All language subtitles for World at War e18 Occupation; Holland (1940-1944).en

(narrator) Anne Frank,
in her diary, June 6 1944:

“Would the long-awaited liberation,
which still seems too wonderful,

too much like a fairy tale,
ever come true?”

“Could we be granted victory
this year, 1944?”

“We don't know yet,
but hope is revived within us.”

“Now more than ever we must
clench our teeth and not cry out.”

The people of Holland had lived under
Nazi occupation for four long years.

(narrator) On May 10, 1940,
without a declaration of war,

Germany struck against neutral Holland.

Paratroopers and panzers
overpowered the Dutch peacetime army,

with its obsolete weapons.

Using Holland's excellent roads,

Hitler's columns raced
across the flat countryside

before the Allies
could come to the rescue.

At lunch time on May 14, 50 Heinkels
attacked the port of Rotterdam.

In 15 minutes they started fires
which destroyed the city centre

and struck terror into the population.

Rotterdam capitulated,
and only a few hours later

Holland decided to surrender to save
other cities from a similar fate.

That night, as Rotterdam blazed,
the Dutch people were leaderless.

The queen, with her cabinet,
had escaped to Britain

to carry on the government in exile.

Faced with the prospect of Nazi rule,
more than 300 Dutchmen, mainly Jews,

preferred to commit suicide.

People were stunned,
bewildered, fearful.

(speaks Dutch)

(translator) Holland hadn't been
involved in a war since Napoleon.

We were completely stunned,

and psychologically broken.

We had read what Hitler said, and…

As to the Jews, I had a firm belief
in what he prophesied.

I actually believed that, yes.

He would do away with us.
Yes, I believed that.

We were not so very alarmed. We didn't
believe all the things they said, no.

My brother—Eddy, the oldest one—

came to our house

in the days the war started,

and he said, “Come with me.
Let's try to escape.”

And I remember that
my mother said, “Escape? Why?”

“I must wait for the man
who brings the laundry.”

“What do you want me to escape from?”

Maybe they were the enemy to us,
but, really, true,

they didn't see us an enemy
at that moment at least,

you see, because we were
just hotel employees,

and so long as we didn't bother them,

they accept everything, you see.

Like, the doorman
opened the door for anybody,

like he'd do today,
like he'd done years before.

I mean, and the bellboys
did the things they had to do,

the porter did the things
that he has to do.

Anybody, from the highest to
the smallest, did his job what he did.

(narrator) Germany imposed
a new administration

headed by a Reich commissioner

personally responsible to Hitler
and empowered to rule by decree.

The new supreme ruler of Holland
was Dr Arthur Seyss-Inquart,

a Viennese lawyer.

He had helped organise Austria's
absorption by Germany in 1938.

In the Hall of Knights at The Hague,
he addressed German officials.

The 12 most senior Dutch civil servants
were also present.

(speaks German)

(narrator) He tried
to reassure the Dutch

by declaring that Nazi ideology
would not be imposed.

Germany had no imperialistic designs
on Holland.

Dutch laws would remain in force
until further notice.

Seyss-Inquart made it clear

that the country would still
be administered by Dutch civil servants.

Anyone who wished might resign.

Few were to do so.

He called for cooperation between
two Germanic peoples of the same blood.

—Sieg…
—(audience) Heil!

(orchestra plays
“Deutschland über alles”)

(narrator) As a conciliatory gesture,

Hitler ordered the release
of all Dutch prisoners of war.

People started to relax.

The Germans promised
to maintain living standards

and to cure unemployment.

The occupation
might not be so bad after all.

The Reich commissioner
Seyss-Inquart himself

saw off a trainload of children
on a free holiday to his native Austria.

For the Dutch Nazi movement, the NSB,

this was a moment of jubilation as they
gathered to welcome the invaders.

The NSB had been holding rallies
here in Lunteren for years,

but now, for the first time, instead
of protesting against the regime,

they were its champions.

The NSB membership
quadrupled to 80,000,

although still only 1%
of the population belonged.

Like Hitler's Nazi Party, the NSB
was born of the economic depression,

fear of Bolshevism,
and the promise of a revived Europe.

It stood for order, discipline
and an authoritarian state.

