In my mother’s archive, I found quite a few small bits of paper, scribbled letters, which she wrote to her mother from both Amsterdam and Utrecht jail.
Apart from these pencil-written but still surprisingly readable scraps, I also found a few “official” letters to her mother. She was allowed to write these once a fortnight, but they had to be “businesslike.”
The smuggled letters give a good insight into the close bond between mother and daughter. Sabine always tried to stay positive and not worry her mother. She inquired after friends, encouraged her mother to stay positive, and even wrote about the progress of the war, of which a surprising amount filtered through into the jail. After Moeder Bien had had no news of her daughter since her arrest in April, she finally received her first official letter from Sabine, dated June 11, 1943:
Dearest Mams,
I am so happy that I am allowed to send a postcard home to ask for a parcel of food. It may weigh up to 2 kg, but nothing in tins or glass. Please send something like sugar or jam etc. You are also allowed to enclose a letter to me, max twenty words. I hope all is well with you. I am very well! Hopefully see you soon. A big hug from your Bientje.
Regards to you and Eva and all my friends.
From time to time, Sabine was allowed to receive food parcels and clothes. Once a week, she was allowed to send and receive her laundry, which Moeder Bien had to collect and bring in person. Official letters were allowed once every two weeks. I found only three of them in her archive. Her second official letter relates to her mother’s gold watch that she happened to wear on the day of her arrest. She wanted her mother to collect it together with most of the money she had on her, although “I will keep some of it for my train journey home.”
In her third official letter, she asked Moeder Bien to bring her dark blue shoes with rubber soles, which were better for floor-cleaning duties that had now been assigned to her. Although Sabine’s carefree life had so far not included scrubbing floors, it was clearly better than doing nothing all day.
While the official letters were only allowed once a fortnight, Sabine soon found a way to exchange secret letters with her mother. The most obvious route lay in the weekly laundry. Although all laundry was carefully inspected, they nevertheless found places to hide the letters. All seams were searched, but apparently not pleats in skirts. Sabine was always surprised that the guards were not suspicious of the same purple skirt going in and out with the laundry every week.
Her method was simple. By wrapping her letter, written on a cigarette paper, around a whalebone stay from one of her cellmates’ corsets, she managed to insert the scraps of paper into the top of the pleat. When these papers ran out, she asked her mother to wrap her laundry in tissue paper, thus giving her a new supply. “But please, Mams, rub the paper for your letters between your fingers to soften it, so that it doesn’t make a noise.”
Moeder Bien also hid small pencils in the corrugated bottom of the specially provided laundry bag. In the beginning, they enclosed a small red comb each way to indicate that there was a hidden letter, but Sabine feared that it would be too obvious. She worked out a different system using the label that was part of each laundry bag indicating the clothes in it and also any food items that Moeder Bien had added, with sometimes a brief note: “Kisses from mother” (I found quite a few of these in her archive).
Sabine instructed her mother carefully:
On the label mark the item with a letter with a Z. If I return a letter I will mark it with an X.
In this way, quite a few letters went to and fro. Often there were requests for particular clothes or toiletries, but also information regarding the state of the war and news of friends and relatives. Small things could also be included in the laundry, “but nothing valuable. The chance of it being stolen is great.” She even suggested small things could be hidden in her sanitary napkins, “as I don’t think the male guards will take these apart.”
In every letter, she assured her mother that she was well and not unhappy. She was managing well. But she also said she had been interrogated several times again, and each day brought the worry of yet another one. She seems to have been beaten regularly.
But despite all this, she was also very worried about losing her apartment and asked her mother to keep paying the rent from her salary, which she hoped her boss was still paying her. She was getting very homesick by now, but made sure her mother did not suspect this. On the whole, her letters were positive and cheerful.
In her first smuggled letter, she asked after dear Gerard, who by now had been in prison for some time. She also asked her mother to warn her boss, Piet.
May 18, 1943
Dearest Mams,
I have already been interrogated twice and fear it will happen many more times. Awful. Warn Piet (in connection with Jan van den Hoek). He is known to them. I have only passed on Piet’s telephone number to Jan in connection with “something” that he wanted to send abroad. Otherwise I don’t know anything. Now they are beginning with a third interrogation about Gerard etc. Mams, please write to me how they all are. Find out from his brother. I really hope they make it to the end of the war. Do you think it will end soon? We are aware of what is happening in the outside world. All is well with me. We are now six in our cell again. Luckily the smelly one is gone.
