"Into the Mirror, Into the Past": Tales of the Tribe, #1

By Ludij Peden

The contrasts associated with being born during the Nazi occupation of Holland, and then a few years later, emigrating to the tropics of Australia with my parents made a lasting impression on my memories. I vividly remember the amazing differences of the life and lifestyles in bustling Amsterdam from the laid-back approaches to the lifestyle and culture of tropical North Queensland in those immediate W.W.2 post-war times. I grew up and was schooled in the vast open spaces, the warmth and the rambling freedom of Cairns which was then only a small country town. These impressions, I'm sure, impacted on my young consciousness leading me to express my love for these, through painting and lately through writing. I wanted to record my experiences – some amusing, some not – with paint and pen.

Beginning my working life as a teacher, eventually my passion for art drew me into a career as a full-time professional artist. Married with two grown-up sons and two grand-daughters I now live in a beautiful historic village in the mountains of the Atherton Tablelands behind Cairns.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ludij Peden
• Release date: Aug 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393308003

Book preview

Dedicated to

those members of my family who went before,

are now here, and are yet to come

- before I forget

- and they never know.

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I have written my life in small sketches, a little today, a little yesterday, as I have thought of it, as I remember all the things from childhood on through the years, good ones, and unpleasant ones, that is how they come out and that is how we have to take them. (Grandma Moses)

Acknowledgement

My heartfelt thanks to my family and friends who have helped me along life’s paths whether straight, narrow or winding; who have cheered me with a positive word, and bolstered me with encouragement when I have flagged; and especially to my husband for his support and patience in all my various endeavours.

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Preface

This memoir was written because our two mothers were hoarders. I am indebted to both of these women for their foresight, over each of their long lifetimes, in not throwing out items of interest and significance to them.

These items about family were obviously treasured and kept safe during the vagaries of the elements and times, without any knowledge that one day they could be so useful in rekindling memories. The information preserved, provided the incentive to recall, research, and to tell the stories of our families and the lifestyles at the time. On their passing, I became the keeper of the boxes, and since these little treasures, mementoes and stories are usually left to womenfolk to pass on, I’m trying to do my bit, by putting it all in writing for future generations.

When I was a young girl, I liked to stay awake in bed and from my room listen in on my family when there were visitors, discussing their lives, the people in it, and sometimes telling old stories late at night. Particularly on the rare occasions that close family was there, the conversation would turn to family tales. On holidays, staying with my aunt, she enjoyed repeating the hush hush aspects of the stories to me, as distant relatives like to do. Strangely enough, none of it was boring.

Some years ago, my family, fascinated with me repeating the little dramas and humorous anecdotes that I’d remembered, suggested I research and write them down. I spent the following years in archives and the internet, as well as recalling and recording my own memories.

In the other books, some still in progress, I have covered the lives of my father and his ancestors, the lives of my mother and her ancestors, the lives of Bruce and his ancestors, and lastly one about the family stories of ours - Bruce’s and my family.

It has been an interesting journey, travelling through the lives of our ancestors, and reminiscing on my own life. Family stories, by their very nature, are subjective. They are always told with the first person slant - someone’s story, someone’s tale. No-one can dispute another’s memory. We all remember things in our own way – that is the wonder of it all.

Writing this has made it possible for me to describe how life changed in my time, and how my attitude also has changed over the years. We all experience growth in various facets of our lives, and then there are other areas in which we seem to have made little progress. However, all of us do or experience things in the normal course of our daily lives which require courage, special effort, conquest of self, ingenuity, perseverance, sacrifice, or use of special skills. Often we take these qualities for granted and don’t give ourselves enough credit for some of our accomplishments.

There is just so much research material that is beckoning. I’ve already gone through almost all of the more easily accessible archives, both in person and on the internet, and now I think I need to travel overseas again to access various other archives. Each time I think I have all I need, the world keeps opening up. I find another person or place somewhere, another great story, I had not known about before. However, the other books WILL follow.

This family story is a little about our life in Holland; how our family emigrated to Australia; settled into a different culture and a very different land; how they integrated into their respective communities, and became well respected and good citizens of Australia.

This is a book of memory, and memory has its own story to tell.  (Ludij Peden 2019).

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Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may whet my mind and say something clever.  (Aristophanes).

Table of Contents.

Acknowledgement

Preface

Beginnings

Dutch Childhood

Straight After the War

Why Emigrate?

Life on Board Ship

Singapore Stopover

Australia

Cairns

Aussie Childhood

Primary School Days

Home Life

Our Family

High School Years

On Being A Teenager

College Life

Teaching Career

A New Chapter

References and Images.

