Hidden Tears

By Michael Taylor

Wilhelmina was a young child when Germany invaded The Netherlands in 1940 and then occupied the country for five years. By the end of the war, her mother was imprisoned in a labour camp and her father was on death row. Years of discrimination followed for thousands of children who were caught up in events out of their control. For some, the result was a lifetime of anxiety, PTSD and a desire to remain anonymous. After 80 years, Wilhelmina's story is finally being told.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Taylor
• Release date: Sep 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463123607

Michael Taylor

Michael Taylor is Professor Emeritus of Transport Planning at the University of South Australia. Author or editor of eight transportation books, Dr. Taylor is a leading pioneer in transportation network vulnerability analysis.

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HIDDEN TEARS

Michael Taylor

Copyright 2019 Michael Taylor

All Rights Reserved

Smashwords Edition

Formatting by Caligraphics

www.number41.com.au

This is a story that has taken me 80 years to tell. It deals largely with my childhood during World War II, and my teenage years afterwards, which were much worse. My father had been a collaborator and, as a result, I was despised and shunned by almost everyone that knew about my family. As children, we suffered the consequences for a very long time. We had to keep it a secret from the whole world. It interfered with my plans for the future and cropped up during my whole life. Even today, my anger surfaces on occasion.

Wilhelmina Findhammer 2019

1.

This is not a story about the horrors of war, its cruelty, barbarism and indignities that can be so generously and enthusiastically inflicted by one group of men upon another. Nor is it a story about tragedy, sacrifice, heroes, villains and a battle of the spirit against foes who were once friends and a country once called home. It is a story of all these things wrapped in layers around one woman’s life for 80 years. Dutch-born Wilhelmina was raised during conflict, and for most, conflict has a finish. At war’s end, men go home, or not, and life begins again from a different starting point. Families draw on resilience, optimism, and each other to piece together what was a shattered and scattered jigsaw of unspeakable events. Then, life goes on.

For Wilhelmina, life also went on but there was no end to the conflict. Every aspect of her life has been over-ridden by a shadow – an invisible cloak of shame that is undeserved and unwanted. The time has come to cast it off. At the end of World War II, tens of thousands of Dutch citizens were rounded up and put on trial. They were accused of collaborating with the enemy and tried for crimes ranging from sleeping with the occupying Germans to serving in their Army. Many had collaborated through fear, intimidation or coercion and justice was at times arbitrary and chaotic. Wilhelmina was only seven years old when her father became one of 145 Dutch men sentenced to death at war’s end. The wives, sons and daughters of those tried were also branded guilty, by association, and shunned, shamed and ostracised by friends, neighbours and the wider community. They became the unrecognised victims of discrimination at school and at work, and many lived a life unable to shake the effects of that treatment. This is the story of one of them.

In 1938, The Netherlands was a country of nine million people living peacefully in an area nine times smaller than its neighbouring Germany. Wilhelmina’s parents had an almost-four-year-old son when she was born in April in the port city of Rotterdam. In 1929, the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States had plunged most western industrialised countries into an economic depression. The Netherlands were a bit slow to catch on, but for them the conditions lasted much longer. Rising unemployment and social unrest in the early 1930s gave strength to the rise of the country’s National Socialist Movement (NSB). Based on Germany’s Nazi Party, it was begun by a council civil engineer, Anton Mussert, who espoused love of nation, and strength in leadership along with the rejection of parliamentary democracy and capitalism. Mussert’s party would secure many votes because of frustration with the Dutch democratic and electoral process, which had 33 parties in 1933, all of which were struggling to solve the problems of the time. Across the border, Germany’s ongoing financial recovery under National Socialism was viewed by the peace-loving Dutch with a mixture of envy and suspicion.

The NSB would have a peace-time membership of 36,000 as it preached to the disenchanted population of national renewal and action plans. He had a captive audience, but as Mussert became more radical in his views and openly supported Hitler’s foreign policy and military aggression, that support weakened considerably. In May, 1940, 10,000 NSB members were put into custody by the Dutch government, only to be freed shortly after by the invading Germans. Then, during the occupation of the Netherlands, 100,000 Dutch would identify as NSB members, largely for opportunistic reasons.

Wilhelmina’s father enjoyed a good education during the 1920s and had high ambitions. Despite his own parents having plans for him to work in the family shop, he finished secondary education and learned chemistry when working in the laboratory of the Enka company – a Dutch manufacturer of rayon (artificial silk). This led him to a career in the police force, initially in the finger-printing division.

One day he took a trip on a cherry-boat cruise which travelled past orchards where people could pick their own cherries. There was also music and dancing on board, and on this particular day the blonde, good looking man was sitting quietly by himself when he noticed a beautiful, smiling young woman. He asked Cornelia to dance, and a week later visited her at the haberdashery shop where she was the manager. The shop was owned by her parents who did not approve of the serious young man in uniform. Undeterred, the couple enjoyed a courtship and against her parent’s wishes, married in August, 1933. Eleven months later a son, Wim, was born into a world beginning to tremble with unrest. One week after Cornelia gave birth to her first child, Austria’s Chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, was assassinated by Austrian Nazis after banning the Nazi Party in his country, and the following week Adolf Hitler became Fϋhrer of a one-party dictatorship in Germany.

The young family settled in Rotterdam, and Wilhelmina was born four years later. Her 30-year-old father had been promoted to Inspector and also joined the Army Reserve where he held the rank of 2nd Lieutenant in the Artillery with a commitment of three weeks military training every two years. There seemed to be little doubt that a war was brewing but the Dutch government continually reassured its people through nightly radio broadcasts, and reminded them of the country’s long and peaceful history. Nobody seemed too worried, but from late October, 1939, the same Dutch government began a slow military build-up, and Cornelia began to see less and less of her husband. Wilhelmina was blissfully unaware:

‘From a very early age I was fascinated by the activities I saw my mother engaged in. She responded to my interest by teaching me sewing, drawing, modelling in clay and other hand-crafts. I remember wanting to make a face-washer for my doll and being impatient because I didn’t succeed fast enough. My mother advised me to sit quietly in my own room and try very hard. At that time I was about two years old, a very quiet girl and very focused on my mother. I could not be without her, otherwise I would start crying. I have no childhood memories of my father. I cannot remember having a father. He was always away.’

On the morning of Thursday, May 9, 1940, Cornelia was sitting in her backyard garden having coffee with a friend.