Now a few things I would like to receive with the laundry on 28th May: a small pencil (hide it), something sweet, but cheap. A good chance it will be stolen. Also hair grips, sunlight soap (ask Cees), toilet soap (ask Ton) and Nutrogen cream (ask Carolien). Lots of love and kisses. Sabine
Jan van den Hoek was the ex-boyfriend of Eva, Taro’s sister. He was the friend with whom she would have driven to see Taro on the day war broke out. He was also active in the Resistance and was arrested a few days after Sabine. He had managed to get hold of maps showing the German reinforcements around the mouth of the River Maas, and he wanted to pass on this valuable information to “someone abroad.”
He had asked for Sabine’s help, because she was in contact with Peter Tazelaar as well as English pilots. Unfortunately, most of her friends in her Resistance group had by now been arrested. The reason she asked Piet was that he also had his own connections abroad, having studied at the Sorbonne. After the war, she declared that she always thought Piet was unreliable because he was such a liar, but that he seemed to have no political interests. Jan’s name was mentioned several times during her interrogations, and she was afraid that the link to Piet would be discovered. Despite his apparent neutrality, she slowly but surely found out that Piet had in fact played quite a different role.
Even though all laundry was carefully inspected, there were some two hundred laundry baskets going in and out of the prison, so the chance of the letters being discovered was relatively small. She was still worried, though, about the address book she hid in her sofa when she was arrested.
Dearest Mams,
Finally. I received some laundry. Poor you. I can so imagine how horrible all this is for you, but, don’t worry, I will get through all this. The war cannot last longer than this winter, don’t you think? The laundry control is now very thorough, so I will hide my letters in four different places. Make sure you look everywhere and let me know if you have found them. I am desperate to hear from you. Did you receive my apartment keys? Keep everything locked up and please remove my notebook (on the brown sofa) and Gerard’s album from my desk. I hope you have eaten my butter?
In this letter, she again advised her mother to warn Piet, because she was very worried he would also be arrested. The tone of this letter was more somber than usual due to the recent interrogations, which were “horrible” and “nerve-wracking.” Her cell was revolting. On top of that, she was still very worried about Gerard and Broer:
Mams, contact Gerard’s brother to ask how Gerard is. And tell me honestly, even if it is bad news. I need to know. I can’t sleep at night thinking about them. Please tell me. Promise me you will be careful? Some people have been here for months for trifling things.
Oh yes, Mams, do not hand in my radio. Tell them it has nothing to do with you. It is my business and not yours. What can they do to me. I am already here.
And another thing: you will have to go and ask for my ration card in the Euterpestraat, room 42. Don’t go yourself, but send someone who supposedly does not know me and cannot give any information about me.
These instructions might have been worrying, but the following paragraph might have made her smile.
Order biscuits every week, on my behalf, at the bakery in the Bachmanstraat, then save half of them for me. Buy as many as they will sell you. I will refund you the money or coupons later. When I get home I will eat them all in one go. I feel happy just thinking about it. I am salivating already when I think of a cheese bun or a custard pudding. Let alone a rijsttafel in Tampat Senang.
The Tampat Senang was a famous Indonesian restaurant in The Hague.
June 16, 1943
Dearest Mams,
A big thank you for the delicious Whitsun parcel. I am so delighted with it. Please phone Eva Roeper-Bosch. She was also jailed here in Amsterdam, but was found innocent. When is it my turn? I will surely be here till the end of the war.
That same morning, a large transport of women was sent to Vught and Ommen camps.
At least they have fresh air there. I won’t be going anywhere as long as they want to interrogate me. Write to me about Gerard!
At the end of June, her mother visited the jail to collect the keys to Sabine’s apartment. They had hoped to see each other, but it was not allowed. Sabine was desolate: “Mams, I cried and cried when you came for the keys. I had to show them which ones and when I asked if I could see you, he bit my head off. Back upstairs I cried and cried, you see, there are days when life feels so oppressive and I want to crawl up the wall, because I want to feel free again. But on the whole things are bearable.”
It is clear that Sabine struggled to keep up her morale. Hearing news from her mother both cheered her and at the same time depressed her.
On July 15, it was Sabine’s twenty-fifth birthday, and her mother sent her a surprise: “Mams, I am so happy with the beautiful bouquet of flowers and when I saw your card with birthday wishes I burst out in tears.”
