Five Brothers and a War

December 31, 1940/January 1, 1941

New Year’s Day in 1941 was a noteworthy and critical day in the future of the van Pelt family. On New Year’s Eve, curiosity got the better of Jan and his best friend, Wim van Rossum. Unbeknownst to Leendert and Marie, Jan and Wim, along with two others, travelled to the heart of Den Haag to see how the first Nieuwjaarsdag (“New Year’s Day”) under German occupation would be celebrated. On their way home, they passed a bar where German soldiers were standing around. Presumably, alcohol had a part to play in the argument that ensued. As so often happens in such situations, the words eventually led to fisticuffs. With the number of German soldiers present, both Jan and Wim were subdued, captured and detained. The other two friends managed to get away and disappeared into the night. Jan and Wim had to produce their identification papers, which of course were duly recorded. Jan was 16 years old and Wim was 17 at the time, and therefore not subject to “employment” as “guests” of the Germans. They were, however, subject to interrogation. The two boys were first put into ice-cold rooms, and then were brought individually into interrogation rooms where they were sat down beside a red-hot room heater. Jan knew that this was done to increase his stress levels in order to make him confess.

The interrogation went on for several weeks, during which time the two were allowed to go home after each session. Ultimately, the German soldiers who brought the complaint could not identify precisely who did what—the tall Wim or the shorter Jan—and therefore the German martial-law judge decided to not move forward with the charges. In his admonitions, he chastised the two for fighting with German soldiers and told them that such actions were completely unacceptable. He also dressed-down the Germans when he said that they should be ashamed that the two Dutch youths spoke better German than they did. But ultimately it was no coincidence that 18 months later both Jan and Wim were ordered to appear for work in Germany, where they would spend the remainder of the war.

van Pelt

Five Brothers and a War

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