Mum's story before she met Dad

My name is Hendrika Ottema. I was born on the 31st of May, 1928 at Almelo, a town in the province of Overijsel. I was the 10th child of Otte Ottema and Hendrina Ottema-Wanschers. My father was born on the 12th of January 1889, my mother on the 31st of December, 1889. They were both from Almelo.

My father was a self-taught builder and architect. He had a flourishing business in the 1920s, but when the stock-market crashed, his bank crashed as well, and Dad's business went bankrupt along with it. At that time he had twenty or so employees, and they all suddenly became unemployed.

Dad had come from sombre beginnings. When he was nine years old his father died, leaving behind a widow with seven children. Dad was the third oldest. His mother certainly knew what hardship was, and the family didn't know where their next meal would come from. They lived near the Twente-Rijn canal. My father used to run from one bridge to the next, shouting at the top of his voice, “Ship coming!” so as to warn the bridge-attendant to open the swing-bridge and let the ship through. This earned him a free meal from the skipper. Those were the 'good old days'.

I grew up in a warm nest. Ours was a loving family with lots of fun and laughter, even through the Great Depression and jobs were scarce. At that time, Hitler came to power in Germany. He ignored the Treaty of Versailles and reoccupied the Saarland. The Allies did nothing to stop him, and the German people regarded him as a savior, as did many others the world over. It wasn't very long before there was plenty of work in Germany, and many Dutch workers who lived near the border could find well-paid jobs. My two older brothers were soon convinced that Hitler was doing an excellent job, and became true sympathizers of the man.

In Holland, Antoon Mussert formed a new political party on the same principles as the one in Germany. He called it the N.S.B., freely translated as the National Socialist Party. It was fiercely anti-communist, and had a roughly ten per cent following. Naturally, the Ottemas joined the party as well. But the left-wing parties: the Communists and Socialists, didn't like them, and made things difficult for them.

I remember vividly one day, when my parents were out and only we younger children were at home, that  a large brick was thrown through our window. The three of us (Wim, Ans and I) dived under the table, trembling all over. I couldn't understand what this was all about; I was only eight years old at the time (in 1936). Sometimes, stones were thrown at us while we walked to school. Such things make a big impression on small children, and I am sure that these upheavals, at such a tender age, left a stamp on our later lives, making us unsure of ourselves.

Then, on the 10th of May 1940, the German Army marched into Holland. Within five days, our country was occupied. We felt a bit safer now. However, Mum's parents were anti-German and refused to have anything to do with us. I was very confused, and couldn't understand why we didn't go and see Opoe and Opa any more.

Dad started his business again, and soon needed personnel. Among them were some of my uncles. Slowly, broken family-ties were mended. I remember one day in particular when we children were playing in the garden. Mum came running out of the house shouting loudly, “Look who is coming!” We saw a man approach, seated on his horse-drawn carriage. It was Opa with his white beard.  He had come to make up again with Dad. It made me very happy, because my Dad was a good man.

My oldest sister, Katrien, who was 27 years old at the time, was engaged to be married. In August, 1943 she went camping with some girlfriends in Lunteren, at a holiday-camp. A week later, we got a telegram saying that she was seriously ill in a hospital in Naarden. Mother rushed over the next day. Katrien had blood-poisoning. It was a serious illness in those days, because there was no penicillin yet. Mother sat at her sickbed for a whole week, and later my Dad and her fiancee as well, but after a week of unbearable suffering she died. Her body was taken back to Almelo in a white railway-carriage put between the ordinary wagons. We children thought it was something very special. I was 15 years old.

Katrien's body lay in an open coffin in the front-room.Our dog, Pukkie, stayed with her all that time. It lay under the table. We four girls, stayed with her every night in turn. In the day-time we had many visitors. It was very sad. At the funeral, there were also many people. The women all sat in carriages with drawn black curtains , so it was quite dark inside. The men all walked behind the horse-drawn hearse. We girls were all in sombre black, and we had a carriage to ourselves.

We looked secretly through the windows, one at a time. Suddenly, the one whose turn it was started giggling. “Take a look. Pukkie is in the procession too!” We all saw Pukkie followed by several other dogs. Apparently she was on heat. We couldn't stop laughing! It was all due to nerves, of course.

The day after, Mum and I went to cemetery to see Katrien`s grave. We walked, and again Pukkie went with us. Even before we came to the entrance, Pukkie ran ahead. When we arrived at the grave-site, Pukkie was already there, digging away! Katrien was her favorite, you could tell. It really upset us.

Her fiance continued to come to see us for a long time after her funeral, even after he got married. He and his wife had three children: two girls and a boy. His wife died rather young. His son studied to be a doctor. In 1973, in the wintertime, while I was on holiday in Holland, we heard that he and his son were killed in a car-accident. The roads had been iced over from the frost.

