[Marxism] The Day Mum's House Got Hit by a Bomb

["Jurriaan Bendien" <andromeda246@xxxxxxxxx>]

   These days, there is enough bombing power in the world to flatten every
residential building on earth. Probably, the US Air Force with superior
military efficiency has aerially bombed more homes than any other army in
history, although of late the emphasis has been more on "precision"
bombardments, guided by laser technology, WACs and satellite
communications - the lingo for off-target errors being "collateral damage".
   What is it really like for people to experience having their house
bombed?
   Looked at from a remote distance in the air, the exploding bombs can
look like flashes of disco light and puffballs of smoke and debris, a sort
of lugubre abstract art. But what is it really like down below? As a
youngster, I read Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse 5", a great
anti-war novel, and I saw the movie. I've read more stories since.
   But there's a more personal story to tell, the story of the day Mum's
house got hit by a Bomb. And it's a real story, not fiction if you were
thinking that. Why tell that story? I guess I have no reason, except that I
was preoccupied with the experience again recently. Apart from that, my
feeling is that that it's easy while high up in the air to abstract from the
damage below. I vividly recall watching the "precision bombardments" in Iraq
and Yugoslavia on TV, showing the targets through the scope, and then the
billowing explosion like a Rorschach ink blot. What I wanted to get to, is
the human experience of it, and the closest experience I have, is what
happened to Mum herself.
   When the Dutch capitulated to the German Wehrmacht in May 1940, the
invaders occupied school buildings in the Beethoven neighbourhood of
Amsterdam, practically next door to where Mum lived - the municipal girls'
college in the Euterpe street and the Christian college opposite at the
Adama van Scheltema square.
   In the first school, the Amsterdam bureau of the German
Sicherheitsdienst (SD) was established, and in the second, the subsidiary
"Zentralstelle für Jüdische Auswanderung" where Jews captured in razzia's
were locked up, prior to rail-transport to the Westerbork camp, in transit
to Germany and Poland. In half a year's time, up to December 1942, some
18,000 Jews were assembled there and abducted. In the Euterpe street, the SD
and the Gestapo routinely tortured arrested suspects brutally, making the
name of the street a byword among locals.
   In  Autumn 1944, colonel Koot, leader of the Dutch underground
resistance, requested from London that the two schools be bombed, as a
precautionary measure to protect the growing resistance from the threat of
mass arrests. However, the London bombing commission and the RAF initially
felt that, because the schools were in the middle of a densely populated
residential area, the bombardment was too risky.
   Prince Bernhard, the official resistance chief in exile, also put in a
request, which went from the exiled Dutch Cabinet to the Bombing Commission
and then to lieutenant-at-sea Moolenburgh, Marine attaché, who discussed the
matter with the Air Ministry, which in turn contacted the best man for the
job: the 28-year old "ace" colonel Denys Gillam of the 146 Wing squadron
stationed in Antwerp, otherwise known as "Kill'em Gillam", a pilot had
previously earnt his spurs in the Battle of Britain.
   When Gillam declared the operation would be a "piece of cake",
Moolenburgh gave his approval, provided the attack would occur on a Sunday.
The first attempt, on 19 November 1944, failed however, because of overcast
skies. The 25th was still rainy, but by 26 November, visibility had improved
with sunny skies, and three flights of 4 Typhoons went into action. Nine
Typhoons with 8 rockets each flew directly to the target, the others circled
round the harbour area to confuse and distract the flak.
   At 13.20 hours the first planes dived at 50 degrees over Amsterdam, and
launched their fosfor rockets at 600 metres from the ground. They were
followed by 8 Typhoons dropping two heavy-duty 1,000 pound bombs
each, then another sweep by 7 planes dropping fragmentation and
incendiary bombs. The whole operation lasted just ten minutes.
   Mum's family had just been to church to attend a memorial service for
the fallen, and after lunch Grandma was doing the ironing upstairs. Mum, who
was 17 years old at the time, recalls that:

"We were hit by a stray bomb, which landed in my father's study, and
exploded in his piano [Grandpa was an accomplished pianist]. Only the
keyboard remained, a gaping hole was struck through the wall, the window,
and the floor two stories down. Grandma at that moment was standing inside a
clothes cupboard behind the wall, which remained intact, with my younger
brother. She exclaimed, "God will save us".  My younger brother replied
drily, "Well I hope so". Two of my older brothers hid under a heavy wooden
garden bench, which had been put inside before the winter, below in the room
overlooking the garden. Pieces of schrapnel flew around everywhere, but they
were not hit. I ran downstairs, and squeezed under the coathanger against
the wall. I sat there huddled up, with all the coats drawn over me, my
fingers in my ears. I came away unscathed. Only my knee, which was not
covered, was wounded by five of the mass of glass splinters, which, because
of the air pressure, were blown through the whole house. Later, my father
noticed that all the button-loops had been ripped off the coats - was it
because of the air-pressure ? He was, at the critical moment, with another
son in the garage - which remained intact - and hid behind travel chests.
After the thunderous noise had ended, we re-emerged, very bewildered.
Miraculously, all of us had survived. Our next-door neighbors also came
outside with ghostlike faces covered by dust. All had survived, but further
on in the street there was a loss of lives and limbs. The footpaths were
covered by a thick layer of glass splinters. It was cold, we had no heating
at that time."