(crowd sings)

Patriotic in their fashion,

the Dutch Nazis
extolled ancient traditions,

glorified the fatherland
and promised national self-respect.

(song continues)

(crowd sings Dutch national anthem)

Saluting the Dutch flag

and singing the national anthem
were part of the ritual.

All references to the royal family,
the House of Orange,

were, however, omitted.

(anthem ends)

(crowd chants)

Anton Mussert, the NSB's leader,

was an engineer with an outstanding
record in the civil service.

He saw this as the moment

for the rebirth of the Netherlands
as a great power.

Mussert moulded himself on Mussolini.

Hitler was the Messiah
sent to save Europe.

(Mussert speaks Dutch)

(narrator) A German bomber
flew low over the crowd in salute.

It was just six weeks

since the Luftwaffe had spread
fire and death in Rotterdam.

(Mussert speaks Dutch)

(crowd sings)

(narrator)
But there was another Holland.

Astonishingly,
on Prince Bernhard's birthday,

only one week after France had fallen,
thousands of ordinary Dutchmen

spontaneously demonstrated
their defiance.

Soldiers saluted as
people sang the Orange anthem

and placed white carnations, Bernhard's
favourite flower, on national monuments.

Some saw no point in open opposition.

A new German-approved
political organisation,

the Netherlands Union, was formed

to unite patriots in loyalty
to the occupying power.

With most other parties gagged,

it seemed to be a respectable
alternative to the NSB.

15% of the population joined.

Holland was a religious country.

Despite Hitler's claim to be
the saviour of the Christian West,

the churches were hostile to Nazism
because it placed man above God.

In some churches,
Dutch Nazis were denied communion.

Everyone had to be fingerprinted
and photographed and registered.

The Dutch government
had left instructions

for civil servants to stay at work

as long as they thought it was
in the best interests of the people.

Now they were systematically issuing
identity cards to the entire population.

The Germans introduced
a racial questionnaire.

(speaks Dutch)

(translator) Very shortly
after the occupation,

two men from the German security police
came to me and asked,

“Are there any Jews
in your municipality?”

I told them it was true
there are no Jews in my municipality.

But that was my first mistake.

Because by answering that question
you accept racial discrimination.

And you had to fill in a form.

One passage was if you had
any Jewish grandparents.

I had none, so I said no.

Then you went home and didn't realise

that you'd helped in cornering the Jews

and making them vulnerable

and bringing them in a position

where they could later on
be transported and gassed.

You didn't realise.

After a year of being politicised
a little bit better,

you got more agitations on what
such a declaration really meant.

But the first impression is:
your age, your address,

grandparents of Jewish origin? No. OK.

You see? It is so… It was a process.

Step by step the process of infiltration
of this Nazism in the society was there.

(narrator) All Jews were dismissed
from public office.

The Germans began
to segregate Jews from other Dutchmen.

They were banned from cafés and parks.

In Amsterdam, black-shirted NSB men
marched into a working-class area,

pulled Jews out of pubs
and beat them up in the streets.

Jewish self-defence groups fought back.

A Dutch Nazi was killed,
a Gestapo man injured.

As a reprisal, the Germans
snatched 400 young Jews

at random off the street, beat them up,

and sent them off to Mauthausen,
already known to be a death camp.

A Communist street cleaner, Piet Nak,
following his party's instructions,

stood up in the street
and urged Amsterdammers to protest.

(speaks Dutch)

(translator) What drove me personally,
but I think the other people too,

we were filled
with an overwhelming hate.

We'd never seen anything like that
in Amsterdam.

Lots of people,
just because they were Jewish,

men, women and children—
there were no exceptions.

People just arrested and beaten up.

You see… Well, what would you do
if you saw someone in the water?

Of course you'd dive in and get him out.

You don't ask if the water's clean
or dirty. You are filled with anger.

There was nothing we could do
but go on strike.

I wouldn't have known what else
we could do. There was no other way.

(speaks Dutch)

(translator)
Thousands in a tightly packed column

marched through the streets
in Amsterdam,

while the Germans circled
round them in tanks.

Of course
the demonstrators weren't armed,

yet they found a weapon
in marching and singing.

So they marched along the Rozengracht
singing the Internationale.

(Nak speaks Dutch)

(translator)
The second day of the strike

we held a meeting
at the cleansing department.

