Oscar Van Sittart worked with Saul at his law office.
“Saul, I don’t think we can stay here. Your German friend Pauli had the right idea. We Jews should just down tools and get the hell out of here.”
“You mean just sell everything and leave?”
“No, I mean just leave. Lock the door and get out. Give the key to a gentile friend and get out while the going is good. Maybe they could sell things later.”
“Where would you go?” Saul asked despairingly. “They’re still fighting in France. Half that country is overrun.”
“Make our way to America, Canada, South Africa, Australia, Ireland. Hell, I don’t know; anywhere but here. This is no longer just a bad premonition of disaster. This is a disaster.”
“What do you think they’ll do – uproot us, ship us off to some place like the Polish ghetto? You think we should just give up everything we’ve worked at for so many years? So we’ll be an occupied territory. This isn’t the seventh century. The Germans aren’t the Mongols. Civilization has progressed, and even the Nazis can’t destroy a thousand years of progress. No, we should stay here and resist this on our own terms. The rest of the country will stand by us, and the Germans will eventually come around to the rule of law. It’s in their blood. There may be some dark times, but we can see this out. I don’t believe in running.”
Annika was frustrated. “Saul! You said that to Pauli and he’s gone. I agree with Oscar. It’s long past time to get out. Yes, we leave everything. We won’t starve to death. We start new somewhere else. We won’t be the first to do that.”
Saul nodded and took a deep breath. “I agree, things are bad, but the Dutch people will stick together. What are the Nazis going to do? Mass executions for disobedience? We still have our courts, our ways, our traditions. They won’t break these overnight.”
“Don’t be a fool, Saul,” said Oscar. “What do you think they just did to Rotterdam? They flattened half the city. Thousands dead. Why? Because the Dutch army showed resistance when their country was invaded. Why can’t this happen here? Are we any better than the Russians? Russia has been a bloodbath for twenty years. It’s been completely out of control for years. Why can’t some people just interpret what they see for what’s really going on. This isn’t the worst of our troubles – with German troops invading, it’s the beginning. What’s to stop Hitler now? The British have been driven out of continental Europe. The French army has come apart. Look at Rotterdam. Nobody knows how many are dead. Why do think our army capitulated? Why did the Germans bomb Rotterdam? Now they’re bombing Paris. What have any of us done to Germany?”
“Saul,” Annika said, her voice rising, “I’ve never seen you so blind and so obstinate. But let me say something: I don’t want to raise children in a country like this. The Netherlands is fine. Raising a Jewish family in the Third Reich is not. I won’t do it. Oscar and Nina are going to try and get out of here, make their way to Spain and on from there. I want to go with them.”
As Annika spoke, three trucks of motorized German infantry followed by a police sedan drove at an insane speed down the Spiegelstraat. The drivers of all the vehicles in the convoy were leaning on their horns. There was something menacing and inhuman-looking about these soldiers, with their coal-scuttle helmets and their rifles. They were gone in a minute. All conversation stopped, and the waiter cleaning crumbs at the next table stopped and stared. “Where do you suppose they’re going? And how many years will we live under an army of occupation? Who would have thought it would ever come to this?” Everyone at the café’s tables stared in silence across the canal.
Saul was the first to speak. “It’s bad, but we’ll survive. We’re not quitters. We can talk about this again tonight. I gave my word to Uncle Samuël that I’d go and see him this afternoon. It’s not as simple as it sounds. I spoke to him this morning. He’s not well. He’s been talking to his doctor and they think he’s seriously ill. That’s why he’s anxious to see the family get back together again. He’s probably only got a few months left. Until yesterday he hadn’t told anyone except his wife. I promised to go and see him this morning. We’ll mend fences. This is no time for us to be running out on him. Annika, why don’t you go home with Oscar and Nina? I’ll meet you back there in two or three hours. I should go see Uncle Samuël myself. We’ll talk later.”
* * *
Amsterdam, 19 May 1940
AS THE BLACK OPEL OLYMPIA squealed on the cobblestones at the corner of Amsterdam’s Weesperstraat, Reinhold Neumann struggled to sit upright in the back seat. His driver, Dieter Schmidt, was grinning with his hand firmly on the horn. Driving at high speed in a military convoy through the streets of Amsterdam was the most exciting thing he’d done in days. He shouted over the blare of the car horn, “Sir, who would ever have thought the army would be able to drive their trucks this fast?”
“Keep enough distance between us and them so you can stop if you have to. I don’t want to die stuck to the back end of a Wehrmacht lorry.”
They were under strict orders not to stop, and it was unlikely that this column had any intention of slowing for anyone. Neumann knew the insane driving was in part melodramatic and they did it for the effect it would have on the local population. Aside from getting to their objective quickly, they wanted to convey the impression of merciless speed and efficiency. Resistance in the face of this display of strength and purpose would be utterly useless. As far as Neumann could see, these tactics were having their intended effect.
This was Neumann’s third high-priority objective of the day. His first two had gone smoothly, much more smoothly than he could have guessed two days ago when he was first warned of his secondary occupation tasks. And today, if he was successful, he would almost certainly be in line for another promotion. The Reich was growing at a great rate and it would need more senior police officers. He remembered reading somewhere that success was ambition’s strongest stimulant. Today he was feeling stimulated. The ease with which his team had carried out these police raids certainly kindled his daydreams of commendations, promotion, and glory, and he had to struggle to keep his mind on what he was doing now. So far it had been a good day.
Just before dawn, at his first objective, Neumann and his team had arrested the foreign minister. They ringed his house with troops and before anyone knew what was going on, they broke his door down with a sledgehammer. The poor old fool was dragged out of his house in his nightshirt, demanding to know under what grounds he was being arrested. That task went smoothly enough. Nobody in the house expected he would be arrested and the family was clearly terrified. There wasn’t so much as a second’s resistance.
After a quick breakfast of coffee, black bread, and cheese at the main Amsterdam police headquarters, Neumann’s team moved on to the day’s second objective, the Dutch Mint. He watched the streets of Amsterdam flash by and the shocked look on people’s faces as his column raced through their streets. He smiled at the thought. There was a certain professional satisfaction in knowing how easily the much more sensitive second operation went. That was one that had the potential to go wrong, but his team of police and infantry handled it superbly. Nobody expected them, and once they had clubbed the guards’ shift supervisor, clapped handcuffs on him, and thrown him into the back of one of the trucks, the remaining guards turned over all their keys and willingly demonstrated how to synchronize the unlocking procedure so they didn’t trip any alarms. He left two sections of infantry to guard the building, and he still had the better part of a company to handle the rest of the day’s work.
Things were going so swiftly. At this rate, he’d probably be finished by noon. There were only two more tasks on his assignment sheet. Both of these were in the same area. He had to secure two addresses in