In the autumn of 1943, we endured several bombardments. One evening, at 21.00 hours, it started. The R.A.F. wanted to bomb the Stork Works in Hengelo, but one pilot must have mistaken Almelo for Hengelo, as these two towns are very near to each other. The bombs fell close; I shall never forget it. The son of a neighbor who was normally never scared ran into the street, the most stupid thing you could do. His mother ran after him, and then we heard her screaming. Dad ran upstairs and saw the poor woman lying in the street, her arm ripped off by a piece of shrapnel. Together with another man he got a ladder, laid her on top, and ran with her as fast as they could to the hospital. But she bled to death before they got there.

For hours you could hear the planes coming back from their mission. Now and then, one of them would be damaged, or running short of fuel, and then it would discard any bombs that it had left. We usually spent all night in the cellar then.

Our dog was once out in the street at the time that the sirens sounded. A bomb fell not far away, and many windows in our street broke. Pukkie was scared, and tried to get inside, but in doing so hurt its front paw quite badly. From then on, as soon as the warning sirens went, it was the first one in the cellar. Clever dog!

Two of my brothers had joined the German Army. When Germany invaded Russia, my brothers took part as well. After all, Europe had to get rid of Bolshevism, according to Hitler. Four months later, a letter arrived from the German High Command. It stated that my oldest brother, Jans, had been reported as missing in action. That was a blow, but we kept hoping for better news. However, we never saw him again.

The war dragged on, and many able men were called upon to work in Germany. The only way to get out of it was to be declared unfit. One of my uncles had sugar-diabetes and so was rejected as being unfit. He was a cunning fellow, and he sold little bottles of his own urine to friends who were going to be checked. In this way, he saved many men from having to work in Germany.

My brother Otte came home on sick leave. He had been wounded in Russia, and was allowed to recuperate at home. Later, back in action again, he was nearly killed once more, but survived, and is  alive and well to this day.

Then came that fateful day, the 17th of September, 1944. This was the day of the Battle of Arnhem. It was on a Tuesday. We called it Dolle Dinsdag [Crazy Tuesday]. There was panic amongst us NSBers. The rumor soon spread that Hitler was going to order the whole of Holland to be gassed, and that he gave the Pro-German section of Holland permission to flee to Germany. Many, including us, decided to go.

We were promised quarters on a farm, but were instead put in a camp at Langendam, a small hamlet near Nienburg on the river Weser not far from Hanover. Its name was “Luna-Lager”. There were more camps, but these were were reserved for prisoners of war. We could move freely about, but always had to carry our passports. We slept six in a small room, in three, two-high bunk-beds.

During working-hours in daytime we worked in an ammunition-factory where grenades for canons were made. The factory was situated in a large forest. Every day we walked from our camp over the moors to the factory. It took us three quarters of an hour, and we used to sing all the way, Mum, Ans and I. Many prisoners worked there, too: Russians, French, Hungarians and many more. We became friends with many of them.

Although the factory was well camouflaged, the sirens sounded often. Then we would hurry out of the factory to the underground shelters. Poor mum was quite deaf, and she didn't always hear the siren. She was often left on her own in the place. I was 16 years at the time, and worked with eight others, including Mum, in the last room. By then the grenades were ready and had only to be stamped. They were big, those grenades, and fairly heavy. Mum thought it was too tiring a job for me because I was very thin. Quite often, she asked the foreman to give me a lighter task.

From September until the 2nd of February, 1945, we worked there. Then, at last, I got an easier job. Mum was really pleased and when I left to go to it called after me, “Shouldn't you give me a kiss?”
"Oh Mum," I said, a bit embarrassed, “I will see you later.”

An hour later we heard a loud explosion. We all ran outside to the shelters, thinking it was an air raid. We came out after the danger had passed, and then realized there had been sabotage in the factory itself. There were bodies lying around covered with blankets. We panicked when mum didn't turn up. We saw several bodies under a big blanket. One hand was sticking out from under it. My youngest brother Wim recognized it. I felt as though I was having a bad dream, and that I would soon wake up. But we children still had each other. I could easily have been a victim as well.

The funeral was very scary, too. We had to jump behind rocks every time the Allied fighter-planes zoomed overhead, strafing us with machine-gun fire. Ans and I fled that place then. We couldn't work in that factory any more. We went to the Labor Office and told them our story. We were sent to a home for old people in a little village called Blenhorst. Most of the old people came from the Ruhr area. It was constantly being bombed. Those poor souls were completely out of touch. Some couldn't even remember their own names any more. They all slept in a large hall, and we had to look after them during the night.

We slept during the day, but even so it was difficult to keep awake. A few times it happened that the sirens went, and we got so scared that we left the old people on their own. We hurried to the air-shelter and fell asleep, leaning against one another. We were lucky not to be discovered.