Grandma was not just a stoic, but must have had nerves of steel. She wrote
in her dairy:

"Sunday 26 November 1944. Finally some sun again. We went to church, Mr van
Royen was speaking in memory of the dead. This afternoon at half past one
suddenly a heavy bombardment of our neighbours, the SD. I was ironing
upstairs with my youngest son when it begun, and rushed downstairs, a huge
noise, breaking glass and ruins. Fearful moments. Very thankful and happy
that we were all unhurt afterwards. Enormous damage, the three glass houses
(no.'s 4-12) heavily damaged. Mr Franco at no. 6 died, Attie lost a
leg. Enormous fires behind us. Deeply moved by it all. At Saarberg's (no. 4)
everybody died, except Cisca."

   The colleges were destroyed, and a number of residential houses went up
in flames. One of the rockets had gone through the very centre of the SD
quarters. In all, about 50 civilians died. Although Gillam had said the
operation would be a "piece of cake", 30-40 homes were in fact ruined, or
heavily damaged. Punctured waterhoses sprayed thousands of liters of water
at the flames. Personal belongings piled up in the street on the mud,
wounded and dead were carried away, but many bystanders nevertheless looked
happy, because the German quarters were completed wrecked. One person who
had lost everything said cheerily: "Now that the building which is known
throughout our country as a torture chamber has been destroyed, I am not sad
about my own loss".
   The Germans, who had suffered large casualties, trotted about looking
defeated, and then sealed off the area. It was rumored that the German
General Jodel, Wehrmacht chief-of-staff, had been killed, but other reports
said he wasn't, because he had been in another building. One witness
reported that "When one of the inhabitants who had fled from the scene
returned, he caught a fireman stealing money from his house. The SD shot
three of the plunderers, and threw them in the burning homes." During the
clean-up, a thief reportedly also stole some 140,000 guilders from a
well-to-do inhabitant of the Albrecht Dürer street. The colleges were
plundered of valuables afterwards, and, during the hunger winter, all scrap
wood from the ruins was used for fuel.
   Mum's relatives were very supportive, bringing offerings of food, and
for while she and her brothers stayed with relatives elsewhere in Amsterdam,
until most of the mess was cleaned up. Electricity was restored three days
after the bombing, and some windows replaced. In all, it took a month to
restore what remained of the house. Mum recalled that "With planks and
boards the windows were nailed shut, and we lived for half a year in
one-half of a house, through the hunger-winter of 1944, until repairs could
be done after liberation."
   The colleges were eventually rebuilt. On 18 May 1945, on recommendation
of the Commission for the Streetnames, the Amsterdam City Council decided to
change the name of the Euterpe street to Gerrit van Veen street, after the
resistance fighter who had been involved in destroyed the Amsterdam
population register (he was shot dead by the Germans on 10 June 1944).
   When I was a boy, Grandpa gave me a piece of schrapnel and some kitchen
utensils, warped in strange shapes by the heat of the bomb, in memory of the
event. I kept them a long time, for luck. Mum had been lucky in the war; she
had
survived a bombardment, and narrowly escaped from rape by a German soldier.
   Mum says that after the war ended, "the Canadian airmen who had executed
the bombardment, paid a visit to all the families who had suffered losses of
life, or who had relatives that had been wounded. We were allowed to make a
trip on the military jeep. They showed a lot of grief for what had happened,
and were rather somber, but we were all excited and joyful that we could
experience these nice soldiers first-hand, they distributed cigarettes and
sweets."
   She got a job as nurse-aide in a hospital, later ran a creche for
toddlers and married in 1957, giving birth to five children, of whom one
died. In 1972 she emigrated with husband and family to New Zealand,
separated from Dad in 1981, and returned to Holland in 1991 to retire there.
It was her third and last emigration.
   On the 60th anniversary of the bombing, grey-haired, she revisited her
old family home in Amsterdam with her brothers, reminiscing with the current
occupants who kindly listened and served tea.
   "I walked to the garden gate, and really the atmosphere was the same as
I remember it. The tiny acorn tree that my mother had planted in 1939 by the
patio at the end of the garden had grown into a gigantic tree. The jasmine
bush in the corner, where the garden bench had stood, was still there, as
well as the beech tree, now metres high, slim beside it. It was a very
moving moment for me."
   She smiled philosophically as she told me about it, yet in her eyes I
thought I saw a glint of a feeling that carried over from a by now distant
memory. I guess that some experiences cannot very well be captured in
words.

Jurriaan


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