Start, part 6
First, prepare yourself for a horror story, which is insufficiently known even to many Dutch people of the postwar generations.
A ticket to Hell
The most portentous change was the compulsory introduction of an identity card, a small folder, rather, for all people over 14 years of age. This was by far the single most damaging action any Dutchman took against his own people.
Even today, this "Persoonsbewijs" (I'll call it the PB from here on) would be almost impossible to counterfeit and for that time it was truly amazing. Special paper, special ink, microscopic lettering for the background, a watermark, a sealed photograph and fingerprint were some of the protective measures. But the decisive factor was that there was a copy of the PB, kept in bomb-proof vaults and totally inaccessible except to the German security services. This meant that even if you were somehow able to produce a perfect fake, a check in the vaults would immediately reveal that there was no such PB on record. Nowhere in Europe – not even in Germany itself – was there anything remotely comparable as regards security, the system was totally watertight.
This diabolically clever PB was the brainchild of a Dutch official, Mr.J.L. Lentz, a "name of infamy" to paraphrase president Roosevelt. He was an eminently capable official at the Dutch registry office, obsessed with perfection. Although he was pro-German, he was not a member of the Nazi party and his PB was primarily the result of his ultimate goal in life: "to deliver a good piece of work". It was Lentz who suggested that the PB should be marked with two large black "J"s to indicate that the person in question was Jewish. That was convenient for population statistics…
As the food rationing coupons (see below) were only supplied when you showed your PB, and people with a "J" in their PB would be arrested and sent to the concentration camps after 1941, this meant that Jews could not obtain coupons – and thus, no food. Also, Jews were immediately identified by their PB during security checks – at the railway stations, at major bridges or simply on the streets.
Single-handedly, Lentz has thus been responsible for thousands of deaths, his PB could be literally a ticket to Hell. His insane drive for perfection was an important reason why only a small percentage of the Dutch Jews survived, far smaller than for other occupied countries in West-Europe. After the war, Lentz was tried – and jailed for 3 years… Until his death in 1964 he remained enormously proud of his "job well done". He epitomizes "the banality of evil" as a Dutch writer has called it, exactly like Adolf Eichmann.
Three changes
I wrote about the changes that took place when we had become an occupied country, and I should mention three of them in particular.
The first is the introduction of food rationing. For those who have never experienced it: this meant that you had a weekly or monthly allowance of only a fixed quantity of meat, fat, bread, milk etc. In the course of time, practically all consumables became rationed: soap, sugar, matches (they contain chemicals also used for explosives!), coal (the main source of energy then) clothing and shoes. Also, the quantity allowed became less. Yet the nutritional balance of the diet was sufficient until 1944 (I'll come back to that). In fact, medical specialists now agree that it was a pretty healthy diet, reducing the risk of obesity and cardiovascular disease! Coffee was one of the first things that was rationed and it was the last to become freely available again…in 1952! For several so-called "luxury goods", substitutes were soon introduced: surrogate cocoa (based on acorns, I think), surrogate tea (comparable to the herbal teas that are now so popular), home-grown tobacco (the quality depended on the grower's ability, some of it was acceptable). Late in the war (1944), even soap disappeared and was substituted by "clay soap", which was pretty useless. Shoes and all leather goods also disappeared (except on the black market, of course) because the German armed forces were "leather-based": not only for boots, but also for all sorts of cases (maps, pistols, ammunition), belts and straps. The British and US armies were "canvas-based", the German armed forces had luxury equipment… In 1943, my usual footwear was wooden sandals in summer, wooden shoes in winter, but even wood became scarce in the end, as I'll show later on.
What is amazing is that this rationing system continued to function perfectly throughout the war, despite mass movement of families to other locations. Preparations had already been made before the war and an entire comprehensive infrastructure was set up for the issuing of rationing coupons, distribution of stocks over the thousands of shops etcetera. The rationing authority became a major employer and if you had a job there you were reasonably certain you were not going to be sent to Germany for compulsory work in the armaments industry.
As mentioned in the above PB story, Jews could not obtain coupons, and neither could people who had gone into hiding for other reasons (and there were several such reasons as we'll see later). One of the best activities of the resistance movement was the supply of stolen or counterfeit coupons to these people so that they could survive.
The second change was the virtual disappearance of motor traffic. Petrol was only available with special dispensation, if your business activities were advantageous to Germany, for instance. The lovely Packards, Hudsons, Chryslers, Lincolns and Delages so frequent in the city of diplomats that was the Hague soon disappeared from the scenery. Soon, cars and motor bikes were requisitioned, like the radio sets. Those that remained on the streets were kept running by switching to gas: either a sort of stove on a small trailer in which wood was converted to gas, or enormous balloons filled with coke-gas from the utilities.
The third change is the combination of a total blackout and a curfew. Nights were really pitchblack and silent, even in the cities. There were numerous cases of people drowning in a canal because they didn't see anything. You only were allowed out with special dispensation, e.g. midwives and doctors.
Bush telegraph
As I said earlier, listening to Allied radio stations was immediately forbidden when we were occupied.
Soon afterwards, all radio sets had to be handed in. The usual sets of that time were large, and handy tinkerers began to build small illegal sets for listening to the BBC. With the large components like valves (tubes, if you're American) of the time, that was not easy. If you were caught, there were serious consequences, so these sets were hidden when not used – sometimes in hollowed-out Bibles… Reception was uncertain because the Germans had powerful jamming stations. Nevertheless some of that information reached the general public by word of mouth. In this era of instant information, you may be surprised at the speed of this "bush telegraph" type of communication, of which I have a classic example:
On September 5th, 1944, there had been a totally spurious announcement on the BBC (I told you this was not always reliable…) that Allied troops were in The Netherlands and had liberated a major city in the South. The country erupted: thousands of people lined the roads expecting to see Allied troops, the national flag was flown and people were congratulating each other. Collaborators fled in droves, there were chaotic scenes at railway stations and on the major roads. That day has been immortalized as "Mad Tuesday" (Dolle Dinsdag, lots of pictures on the web under that search term). The point is that it was on that single Tuesday country-wide, the remoter parts of the country did not have a Mad Wednesday!
End, part 6
Continued next weekend!