September 1944 – June 1945 by Ariaan
Rodenburg-Somsen [389]
By the end of World War Two the operation ‘Market Garden’ took place.
The allied forces tried to get hold of three bridges in The Netherlands
so as to be able to push on to Germany before the winter and put an end to the
war.
But near Arnheim things went
wrong in September 1944.The English airborne troops, it is true, got hold of
the bridge across the Rhine but after days of heavy fighting they had to
surrender the bridge again. Arnheim was destroyed, the population was forced to
evacuate and then the Germans plundered the city. Ariaantje Klaasje Rodenburg-Somsen [389] was one of the tens of thousands of refugees. She was only seven
years old. Recently she committed her memories to paper. Memories of this
evacuation and of her stay in Aalten from September 1944 till June 1945.
It is very hectic in
Arnheim and there
is an air-raid alarm . From time to time we have to take shelter in the cellar.
The schools are closed and the message is
spread that Arnheim has to evacuate.
My granddad and grandma Meijnhardt, who live
very close by the bridge across the Rhine, come over to us in the afternoon.
They tell us there are already fights at the bridge. They have been able to
pack their suitcases in a hurry and they had to leave behind the rest of their
possessions.
Arnheim before and
after the battle
They will go to relatives in Nijkerk. An uncle
and an aunt from the town quarter Schaarsbergen take our wicker cradle on four
wheels. They will also go to Nijkerk together with their four children.
My parents are also busy packing some things.
We will go to Aalten on our bikes. We will be allowed to stay with aunt Riek
(see picture on page 100 family book)
My father has given away my bike (one with
thick wooden blocks on the pedals so that I could have it for a longer time
while growing up) to a family that had no bike at all.
I am very anxious to know how all this will go.
My father and mother on two bikes with three children: Ariaantje, Dikkie and
Hannie. How are they going to manage?
We leave very early in the morning. The journey
takes us to Doesburg where my mother has an uncle and an aunt who live in the
Poortstraat. My mother has got Dikkie on the back of her bike. My father has
got two suitcases on the back of his bike and I can sit on these. I can look
over my father’s head.
At the front on the horizontal bar there are
two blankets and a pillow where my little sister Hannie can sit.
My father is already on his bike I believe when
my little sister is put before him and then our neighbour from across the road
pushes him forward. In this manner we cycle into the direction of Doesburg. It
is very crowded on the roads for it is a complete exodus. Before 8 o’clock p.m.
we have to be in Doesburg because there is a curfew.
When we are on the bridge across the river
IJssel in Doesburg my mother falls with Dikkie. There are some Germans on the
bridge who help my mother get up. They ask us if we have accommodation for the
night. My mother tells them that we are almost with our relatives in Doesburg.
Fortunately we arrive there safe and sound and we spend the night with them.
Where are we going the next day? Now we are
heading for Aalten. On the road we have refreshments at a cafe ‘De Wiemelink’
just outside Doetinchem. On we go and in the afternoon we arrive at aunt Riek’s
house.
She is a widow, aged 39, and has three
children: Dien (18), Henk (17) and Annie (13). My father tells us there is
another girl in the house. She is called Nita Visser (10) and is Jewish. We can
live there for the time to come. We do not know for how long.
My aunt lives in a detached house in the
Hogestraat number 75 with a garden all around.
Hogestraat 75, Aalten
She has a front room and a back room separated by sliding doors. There is also small kitchen with a table at the window, a cooking-range for coal and a back-kitchen. From the kitchen you enter the back room. We hardly come in the front room.
Upstairs my aunt has got three bedrooms and an
attic that can be reached by an extension-ladder. In the back of the garden
there is an air-raid shelter. When we arrive we put our bikes against the
shelter and we put branches upon them so that everything is well hidden.
At that time I play with Rikie Hunink, Jantje
Weggelaar and a girl of the Winkelhorst family. We need not go to school but my
father, who is a teacher, teaches us and the children of the neighbours. Then
we sit and work in the back room.
In the evenings the rooms have to be blacked
out very well and my mother is darning socks at the light of small candle in a
jam-jar. This I remember very well. My cousin Dien has a boy-friend, Jacob
The Heinen-Rots
family, Aalten (1942)
l-r: Henk (1927-1998),
Annie (1931-), aunt Riek Heinen-Rots (1904-1999), Nita Visser (Waisvisz)
(1933-) and Dien (1926-)
Fries. He is always in good spirits. I think he
is a nice boy and good company.
From time to time
there is a lot of commotion in Aalten. When there is an air-raid alarm we often have
to go into the air-raid shelter at the
back of the house. But sometimes we go to the
hamlet of Heurne, also to an air-raid shelter. Fortunately we are not hungry.
Very often we stay there for a few hours and sometimes we eat hotchpotch there.
Very often there are also razzias, men are
taken prisoner to be transported to Germany. Sometimes my father hides in a
cupboard, but sometimes also at the cycle repair-shop of Winkelhorst. In the
back of the garden there is a deep hole in which my father can stand upright
which is covered then with branches.
