Not long after the war, Sabine and Peter reunited. During an RAF party in The Hague, Peter met up again with Lon Versteijnen, a friend of both Peter and Sabine. Lon had been in the Resistance and was in Ravensbrück at the same time as Sabine. Peter wanted to know if Sabine was still alive, and Lon supplied him with her address. He soon paid her a visit, and in the general party atmosphere and sense of enormous relief that better times were ahead, they made a hasty and in retrospect unwise decision, like many others, to get married. At that stage after their war experiences, neither was emotionally able to live a normal everyday life. There was still a lot of hardship and unrest for everybody, not least for those who had suffered so much. Professional help to deal with trauma was not really available in those days.
After their marriage in December 1946, Sabine got pregnant almost immediately, and Peter’s job at the KLM Royal Dutch Airline as an operations manager offered them a chance to escape the aftermath of the war and go to India for a few years. But shortly before their departure, Sabine became very unwell, losing weight rapidly, going down to 48 kg. She still could hardly tolerate any food as a result of her previous starvation diet. Peter flew out to Karachi ahead of Sabine, who stayed behind until after my birth, leaving her feeling very miserable and lonely.
Dr. Steijns provided a safe haven for her. He and his wife were eternally grateful to her and had offered to deliver any babies she might have in the future. They had resumed their practice again after having reclaimed their home from the Germans who had commandeered it during the war. To their joy, they found their family silver and their daughter’s dolls back in the garden where they had buried them. Both I and my brother a few years later were born in this clinic with the help of Dr. Steijns. After all she had suffered while in the Revier, particularly in Ravensbrück, it was a great luxury for Sabine to get such personal care and attention from people who cared for her. She would have felt very sad, however, that Peter was not with her but in India.
Before flying out to India, my mother and I spent a month in a one-bedroom apartment in Amsterdam. Unfortunately, 1947 was one of the coldest winters on record, and she told me later that she had to hand-wash her clothes and my cotton nappies in cold water and dry them around the stove, so it was a miserable time for her. Then, when I was six weeks old, we flew out to join Peter.
Of course, I don’t remember this period, and apart from a few tiny photos, I don’t really know what life was like there for them. Occasionally we flew back to Holland for a few weeks’ respite from the heat, which probably did not suit Sabine’s health very well, and stayed with friends in the Catshuis in The Hague. This beautiful house stands on the Sorghvliet Estate and dates from the 1600s. In the war, the German spy training school, the “Agentenschule West,” was based there. According to my mother, I learned to walk during one of our visits there. Since 1963, the Catshuis has been the official residence of the prime minister, and various ministers have actually lived there with their families.
Altogether we spent two years in India, in Karachi and Kolkata, but eventually it was time to go home. My mother and I flew back ahead, and while searching for a flat to rent, Mrs. Roeper-Bosch, Taro’s mother, kindly offered us the loan of Taro’s old bedroom, installing a heater and furniture to make it comfortable. We found a first-floor flat near her in Scheveningen and lived there for two years before moving to another flat, also in The Hague. My brother was born while we lived there.
Peter could not settle down, though. Working in an office for the KLM did not suit him, nor did everyday family life. He was too much of a free spirit, restless and looking for challenges. In 1950, he left the KLM and started working for Shell. He had already started doing undercover work, and this new job gave him the opportunity of traveling, which provided a cover for his spying activities as a secret agent. At first he worked for the Dutch Secret Service, but later for the CIA. His very dangerous missions behind the Iron Curtain meant he often disappeared for weeks or months on end, leaving Sabine on her own and in the dark as to where he was, as well as in financial difficulties. He would disappear suddenly and reappear equally suddenly sometime later.
In the mid-1950s, Shell offered him the opportunity to work in Curaçao, which he decided to accept, but the marriage had hit rock bottom, and my mother refused to go with him. She was still ill and painfully thin. They divorced in 1955.