I must tell you about the time that Ans and I were sitting at the table in the kitchen one night. She heard some noise and went to investigate. In the dark, she bent over an old woman. Then, totally out of the blue, the patient slapped her face. She came back to the kitchen and told what had happened. I burst out laughing and that made her angry at me, but later on we both laughed.

We hadn't been there very long when one day my older sister, Alie appeared, totally unexpected. She had heard that mother had been killed. She told us that our brother Henk had been shot in Holland. Alie was a nurse and worked in a hospital in Utrecht in Holland. She was on holiday and had decided to come and get us all. “We aren't safe anywhere anymore, so we might as well go back to where we belong,” was her opinion. So that is what we did. We left the next morning.

The journey from Blenhorst to Groningen took us roughly three weeks. We walked during the daytime, now and then catching a ride on a farmer`s wagon. We even rode on a tank once. We slept at night in haystacks, sheds, and once in a small railway-station. On the 7th of April, 1945, we celebrated Ans's birthday on the road. The weather was good at the time. Sometimes we were lucky to get something to eat at a farm-house.

We used to wash ourselves at streams. You'd think we would have felt miserable, slowly getting hungrier and dirtier, but I can only remember being happy. We sang a lot and even had fun together. We were in good shape mentally, realizing that come what may anything had to be better than the nightmare we had been through. It was as if Jesus had laid a hand on my shoulder.

We were carrying several suitcases. Crossing the border, we had to open all the suitcases. In one of them we carried all our dirty clothes. It even contained our dirty underwear. We had all had our periods! Of course, it was my luck to be carrying that one and have to open it.

At last, we arrived in the city of Groningen and had to tell a white lie: that we had been forced to work in Germany. We could not tell them that we were NSBers. They would have  put us in prison straight away. We were placed in the centre of town with a young couple with a new-born baby. After a few days, the fighting became fierce. There was shooting everywhere. By evening most of our street was in flames. It reached to within three houses away from us. I thought, “Oh, my God, we are going to be burned alive.”

Our radio had been on all day. Suddenly, there came an announcement that firing on both sides would stop for an hour, to give people living in the inner-city the chance to flee. We then went to the couple's parents' home. They lived only a few kilometres away. The next morning the young man returned to fetch something that the baby needed, but he didn't come back. It was a terrible time for his wife and parents. After two more days, the shooting stopped. The young man was found, lying dead on top of the roof of his house. They took him home. I never knew how bad a burnt body could smell.

After the funeral we started walking again, back to Almelo. By now, the war was finished, but not for us NSBers. After three days, we arrived at our house where we had lived for so many years. All the glass in the windows was broken. It was very sad. A soldier was there with his gun at the ready. When we made ourselves known, he said, "You are being sought. Go give yourselves up." The streets were decorated, and there was dancing, but we were put in a cell.

The prisons of those days were different from nowadays. We slept on straw-mattresses on the floor, “aired” once a day. There was no radio or other luxuries. But we didn't mind too much. At least we could rest, and didn't have to walk any more. We didn't get bored. We talked a lot about what we were going to do once we were free. We fantasized about our favorite foods. And we spent hours picking the lice from each others heads. We even had scabies.

All this was a result of the rough time when we walked for weeks without being able to get a decent wash. We got rid of the little worms, just under the skin, by picking them out with a needle. We also sang a lot in the cell. We stayed there for a fortnight. We were always hungry.

After prison we were placed in a house with many others and received a year's confinement. Luckily an aunt, a sister of our mother, came to see us one day and took us to her own home. She received a letter from the Dutch authorities informing her that we were enemies of the state. She ignored this completely and we stayed the rest of the year with her and her family. Aunt Sientje had three children, 2 boys and a girl. They were 17, 3 and 14 years old.

We had a great time together. Although weren't supposed to be allowed outside, we were taken on a camping-holiday to Dalfsen. It was meant to be for a week, but somebody informed on us so we had to return home after a few days. My uncle got a nasty letter from the city-counsel reprimanding him. He was warned that next time he would be fined, and that we would be taken away from his care.

When the year was over, Ans and I went to Hilversum where Alie, our sister, had rented an attic-room in a well-to-do neighborhood. It was great there. We both got jobs. I was a clerk in a laundry, and later I worked as a nurse-aid in a nursing-home. When we reached the age of 18, we applied to train as nurses and we both got jobs at the Hospital in Zutphen, the place where where we did our nursing course. Alie was very happy because now her two little sisters had a roof over their head, as we were there as interns.

Meanwhile, three members of our family were serving time: Papa in Steenwijk, Dinie in Staphorst, and brother Otte in Vught. They were allowed one visit each month, and we made sure they got that. There was no money for train-fares, so we had to hitchhike. At first we were apprehensive and scared, but we got used to it. We always traveled together and made sure we had plenty to eat for ourselves and and especially for the prisoners that we went to see. They were starving for food and looked desperately hungry.