She again asked for news of Gerard and whether her mother had warned Piet yet. “You know, sometimes it is so difficult to keep going, especially now it is summer and the weather is so nice.”
Fortunately, her situation suddenly improved somewhat. A Dutch doctor, who was working as a volunteer in the jail, asked her to assist him looking after sick prisoners. She was moved from her overcrowded cell to the sick prisoners’ cell, which was much bigger and cleaner. Best of all, the food was much better. The prisoners slept on small iron cots, and Sabine slept on a straw mattress on the floor.
About her new cellmates she wrote:
I am now in a cell with a German Blitzmädel [part of the female branch of the Hitler youth], who is very sweet. She has had a miscarriage and had a nervous breakdown due to having been at the Front. Her husband is Austrian. She offended a general who fancied her.
No. 2 is a married woman of thirty-seven, very sweet, sometimes irritatingly so. She suffers from panic attacks and gallstones. They are especially awful. The other day she was sick twenty times. She helped Jews.
No. 3 has been here for seven and a half months. She has a very swollen knee due to a fall and is thin as a broomstick. She is suspected of being a communist.
The three women even took the trouble to write to Moeder Bien to tell her how well Sabine was looking after them.
The Blitzmädel wrote in fractured Dutch:
Dear Madame. I hope I may call you that. Thank you very much for the excellent care of your daughter. We are all prisoners and we must all help each other as much as we can. She is very brave and looks after us very well. Bye, dear Madame. I may be German, but I love it here. Christel
About No. 2, Sabine wrote underneath: “And now another victim. Daag.”
No. 2 wrote:
Dear Madame. We are very fond of Sabine, she looks after us like a proper nurse and the cell is sparkling clean. She is a good child and we hope for you that she will soon go home. Helma
At last No. 3 got her chance: the suspected communist.
Madame. Sabine has nursed me very well. You can be proud of a daughter like her. The only thing is she ruins the floor cloths too often. She wrings them out too forcefully. Greetings from her cellmate. Lies Vreeken
This nice arrangement unfortunately did not last long. On July 27, Sabine wrote:
My luxury job has finished. A German nurse has replaced me and I am now back in a cell where there are four cases of scurvy. But don’t worry about the dirty laundry. It is so hot in the cell, we are all sitting around in our underwear.
More and more items were now stolen from her parcels. Sabine had asked for some needles, and Moeder Bien had hidden these in some meatballs. “I received my parcel Friday night, but without a label. When I asked about it, I was shouted at. From your letter I understood that a lot of things were stolen from it. The meatballs were missing. I hope they choked on the needles.”
Moeder Bien also sent her some good news regarding Gerard. “I am so glad Gerard is still alive. I am hopeful for him again. He has already been in jail for nineteen months, the poor man. And I for three months, although it seems like a year.”
On a separate bit of paper added to the same letter of July 27, she wrote:
Darling Mams. We all expect to be home before 1st October. We are expecting the invasion any day now. If I am freed, I will come straight home, so do not come to Amsterdam. Stay at home, lieverd, promise me. There are no longer any transports to Germany. Book a hair appointment now already for me at Legrand for around that time. Bye, lieverd. Your excited S
She could not know that Gerard had only two more days to live. He would be executed on July 29, 1943.
Sabine never forgot to thank her mother and her friends for all the food and other things that they sent her, although much of it was stolen before it could reach her.
Her letter of August 10 started with a long list of food that had been stolen by the guards. She was also fed up with her cellmates. “I am now sharing with four women all older than forty and very pious. They are all new here, some of them have only been here two weeks. Boring.”
But there was something more important in her letter. She had heard that sixteen men had been executed, and she had hoped that her mother would pass their names on to her.
Why didn’t you? I am sure that Gerard and Broer were among them and I am heartbroken. Some of them were architects and policemen I heard.
None of the new prisoners, from whom this news must have come, could remember Gerard’s or Broer’s name on the list.
Therefore I am a little hopeful again they were not among them, but, please, Mother, do not leave me in this terrible uncertainty. If they were on it, tell me. You should have done so already, because now I have to wait for another fortnight again, till the next letter. I also need to know with regard to the next interrogation. It could make a difference in my declarations. Think about it (but do not mention it in your letter).
She also wanted to hear news of two recently married couples whom Moeder Bien knew.
