The Long Journey: A Young Child's Experiences

By Eddy Raats

Memories, memories... and such memories! For many of us, this past reality is already distant, unreachable, barely imaginable, but nonetheless it can be shared, because the well-known Flemish Esperantist Eddy Raats has made it available to us by revealing his memories here,  memories first written down for the purpose of elucidating for him

• Language: English
• Publisher: Monda Asembleo Socia
• Release date: Oct 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9782369602064

Book preview

Introduction

At first, these memories were intended only for myself. By writing them down I have tried to understand the extent to which my turbulent early years have influenced my life. For instance, the language barriers I encountered certainly led me to Esperanto.

The Night of Broken Glass¹: The Nazis in Germany organized an anti-Jewish pogrom known as The Night of Broken Glass. After this violent event, the war drums beat louder and with more urgency. In 1939 Poland and the Netherlands mobilized their military-age men. Belgium followed suit just a few days later.

Marinus, our dad, is a reservist and is ordered to report to his army unit. He puts on his uniform and travels to the barracks in Mechelen. One evening several days later, he returns home, but not by choice. His medical examination has revealed the following condition: dad has active, contagious tuberculosis².

Because Belgium has decided to remain neutral, dad agrees to be treated in a sanatorium in Switzerland. He thinks that, although mum and we children will have to stay in Belgium, at least we will be safe in a neutral, unoccupied country. Unfortunately, events will decide otherwise: in May 1940, Germany invades Belgium, the Netherlands and France.

The price of the Second World War was 45,000,000 dead and millions of shattered families. The physical and mental catastrophe was immeasurable and the material cost was staggering. Words cannot even begin to describe what occurred in the Nazi concentration camps.

While mum was expecting her fifth child, the fourth, a girl, fell ill and died only two weeks later of what was known as fulminating consumption. Dad had unknowingly infected the six-month-old infant, although the cause of her death was not determined until two months later. This was what compelled dad to agree to medical treatment in Switzerland, because he was afraid, correctly, of infecting his wife and the rest of the children.

My parents' wedding photo, the 23rd of October, 1934

Mum’s (Thérèse’s) First Journey

A short time after Marinus’s departure, Thérèse gives birth to another baby girl, who is given the name Nicole in honour of the recently deceased infant.

Since dad’s health seems to improve after a while, he writes to ask for his violin to be sent or brought to him. He sorely misses his instrument. Thérèse has no money to pay for the journey, but, because she is very anxious for Marinus to have his violin, she asks their friends for help. One of dad’s fellow musicians in the national orchestra, a young woman, loans them the necessary money, which permits mum to carry the violin to Switzerland herself. As a precaution, she takes the practice violin rather than dad’s expensive, high-quality instrument, which had been made by Van Hoof, a famous Antwerp musical-instrument maker. My dad was barely eighteen years old when the city council had awarded him that violin for graduating as a violinist with the highest honors possible. Despite already very strictly controlled borders, mum encountered no difficulties.

Their reunion is touching. With dad’s positive medical reports and Belgium still not involved in the conflict at that time, my parents are able once again to look forward to a happy and bright future. A disagreement with the religious nursing sisters is the only thing troubling their happiness. The head nursing sister forbids mum to sleep with dad. He calmly reminds the nun that they are a married couple, that they have had several children together, and, moreover, that she has no right whatsoever to interfere. Nevertheless, this officious nun decides to have mum physically removed from the sanatorium. In the end, thanks to the intervention of the priest and the doctor, both friends of Marinus’s, the nuns reluctantly acquiesce. Dad later laughs about it, saying that those sexually frustrated women are just jealous…

A stowaway journeyed home with mum, the product of the conjugal bed. No more than two weeks after mum’s return home, the war broke out in all its cruel fury. This child was born into the middle of a war.

Thérèse was never able to repay the debt to dad’s colleague, not just because she did not have the money, but because someone betrayed the woman’s husband, who was a member of the resistance. The couple was arrested and suffered terrible torture, but neither betrayed their resistance group, which continued to operate until the war’s end. After they were deported to Germany, no one knows what became of them…

The Kindergarten

Because of dad’s work, we move in 1937 from Merksem to Bosvoorde, a suburb of Brussels. Here we live in a ground-floor apartment on a very steep street, which disappears somewhere inside the huge Zonian woods. These woods were, and still are, popularly known as the green lungs of Brussels.

In the winter, the road is covered with ice, which means that we generally have to pull socks on over our shoes to keep from slipping and sliding down the hill. A heavy rainfall following a dry period sends a torrent gushing down the street. Nevertheless, in the spring, when new leaves appear and transforms the treetops into a bright green canopy, and a multitude of flowers fill the air with their intoxicating perfume, then our neighbourhood is beautiful and feels like home.

We have the use of a large, shared garden area. What we call our garden is really a communal grassy field with no play equipment, but where twelve children play nonetheless. It also serves eight families as a place where they can dry their washing, and bury or burn their trash.

In those days trash was burned locally, or, if not burnable, it was buried in a large pit dug in the garden for just that purpose, and, perhaps, to provide work for archaeologists in the year 4000. Since some of our neighbors have a lot of trash to get rid of, several men dig an extra-large pit in the garden.

Once the diggers leave, the pit becomes our playground. The bigger children jump into it and are able climb back out quite easily, but a problem arises when the smaller children try to do the same. Several children begin to cry because, despite their best efforts, they cannot escape from the pit. The bigger ones just ignore the little ones and carry on with their own game. 

Finally, a second-floor neighbour comes into the garden to hang out her washing and spots the children in the hole. Lying on her stomach, she hauls the little ones out of their sticky situation one after the other, but, as she catches the last one’s hand, the edge of the pit suddenly crumbles and the poor woman disappears head first into oblivion.

This is not funny. In falling, she has broken one of her arms, but, because the sliding sand has buried her own child, she digs furiously with her other hand to free him. Meanwhile, the bigger children run away and the little ones cry at the top of their lungs. Alerted by the children’s crying and the woman’s shouts for help, several neighbours look out their windows and soon more hands are helping free the little victim, whose mouth and airways are filled with sand.

Happily, one of the men knows what to do. He clears the child’s mouth and throat as much as possible and blows air into his lungs. Once the little boy has vomited and then shortly after coughed and sneezed, the same man runs to the main road, where he stops a car and takes the child to the hospital.

Alas, the pit is filled in the same day! As the Flemish proverb says, It’s too late to fill in the hole after the calf has drowned.

In the hospital, the little boy fought for his life for several days. When his condition finally improved, his doctor tells him he has been very lucky and has managed to slip through the eye of a needle.

Beginning in early 1939, while mum stays at home with the babies, a young, blond woman named Betty takes us and the neighbours’ children to school, although she is sometimes replaced by her sister Rosa. Our school is a big convent school for girls, but it also has a kindergarten for both boys and girls. To preserve the school’s Christian character, all the teachers are nuns.³

Sister Justine is a particularly strict nun, who more resembles an army drill sergeant than a teacher expected to educate young children affectionately. Her pointer is infamous, and she uses it regularly to redden the skin of any child she deems disobedient. Her greatest regret is that the classroom has only four corners in which to punish miscreants. I don’t like going to school, because I spend more time on my knees in a corner than sitting in my seat.

Today, quite by chance, Rosa, who is prettier and friendlier than her sister, comes to fetch the neighbourhood children from school and bring us home. My brother Joske doesn’t notice that I’m not with the group and so he arrives at home