police.
    That we did.
    The policeman knew, because Mr. Delfo had contacted them.
    Did you tell them about the sleeping arrangement?
    No, that's too details.
    We have no time for this.
    And we thought that we would then be sent to Barcelona
    and see the Dutch consul.
    Not so.
    We were all arrested for crossing the Spanish border
    without legal papers.
    We went to the police, a prison, jail, in Figueres.
    Then Dottie was separated from us
    and sent to Girona, the capital of Catalonia,
    to a prison for women.
    And we men stayed for four weeks, three or four weeks,
    and were sent to a concentration camp
    in Miranda, which is in the northwestern part of Spain,
    and the concentration camp formerly
    held the anti-Francoist prisoners.
    But they were only now foreigners,
    men in military age, terribly overcrowded.
    Dottie remained in this prison.
    The prison was mostly for prostitutes
    who were illegal in Spain, but they
    were in separate departments.
    And we were-- there were some other refugee
    women who were all together, crammed together
    like sardines at night.
    And the door couldn't open anymore.
    There was 30 or more lying close together
    with all the bright lights on, burning all night.
    And I once received a visit from Mr. Delfo, who
    came with a great gift of two handkerchiefs
    and a few almonds, I think.
    Well.
    [INAUDIBLE]
    A list of all the Dutch subjects in the prison
    was sent to the consulate in Barcelona.
    And eventually, she was let out of the prison after, I think,
    two weeks or so.
    And to send to a little spa in Catalonia.
    Well, originally it had been a hotel.
    It was used as a residential stay.
    Forced residents.
    Residents who were refugees.
    You had to go to the police every day
    and show that you were still there, sign in.
    And we stayed there for about six weeks,
    I think, until one day-- we all had
    written to our consulates, all different nationalities.
    Some were stateless and had really no consulate right.
    But the few women in the group who were from Holland,
    were one day picked up by a representative
    of the Dutch consulate in Barcelona
    and taken out of prison.
    They had worked us behind the stage, so to speak.
    We knew that we were busy for us,
    but we had no idea how long it was going to take.
    So they took us to Barcelona.
    From there, we were shipped to Madrid, just the Dutch women.
    And then they remained there under the protection
    of the Dutch embassy and consulate,
    and got money, were fed, were put up
    in a nice hotel, enclosed, et cetera.
    And meanwhile, the men were sent to Miranda de Ebro.
    And it appeared that Mr. Delfo, who could have helped us
    if he wanted to, didn't do a darn thing,
    because I had been so dumb to tell him
    that we wanted to get to England.
    That is my conclusion.
    He never told me that.
    Anyway, Miranda de Ebro was overcrowded.
    Instead of room for 500, there were 2,400, where
    the conditions were terrible.
    But there was no mistreatment of any kind.
    Finally, Dottie, as soon as she had found her feet
    on the ground, she somehow became
    friendly with the wife of the ambassador,
    and wrote a letter to her.
    And the lady was so impressed by the letter
    that she received that she invited Dottie to come for tea.
    She told her what--
    everything, how we had reached Spain,
    and asked the lady whether she could not do--
    [INAUDIBLE] she could do something for me to get out.
    Actually, I asked for the three.
    Yes, well, I leave this--
    The three women who were in one room together in the hotel.
    I concentrate on--
    And I wrote a letter also in the name of all three of us.
    I concentrate only now on us.
    Yeah, yeah.
    She said, the only thing I can do
    is that your husband can be sent to a military hospital
    in Vitoria, where he will be examined,
    and maybe that he will be declared unfit
    for military service, in which case they would release him.
    She did this.
    And one day I received a call to come to the office of the camp.
    I was told I would go to Vitoria.
    And next day, I was sent there.
    And it was a military hospital.
    I just said that.
    Because I understood Spanish, I didn't
    want to let on that I understood Spanish.
    I was examined, and I faked an injury in my left leg, which
    had been injured years before.
    So I could limp a little bit.
    I understood their conversations,
    and I reacted accordingly.
    In short, I could--
    and do some tricks, and they declared
    me unfit for military service.
    By that time, the ambassador had been
    asked by Queen Wilhelmina in London
    to visit the Dutch subjects in Miranda
    to see how they were doing.
    And Dottie, who had heard from his wife
    that he was going with the first secretary
    to the concentration camp, she said,
    I just heard that my husband is going to be liberated.
    Could his excellency take him along?
    She said, I will tell him.
    That's what happened.
    They came to the camp.
    I was liberated that very same day,
    got into the beautiful limousine in my only suit that--
    In fact, he had a shaven head still.
    I had a shaven head, yes.
    I got into the limousine.
    And on the way back to Madrid, I was sitting next
    to the first secretary.
    I told him the whole story.
    He said, we need people badly in the embassy who know Spanish,
    and you are the first one to come here.
    Could you help?
    I said, gladly.
    I became employed by the Dutch embassy
    to liberate Dutch subjects.
    And I was doing that and became employed.
    We got a very good salary, diplomatic status,
    until after the liberation of France.
    Then the stream of refugees ended,
    and the Dutch government in London was badly in need,
    had wanted us a year before to come over,
    but the embassy delayed our departure
    because I was needed in there.
    We were asked to come over.
    By that time, it was December 1944.
    We got to Lisbon.
    And in Lisbon, we had to wait for an airplane, KLM airplane,
    because the week before Mr. Israel and Leslie Howard
    were shot down.
    So no planes were.
    So the first plane after that, we
    were put on with the two sons of the new Dutch ambassador
    in Paris, small children, and the diplomatic pouch,
    and we were flown to London.
    Almost crashed because of ice on the wings.
    It was a very dangerous flight.
    But we landed in England.
    We were separated again, because we had to go through
    the so-called patriotic school, which was a screening place
    for-
    We didn't expect it.
    At the airport, all of a sudden we
    were whisked away to different places.
    After four or five days we were set free.
    We were both put to work at the Dutch foreign office,
    worked at the Dutch foreign office
    until the end of the war, until the Germans capitulated.
    The foreign office moved back to Holland in August,
    beginning of August 1945.
    And we were taken back to Holland, to Hoek van Holland.
    Unfortunately, we had heard that Dottie's whole family had
    perished, because Eddie had gone back to Amsterdam in 1943
    to fetch his parents and brother,
    and on their way back to Switzerland,
    helped by certain people, they were caught by the Germans,
    sent to Drancy, and from Drancy to Auschwitz,
    Eddie to [NON-ENGLISH],, a Polish coal mine.
    They were all killed.
    I heard from my brother, who was a captain in the British army,
    as soon as he got to Amsterdam, while I was still in London,
    that my father, who had been hidden by Mr. Feits and Mrs.
    Feits, had died of starvation four
    weeks before the liberation.
    That my mother was still alive, barely alive,
    but was getting better.
    And we rejoined my mother after the war,
    who had found an apartment, where
    we lived until we decided to leave Holland for the United
    States in 1949.
    I made it.
    We left out a lot of things, though
    Oh, yes.
    [LAUGHS] Oh yes, but--

    Overview

    Interviewee
    Dottie Ringel
    Mr. Dolf Ringel
    Date
    interview:  1988 December 07

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    2 videocassettes (VHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Legal Status
    Permanent Collection
    Provenance
    The interview with Dolf Ringel & Dottie Ringel was conducted on December 7, 1988 by the Queensborough Community College Holocaust Resource Center and Archives. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received a copy of the interview in November 1990 and an interviewee release form on April 2, 1991.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:08:57
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn512470

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