Envisioned Through His Eyes

When I first moved back to the Netherlands, my mother and I would have a weekly routine to go visit my grandfather. Every Tuesday and Friday, both she and I would go see him. I was just a kid back then, but I knew it meant a lot to him, that we went to see him. Yes, it took up a lot of my time, but it was worth it just to make my granddaddy happy. He was getting to an old age, where he couldn’t go out anymore; he was at a loss of breath more often when walking around.
Another reason that we always had to visit him was because my immediate family and I would always be traveling around the world. The job that my father had was to do with oil and that meant we would move often. Opa, which is Dutch for grandfather, would always come visit us when we were abroad, but now that we had moved back to the Netherlands, we just had to see him all the time.
So, this one time that my mom and I went to go see him, we met his neighbor, Miriam, and we all stayed for lunch with Opa. Then somehow the topic of World War 2 came into place. I think it started because my mom said something about his constant smoking, and when he had started. He said he started smoking when the Canadians came and liberated the Netherlands. Apparently, the Canadian soldiers were handing out cigarettes and he was one of the many that got a pack to himself. He was only fifteen, and at the time we visited him, he was seventy eight. That’s sixty three years of smoking, which I find to be absurd! Then, since I was still a child, I had to ask my mom what liberated meant, and she gave me an explanation. She said that it was like how the Germans took over Holland, like they did other countries, but then when Hitler began to lose his greatness, the Canadians came into the picture, and gave back freedom to Holland. She said that what the Canadians did was liberation. Opa then jumped to another story, and it felt as if I was watching a television show.

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“It was a special day, a day when we’d go to school and see a movie. A movie on the school we went to. When we arrived though, the teacher said that we had to go home, that there was a war. A war had began. We didn’t know what else to think, so we went home. In a matter of time Germans were all around us. I was only ten when it had all began.
“The days went by slowly, and we began to be taken under the rule of the Nazi people. Due to the Nazi rule, some people started to wear these odd golden-yellow stars. One of my friends wore one too. One day, he told me he was going on a vacation, so I brought him to the train… and we said our good byes and I wished him luck, and I never saw him again.
“He was taken by them… he was sent to the concentration camp with all the other Jews. And well he never came back. He was murdered by the Nazis. So many people were murdered by them. It was terrible.”

There was a silence, he gathered his thoughts, and then started again.

“The worst of all the years was the last year, the year when we didn’t have food. All the Nazis stole the food from us, and brought it back to Germany. We all were so hungry. Of all of us, Ria got the sickest. She was so weak.
“Luckily for her though, her church had sent her to Friesland, so then she could get better and be healthy again. I though, had stayed behind. While she was gone, her mother came along. She came to talk to Ria’s father.
“Ria’s parents were officially divorced and didn’t live together, so if her parents wanted to communicate, they came to each other. Ria’s father had then moved in with my mother and me when I was younger. My mother had rented out a floor in our house so we could get more money, and of course that’s how I met Ria.
“So, when Ria’s mother came, she asked where Ria was, and her ex husband had said that she went to Friesland. Then of course, her mother decided she’d go to see her daughter, but then she saw me, and how hungry I was too. So she let me come along as well. Luckily for me, she was a pretty woman, so she got us safely onto the train. She smuggled me onto the train. It was very interesting.
“As she sat on the train, I laid down under the seat. The Nazi generals let her in without any hesitation. But then after a while, an officer came into her little room, and asked her where she was headed. She of course said Friesland, and he asked why. She said she wanted to go see her daughter. The officer then said that we were on the wrong train, that this train was going to Germany, but it was going to stop at a little town that will probably have a train to her destination. He asked her if she’d like him to get her a train to go to Friesland, and she of course said yes, but then she grabbed my hand under the bench, and pulled me out, then she asked if I could come too.
“The officer smiled and then said I could. Then the officer asked if I was hungry. I kept silent, but nodded my head. He then pulled out a loaf of bread, and cut two slices of bread, and put some syrup on it, and handed it to me. It tasted delicious. It was like miracle food, so sweet, and so filling. I basically inhaled it. Then he kept on talking to Ria’s mother. As the train stopped, he got off the train, and found an officer that was going to be on the train we should have been on in the first place. They conversed for a bit, and then he came back, and told us we can go to Friesland with the other man.
“Both she and I were so happy. Nothing bad was going to happen to us, and the generals were nice. It was surprising how nice they were to us.
“When we arrived at the next town, we had to walk a bit, and then this Dutch driver came behind us and asked where we were going. We told him and he hesitated before offering us a ride with him. Apparently he wasn’t supposed to let us in, but he did. He opened the back door of his vehicle, and we saw millions of guilders. The man driving the car said that we could sit on the pile of guilders, but that we weren’t to touch it, just sit; and we did that. The man worked for a bank, and was transferring the money to a different bank. He was nice though, and it was something I’d never done before.
“When we arrived in the little town, in north Holland, we got out, and went to the local church. We asked the minister if he knew where Ria was. He of course did, and brought us to a farm. She was sent by her church in The Hague to the church here, so she could get healthy.
“When we saw her, she was so happy, she came running to both her mother and I. It was great to see her.
“At the farm she was living on, she’d work for her food though, and then that’s what I did. That same night I started to milk a cow, just so I could get some food. After that day, I began to live and work at the farm. I was very strong and had a decent layer of fat. I was thirteen, and healthy. Although, there were many other people, not here, but elsewhere in Holland, that were suffering. Many people didn’t have the food I had. At the time, so many people were dying due to lack of food. It was definitely a sad time for everyone.
“When the Canadians finally came to Holland, I was very healthy, and fully alive, Ria too. It was amazing to feel so good again. All the Dutch celebrated the freedom we had just been given. The Canadians paraded down the streets and then, I got the cigarettes.”