‘A Beautiful Life'

Spying a spry 90-year-old visitor at the weekly Port St. Joe Rotary Club meeting, Willie Ramsey walked over and extended a hand to Joseph Van West.

Ramsey discovered that Van West hailed from Normal, Illinois, a favorite deer hunting spot, and sat down for a longer visit.

In the course of lunch, Ramsey learned a little about his new friend.

The Amsterdam native immigrated to the U.S. in 1954, and worked as an agent for Dutch companies seeking to establish themselves in America.

He'd had an office overlooking Lake Michigan, and retired to Normal to be closer to his daughter and granddaughter.

Later in their conversation, Van West mentioned World War II, and Ramsey asked a delicate question.

"I realized that he had to be Jewish, and he had to be there at the time of the invasion by the Germans," recalled Ramsey.

To Van West, he said, "That must have been a difficult time."

Van West began his story.

As a Dutch Jew during the German occupation of the Netherlands, he had spent the war years hiding with his future wife in attics and closet spaces on the upper floors of residential homes.

He'd lost all of his immediate family, along with 30 or 40 aunts, cousins, uncles and grandparents, who perished in concentration camps.

Out of hiding, he returned to a war-torn city unlike his idyllic boyhood home.

He'd come to America to escape those horrors, only to relive them for those, like Ramsey, who were simply curious to hear his story.

"It takes a lot out of me," Van West said after last Thursday's Rotary Club meeting, where he spoke, at Ramsey's invitation, about his life during World War II.

"The memories are terrible, but people have to know," Van West insisted. "People really have to know what happened."

Invasion

Just shy of his 21st birthday, Van West had been conscripted into the Dutch Army to fend off the advance of the Germans into the country.

The May 10, 1940 invasion proved swift and devastating. After only four days in Holland, the Germans launched an assault on Rotterdam, killing 30,000 civilians in five hours.

The Dutch government ordered its troops to lay down their arms on May 14, but small skirmishes continued a few days later.

At the time, Van West was serving west of Amsterdam, in the city of Haarlem, and was ordered to a German detention camp.

Bucking orders, he returned to work, but soon found his options shrinking.

Since occupying the Netherlands, the Nazis ordered Dutch Jews to wear a yellow Star of David inscribed with the word "Jood," Dutch for "Jew."

The patches helped the Nazis identify and capture Jews at an increasingly alarming rate, some 300 per day, and transport them by train to concentration camps.

"They picked them from the streets, in the town," remembered Van West, who feared for his family's safety.

"We obeyed because they had our names, what we were and what religion we had. We had no idea what would happen."

One day, while grocery shopping, Van West's father, Hijman, a florist, was taken by the Nazis and never heard from again.

After the disappearance of the family's patriarch, Van West's mother, Fiekje, a seamstress, and older sister, Keetje, found a hiding place in the home of a friend.

Albert Stiphout, Van West's cousin by marriage and a well-connected policeman working with the Dutch underground, secured Van West a job on a chicken farm in an isolated town called Amersfoort.

Van West told the farmer he had been a soldier and spoke nothing of his Jewish heritage.

The farmer hired Van West despite his lack of farming skills, and he breathed a momentary sigh of relief, for himself and his family.

"I thought perhaps we were safe," he said.

Alone

The feeling was fleeting.

Not long after his arrival at the farm, Van West received word that his mother and sister had been evicted from their hiding place.

The homeowner's sister became concerned for her safety and asked the Van Wests to find somewhere else to hide.

Joseph Van West journeyed by train back to his Amsterdam home to comfort his mother and sister.

With the city under black-out, Van West spent the long night in silence, holding his sister's hand.

When morning came, Van West's mother demanded that he return to the chicken farm, despite his objections.

"She said, 'You have to go find a place that is better. If we are picked up, you are gone, too,'" Van West remembered.

He reluctantly returned, knowing in his heart that he'd never see his family again.

Two days later, he received word that Fiekje and Keetje Van West had been picked up by the Nazis and taken to a concentration camp.

"That was the end of my family," Van West said. "I had no one else in my life anymore that I could love. I cried my eyes out in the chicken coop."

Falling Hard

When fall arrived, the farmer had no more use for Van West and sent him on his way.

With no home or family to return to, Van West turned again to his cousin, Stiphout.

