Anneke Bloomfield

Interviewer: [Interviewer’s questions are mostly inaudible]
BLOOMFIELD: My name is Anneke Bloomfield. I was born in the Hague, the Netherlands, the province of South Holland. This is in dedication to my father, who took up the courage to make many many changes and to begin with, leaving the Jewish neighborhood.

I was born in April of 1935, and I had a brother who was a year older. And another little brother who came around three years later, and then a little brother just before the war started in 1940. And then later on, we get to that I had a little sister just before the war was over. 

My father had a good job with Shell Oil and my mom was a retired school teacher. We lived in this Jewish neighborhood. My dad took up the courage to make some drastic changes since he realized there were some bad things going on in the eastern European countries. So the first thing he did was he left the neighborhood and bought a nice modern town house in a whole different area. Then, what he did, instead of going to temple on weekends, Friday nights or Saturdays, we now had to go to church on Sundays. 

The next step he did was, this church had a wonderful library that was open two nights a week, and he asked, since he was an avid reader, he asked if he could work, donate his time in this library. So now everybody sees him or us in church on Sundays, as well as the whole neighborhood could borrow books, the whole neighborhood gets to know Mr. Seibol as a Christian. 

The next step he did was we had to go to a different school. Of course I was just starting kindergarten. And then later there was a big school just two blocks away, but that wasn’t good enough. He made us go to a very Christian Bible School several blocks away. As a matter a fact, it was a good seven blocks. It was small school, 250 students, and we had Bible classes every morning, the first thing. So that was really quite a change for all of us. 

BLOOMFIELD: In 1940, the Netherlands had about 10 million people and most of them were in the big cities like Amsterdam, which is known for the arts and the diamond cutting. And then The Hague, what was the like Washington, DC with all the government buildings. And right next to it, in between The Hague and the beach, you have the city of Scheveningen, a tourist town. And then we have Rotterdam, which of course is still today the most modern biggest harbor in the world.
So, I don’t remember too much between this age and up. …Oh my set of grandparents. I had a very rich set of grandparents. They took care of all my nice toys. I had a room full of toys, baby carriage, dolls, books, you name it. And Grandma would keep me in pretty dresses and little shoes.         

On the other side, from my fathers side, they were extremely poor. The lived in the oldest part of Delft, very, very old house. And just down the street there were the two churches built in 1400 and 1700, so you can imagine how old their house was. The workshop downstairs had cobblestones. And then you went upstairs and the front room was used to be my dad and his brothers’ bedroom. But now was my grandmother’s pride and joy, with a little chandelier and lace curtains. And then the back part was kind of like a mobile home. They had an alcove; the bedroom was really, really small and had french doors with lace curtains. A kitchenette, fire place, dinning room area was all one area. But they were adorable. They were such sweet people. I just had to go get my hugs as often as I could. But then of course in 1938, while all these moves were going on with my father, he did not allow us to see any more of our relatives. So no more grandparents, no more uncles in the jewelry business in Rotterdam or any in the tailor business in The Hague. So our life took quite a change. 

BLOOMFIELD: April of 1940 I turned five and although my rich grandparents didn’t come to our house (none of them did anymore) somehow they managed to get me this beautiful blue scooter, a great blue scooter with air tires so I could really go float over the cobblestones. And right after that the war started. And of course I remember the soldiers running through the street and shooting, and my dad made us sit underneath the dining room table. We were pretty close to the air base for our Dutch air force, and the German air force, of course, was much stronger and the first thing they wanted was the harbor at Rotterdam. And they burned the city down in like three days, five days, something like that. From there on, from my point of view, a little girl’s point of view, just turned five, life was pretty normal.

BLOOMFIELD: But then, a good two years into the war, it got to be more restricted with food. We got a little more, no more, you know you couldn’t go to the store and say you want a pound of cheese or you want a cake or anything like that. And another thing was, there was a Dutch group that agreed with Hitler. And they formed their own army. We called them NSB. One of those moved like two doors down across from us. And they were very fanatic. They had permission to look into all the government papers, records. My dad had already changed his age, he had already made himself a little older. But he still was very, very uncomfortable with the whole situation.           

So one day I came home, and I said to my mom, “Where’s Clausha (my older brother)?” And she said, “Oh we found him a place to stay with some other people, quite a ways away from here where he has a little more sunshine; they have a little meat available and they are going to take care of him.” They never told us of course what the real story was. And then I came home and Bercha[?] was gone, and he was only like 3 and a half years old. And my dad had found him a place in a little village on the east part of Holland. They already had a little Jewish boy. Little did my mom know that she had to not be able to see him for many years, because they would not give him up after the war for two and a half years. So that was heartbreaking. And then I was sent away, I was sent South, close to Belgium. I don’t remember to much about it, but I do remember coming from the big city; we had no fruit tree, big fruit trees, so I did a lot of tree climbing and I ate a lot of plums. But it was very dangerous for people to hide children like us. So Clausha came home again, and I came home again. And then of course, many, many things happened.

One of the things was that my dad tried to make us very independent so that if something happened, if they found out who we were and they would pick us up and put us in a concentration camp or something, that we wouldn’t be panicky. So he brought us a tram ticket, and we were supposed to ride trams all day long. And he said just, there were still trams going, not as many but they were still going. And then we got to the city of Scheveningen by the Kurhaus Hotel and Clausha of course he was the big tough boy, and he said, “Lets go see on the beach.” Because behind that hotel we used to have picnics quite often, my mom and dad and us kids. And I said, “No, I don’t think we should because there is so many German soldiers here.” What happened was the Kurhaus Hotel had been taken over by the officers and as we got to the beach we saw something we had never seen before, which were bunkers, they were building bunkers, and they were shooting the first rocket over to England. Of course, when I came home I had to figure out what that rocket was. Then many, many things happened. 