The boss there wanted us to start work
in the afternoon of the second day,

but we had already decided
we would only go back on the third day.

(narrator) The trams,

which had signalled the start
of the strike, signalled its end.

The Germans had shot down nine people.
To continue would mean a bloodbath.

For 48 hours, workmen,
shopkeepers and businessmen

had staged a unique strike
in defence of the Jews.

(Nak speaks Dutch)

(translator) My personal opinion is,

put yourself in the place
of the Jewish people of Amsterdam.

They felt they'd been deserted,
left on their own,

but because of this strike
there must have been many Jews,

well, you can't really say many,

but if you ask
if it did any good, I say this:

if just one Jew in the gas chamber

felt that the workers of Amsterdam
had not deserted him,

then it wasn't for nothing.

(narrator)
Faced with such bold opposition,

the Germans now abandoned
what was left of conciliation.

The mayors of three towns
who had been lenient with strikers

were replaced by Dutch Nazis.

NSB leaders, though not allowed
to form a government,

were installed in positions of power.

The head of the Netherlands Bank
was Rost van Tonningen.

(woman)
My husband joined the NSB in 1936.

He was very interested
in the work of Hitler,

what he was doing in Germany.

In Holland, the situation
was quite different from Germany.

We have big poorness here in Holland,

we have no buildings,

three-quarters of the population
had no work,

and they had bad clothes,

so it was really not
a very good situation in Holland.

Before I joined the NSB,
I was in the youth movement.

The only difference between the NSB
and the youth movement

was that it was not
a political movement.

The Jeugdstorm was to bring the children
who came from poor parents together,

to give them ideals,
to work in teamwork for another person.

Of course, we looked
to the youth movement in Germany.

It was quite different, because a German
has a German character

and a Dutchman has a Dutch character.

So we tried in the movement of the NSB,

because we saw the ideal,

we saw the danger of the Bolshevism,

and our thinking was to work there,
to make them a big movement,

to try to help Europe,

as a big united Europe from several
kinds of countries who work together.

(man speaks Dutch)

(narrator)
Another Dutch Nazi, Woudenberg,

was put in charge of the trade unions.

My father, I think, worked
and he lived from a religious base,

without calling it God

or some other religion's name.

My father was a well-known man.
He was a hated man.

There was a possibility
for me to go to Germany,

to this National Socialistic
educating institute.

It was a school,
like Eton school or something like that.

We wore uniforms,
and we had the feeling

that we were a selected group,
better than the others.

And, you know, you feel happy
when you have that feeling.

And in a very short time
I was educated in this SS thinking,

a great Germanistic empire,
and there was no reason

for me to think about Holland
and the Netherlands in school.

I knew there should be one thing done—
this war had to be won.

When I had the age,
I had to be a soldier,

to fight so that we could leave behind
that little small country

and we come to new situations,
this great Germanistic empire.

—(man) Heil der Führer!
—(crowd) Heil!

(narrator) June 1941.

The NSB called for support
for Germany's attack on Russia.

Mussert urged Dutchmen
to unite for Hitler,

against Stalin, against Churchill.

(Mussert speaks Dutch)

(crowd chants)

(repeated drumbeat of “V”
in Morse code)

(man) Beep beep beep beep.

(conversation in Dutch)

(translator) First it would start,
“Beep beep beep” and “Radio Orange”.

There you were, sitting in the dark.

You could only have a little light,
a candle or something,

and we would listen.

(radio crackles)

(narrator) Hundreds of thousands
risked arrest

to listen to Dutch broadcasts
from London,

their only trusted source of news.

The radio urged patriots to daub up
signs “OZO”—“Orange will win”,

and “V” for “victory”.

Goebbels started
a not very convincing countercampaign—

“V” stood for
“German victory on all fronts”.

(man) Early in '41,
we decided to start a political cabaret.

We looked in all the gramophone shops

in London for old Dutch records.

We used the tunes of these records

and put new words to the tunes,

so that every Dutchman
could whistle the tune

and then every other Dutchman knew
he had heard that from Radio Orange.

(piano plays song intro)

(woman sings “Lied van de watergeus”)

(woman) There were two boys
who came over to England in a canoe.

