This novel won the 2024 Colorado Historical Fiction Book Award.

Chapter 6

Amsterdam
Spring 1943

By 1943 we lived in a universe of yellow stars. The worst thing about stars was how quickly we got used to them. I say “we”, but of course the situation was different for Sonja and Philine. Even when I stole Philine and Sonja’s IDs, they had to decide every day whether to go out with a fake ID and no yellow star, or whether to wear a star and carry their real ID. It was a risk either way. A Jew caught using a fake ID without the capital black letter J resulted in his arrest and deportation to a so-called labor camp. However, going out wearing a yellow star meant avoiding eye contact with citizens and inviting harassment from soldiers. They were especially attracted to beautiful Jewish girls, as they were now legally prohibited from ignoring their advances. Jewish girls in duos and trios walked together for safety.

The main way Philine and Sonja solved the problem of whether to wear the star or use the ID was obvious: they stopped going out. They would leave home for necessary trips to the grocery store, baker’s, or bank. Philine also spent most of her time with Sonja. Not only was it more comfortable, but it was in the center of Amsterdam; The Polaks’ apartment was in the eastern part of the city; a neighborhood once known only for working families and scattered parks but now officially called the Jewish quarter.

“It’s a ghetto,” Philine said sternly when I once asked her how things were at her father’s house. We had heard about Jewish ghettos in Germany and Poland. But this was Amsterdam. How does evil spread? Is it like a disease that passes from person to person? Or is it like the weather, from storm to storm? Nothing that dramatic. The new Nazi rules were filtering into the private lives of the Dutch in invisible specks, like motes of dust in a closed room. Until one day we turned the key in the lock and found ourselves trapped, then looked at our little room and realized it was so buried in filth that it was no longer fit to live in.

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And yet. Despite all the Nazi propaganda thrown at us, we knew that the Soviets had defeated the Germans at Stalingrad. Nazi propaganda did not mention this. But this wasn’t our war. We saw Jews and “subversives” rounded up, loaded into pickup trucks, and disappeared without a trace. We saw German soldiers resort to daily violence when they got bored, fighting each other outside bars or throwing children’s bicycles into canals for fun.

I was now going to school as a way to stay in Amsterdam. Many of my favorite professors had either been arrested or fired for being Jewish, and classes by their struggling teaching assistants felt like a waste of time. Of course, all the Jewish students were gone, which meant my closest friends were no longer at school. The League of Nations in Geneva, the focus of all my career dreams, had already been dissolved in 1940. Mostly, I stayed at school to channel Sonja and Philine so their education could continue, even if it was through third-hand notes. copied by me from the nervous ramblings of overworked young academics pretending to be law professors. It was something that had to be done.

An ordinary day in early March. I decided to stop by the Red Cross offices, something I do when I’m feeling down. Walking into the crowded rooms among nurses in white uniforms calmed me: at least someone was doing something useful in this city. And Nurse Poldermans’ tough and steady presence always reassured me that there are still people in this country who have not completely lost their moral values.

I walked through the front doors of the offices and stood there. A disaster. The beautifully arranged shelves of supplies, from medical equipment to emergency blankets to boxes of plastic baby bottle teats, looked as if they had been ravaged by wild animals. The spotless white tile floors were streaked with mud, lumps of dirt, and hard black boot soles. Only Lottie, one of Nurse Poldermans’ assistants, was there. He started talking as soon as he saw me.

“They broke in last night and took everything, Hannie,” he said. “Just boxes of stuff and even paperwork in the offices, everything.” Lottie’s normally rosy face turned ashen as she sat on the floor and put the remaining scattered things into boxes.

“Where are Poldermans?” I asked.

“Hannie,” he said. Nurse Poldermans was standing in the doorway of his office, his thick arms crossed over his chest, his face set in disgust. He looked like Prime Minister Churchill; His huge size and constant grimace made their immobility a relief. “Come in,” said Poldermans.