About the Author

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"Into the Mirror,

Into the Past"

By writing about my childhood and growing up, I’m not saying these times were better or worse than now. I am trying to avoid sounding nostalgic – these pages are merely describing a period in my life – the things that were, and will never be again – no judgement – just an account of the lifestyle as I was growing up to adulthood.

CHAPTER ONE

Beginnings

The bicycle weaved its way, in and out of the narrow, pitch black streets. The rider and his passenger were silent, no lights on the bicycle, no lights anywhere. The blackout was complete. Occasionally the clatter of the bicycle’s wheels on the cobblestones broke the deathly silence. On they rode.

The icy slivers of cold stung the areas of his face exposed by the black balaclava and pierced his chest through the button holes of his dark thick woollen overcoat. His gloved hands were clenched in a frozen grip on the handlebars, his teeth clenched in desperate concentration. Peering through the blackness, until his eyes ached with the effort and stung from the cold, he tried to distinguish craters, rubble or human forms: anything that might cause their freezing midnight dash to come unstuck.

She clutched him tightly around the waist, partly for warmth and partly for security. Now and then she gave him a squeeze of re-assurance and appreciation as she sat side-saddle, confident in his riding ability. He was a champion cyclist after all! Wrapped in her thick winter coat, woollen scarf and beanie, with only her eyes exposed, she still gave an involuntary shiver every so often. Expectation or apprehension? She didn’t know.

Suddenly, a menacing figure loomed out from the even blacker shadows of a ruined building wall.

HALT!!

It was 1942. The Nazi Germans had already been in occupation since 1940. A curfew had been imposed on the resentful, cowed population of Amsterdam, all of the Netherlands in fact. ‘No one to be outside after dark, all curtains to be drawn, not even a chink of light to be seen from the streets, no lights, no people’, were the orders. To disobey was to invite imprisonment, torture, forced labour in the camps, or, perhaps worse, death.

Now another soldier stepped out from the dark. The rider sucked in his breath and his eyes narrowed, but he immediately stopped anyway, and stepped off the bicycle, with arms raised. She sat quietly on the pillion seat, not moving, the bike propped up against the rider’s buttocks. He could feel her trembling resonate through his body. His eyes darted this way and that trying to improvise some sort of escape. He could leave her there as she would be of no use to them; no harm would come to her. They didn’t want her! But if he were taken that would leave her totally alone with no means of support. He needed to be free for her sake. However, he decided to postpone any ideas of flight until the potential outcome was obvious. This he had learnt well in the Resistance.

The Nazi soldiers slowly edged forward menacing them with their guns. With the tips of their guns they indicated that the balaclava had to come off, and her scarf and beanie as well.

Papers!! one snapped, langsam!!  (slowly!!)

Slowly, as ordered, the rider took off his glove, and slowly drew out the ID from his inside coat pocket and slowly passed it over. She also slowly reached into her pocket for her ID and slowly handed it to them. The Germans concentrated their torch on the papers and examined them closely. All their winter breaths, from slitted mouths in close proximity, caused a vapour to envelope the four, as moths locked in a jar, and the torchlight cut through it like a searchlight on a cloudy night. Unexpectedly she gave a small gasp as the pain surged through her body, generating an instant reaction from the soldiers. The torch waved wildly up and down, and the aggressive guns were once again trained on them.

One flash of their torch, however, told the soldiers why this foolhardy couple had strayed out during the forbidden hours. The look on her face said it all – the fear, mixed with the pain of the onset of labour. Although heavily wrapped against the bitter cold of late January, the pillion passenger’s bulk was obvious. One of the soldiers carefully lifted her thick winter coat with his gun and stuck his hand under.

Meine frau – baby – krankenhaus (my wife – baby – hospital) the rider hastily explained, using a smattering of German words practised for just such an occurrence.

The soldiers, flashing the torch in their faces again, intently surveyed them for some heart-stopping moments, in total silence. They had infringed the curfew. Could they be couriers for the Resistance? Should they shoot them both down like dogs? Perhaps take him for the labour camps? No – too much paperwork on such a freezing night! An eternity passed; then suddenly one of the Germans gruffly handed back the IDs and waved them on.

The rider pushed off the bicycle and mounted it, wobbling a little in his haste to leave. It was not until the thick darkness enveloped them that he relaxed, having half expected a bullet in the back - as the Germans were known to have their little jokes! Now he could concentrate on what was in front of them instead of behind.