They were introduced to me,

and they realised
all of a sudden who I was.

They looked at me in such a strange way,

and they said, “Is that you,
this girl, this voice?”

And I said, “Yes.”
And they said, “May I touch you?”

And I said, “Certainly.” They were…

Something happened, something strange,

and all of a sudden
I realised what I meant.

Not I, but what this voice,

the whole thing we meant to do with it,
what happened in an occupied country.

(narrator) On the surface, life
in Holland seemed to go on as usual.

Under the patronage of Seyss-Inquart,

Holland's most famous conductor,
Willem Mengelberg,

still gave dazzling performances
with the Concertgebouw Orchestra.

(♪ “Egmont Overture”—Beethoven)

(narrator) But all the time the Germans
were steadily tightening their grip.

By 1942, the invaders
began to fortify the coast.

They evacuated resorts where people
had holidayed only two years before.

The Germans conscripted
more and more workers for forced labour.

Those who resisted,
they imprisoned and shot.

There was no sign of an Allied victory,

no sign of when Holland
would again be free.

(♪ “Egmont Overture”—Beethoven)

German promises not to impose
their ideology were now forgotten.

All performing artists,
writers and painters

had to join Nazi-controlled
cultural guilds.

Only music approved by the censors
could be played.

Jewish composers were banned
and players of Jewish origin sacked.

Slowly, resistance was organised—

weapons and explosives for sabotage,

an underground press, printed
and distributed at terrible risk.

The few thousand men
in resistance groups

became Holland's conscience.

(man sings
“Kleine Greetje uit de polder”)

(narrator) The illegal papers
urged people not to attend

German-sponsored all-Aryan
sports meetings.

But attendances rose—
people wanted to escape the war.

(song continues)

The Resistance also urged people
not to listen to German-controlled radio

which poured out pop songs
and propaganda.

Popular entertainers
like Eddy Christiani

walked a tightrope
between collaboration and resistance.

You must live. So to listen to music,

I know it's maybe collaboration,

but then the whole Dutch people
have collaborated.

You couldn't listen to another station
than the German station.

See what I mean?
And you can say maybe,

“I don't like the German music. I never
listened during the war to music,”

but if for one week you're at home
and it is in absolute silence,

you don't hear nothing at all,

then in one weak moment
you put on your radio and you hear music

and you don't care
if it's German or Chinese.

It's much better than to hear still
the bombing or the aeroplanes

or the shouting of the Germans.

(band plays marching tune)

It was allowed for the Dutch people
to sit down

and just listen to music,
but no dancing.

It was also forbidden
to make show with your orchestra.

It was not allowed for a trumpet player
to play a muted trumpet,

you see, like, let's say,
Duke Ellington, to crow.

It was forbidden for a trumpet player
or for a saxophone player

to make a movement
with his instrument, like swaying.

It was forbidden to play
a higher note than a C, a written C,

because that was all Negro music,

and they say in Germany
Negro music was music of the devil,

and we are now a cultivated people,
and so were the Germans,

so we have to play
proper, cultivated music.

At that time, of course,
you had some officers

who were looking for nice girls.

Today you have customers in the hotel
all looking for nice girls.

If they want some nice girl,
you could find some nice girl.

I still can find some nice girls today
for them if they ask for it, you know?

But I must say, there was…

He was… How do you call it?

He had his office at the Museum Square

and he was, you may say,
town commander of Amsterdam,

and he was a guy, you know…

I mean, today they would say
a playboy, you know?

He was a German playboy in uniform.

He had his own two seats in one of
the cinemas and the City Theatre.

And later on, I have been many times
to the City Theatre with his card,

because those seats
was not allowed for anybody to sit down.

But two employees, like me,
youngsters, you know,

sat down there
at the invitation of the commander.

So we had fun about it.

(narrator) One film which had
to be shown in every Dutch town

was The Eternal Jew.

(Dutch newsreel) They have always moved
over the Earth like parasites.

Their journey started in Asia.

From there they moved via Russia
and the Balkans into Europe.

Halfway through the 18th century,
they were spread across Europe.

Towards the end of the 19th century,

they used ships
to take over America too.

Where rats appear,
they bring death and depravity.

They destroy human property and food.

They spread pests, leprosy,
typhus and cholera.

