A few years ago, Catherine and I attended a wedding for one of her coworkers. The ceremony took place in the Riviera Ballroom on the shore of Lake Geneva. The reception was held there, as well. It was a memorable location for a wedding.
The reason it was memorable for me had nothing to do with the wedding. At the reception I had the rare opportunity to engage in conversation with a most fascinating individual. What I took away from those several minutes left me humbled and inspired.
Nellie worked in the kitchen at the facility where Catherine also worked at the time. By chance, we ended up sitting at the same table during the reception. After casual introductions and typical small talk, I discovered that Nellie was from Holland. As is my habit, I began asking her about growing up in Holland – what was it like? Why did she come to the States? Before long, I realized she had some powerful childhood memories.
In May of 1940, the Germans invaded the Netherlands. The Nazis began identifying and deporting Jews to death camps. Of the 140,000 Jews that lived in the Netherlands prior to 1940, only 30,000 survived the war. Nellie was a child at the time. Her non-Jewish family helped hide Jewish friends and neighbors and worked to smuggle them to safety.
As she spoke of how her brother and his friends would sleep on the roof of their house in order to avoid Nazi patrols, and explain the method of tying a string to his toe dropped down the chimney to awaken him when needed, she related these things without drama or intrigue.
Since she was a little girl at the time, her memories were random. There was a strong bitterness evident in her voice as she told of the Germans entering their house without warning one morning and taking their breakfast for themselves.
This small Dutch town had one fire truck and a group of volunteer firemen. When they were able to anticipate a German patrol looking for Jews, the firemen had devised a clever plan. The fire truck had compartments large enough to hide people. As the Nazi patrols would come into town, the fire truck would go racing out of town at the same time with sirens screaming headed for an imaginary fire. Once safely outside of town, their concealed Jewish passengers could exit the truck to hide or flee, having escaped the Nazis one more time.
A pastor of a small church in the town hid a Jewish friend for weeks in the sanctuary inside the organ cabinet. They joked with the Jewish fellow about spending so much time in a church.
Other memories were not so victorious. A pastor hiding Jews in the attic of his church was taken away with the discovered Jews and none were ever heard from again.
As I listened to Nellie reminisce, she didn’t speak of heroics and courage, or the bravery of those she knew in this small Dutch town. She told these stories as though any one in any small town anywhere would have done the same. Though, at times, I could see her eyes start to tear up as she would mention certain people.
No books were ever written about Nellie’s family. No movies were made about the risks they took. None of them are celebrities. They were a normal family in a small Dutch town doing, without question, what they assumed everyone would do.
I consider it a privilege to have shared a table at that wedding reception with someone who understood firsthand what it means to be a hero. She just didn’t know it should apply to her and her family.
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