The Heart Has Reasons (13 page)

We got a big boost when the Archbishop Johannes de Jong of Utrecht gave us 10,000 guilders from his “special needs” fund. So by the fall of ’42 we could say to the prospective foster parents, “If you take a child, yes, there will be risks, but we can provide support: fifty guilders a month if necessary.” That was about how much university students would pay to rent a room in a nice house, so it certainly helped to make it more feasible. However, considering the number of children we were trying to support, our coffers were soon empty again.

One evening, Geert Lubberhuizen and I got together to try our hand at forging some identification cards. Geert was an older chemistry student who had also been the editor of
Vox Studiosorum
, the Utrecht student newsweekly. He stuck his neck out in ’41 by writing a scathing critique of an anti-Semitic movie the Nazis were showing. The SD immediately came after him and shut down the paper for good measure. When he joined us in the Kindercomité, he was keeping a low profile, but he thought he could work with me on forgery and falsification.

IDs were a big problem in those days. Beginning in November 1941,
everyone had to go to the municipal building with two photos. One photo went into a central card file in the Hague, along with your fingerprint and signature. The other was attached to a preprinted card, and your fingerprint and signature were put on that as well. If you were Jewish, they would stamp your card with a big black “J.” An officer would then sign it, and finally he would stamp it again with a special stamp. The fingerprint was covered by a transparent seal, and that also was stamped.

Wartime photo of Geert Lubberhuizen driving a motorboat.
Courtesy of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation.

Once the photo was attached, it was very difficult to remove without tearing the paper. So you had to scrape off the front while leaving the backing, and then attach the new photo. Sometimes there would be a photo that was built up in layers. Then it could simply be peeled off. But often it was all in one piece, and then you had to scratch it very patiently—it could take a whole day to clear it away. After that, of course, you needed the right stamp.

To do that, we made a photographic enlargement, and then it had to be drawn exactly using a draftsman’s pen. We would then reduce it and have a die made from it out of zinc and India rubber. After that, we would attach it to a block mount and test it out. We had certain tricks to get a better image, but that was usually good enough.

We also worked on special projects, such as official letters for some of our hidden children verifying that they had been bombed out of Rotterdam. This was a good cover for them as well as their foster parents because many non-Jewish children were left homeless after the bombing and had been sent away to live with relatives. All the streets in the center of Rotterdam had been destroyed, so it was easy to invent plausible former addresses.

So as the Germans came up with their identification cards, distri
bution cards, food ration coupons, and other official documents that were required for this or that, we would try to match them. Mostly it was a matter of removing the ink that was there, and printing something new over it—easier said than done. I always kept a magnifying glass in my pocket to be able to examine documents that needed to be forged. The Germans would insert tiny markings on the originals to distinguish them from forgeries, so I had to be sure not to miss any of those details. Some documents couldn’t be forged, such as the IDs, which were printed on paper with changing colors. In that case, we would use brand new ones stolen from the stock in the town hall, and fill them out as needed.

Geert and I often worked late into the night, and I remember him saying at one point, “I think it’s very awkward for us to always be begging for money—why don’t we make something that we can then sell for a decent price? People would be glad to pay for it, and afterwards they could say, ‘This I bought for the cause.’” Well, that was the beginning of his printing press idea.

One of Geert’s codenames in the Resistance was “Bas.” We sometimes had a hard time finding him, for he was going all over trying to buy things to set up a printing operation. One day Anne Maclaine Pont, another member of our group, left a note on his door that said, “Where is Bas?” When he got back, he scribbled, “Bas is busy,” and then went out again. She returned later, and added, “Bas is as busy as a bee.” When he came back that night, he chuckled at the note and decided to call the press De Bezige Bij, meaning “the busy bee.” Later he moved to Amsterdam, and had many people helping him, but at the beginning he had no one but me. You could say that De Bezige Bij was born in Utrecht, and I spent those first months rocking the cradle.

The first thing we published was a poster containing the poem “De Achttien Dooden,” “The Eighteen Dead,” by Jan Campert. He wrote it as an elegy for fifteen members of a Dutch Resistance group who had been shot by a firing squad along with three of the February strikers. It gives you a glimpse into the mind of a man who has been captured, and knows that his time left on earth is very short. Campert wrote it when he, too, was in prison, after he’d been arrested for helping to hide Jewish children.

A cell is only six feet long
and even less in width
but smaller is the patch of ground
in which I’ll soon be thrown.

Though I have not yet seen it,
there, nameless, shall I lie.
Eighteen of us together—
Come morning all will die.

O loveliness of land and sea:
the Netherlands’s fair shore.
But once that land was under siege
Then I could rest no more.
What can a man of honor do
when dark eclipses light?
but kiss his wife and children goodbye
and join the losing fight.