They're vicious, cruel cowards,
who prefer to move in big groups.

(narrator) Made in Germany,

the film was part
of the carefully prepared campaign

to foster fear and loathing of the Jews.

(Dutch newsreel)
The assimilation has reached its maximum

here in the second
and third generations.

They try to imitate the host people
in their appearance.

The host people
sometimes let themselves be fooled

and consider the Jews
to be their equals.

That's where the danger lies.

(narrator) In each occupied country,

the film's message was sharpened
by inserting local material.

(Dutch newsreel)
These assimilated Dutch Jews

are and always will be strange elements

in the organism of the host people,
no matter how hard they try.

(narrator) The Germans
were now putting into effect

their plan to destroy
all the Jews in Europe.

The local population
had first to be won over to cooperation,

or at least to acquiescence.

There were 140,000 Jews in Holland.

In May 1942, they were ordered
to wear the yellow Star of David.

By that autumn,
they were being rounded up

and on their way to concentration camps.

It was forbidden for Jewish people
to go to the movies,

to go to the park, to go to anything.

But my brother discovered
it was for a long time possible

to rent a boat
and do some sailing on the Amstel.

One Saturday a little boy
fell in the water

and immediately my brother jumped
after the boy and brought him out,

and it was the son of a Fascist
living in our street.

The mother of that little boy

was very, very thankful to
that Jewish boy who saved her only son,

and she said to him,
“If I ever can do something for you,

then come to my house.”

And he went away but…

He was not yet downstairs,
immediately he went back, and he said,

“You said something maybe I can use.”

“Please write me a note
that I saved your son.”

“That's the only thing I ask.”
She said, “I'll do that for you.”

And I remember her letter,

in which she wrote that that boy
saved her only child,

with German greetings, Heil Hitler,
she wrote under that letter.

And I remember my mother,
she was so mad at him.

She hit him. She said, “You are crazy.”

“Why did you do that for?
Now they know your address.”

“Maybe they are coming tomorrow.”

She didn't realise
they had all the addresses.

And…

Well, one day we were actually hauled,
all of us,

and were brought to the theatre.

There were tables
and there were people writing things,

and there were sacks, and there was…

It was terrible. But anyhow…

There was a man
looking at us, looking…

“Is that your family?”

“All right.
You can go home, all of you.”

And this was really unbelievable,

to walk on the street again
at six o'clock in the morning,

to be free again.

But for the first time,
now we were absolutely safe.

We were in their hands
and they sent us home.

We were tired, but we never go to bed.
No, my mother made coffee.

We felt so safe, yes.

They hauled us from our house,
you know how many times?

11 times they played
that game of cat and mouse with us.

We knew exactly how it went.
Then the man came, he sent us home.

The last time he said
it was now long enough,

that game ten times, 11 times,
for only one child.

The whole family Koopman
must go to Vught now.

(narrator) Loads of Jews
in goods wagons

arrived at transit camps
at Vught and Westerbork.

Their names and papers
were checked by clerks,

some of them themselves Jews.

Then they were sent east,
supposedly to be resettled.

In fact, to be gassed and cremated
in Sobibór and Auschwitz.

The Resistance
called for strikes and sabotage.

Railwaymen and police,
under German control, did not respond.

The trains ran on time.

Of Holland's 140,000 Jews,
105,000 perished.

(Van Der Deen) I came there on
the platform and there were 24 people—

young and old, ladies, children, men—

chained together in an iron chain.

And they were, of course,
transported to Germany to be gassed.

Four Germans were there—
three at one side with Tommy guns,

and one on the other side of the group.

I was alone, it was 12 o'clock,

you were in the midst of a city
on a railway platform.

What could you do?
If I could, by surprise,

shoot down the three,
the other man was there.

With my pistol, I was helpless.

But even when you got all four,

what can you do with 24 people
who are all linked together

in the midst of the day
after a shooting party

in a place that's crowded with Germans?

So you walk away.

And that is absolutely terrible,

and if you have that experience,

you have a new stimulus to risk yourself
for the few possibilities we had.

I stayed for a long time in Vught.

Till the last Jewish prisoners,
I stay in Vught.

And…

Well, you see, Maurice,
the boy who tried to save us,

must leave me, which was terrible.