I am so jealous of their happiness. Why am I so unfortunate in my love life. First Taro and now Gerard, who, even if he survives till the end of the war, I will never marry. But don’t think for one moment that I regret anything, Mams. On the contrary. But the war has ruined so much for me, just as it has for thousands of others. Without the war I would have been happily married and been a mother by now, enfin, it is what it is. But I can’t help dwelling on these thoughts sometimes. Dearest Mams, I miss you so much and also all my dear friends. Bye, darling, lots of kisses and love from Sabientje
On August 12, there was a short note. Sabine had found out herself that Gerard was executed.
Dearest Mams,
You don’t need to write to me about Gerard any more. I just saw the list with the sixteen names. I hope Gerard is now happy. The worst is over for him, only...so near victory. Tell me everything now! In haste, S
Gerard had been executed on July 29, aged thirty-six. Sabine’s heart was broken. Apart from her sadness, for the first time she became seriously frightened of what might be waiting for her. Until that moment, she had been telling herself that she had committed no crime and that she would be freed at any moment. But Gerard’s execution changed that. She had, after all, worked closely with him. Would the same fate await her?
Among all the documents, letters and laundry labels, I also found something quite different: the farewell letter from Gerard to his mother.
After the war, Gerard’s mother sent Sabine a copy of this letter, written in the Kriegswehrmachtgefängnis (an armed forces prison run by the German military) in Utrecht, a few hours before his execution. It is a moving letter, and I hope it gave his mother some comfort.
My dearest and courageous little mother,
Yes, here I am, feeling radiant. Happier than I have been in all my thirty-six years. In my personal feelings there is only one shadow over my extreme happiness, caused by a deeply felt sense of compassion and pity for you, who are forced to take part in my happiness. Moedertje, this afternoon at two thirty this shadow will lift, because the good God has agreed to receive this thirty-six-year-old person of little consequence. It is an eternal example of His goodness to be content with one so unimportant and to say: come to me, my child. And dearest Mother, I feel so ashamed towards you, who has already lived a much longer and more difficult life and who has not yet been able to receive this ultimate happiness. [...]
I enclose a hair lock.
There are some more pious sentences, but he ends by saying,
And now, Mother, having looked deep in your beautiful eyes I ask you to forgive me for the sadness and many worries I have given you. After thirty-six years you have won. In the end you are the loveliest woman, my greatest love. I know this will help you. You cry now and I understand that my darling. I have no more tears, my happiness is complete. [...]
Darling, a long and heartfelt kiss from your own, and so proud of you.
Gerard. So long
This letter must also have been heartrending for Sabine, even though she would only read it years later. The relationship between Gerard and her must have been very close. Again she had lost a dear friend and possibly lover, due to the war.
Sabine originally thought she had been arrested because Gerard and Broer had been arrested some time before her, and she wondered if the Sicherheitsdienst had made the connection between them. But slowly it also began to occur to her that her arrest might have had something to do with her boss. He had been unconcerned when her mother tried to warn him, at Sabine’s insistence. Might his telephone call at her office have had something to do with her arrest? Had he informed the men outside that she had arrived at her office? She now seriously wondered if he had betrayed not only her, but others too. After the war, her suspicions were proven to be true.
After Gerard and Broer had been arrested, Sabine contacted all their mutual friends to collect food for them and put it all in a suitcase and rucksack. When wondering who she could ask to take this to them, her boss, Piet, offered to go in person. On the agreed day, a mutual friend had run into Piet at the station and, knowing about the food delivery, asked him where the rucksack and case were. Piet told him he had put them in the luggage depot for the moment, although everyone knew that these were unlocked and everything deposited there was immediately stolen. Gerard later confirmed he never received the food.
Piet himself was also arrested during the war while on a train carrying smuggled guns, and via Camp Vught ended up in the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, where he was freed by the Russians. Immediately after the war, when he returned to Holland, he was arrested again, this time by the Dutch authorities. It appeared that he had been working as an informer with the Germans as well as the Dutch, earning large amounts of money for his information in the process. He confessed after the war that he had passed on the names of Jan van den Hoek, as well as those of Gerard Vinkesteijn, Broer Moonen, and “Sabientje ‘Suur’” to a German contact, who, to all intents and purposes, pretended to be a member of the French Resistance. He spent two years in jail but was released due to lack of evidence. Sabine was the only one from her Resistance group to survive.