I knew this work that I took up
might end in untold pain.
But yet I could not let it be,
my heart could not abstain.
For so long in this country,
such freedom we enjoyed,
until his vile rapist’s hand
declared it null and void.

The vermin catcher of Berlin
piping his evil tune
ensnares an entire people
and leads them to their doom.
No more I’ll see my sweetheart,
nor share with her my bed.
So don’t believe his lying tongue,
no matter what it says.

I watch the early morning rays
sift through the window high.
As my last hours slip away,
may death come easily.
As any might fail, so I have failed,
but fill me with your grace, I pray:
To face, unbowed, the firing squad
that will end my life today.

Someone managed to sneak it out of the prison, and copies were being passed around in the Resistance. Anne Maclaine Pont took it to Geert and said, “Can’t you do something with this?” By the time we printed it in March ’43, Campert had already died in Neuengamme. But the poem quickly became the anthem of the Dutch Resistance, and it’s still read widely in the Netherlands today.

Our initial run was 15,000 copies and we sold them for a donation of five guilders or more. Within six months we had raised 75,000 guilders. Geert went on to publish books by some of our best Dutch writers and poets—all the ones who refused to become members of the
Kultuurkamer
, the Nazi-controlled organization of approved “culture workers”—plus some powerful foreign works by such authors as John Steinbeck, who was a newcomer at that time.

But he published some lighter things too. We put out several books of political cartoons, making fun of Hitler and Nazism. For instance, one cartoon depicted German soldiers overrunning the Netherlands. The caption read, “They’ve returned to show their appreciation.” You see, some of those same children who had received food and shelter here in the Netherlands following the Great War came back in their Nazi uniforms twenty-five years later to terrorize us. Another cartoon showed Hitler’s mother at the time of his birth, looking shocked at her loudmouthed, mustached baby.

It wasn’t difficult to sell that book, or any of the other things. People didn’t have much to buy during the German occupation, so, in that sense, at least, it was an opportune time to ask them to open their wallets. All along, we distributed the money to the families who were hiding Jewish children, not only to our own contacts, but those of the Amsterdam Student Group as well. We also gave some money to other groups, such as a theater troupe that had also defied the
Kultuurkamer
. They were really hard pressed, for they were banned from working and had their families to feed.

When Geert moved the operation to Amsterdam, I remained in Utrecht but we kept in contact. I used to warn him not to attend meetings of the Resistance there, because the Gestapo was very active in Amsterdam. Later he joked, “That boy saved my life again and again, because whenever I was invited to a big Resistance meeting, I’d say ‘Sorry—Rut tells me not to go.’”

After the war, Geert added up all the wartime revenues of
De Bezige
Bij
, and the figure was close to 800,000 guilders. He continued to run
De
Bezige Bij
for nearly forty years, and it is still thriving today. As for me, when the war ended I returned to school to finish my chemistry studies, and then went to work in the lab of Organon, a pharmaceutical company. It was a good time to jump on the science train, and I learned on the job under the tutelage of some fine bio-chemists. I was fortunate to be part of the research team that discovered how to isolate, and later to synthesize, heparin, the anticoagulant drug.

What do you make of Germany’s use of highly advanced technolog y to do such terrible
things during the Holocaust?

Following the liberation, I was shocked to learn that the stories about the gas chambers were true, and that industrial giants such as I.G. Farben—which was later broken up into Bayer, Agfa, and BASF—had been directly involved. My uncle was a chemist, and we also worried a lot about the atomic bombs that had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There you saw how the latest technology had brought the war to an end. But to a terrible end.

My uncle said, “We should join the group of scientists that refuse to do atomic research.” I think this was in 1950 or something. But it occurred to us that if certain ethically minded scientists refused to do the research, then other scientists would take it up. How would our refusal improve the outcome?

I believe that science, ultimately, is neutral. The same physics that makes nuclear weapons possible also makes nuclear medicine possible. The Zyklon B that was poured into the gas chambers was a fumigant, very handy for killing bugs and rodents. The problem was not with the Zyklon B, but with the use that was made of it.

The same holds true for most science and technology. Consider a factory that manufactures guns. If those guns are used by the police to protect citizens, then you say, “Well, that’s OK.” But if they get into the hands of criminals? To prevent this, you don’t talk to the scientists and engineers—you go to the lawmakers and the government agencies.

In 1962 there was a drug that worked very well as a sleeping pill for elders. Then some marketing people said, “We can sell it to pregnant women, for they don’t sleep well either.” It was marketed that way, but
the research had not been done, and it caused terrible birth defects. So we need clinical trials, and regulations, and so on, because scientists can’t imagine all the possible uses that might be made of their research. The people who apply the science have to come up with uses that will benefit humanity. And if they don’t, we need laws to stop them.