“Oh, and you need some kind of alarm system inside the house,” Mr. Smit said, sipping his tea. “I will arrange for someone to set it up for you soon. And the laundry, watch the laundry. If there are clothes that don’t fit any of you hanging on the line or draped near the stove….” He shook his head as his voice trailed off. Corrie understood his point.
Mr. Smit left the Beje ten minutes later. As Corrie showed him to the door, he offered one last piece of advice. “Practice the routine. It must not take more than a minute for all your guests to get from wherever they are into the secret room.”
Corrie locked the door behind him and walked back to the dining room. She slumped down into a chair feeling totally exhausted. How would it ever work? Seven or eight people were supposed to disappear without a trace in sixty seconds! They would practice it as best they could, but silently she prayed they would never have to prove it in a real emergency.
Chapter 6
The Window Washer
What possible good could it do, taking her away?” Willem asked Corrie. “She couldn’t work, and it would take effort and money to transport her on one of their trains.” He was referring to the ninety-one-year-old blind Jewish woman the Nazis had carried away from his rest home. Corrie stared into his tired eyes; she had no answer. So many questions in Holland were now unanswerable. Most of the time it was too painful even to ask the questions. By 1943, there were few Jews left in the country, and they were all in hiding. Those who were found were herded onto trains and shipped off to concentration camps, never to be heard from again.
By summer 1943, the Beje had six permanent guests, four of them Jewish, and a steady flow of others, mainly Dutch men trying to avoid being sent to the labor camps. Sometimes, when the situation was not too tense, Hans, one of the guests, would spend hours retyping papers and letters that told other Dutch people about the awful things happening in their country and in Germany, and laying out how they could play a part in helping to stop them. At other times, such as when Nollie was arrested for hiding a Jewish girl in her home, it was simply too dangerous to do much but lay low and wait. During those times, the men would take two-hour shifts peering out through the blackout curtain, hoping that if the Gestapo did raid their hiding place, they would be able to sound the alarm early enough and give themselves an extra thirty seconds to make a run for the “Angels’ Den,” the name they had given the secret room.
The days seemed to drag on and on. Of course, the guests couldn’t leave the Beje, except in an emergency. Sometimes, though, they were able to sit on the roof in small groups. A thin balcony, about seven feet wide and twenty feet long, ran down the middle of the roof of the front house. The ten Booms had put up a washing line on the balcony, and many of the family chores, such as peeling potatoes and mending clothes, were done there during the day. Since the balcony was not visible from the street, the guests were able to relax a bit and enjoy the sunlight and envy the birds that flew freely around Haarlem.
The nights were more interesting than the days. Electricity was now being shut off at dusk to conserve energy for the German war effort. So many homes in Haarlem created ways to make their own lights. At the Beje, Corrie’s bicycle was wheeled into the dining room after dinner and set on a stand. One after another, people took turns peddling with all their might. Of course, the bicycle didn’t go anywhere, but the spinning back wheel worked the dynamo, which in turn lit the lamp on the front of the bike. As the light shone, one person would pull his or her chair close to it and perform the agreed-upon entertainment. Leendert, who had installed the alarm in the house, gave lectures on Dutch literature and organized play readings. Mary, who had been a travel agent for an Italian company in Amsterdam, gave travel talks on famous places in Italy and tried to teach everyone Italian. Even Casper ten Boom, who at eighty-four had little use for Italian, showed up for her lessons with a small black notebook and a freshly sharpened pencil. Hans taught astronomy, and then the bike would be wheeled over to the piano, where Mary would play her music. Often some of the other guests would join in with a violin or oboe. Many books were read aloud during this time. There were books of plays, poems, history, mystery, anything to pass the time and keep people’s minds off the terrible things going on outside their little refuge.
But it was not easy to forget. Every person who entered the Beje could be a spy, and even a person loyal to the cause might be caught and tortured by the Gestapo for information. No one knew for sure how anyone would respond to the Gestapo’s tactics. They all knew, though, that under torture, any contact could give them all up. So imaginations often ran wild, wondering whether things that seemed normal and innocent were really that way or whether they were a cover for something much more sinister.
One lunchtime in June 1943 the nine people in the house, Corrie, Betsie, their father, plus the six guests, were seated around the dining room table. Suddenly they heard a scraping noise outside, and everyone stopped eating. Corrie looked towards the window and froze. There was a man staring in at them through the flimsy lace curtains. Corrie wondered how that could be; he would have to be eight feet tall to see in that window. And so he was, with the help of a ladder! They all watched as he wet the window with a cloth and began rubbing it energetically.
“We didn’t order a window washer,” Corrie hissed under her breath.
Everyone sat staring, until Eusie broke the silence and whispered urgently, “Keep talking. We’re having fun. We are all at Mr. ten Boom’s birthday party, and in just a minute we will sing to him.”
Corrie lifted the half-eaten slice of bread to her lips; her mouth felt far too dry to swallow anything, but she knew Eusie was right—they must act normal. Mary passed the salt, and Hans told a joke. They all laughed loudly at it. Then Eusie turned to Casper ten Boom and burst into the Dutch birthday song, Lang zal hij leven (Long shall he live). Everyone applauded enthusiastically at the end of the song, and Corrie felt it was then safe to get up from the table and talk to the window washer.