We usually managed to complete those trips in one day, but once it became too late to go back. We had to go to the police-station where we spent a night in a cell.

During that period in our lives we really missed home. Other students went home at holiday-time, but we had to stay at the hospital, in our own room.

Papa was set free after nearly three years. All his possessions had been confiscated. But he soon found work again. He rented a room in a pub and it wasn't long before he had saved enough money to buy an old motor-bus without tyres. It stood on a small piece of land that he still owned (later it too was taken from him).

How “gezellig” (homely) it was in that bus. We felt we had a home again at last! All of our days-off we spent there. In the evening we biked from Zutphen to Almelo. We spent many a day with papa in his bus.

Papa would have preferred that we had found some other profession than nursing, because of the risk of contamination. Many men coming back home from German concentration camps had tuberculosis, and nurses could easily contract that or some other disease from them. In Zutphen of the ten nurses that worked in the TB ward, seven contracted Tuberculosis or Pleurisy.

Ans was one of them. She contracted pleurisy and had to spend two years in bed. This was a great pity, because she never got her nursing diploma. Alie contracted it too while working in Zonnestraal sanatorium, and had to take a whole year of work. I managed to stay healthy and could sit my final exams in 1951.

After three years of study, of the 24 girls who had started only five passed the exams. I got the opportunity to take over, temporarily, from a Matron in Hilversum who needed an extended holiday. During that time there I followed a course of Chiropody. In 1953, I worked in Middelburg, where I got my diploma in maternity.

While there, I experienced the big flood. In February a frightening storm together with abnormally high seas caused the dikes to break in several places in Zeeland and Zuid Holland. In the floods that followed, 1985 people drowned, as did thousands of cattle and other animals. Our hospital stood on hilly ground, thank God, but we were completely surrounded by seawater. We were totally isolated, and for a few days my family back home were very worried for my safety.

After this ordeal I worked as matron in a rest-home in Oosterbeek. Ans was better again and was allowed to work, but in 1955 she emigrated to New-Zealand. I was planning to go and work in Curacao a little later, but from the letters that Ans wrote I realized that she was homesick. Because the two of us had always been together, I decided to emigrate to New Zealand as well.

After all the formalities such as applying to the New Zealand Embassy and booking the fare, I didn't have long to wait. I boarded the “Zuiderkruis” on the 19th of January 1956. We sailed through the Panama Canal to Tahiti. There we had a break. We spent a welcome interlude on a tropical island and eventually arrived in Wellington on the 26th of February.

A few days before being interviewed we are asked as to our preferred destination. I named Dunedin where my brother and sister lived. However, as my fare was an assisted one I was warned that there was a small possibility I'd be placed in a hospital somewhere else. But they told me that chance of that was small.

At Wellington, still aboard ship, we were given our final destination. Mine was to be Alexandra Maternity Hospital in Wellington. That was a blow. But Ans, who was there to greet me when I disembarked, said, “ We'll go and see the matron and tell her that you plan to come with me to Dunedin to see your brother, and there apply for a job.” However, the Matron was very unwilling. She told me that I had to report for duty the next morning.

"Blow her!" Ans complained after the interview. "That woman has no feelings." She persuaded me to go with her. "We are going to go anyway." And so we sailed on the ferry to Christchurch that same evening.

In Dunedin we greeted our brother Wim. After a good night's rest, we went to the labour office. I heard there that Dunedin Hospital was crying out for nurses. I was told that they would contact Wellington and then let me know when I could start there.

But then Wellington sent word that I had to return there forthwith, otherwise I would have to pay for my whole fare. Of course, I hadn't that amount. So I boarded the train again. Ans promised me to join me in Wellington as soon as she could arrange to finish up at the place where she worked. I think that I've never felt more miserable than I did on that train. I cried for a long, long time.

When I arrived in Wellington the next morning at 06.00, it was raining cats and dogs and blowing too. So was the matron. When I arrived at Alexandra Hospital she was furious. She called me all sorts of names, half of which I didn't understand as my English was not very good at that stage. The only consolation was that I found that Aggie, a travel companion from the Zuiderkruis who had chosen Auckland as a destination, was also working at Alexandra Hospital.

She hated that matron, Miss Burdett was her name, as much as I did. We formed a sort of pact to try to ignore her nasty remarks. The hospital itself was primarily for unmarried mothers. In those days still a shameful thing for girls to give birth outside of marriage. But the hospital also catered for married mothers.

One day in April, a Mrs. Bep Kerkmeester was admitted to have her first baby. She was Dutch and we clicked straight away. In the afternoon one day, as I was taking her a cup of tea, she had a visitor. She introduced him as her brother. Gerard Lucas was his name. And that is how I got to know my future husband.