It is a piece of good luck for us and my aunt
that they never find him.
Sometimes we play in the street and we also
take walks to the cemetery. One day we see a man at the end of the path without
any trousers. We run home and tell what we have seen. After a few days a
policeman comes with a book with pictures. Rikie and I are to say if we
recognize the man from one of the pictures.
From time to time we go to church on Sundays in
the home of the Gussinklo family. They live in a street at the back of the
Hogestraat. My father presides the meeting and preaches, standing between the
two rooms. There are also a lot of women from Scheveningen in Aalten.
At my aunt’s we always eat delicious homemade
buttermilk sauce. I do not remember if there was a lot of snow that winter. But
one day my aunt has a sheepskin hanging outside. It is evening and we hear dogs
barking. That night the sheepskin is stolen.
In these winter months my aunt also has to
accommodate three German soldiers. The beautiful front room is made empty and
straw is put on the floor. My father talks a lot with them. They are ‘good
Germans’, regularly they bring delicious food. But my two-year-old sister Hannie
keeps saying: ‘The dirty Jerries have taken away all the furniture’. She won’t
accept anything from them. But there are rumours that the Germans are going to
lose the war. At the end of March the English enter Aalten with tanks and hand
out bread, biscuits and chocolate. The collaborators go about the village with
their hair cut short. Everybody can see now who they are.
One day her sister visits Nita. We have to play
outside. The French windows are open. Suddenly I hear Nita bursting out crying.
Her sister tells her that their parents have died in a concentration camp.
Never will I forget how they have cried together. From that day my aunt has
been their mother.
Nita Waisvisz,
November 1946
On June 21, 1945 we return to Arnheim. My
father had already been to the house before. Everything has been stolen. We go
home on a truck with things we have been given. My parents, and the children as
well, are very happy that they can return to their own home. The cellar is
filled with water; my doll’s pram is floating in the water. The window of the
attic is nailed in the bay-window downstairs.
My mother writes on the calendar: ‘June 21,
1945, back home’. A day never to forget, back home all five of us!!!
The Somsen-Meijnhardt
family, Arnheim(1946)
l-r: Dick (1939-1981),
Ariaan (1937-) with doll, Dien Heinen (1926-), Theo (1945-), Maria Meijhardt
(1906-1990), Hannie (1942-), Johan Somsen (1894-1967)
Reunion 1997
l-r: Irene
Somsen-Johnson [832], Kathy Reed-Somsen [833], Ariaan Rodenburg-Somsen [389],
Theo Somsen [227], Cindy Zignego-Somsen [814], Sally Berkholder-Rasmussen
[2771],
with quilt
On Saturday, October 13, 1945, the three of us
are sitting on the porch at the front of our house. And who is coming: aunt
Riek. She asks us: ‘Why are you sitting here?’ We said: ‘We have got a little
brother! He is called Theo’. He is a healthy nine-pound baby. My father wanted
to baptise him Theodorus Baldwin but my mother did not like that name so much
and she said: ‘Name him after my two brothers, Dirk and Frederik’.
In course of time we receive parcels from America. They come from the three cousins of my father’s: Dina, Ella and Jennie Somsen from Baldwin.
When we come home from school this is always a
surprise. Because there are always nice things in
these parcels like clothes, shoes, dolls and so on.The cousins also make beautiful pieces of needlework such as quilts.
My parents got one at my birth. Fortunately my
parents have taken that one with them during our evacuation! At the reunion in
August 1997 I have been able to show that beautiful quilt. I still treasure it as a valuable memory of our relatives
from Baldwin.
Note from the editor:
1.
Nita Waisvisz (Visser was her
pseudonym) lives in Israel and visits Aalten every year.
Well over one hundred members of our family
registered for the promising Somsen Boat Trip from Nijmegen tot the German
border town Emmerich and back again.
This large number is beyond our wildest
expectations!
Now when I am writing this we still have this
trip ahead of us. A trip on two of our biggest rivers: the river Waal and the
river Rhine. But when you are reading this we will probably have cast anchor
again in Nijmegen.
Between then and now, or, if you like, between
now and then there is the period of producing this May issue of Somsen Horizon.
In the autumn issue of this magazine we hope to tell
you everything about this pleasure cruise with all its entertainment.
But it is bound to be delightful. In the most
beautiful month of the year we will be enjoying the beautifully blooming river
banks and the surprisingly vast panoramas from the water. Who does not know the
beautiful lines of the poet H. Marsman:
I see broad rivers
floating slowly through
infinite lowlands…’
With well over a hundred relatives we will be part of
this river scenery for many hours.
That will be quite a happening!
During the trip the children can watch videos
if they like. There will be a stand with all the information about our family
foundation.
And live music on board! How beautiful is this
going to sound..?
We will report on this later.
Gree van
Daatselaar - Somsen [53]