My parents after four weeks,
but he after…

Nine months, we stayed together.

And he took care of me like my father
should have done, or my husband.

I had not a husband at that time.

It was touching, the way
he tried to take care of his sister.

He worked in the night.
He was very left-handed.

He tried to sew things
for other prisoners

just to get a little bit more food—
that dreadful food—for his sister.

And after nine months he had to go,
and I should have gone with him,

but it was not allowed
because I had roodvonk.

I don't know…
scarlet fever, I had that.

And that was one of the dirty things
of the Germans—

when you were sick
you couldn't go to the gas chamber.

No. First you had to recover.

They gave you the illusion
nothing happened

because they don't send you
on a transport

when you are sick. So I had to…

My brother, he came
to say goodbye to me.

I was looking at him and I was thinking,

“For heaven's sake, he can't go,
not in these poor clothes.”

He was small, you see,
and I gave him one of my jackets,

and I was thinking, “It's closing
the other way around, but who cares?”

And I gave him a pair of my boots.
And…

I looked at him when he walked away
from the barrack, at his back,

and from the back he looked like me,

and I was sure I'd never see him again.

I was sure.

We failed as a nation.

We didn't make one milieu with the Jews.

We did it, a part of the group did it,
of the Netherlands, far too late.

We had been neutral
in the First World War,

we thought we should be neutral
in the Second World War—

all this stupid nonsense.

And then, having a sense of protest

isn't the same thing
as translating it to relevant action.

(marching music)

(narrator) As the war went on,

the Germans stepped up appeals

for recruits to fight with them
in Russia.

In all, 25,000 Dutchmen volunteered—

in proportion to its size, the biggest
contingent from any occupied country.

Only half returned.

At the same time,
German decrees forced able-bodied men

to report as conscript labour
to work in German war factories.

Rather than be separated
from their families,

tens of thousands
now tried to go into hiding.

Police spot checks on papers
made draft-dodging difficult.

Another problem
was the ration-card system

administered by Dutch civil servants.

One of their tasks was to keep
a vigilant lookout for irregularities.

This was because the Resistance,
now bigger and better organised,

forged stamps and stole ration books
to feed the growing numbers in hiding.

(woman) We had special organisations
providing people with hiding places,

and they knew our address.

So when they had somebody
who had to be hidden at once,

they knew they could always
bring them to us

because we always had
two sleeping places

reserved for such urgent cases, you see?

And most of the time
they were people who didn't stay long,

sometimes for a weekend,
and then, in the meantime,

they tried to find another safer place
for them where they could stay.

(man) In a small room, I think…

Well, some… four yards, five yards,

there were nine people, I think,
sometimes 11,

and people from other surroundings.

We hadn't to do a single thing.

Peeling potatoes,
that kind of thing, you could do.

Reading books
from the Christian library.

I played chess with my wife.

I studied chess with the books
my friends sent from Amsterdam.

But it was horribly like hell itself,

as Sartre puts it in Huis Clos,

sitting together with people
who you get to dislike more and more

every minute of the day,

with all tensions.

And the only one way of escape
was going to sleep.

Early in the morning
you went to the bureau.

We had a Bible institute at the bureau.

It was very good because we were hiding
all our explosives and weapons

behind the library
of the Bible institute.

And then at nine or nine-thirty,
you had to be there, and not later,

for that would already be…

well, uncertainty in the group—
“Where is he?”

And then we tried to do
what was the programme of the week.

The RAF dropped plastics.

So we got such a plastic bomb,

and found a beautiful German lorry
and put it in.

You have to destroy something
inside that bomb,

and then in half an hour's time
it will explode.

Now, we had no training in that,
and we didn't press too fast,

and after nearly an hour,
it still didn't explode.

So we went back to the bureau we had
and made another bomb,

and pressed that a little bit better.

It was a little bit risky to put it in

because if the other one would trigger
off just by a little movement,

well, I couldn't tell you
the story then. But it didn't.

And half an hour later the two of them
went together, and it was a real fire.

You need some joy to go on

because we had other days also

when some of the friends
would never come back.

(Bruin Slot speaks Dutch)

(translator) There were several
illegal newspapers in Holland.