“Good day,” she said as she popped her head out the door. “I didn’t know we had arranged to have our windows washed today.”
The window washer looked back at her with surprise. “Isn’t this the Bakker house?” he asked.
“No,” laughed Corrie as best she could. “I think you have the wrong address. Some friends and I are in the middle of celebrating my father’s eighty-fifth birthday, so it’s not a day for window washing. Won’t you join us?” she asked, forcing a smile.
The window washer shook his head. “No, I’d best be on my way to the Bakkers. My apologies for disturbing you.” He tipped his hat, pulled the ladder from the wall and walked off down the street.
Corrie locked the door behind her and went back to the dining room. How things had changed! Before the occupation, a window washer who had made a mistake with the address would be just that, a window washer who had made a mistake. Now he could be so much more. He could be an NSB spy or someone from the next street who wanted to earn extra rations by turning in a group of divers and their hosts. Inside the dining room, the party atmosphere had evaporated as quickly as it had come. Everyone sat silently with his or her own thoughts and worries.
And after the incident, Corrie felt safe in the dining room only when the blackout curtains were drawn. She would have liked to keep them drawn all day, but that would have certainly made the neighbors suspicious.
Christmas 1943 approached, and so did Hanukkah. Everyone joined in the celebration with Eusie. Each night he lit another candle on the menorah, read from the Torah, and chanted his ancient prayers.
Inside the Beje, everyone felt safe, but leaving the house was another matter. None of the guests liked the idea of going outside; every few yards on the street there was some official who might ask them for their identity papers. At the same time, they did not like being inside the Beje all the time, either. No matter how they entertained themselves, it got incredibly boring sitting inside month after month.
The youngest guest was seventeen-year-old Jop. He had been a watchmaking apprentice to Corrie and her father. After he was nearly arrested and escorted to a labor camp, his parents had asked if he could stay at the Beje. At first he felt safe working downstairs in the workshop, but as time passed, he moved his work area onto a large board in the parlor.
One afternoon in January 1944, Jop and Corrie stood talking in the back of the clockshop when Rolf van Vliet, a local policeman, stepped quietly inside. Corrie gave him a friendly greeting. She knew he helped the underground whenever he could. Like so many Dutch men, he had made the painful decision to stay at his job, now under German control, and try to warn people about, if not prevent, some of the worst things the Nazis tried to do. And that was why he was in the clockshop. He had read in a police report that another underground refuge, like the Beje, was going to be raided that night. He hoped Corrie knew someone who could get a message to them.
Corrie glanced at the large Frisian clock that stood in the hallway that led from the clockshop to the dining room. It was nearly five o’clock. There was no time to send for someone in the underground, give him instructions about the raid, and have him safely deliver the warning before 6:00 p.m., the new curfew time.
“I’m sorry,” Corrie told Rolf, “but I can’t think of anyone at this short notice to deliver the warning. It’s getting tougher every time to….” her voice was interrupted.
“Corrie, let me go. I know that area well, and I’ll be fast,” said Jop.
Corrie looked at the eager seventeen-year-old she had become so fond of. Jop’s parents were grateful that he was safe at the Beje. How could she allow him to go on such a dangerous mission? On the other hand, how could she not let him go? He was the best hope for warning an entire “family,” like the one at the Beje, that they were about to be raided. How would she feel if someone could have warned them of an impending raid but didn’t?
“You’ll have to be very careful,” she said quickly, hoping she wouldn’t regret the decision. “And we’ll have to get you dressed.”
Jop smiled. He had seen enough comings and goings at the Beje to know that the young men seldom went out onto the street without a dress, hat, and muff on. These days it was much safer to be a young woman than a young man in Holland, unless of course, you were stopped and asked to produce identification papers. Then the “young woman” better know how to run long and fast!
Ten minutes later, dressed and ready, Jop kissed Corrie good-bye and slipped out the side door. Corrie waited patiently for him to return. Finally, the bells of St. Bavo Church chimed six o’clock, and Corrie knew she would not be hearing from Jop until morning. Once it was curfew time, he would not risk returning to the Beje. He would find himself somewhere to hide for the night.
The next morning it was not Jop at the door, but Rolf the policeman. Rolf had bad news. When Jop had knocked on the door of the house, the supposed owner answered. Not being a regular member of the underground, Jop didn’t know that the man wasn’t the real owner. He gave him the warning, and then the door swung open wider to reveal two Gestapo agents with their guns drawn.
Corrie felt herself go pale. “I should never have let him go. I should never have let him put himself in danger,” she whispered.
Rolf put his hand on hers. “We all do what we think is the best at the time.”
Corrie nodded. She knew he was right. No one was in any more or any less danger than anyone else in Holland these days.
“I hate to say this,” Rolf went on, “but no seventeen-year-old boy can keep secrets from the Gestapo. They have terrible methods….” his voice trailed off. He didn’t need to say any more. Corrie knew exactly what he meant. It might take an hour or a day or a week, but in the end, Jop would tell them something about what was going on at the Beje.