Hoping fervently they would not encounter any others, with his precious pillion load, the rider avoided the main streets, taking the narrow dark labyrinth of back streets, ever watchful for signs of danger in the darkness. A lighted cigarette, murmurs of conversation, a clatter of weapons perhaps. Noiselessly the bike raced on the deserted, sealed sidewalks, avoiding potential noise on cobblestoned streets, hugging the deep shadows of the walls. They might not be so lucky next time. Germans shot on sight.

Rounding a corner, the narrow, inky black street suddenly ended at open large iron gates leading to an imposing dark bulk faintly silhouetted against the charcoal heavens. Frantically now he peddled across the open space into the welcome shadows of the trees and walls. They had reached the safety of the silent, blacked-out hospital, the St. Anna Paviljoen Maternity Hospital.

He pounded on the locked, heavy timber door. It opened.

That black, icy night, on a Thursday, in January 1942, at 2.30am, on Zaal (Ward) 204, I was born.     

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St. Anna Paviljeon Maternity Hospital, Amsterdam  1942 

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CHAPTER TWO

Dutch Childhood

I was named after my two grandmothers – ‘Ludij’ from my mother’s mother Ludina, and ‘An’ from my father’s mother Anna. So it became Ludij-An. My Christian name has given me trouble all my life, but on occasions has been very useful. I will recount those incidents later in my story. Mostly people have trouble saying as well as spelling the ‘Ludij’.

The ‘IJ, ij’ is counted as a separate letter, and called a ‘digraph’. It usually replaces, or is placed before, or together, with ‘Y, y’. In the Netherlands, the ‘IJ, ij’ was once written as ‘Y, y’, which is now only used in foreign loanwords not in Dutch words. The ‘Y, y’ usually occurring in borrowed words, from other languages, can hark back to older spellings and names. Dutch is a West Germanic language with about 20 million speakers mainly in the Netherlands and Belgium. The Dutch language developed from the Lower Franconian dialect of Low German. The earliest known examples of written old Franconian appears in a ninth century Latin manuscript and in translations of the Psalms.

There are many family stories surrounding my childhood but these are the memories of others, not mine. However, there are some that are my own personal ones, remembered by me alone. I am constantly amazed how easily some long-forgotten memories have re-surfaced once I started writing my story. Obviously, by concentrating on a period of my life, my mind has shifted and accessed those memories much like a computer searching for files.  Perhaps these become clearer as I am aging, or perhaps because I have more time now to ponder them.

Being born in 1942, a couple of years after the German Blitzkrieg of May 10th 1940 meant that the first years of my life were during the occupation and deprivations that the Netherlands suffered under Nazi occupation. My father had been called up at this time, as all men under forty years of age had been, for the Dutch mobilisation, in a vain effort to repel the invasion or at least to thwart them for a time.

Of course it had been no match - Germany had a population of 50 million and Holland had a population of 9 million at the time. After the first five days, the Germans had made little progress because the Dutch had broken the dikes and flooded the countryside. Hitler had expected to take the Netherlands in a few hours, because the distance from the German border to the coast is only about 150 km. However, he had underestimated Dutch resistance and the soldiers had held on tenaciously - blowing up bridges and defending rivers and waterways with which they, of course, were familiar.

Hitler had been furious! So there had been an ultimatum ‘Put down your weapons or we will destroy Rotterdam in two hours time.’ The Dutch government had seen ‘the writing on the wall’, and had gone into negotiations for capitulation but, apparently, the message had not arrived in time. As well there had been a mix-up of orders at German High Command.

Within the hour, 200 bombers, at only 300 feet high, had droned over, destroying the city centre completely. In a matter of two hours, thousands of civilians had been killed. This had broken a universal military convention to not deliberately attack civilian targets. Rotterdam had been defenceless, being an open city. Amsterdam would have been next but, by this time, the Dutch government had surrendered. This had been the start of five years of Nazi terror.

Life changed dramatically for everyone. When the Germans had begun to concentrate on taking young people to Germany for ‘slave labour’, Dad had closed his business and joined the Resistance. He was one of about 30 in his group, hiding out at home during the day, and accepting underground tasks at night. More so than any other of Hitler’s conquests, the Dutch were brutally occupied.

Not only did my father risk his life by working with the Underground, he also took the added risk of using a tiny movie camera to record events during the occupation. He would hide this in his clothing. The little camera would whirr away under his overcoat, with its little lens poking through a button-hole - recording the scenes, installations, and Nazi activities as he walked or cycled along. These films he then developed in his attic studio and passed on to the Allies via the Underground. Many of his fellow resistance fighters paid with their lives. He was always amazed how he managed to survive.