Poldermans was sitting like a ship’s captain in the chair behind his desk; His solid oak desk was like a tanker ship sailing through a wild ocean filled with paperwork scattered around the room. Private medical files, diary notes, all evidence of Red Cross bureaucracy were thrown away at our feet. The Red Cross was exempt from such things, or so it was supposed to be. They were officially neutral. Of course, so is the Netherlands.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

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“They came for the files,” he said. “But when they saw the materials, they bought them too.”

I had heard that there was a fire at the head offices of the National Ministry of Transport, where the personnel archives were bombed by the Insurgents. Death to bureaucracy. Down with the public dissemination of private information.

“Can I help?” I said.

Poldermans nodded. “I sent all the girls home except Lottie, who was cleaning. You should go home too.”

A wave of anger passed through me. “But we need to get back to work.” I said. This is what Poldermans himself had to say.

“This office is dysfunctional now, Hannie,” he said with simple truth. “I was reassigned to Leiden.” He smiled, a rare blessing. “You’ve been a great help, Hannie. Where are your parents… Haarlem, right? Go there. “Wait for the situation to calm down.”

“Calm down?” I said. Looking around, I could imagine that the situation would escalate further.

“We are in a new phase. The job you did for me” – he lowered his voice so Lottie couldn’t hear – “You can’t do this anymore. “This is very dangerous.” She stood up and for the first time since we met a year ago, she touched me like a mother would, holding me against the warmth of her broad chest. I smelled the cola and bleach of his white uniform and the slightly sour smell of sweat. I never imagined him sweating.

“I’m not going back to Haarlem,” I said. “I need to finish school.”

Poldermans just looked at me and nodded. He’s never tried to convince me of anything, and he’s not doing it now. “I have something for you. Come on.”

I followed him to the back warehouse. Most of the boxes of emergency supplies and jars of cotton swabs had been removed, but a few items were still scattered on the shelves. Poldermans picked up a plain cardboard box and handed it to me. I looked at the label printed on it: CELLULOSE BANDAGES.

“This?” As he knew, I had no medical training.

“I’m sorry to say…” He searched for the word. “The soldiers stole everything we had, even sanitary pads and belts if you can believe it. But we still have a few of them, and they’re better than those old cotton rags, aren’t they?” He smiled darkly. “Women are true experts on blood.”

I laughed, slightly surprised. He winked. “Come on, take it Hannie, thank you.”

His gaze lingered as he said this, conveying a subtlety I couldn’t quite follow. The destruction of this formerly useful space still caught me off guard. “Go away.” he said and walked me towards the front door. When we arrived, he pulled a piece of paper from the breast pocket of his white uniform and slid it through a slit in the top of the box. “If you need to reach me.”

“Okay,” I said in surprise.

“Hannie, look at me.” Poldermans took me by the shoulders to explain the point. “You’re good at this. You are a hard worker, a smart helper. And you’re much more cunning than that freckled face makes you look.”

I blushed. Not out of shame. I feel honored.

“Who knows how long this will last?” Poldermans said. “How much worse is it going to get? I have no idea. Nobody does. But as long as this lasts, you can keep helping, Hannie. There’s always something that needs to be done.”

“Yes,” I said, unsure of what I was agreeing to. I felt a lump forming in the back of my throat, but I refused to give in to it here in front of him. The possibility of leaving the city now… I hadn’t even graduated from law school. Nothing that was supposed to happen in my life had happened yet. I needed more time.

“You know how to communicate, right?” He clicked on the box again.

“What will they do with the files?” I asked. Some of the Red Cross volunteers were Jewish, at least initially. The thought of their private information (names, addresses, emergency contacts) being in the hands of the Nazis made me sick to my stomach.

He smiled. “Nothing. I destroyed all the files last week.”

“Nurse Poldermans!” I laughed. How many times had he scolded me for not taking enough care to complete the endless pages of paperwork and patient records required by the International Red Cross? Is it because you used the wrong color ink?

He shrugged. “God has called me to serve, Hannie. He does not care what form his ministry takes.”