The Children Who Fled to the North and East of the Netherlands
Many children of collaborators only realized the dangers they were in when they fled the Allied liberation of the southern provinces in September 1944. Hendrik, the boy who was afraid of anti-NSB signs after liberation, and his mother stayed with family in Amsterdam for a while but returned to their home in The Hague shortly after Dolle Dinsdag.
Their final departure came when their house was destroyed in a bombardment in March 1945. At that stage, he left for the rural northeastern province of Drenthe together with his mother and sister. In his memoirs, written in 2006, Hendrik, who as a child had been a big fan of Hitler and a member of the NJS, remembered this journey to Drenthe as a time of adventure. In writing this account, he seems neither to have intended to call attention to “silenced memories” nor to scrutinize his position vis-à-vis his parents and their political choices. This results in a lively manuscript in which, although the child’s perspective is presented, innocence or “unfair” treatment are not foregrounded. Hendrik described how he enjoyed walking the roads on their flight to Drenthe and not knowing exactly where their journey would end. During the trip, they called at farms to ask for food and a place to rest. They often encountered hospitality but remained reserved. They presented themselves as bombardment victims, never mentioned their NSB affiliations, and tried hard not to get involved with people. At one of their stops, a local mayor organized a more permanent place for them to stay at a farm near town. Hendrik's family was thus first and foremost seen and treated as bombing victims. This meant that they did not fear liberation as such but more the possible consequences of being “discovered” as collaborators.When Drenthe was liberated, the stress of hiding their ex-NSB status mounted. As soon as they were unmasked as NSB members, they were separated from the other evacuees.
In this memoir it is not the brutal reactions of the guards or local people that loom large. The reactions of locals were overshadowed by the personal bombshell his mother dropped on him at this time, revealing information about his father. She told Hendrik that he had been born while his father was married to another woman and that his father had only joined the SS during the war because he hoped to be able to legally recognize his son. Not only did Hendrik suddenly have to see his father in a different light—he had assumed his father to be a true National Socialist, not one born out of pragmatism— but now, in Hendrik's mind, he himself carried responsibility for their vulnerable position.At the same time, it is not improbable that there was not much aggression shown by locals to unfamiliar NSB internees. After all, locals had few, if any, personal negative experiences of these Nazi sympathizers, and hence they had less impetus to blame, chastise, or exact vengeance on the strangers. On the contrary, Hendrik also recalled the friends he made when they lived at the farm in Drenthe. One of them, an elderly man, who was also a member of the local resistance, even promised to look after Hendrik's stuffed toy when Hendrik's family was arrested. In contrast, local collaborators and NSB members were seen as disloyal to the community. So, unlike the experience of children of collaborators who had stayed at home or whose NSB background was known in their neighborhood, for children like Hendrik the actual liberation period is often not integral to their experience of the war. The flight and their return home with (one of) their parents or being sent to a foster family or children's home had much more impact on their feelings of insecurity. Their idea of living in a hostile world was more connected with the need to keep their “true identities” hidden. Their experiences as “hidden” NSB-ers made their idea of innocence and punishment different from that of the children who had experienced the arrest of their parents at home or whose flight had ended in Germany.