Stiphout secured for Van West a job on a farm in Austerlitz, 30 miles east of Amsterdam.

Austerlitz was also home to Van West's friend and future wife, Netty Broekman, who was hiding with her parents in a non-Jewish home.

Van West met Broekman before the war, while practicing gymnastics in an Amsterdam gymnasium.

The gymnasium had a segregated daily schedule, with the women performing gymnastics in the daytime, and the men, at night.

Netty Broekman, an athlete and the gymnastic club's secretary, skirted custom and visited the facility at night.

Van West admired her "beautiful legs" and hoped to catch her eye.

One day, when Broekman appeared at the club, Van West prepared to impress her with a perfectly-executed somersault.

He slipped, however, and fell on his head. He awakened to find Broekman standing over him.

"When I came to, I was engaged," Van West said.

The engagement never happened, but the accident did spark a friendship that continued after the German occupation.

From her letter, he'd learned that Broekman and her parents, Marcus and Esther, were hiding in Austerlitz with another couple.

While working on the farm, Van West bicycled into town, humming the gymnastic club's song as a signal to Broekman.

When she heard the song, she knew Van West was near.

Once he identified Broekman's home, Van West continued to pay visits at night, believing he had less chance of being detected.

 In time, the couple boarding with the Broekmans fell prey to some swindlers who offered to take them to Switzerland in exchange for their valuables.

The swindlers deposited the penniless couple on the Holland/Belgium border, opening up room for Van West to move in with the Broekmans.

When the quarters proved too cramped, Van West and Netty Broekman moved into a home two blocks away, while her parents remained in the house.

In Hiding

Austerlitz, a small town in the middle of Holland with four streets in the shape of a square, had a wartime population of approximately 1,000.

Most, like the homeowners who housed the Broekmans and Van West, were poor, uneducated farmers and laborers.

Marcus Broekman, a well educated wholesale business owner and diamond dealer, had hidden money with a friend in Amsterdam before going into hiding.

With this money, the underground paid host families rent money to house the Broekmans and Van West. They also secured food coupons for the families and those in hiding.

"It was not all charity," said Van West, adding that host families did incur a great deal of risk. If detected by the Nazis, they, too, would be killed.

In their second hiding place, Van West and Netty Broekman passed their days in the second floor closet and third floor attic.

The closet, located in the host couple's bedroom, measured four feet wide and five feet long. Clothes hung from hangers, and Van West and Broekman had no room to stretch their legs.

The home, like that which housed Marcus and Esther Broekman, was occupied by a couple and two young children, with whom Van West had virtually no contact.

Two doors down, Marcus Broekman listened eagerly to the latest war news from London through a contraband radio.

Each day, he composed a letter in rhyme detailing the news for his daughter and Van West, who received the letter via Broekman’s female host.

During his recent two-month vacation with his daughter and son-in-law on Cape San Blas, Van West translated 40 typed pages of Broekman’s dispatches, verifying his work with a Dutch relative.

In a letter dated July 14, 1944, Broekman reported that he and his wife, whom he nicknamed “Moe,” listened to the news at least 10 hours a day.

He apologized if his reporting was less than letter-perfect.

Van West translated the original Dutch: “And when I forget sometimes a single name, you cannot blame me…I’ll do my best, I say that directly, and I continue with 'This is London,' Moe and I give you the hiding greetings, and finish as always: 'IT GOES WELL.'”

"The Most Miserable Time"

Van West and Broekman stayed in the Austerlitz home for three years.

“Every day was a challenge for us,” remembered Van West. “We had no freedom, we couldn’t go out. It was the most miserable time of our lives.”

They lived in constant fear of being discovered, and experienced several close calls.

When the Dutch underground sent word that the Nazis were to arrive in the village, Van West, Netty Broekman and her parents fled their homes and hid out in the nearby woods.

For three days, they withstood the rain and cold, taking shelter in bushes.

Back at the home, Van West and Broekman were at the mercy of the host family, who threatened to evict them when the rent money arrived late.

Once, a German soldier slept downstairs for four or five days while Van West and Broekman hid in the second floor closet.

“We couldn’t make any noise, because that would be the end,” remembered Van West.

Hunger ravaged their bodies. Van West, slender and athletic before the war, lost 40 pounds while in hiding.