(speaks Dutch)

(translator) Once, the Germans
had taken 40 of our people prisoner,

they'd been put
in Vught concentration camp.

They interrogated one of them
and then released him

and sent him to us with this message:

“If you close down the paper…”—

this was near the end of the war,
probably 1944—

“If you stop producing your paper,
then we won't shoot these people.”

(continues in Dutch)

(translator) We called a meeting
and talked it over very carefully.

We reached the conclusion
that we had to go on.

(Van Der Veen) As soon
as some of your friends are shot,

you take things more serious.

If you know that this man is penetrating
into the underground forces

and you can shoot him
and save so many lives,

it is terribly difficult
and a terrible responsibility.

We had the orders to kill a couple,

a dangerous couple.

We were asked to shoot them
on the streets—

when they crossed a bridge,
to shoot them there and run away.

But we had a school
very near to that place,

and there were so many people
on the streets,

that we thought,
“Let us bring them in that school

and kill them in the cellar.”

And as soon as they came in that cellar
and the light was on,

we saw that the wife was pregnant.

And then we couldn't do that.

So we arranged—the commander
of our group and I—

that we should threaten them.

And we did so. The man first.

We gave him a hell of a time,
I promise you.

But just threatening.

And then his wife also,
but in relationship to her situation.

We took the risk of their promises,

of stepping out of that practice
and waiting till after the war

when people could do with them
what was necessary.

(narrator) Spring 1944.

The second front,
leading to the longed-for liberation.

The Germans put up posters
warning that Allied invasion

would mean death and destruction.

“Mother, is this the second front
Father was always talking about?”

But the invasion came,

and by the autumn of 1944
the Allies were racing north.

On September 13, the first Dutch city,

Maastricht, in the extreme south,
was liberated.

Resistance fighters arrested Nazis
and punished women collaborators.

But while the southern tip
of Holland rejoiced,

the rest of the country
impatiently waited for their liberation.

Days later, their hopes were dashed—

the Allies were beaten severely
at Arnhem.

The Dutch government in exile
called for a railway strike

to deny supplies to German armies.

Railwaymen, who had hesitated before,
now came out in force,

bringing all transport to a standstill.

The Germans retaliated by cutting off

all supplies of fuel and food
to cities in western Holland.

Soon people were scavenging

along silent and deserted railway tracks
for bits of coal.

Shops ran out of food.
Prices soared on the black market.

People kept alive by eating tulip bulbs.

Despite the privations,
the strikers held firm.

Using forged securities, their wages
were repaid by the Resistance,

which was by now
also hiding 300,000 men

wanted by the Germans for forced labour.

There was no electricity or gas.

Houses left vacant by Jews
were stripped of wood for use as fuel.

As the winter got worse,

the Germans relented
and allowed emergency soup kitchens.

Still, it was clear
that many would starve

unless Holland was liberated.

(man) I did ask my friend Bedell Smith
to ask General Eisenhower

could they not start a separate action

to liberate the rest of Holland,

where we had got up to the Maas

and then up to Nijmegen,
and that was it,

and the rest was really getting
in worse and worse trouble this winter.

Well, at that time, pretty soon,

almost simultaneously, the German
counterattack came in the Ardennes,

which upset almost everything
one had hoped for.

(narrator)
Hitler now stripped Holland bare.

From Rotterdam alone
in two days in November 1944,

50,000 able-bodied men were rounded up
and removed to Germany.

(speaks Dutch)

(translator) When the doorbell rang
there were two Germans.

They both came upstairs.

One stayed at the top of the stairs
and the other one came into the room.

He looked round the room,

and the two men who were there
had to get dressed and go with them.

And we, being women,
were crying of course, both of us—

one woman with a baby in her arms,
another hanging on her skirt.

And I can still remember vividly
the one German

who was inside the room, he was crying.

Tears were streaming down his face
and he said,

“I am so terribly sorry
that I'm not alone.”

“I'd love to be able to help you,
but I can't do anything

because there's someone with me
and I don't know him.”

He couldn't do it. He'd have tried
very hard to leave those two men there

because he thought it was terrible.

That was the first time
I'd ever seen a German cry.

He really cried,
big tears rolling down his face.

(narrator) That winter,
16,000 Dutch men, women and children

died of cold and hunger.

Still the liberators did not come.