Hunger Journeys

FEBRUARY 5, 1945
UTRECHT TRAIN STATION
OCCUPIED NETHERLANDS

The two girls froze. The area had been deserted when they came up, but suddenly the train platform was alive with German voices and stomping boots.

“Have you checked the cars?” said a voice, almost right beside Lena’s and Sofie’s heads.

“Schultz and Biermann started at the other end. I’ll do these three. Here, jump up with me,” a deeper voice replied.

A grunt of frustration. “Can’t get this door open. Hey, help me, will you?”

Lena gripped Sofie’s neck and leaned to speak into her ear. “They’re searching the cars. We’ve got to find our bags and dig right to the back.” She felt Sofie nod just as the door to the next car opened with a loud creak.

“You take the far end, Rauch, and dig deep. I’ll start here. Any hideaways in here, we’ll flush them out like rats.”

Lena’s body went rigid. They know we’re here, she thought. Of course they do.

SEPTEMBER 4, 1944
.
AMSTERDAM.

“Lena! Lena, come!”

Lena turned from the basin of lukewarm grubby water, dirty plates and knives and spoons forgotten. Her brother stood just inside the kitchen doorway, his face alight.

“Come,” he said again, stepping forward and grasping her wrist. Lena felt a rare smile take hold of her face. She followed.

Piet did not speak again until they stood outside, with the front door of their apartment building closed behind them, parents and siblings shut away inside, and a bit of wartorn Amsterdam open to their gaze. “The British must be coming,” he said at last. “Look!”

But Lena had already seen: people clustered all down the length of the street, doors standing open, German soldiers ignored. And the buzz. Somehow, even though voices were
muted and no one was close, the air hummed with energy. Two soldiers on the boulevard actually looked nervous, speaking into each other’s ears and glancing over their shoulders.

Lena almost danced on the spot. Could it be true? Could British armies be crossing the border into the Netherlands right at that moment? More than four years had passed since the Germans occupied her country. Food grew scarcer by the month, and the war just went on and on. Could all that be about to change?

Piet’s voice was low. “I told you about the rumours last night. I heard it all on the radio.”

Lena glanced around at the word
radio
to be sure no one was listening. Radios had been illegal for years, but Piet went to his friend’s house every day and listened to the broadcasts from the exiled Dutch government. Radio Orange from London. She felt a familiar rush of fear. If he was ever caught …

“And Prince Bernhard is our new commander,” Piet continued. “Do you know what that means? He’s the new leader of the Resistance. He said the Dutch soldiers should ‘restrain themselves … even if the hour of liberation is near.’ That’s what he said. ‘The hour of liberation is near’! And now rumours are flying fast.”

“You’re babbling, Piet,” Lena said, but her fear evaporated and her smile turned into a grin. What could be better than her younger brother’s bubbly chatter joining the buzz that ran the length of the street and surely the length of Amsterdam as well—even of the Netherlands?

She had felt this same excitement not long ago: the landings on the Normandy beaches, just three months earlier, in June. As she thought back to that time, doubt clouded her mind. Back
then, she’d felt certain the Allies were coming. She had taken the old school atlas from its spot at the back of her classroom and peered at the map of Europe, tracing with her finger the path from those French beaches to Amsterdam. Later, she and Piet had imagined the troops, marching steadily onward, dispensing freedom as they came. Surely the tide had turned, they’d thought, and it would be only a matter of days or weeks before the German occupation ended.

But days and weeks had turned to months. Lena had lost interest in maps and gone back to her daily labour of preparing heaps and heaps of potatoes—that and trying to ignore the mounting misery in her own household.

“Maybe I’ll bring more news,” Piet said, breaking into Lena’s thoughts. She tried to rally the grin, but it dropped from her face. He was already halfway down the steps, abandoning her once again.

Lena knew where he was going: down the street to see the man with the radio. Meneer Walstra had lived on the Hoofdweg, a wide boulevard in the western part of Amsterdam, as long as they had, which was forever. They had not had much to do with him in the past, but Piet had spent half of this most recent summer over there, and he had invited Lena to go with him only once. Mother had kept her home that time, deep in her kitchen drudgery, and Piet had seemed happy enough running off on his own. He had never asked her to join him again. Lena was glad that he came back with news, but lately, with his mentions of the Dutch Resistance, she had begun to wonder what he was up to.