Having had a premonition about how bad things could get, he had stocked up with film and photographic chemicals well beforehand. Photography had been also extremely useful in preventing boredom during the daylight hours of hiding, as illustrated by the many photos of Mum and me at this time. The film called The Mad Doctor was made during this time providing much fun for our parents and friends during the tedious curfews and blackouts.

During this time, private cars were not used anymore, because the Nazis had appropriated all fuel for their own military purposes. People rode bikes or used horses to pull their cars and the city trams. Later even these powerless vehicles were confiscated for scrap metal in the German war effort. Our grandfather had been kept busy at his bicycle shop improvising tyres for people’s remaining bikes. He had been allowed to stay open by the Germans only because of his usefulness in repairing and modifying their bikes too. The Germans also suffered the severe shortages because of the Allies’ embargos and blockades of raw materials.

We lived in an apartment on the second floor of a large building in South Amsterdam. My own little bedroom/nursery had been wonderfully decorated with cartoon and fairy tale characters by my ‘arty’ father. But at night, when it was very cold, my mother would put my cot in the sitting room to keep me warm. Because electricity, coal and wood was rationed, only the large coal stove in the sitting room was used, and, after bedtime, this room held the warmth till almost morning. I was bathed in a tin tub on a table in front of the stove. It was often so cold the towel would need to be warmed by the stove before drying me. During the day my mother would take me in the pram for walks in the park, or along the tranquil Amstel River nearby.

My father, of course, had to be very cautious and would mostly stay inside, in case the Nazis spotted him and hauled him off to the camps. He filled his days playing games with me, constantly taking photos of Mum and me, and developing the photos and films secretly in his attic studio. At night he would sneak out of the house to rendezvous with his Resistance group, find food, and help ‘divers’ – a term used for Jews, escaping allied soldiers and airmen, and other people, who were, of necessity, trying to hide from the Germans.

All this meant that I spent much of my first three years inside the house. Sometimes I would sit at the large sitting room window and watch the street below. In the sky above I could often see the trails of the planes in dogfights. Watching the unlucky ones spiralling towards the ground, I would point them out to my parents saying Moffen! – the Dutch equivalent for the derogatory term Huns. On seeing German soldiers, S.S and the Todt men in their distinctive uniforms I would get quite agitated, calling Moffen, Moffen!! I would point them out to my parents and say Moffen! (Huns).

During the quieter times I would feed the hungry birds with crumbs saved from dinner. In the winter, they were extremely hungry and therefore quite daring. The birds would fly right up to the window sill and take the crumbs from my fingers. Many people caught them this way in order to eat, and avoid starvation, during The Hunger Winter of 1945.

Interestingly, one of my very early impressions was of lying in my bed and my mother trying to sooth me because I didn’t have my favourite soft hanky to rub between my thumb and forefinger. This was prior to my brother’s birth as I had been shifted out of my cot into ‘the big bed’. I can remember that the hanky was in the wash; the room was dark; I was tucked in, and couldn’t sleep. My mother, by my side, was assuring me it would be there for me tomorrow. Couldn’t I just put up with this substitute hanky for now? I cried and cried, and must have fretted myself to sleep, because I didn’t have my ‘comfort’ that night.

Towards Christmas, I was allowed to help decorate the Christmas tree. I was always fascinated by the candles, and as fast as Mum and Dad would light them, I would blow them out. Sinterclaas, on the 5th December, is a very special time for Dutch children and the tradition was maintained even throughout the war, engendering some very innovative and novel ideas for sweets and presents during the deprivations.

In the early evening, careful about the curfew, blackout curtains drawn, our family and the neighbouring ones in our building would gather in someone’s apartment to wait for Sinterclaas’ arrival. Sinterclaas is the Dutch equivalent of Santa Claus. It was an exciting time for the children. After we sang some of his special songs, a white gloved hand would appear through the partly opened door, throw lollies all over the floor, and leave some clues on where to find a little gift. During the build-up, and scramble which followed, we children never noticed which of the parents was missing. Before going to bed I would leave, in front of our disused fireplace due to the unavailability of fuel, a chocolate for Sinterclaas, and some hay and a carrot for his horse. I don’t recall what I left for him after those things were also no longer available. He certainly too must have suffered tough times!

It was hard to get decent food in the cities. Everyone lined up for endless hours in