The situation proved more dire two houses down. Marcus and Esther Broekman’s hosts deprived them of their share of food, keeping most for themselves and their children.

Because he could not complain to them directly, Marcus Broekman wrote of their stinginess in his verse, calling them dirty, uncooperative and “low-class.”

In this environment, even the smallest kindnesses meant so much.

Once, Van West and Nettie Broekman’s host presented them with a single boiled egg, which Van West likened to “dinner at the Ritz Hotel.”

He and Broekman agreed to save it for the night, to ease their hunger before going to bed.

When the appointed time arrived, however, Broekman asked that they give the egg to her parents, who also hungered.

Marcus Broekman gave his thanks for the gift in a rhyming three-page thank you note.

An Unexpected Guest

 In the months leading up to the German surrender, Van West and Broekman heard a chilling sound coming from downstairs.

Their female host conversed and laughed with a German-speaking man whom they immediately identified as a Nazi soldier.

The host called to Van West and Broekman, who huddled together in the upstairs closet, fearing their time had come.

“We thought this is the end of us. We thought she had enough of us,” remembered Van West.

The closet door swung open, revealing a man in an S.S. uniform.

“May I introduce you to my brother-in-law,” the host said.

The soldier had not come to take them away. Seeing that the Germans would soon be vanquished, he came to share their hiding place.

Van West talked and played cards with the man, but felt conflicting emotions.

“I hate to say it, but he was a nice guy. I still hated him, he could have killed a lot of people, but what do you do?  You both were hiding.”

The soldier stayed for the war’s duration, some three or four months.

On April 29, 1945, Marcus Broekman reported news of a forthcoming German surrender.

President Harry Truman had announced that the talk was only rumors, but there was much to give hope.

Packages of food for occupied territories stood ready.

“The airplanes bring food but no bombs,” Marcus Broekman wrote. “The operation has started; airplanes with food are at this moment underway to the Netherlands.”

Nobody Left

The German forces surrendered in early May of 1945, almost exactly five years after the invasion of the Netherlands.

Though the Germans were disarmed, they remained on the streets, inspiring fear and hatred.

“We were afraid to go outside because the Germans were still there,” Van West recalled. “They were disarmed, but you saw that uniform, you never knew. You had such a hate for them.”

Van West recalled the day he ventured outside as an “unbelievable time.”

“The highway was full of American soldiers waving at us, giving us candy and cigarettes. We cried our hearts out from happiness.”

By bike, Van West and Netty Broekman journeyed back home to Amsterdam, only to learn that nearly their entire families had been killed during the war.

“There was nobody left. We thought, ‘How can we be happy, when nobody else is left,’” said Van West.

A friend secured an apartment for Van West, Broekman and her parents, who encouraged the young couple to marry.

During their years in hiding, Van West and Broekman never discussed marriage. They “were sure,” Van West said, that they would spend their lives together.

During a civil service inside an Amsterdam government building, Van West and Broekman exchanged vows.

Stiphout, the cousin who’d saved Van West’s life during the war, served as a witness, along with a beautiful woman who lived in their apartment complex.

The bride and groom had a limited wardrobe and wore shabby clothes. The female neighbor wore a beautiful white dress, and the officiant called her forward, believing her to be the bride.

In 1954, Van West, his wife, baby daughter Patricia and in-laws immigrated to America, sponsored by Van West’s cousin in Chicago.

Van West took a job in the Marshall Field import office, and later worked as a salesman for a luggage manufacturer.

Though he’d been a successful businessman in his father-in-law’s wholesale business after the war, Van West started over in America, earning a meager salary.

“It was not too bad, we were never homesick because we knew what we left behind,” he recalled. “We knew we had to stay here and make the best of it.”

Van West went on to have a successful career working with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce as a business agent.

He and Netty were married for 64 years, sharing an uncommon bond forged during their years in hiding.

“I had a beautiful marriage. We loved each other so much,” Van West said.

In nearly four years in cramped quarters, the couple never exchanged a cross word. “We never had a fight, never had an argument. We knew we had to save our lives.”

Netty’s love saved Van West during a time of constant fear and unspeakable horror.

Her death last September dealt a devastating blow.

Today, when Van West recalls a life fit for the history books, it’s Netty that he remembers most and their many happy years together.

Not war, not loss, but love.

“We had a beautiful life,” he said.