Five Brothers and a War

Razzias at Home

With the van Pelt family being made up of five boys, it was difficult to imagine not getting the attention of the Nazis, who wanted males between the ages of 17-40. In the beginning of the War, in Holland, 1940, Leen was 19, Piet was 18, Jan was 16, Kees was 14 and Bert was 11. By the time the war ended five years later, the only one underage was Bert, and then only by a few months. In order to protect the boys, a hiding place was devised in the crawl space under the ground-level floor. A trap door was cut into the floor of the closet in the dining room, and a well-fitting piece of linoleum was kept on hand. The lower shelf in the closet held vases that could quickly be placed on top of the linoleum once the boys were under the floor and the trap door was closed. The actual hiding place was underneath the very dense hardwood flooring in the hallway leading from the front door to the kitchen, so a small access path had to be cut from the foundation wall between the living room and the hallway. The substrate beneath the house was sand, and the hiding space was about one meter high. From time to time, the family would run drills to ensure that everyone could get into the hiding space quickly enough, and that the trap door could be closed and hidden very quickly. Once the drill was over, the trap door remained open, ready for the real deal. Several times, there were false alarms, but even those were helpful in getting the drill down to a science.

This rendering removes all walls, focusing only on the foundation walls and crawl space. Of course, this rendering shows sunlight, whereas no light whatsoever reached this area.

Below the kitchen

Below the dining room

van Pelt

The van Pelts took out part of the foundation to allow access to section below interior hallway.

Squeezing through the trap door in the closet

Below the living room

Five Brothers and a War

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