She had begun to worry.

Resistance was all very well. Someone needed to do something about the occupation—the Dutch army could not fight
openly, like the armies of the unoccupied Allied nations, but there was much they could do underground, in secret. Lena agreed with all that, but she did not agree with encouraging a fifteen-year-old boy to get involved, especially when that boy was her own brother—her only brother.

She took a deep breath. Maybe she need worry no more. Maybe today the British troops would put all her worries to rest.

Piet strode off down the street, and Lena wandered back inside, finished the supper dishes and collapsed on a kitchen chair, an unread book clasped in her hand; even from the back of the apartment, she could hear the excited sounds from the street. They washed over her. She had no idea how much time passed before Piet slipped back into the room with none of his earlier ruckus. Lena started out of a doze and sat up abruptly. She had been sitting there waiting for him, she realized—for his news.

No one else in the house seemed to be all that affected by the mayhem in the streets. Lena’s older sister, Margriet, was putting Bep to bed in the big bedroom. From the kitchen, Lena could hear the rise and fall of her voice as she told their little sister a story. Father was out, as he so often was. Mother was in the dim study, unravelling an old sweater in her endless, and largely futile, attempt to keep her family decently clothed. Lena was glad they were all out of the way. She jumped to her feet and, for the second time that day, slipped outside after her brother. Slipped outside and stopped. Doors on either side of her stood wide open, and people—the men hatless and jacketless, the women still aproned and in house shoes—crowded into the
street, shouting and laughing. The city that earlier had buzzed with excitement now sang with joy.

A big bubble of hope lodged in Lena’s throat. She swallowed hard and looked to Piet for an explanation. “‘The hour of liberation is here,’” he shouted at her. “That’s what he said. The prince. Our prime minister. From London. On Radio Orange. ‘The hour of liberation is here’!” Then he stood back and looked at her.

The hour of liberation is near. The hour of liberation is here, Lena thought, her grin as wide as her brother’s. She made no attempt to speak. There was no need. What a glorious journey it was for a day: from “near” to “here”!

“And in the morning,” Piet went on, his mouth back beside her ear, “we will go to welcome them. To welcome the troops!”

They made their way out of the crowd and back to their own steps, where they could speak more easily. “Mother and Father will say no, Piet,” Lena said, hating the meekness of the words even as she spoke them. “What about school?”

Piet glared at her. “Oh, Lena! There’ll be plenty of time for school later. But if we miss this, we’ve missed it forever.” His voice was edged with anger. “We’ll just go. We’ll be gone before they’re up. No matter what happens after, it will be a day to remember. Are you going to let them take that away from you along with everything else?”

Lena flinched as she met his eyes. She was almost seventeen years old, and he, though barely fifteen, was so strong and determined. She lifted her chin a tiny bit. “Yes,” she said. “We’ll just go.”

Light came early on that fifth day of September in 1944, war or no war, but Lena and Piet rose earlier. Lena slid out of bed, leaving Margriet snoring gently, and dressed in the dark without making a sound. Then she settled in to wait. Long before dawn, Piet tapped on her door, and she picked up her shoes and her coat and shadowed him down the hall. The front door greeted them, solid and locked. Lena held her breath while her brother fiddled. She twitched at each click and clenched her teeth as he eased the door open.

Leaving it unlocked behind them, they paused on the stoop to slide their feet into their shoes and shrug their shoulders into their coats; then they looked up and took in the goings-on, more through their ears than their eyes. The street was dark: no streetlights in wartime; every window blacked out. Stars glittered in the moonless sky, and the street was thronged with moving shadows, at least as many as the night before.

Walking down the steps and entering that ghostly multitude frightened Lena. Despite their energy and excitement, the bodies didn’t feel quite real to her. She held tight to Piet’s arm. At any moment, she could lose him entirely. German trucks or guns could tear into them from either side; a child could lose her way and plunge into a canal.