Interviewer: Do you recall knowing about the antisemitism?
BLOOMFIELD: No.

Interviewer: No. So OK, the children didn’t, OK.
BLOOMFIELD: No. The way that we were put in the Bible School and the way we were raised, no. 

Interviewer: You were never told why?
BLOOMFIELD: No. And that was a real problem after the war because I was sent away three times. So the second time I was sent up North. And this was a farm and they had two little girls, which was quite pleasant. And the first night I was there, at dinner time there were two men sitting at the table and they sat with their backs up against the wall so they could see the driveway. And what I enjoyed a whole lot was that the only Germans I could see was way at a distance, way down. But they of course could keep their eyes on it, which I didn’t know that they were hiding on the farm, or maybe they were in the resistance.        

And then that night we had a wonderful dinner. I hadn’t realized how tight food had gotten to be (we now had food coupons). And we had a glass of milk, and we had potatoes and a vegatable, and a little piece of meat which was pork and it was very fatty pork. And I had never had pork but I didn’t know the difference. And I hadn’t had meat for quite a while so I gobbled it all down. And it was so tasty that when everybody left the table, I ate all the left overs. And then at nighttime, my bedroom was on the second floor with the two girls. Very pleasant room, very nice family, and the big farm roof was like this [indicating with hands] and I saw this smoked ham hanging. I didn’t know what it was but I could sure see it was very tasty. So I waited ‘til the little girls had fallen asleep, and then I let the ham down and took some big bites out of it, and pulled it back up. Of course I had teeth marks showing and I was reprimanded that I was not allowed to do this anymore and they would not let me go hungry. But then of course this food got into my system, because I had hardly had any milk and I hadn’t had any meat for quite a while, and you know. So I started breaking out and they became boils. And the boils started to infect, and they wouldn’t take me into the city because they didn’t want anybody to know they were hiding me there. And it wasn’t like pick up the telephone, “Mrs. Siebol come and get your daughter.” It didn’t work out that way. It wasn’t that way. But finally I got to be so sick and some homesick that they managed to let my father know and he brought up the courage to take a train (there weren’t many trains going anymore), he picked me up and took me back home. 

BLOOMFIELD: I remember as I went back, when I had to transfer, I saw the cattle cars and the flat beds with the German soldiers with all their guns on it. And now when I come home they have come up with the V2’s. They brought them in on flatbeds like 10 minutes away from my home.
Because of all the bunkers building, and the first rockets were pretty dangerous to shoot up and a lot of people got burned on account of it. So the Germans really needed slave labor, and of course they were looking for Jews. All along the same thing.         

So the first time this happened, I was reading a book by the front window and there was a bang bang on the window and I looked and there was this big German with his helmet, and now I am like seven and a half, maybe. And I got so scared and my mom said, “Go upstairs to your room.” And this German, they would block off a whole street, and they would go from house to house to house. And they started on top of the house. You were not allowed radios. My mom hid her jewelry in a dirty hankie in her apron. And then of course they looked for people between I believe 16 and 40, and Jews. So they went through the whole house, and I remember when he came the first time into my bedroom. I had nightmares for years. It was so scary having that big soldier go through my house. And then when he got downstairs, we didn’t have a basement, but we had one area that was about that deep in the kitchen floor. And instead of lifting it up he just put his rifle down three times and he looked at my mother and he said, “Well, if you are hiding somebody it sure isn’t living anymore.”         

And this happened one time. And it happened that this soldier who was about to step into our house, another soldier was going to go in the house right across from us, and this was a salesman, and of course he had nothing to sell anymore so he was home. And he said to the German soldier, real cheerful, he said, “Come on in and have a cup of coffee,” just as my mom was going to let [the] German in, well she wasn’t going to let them in, they busted in. And he said, “And get your buddy from across the street too.” My mom go so mad, she said, “Here I have no food to feed my children and this guy is going to give the German soldiers coffee?” And he entertained them and we could hear them and he was laughing and they were carrying on. And finally when they got outside he looked at his watch and he said, “Well we might as well go for lunch it’s already so late.”          

So when the street was all quiet, I could see him from my bedroom window. Often they had already picked up Jews or young people, they were in the street with some German soldiers around it. When that was all gone, the neighbor came to my house, and he said “Mrs. Siebol.” My mom was so mad at him, and he said, “I want you to know something.” He said. “I gave those soldiers my last little bit of coffee because my son and six other young guys were in the chicken coop just three doors down from you.” 

So those kind of things happened all the time. Like Shell Oil got the word through that they had potatoes for us. No way did we, at that stage anymore, dare carry potatoes in the house, they’d kill you. We even ate our own little rabbit. There were no more cats and dogs around. There were no more trees around because the Germans took all of our coal. We were so cold. And the potatoes, my mom and I went up to the attic and we took down the baby carriage, and now my baby brother who was born just before the war, we put him in there and then when we got to where the potatoes were, we took everything out, put the potatoes in the bottom, and then put everything back, and my little brother on top. That’s how we got the potatoes back in the house.        

So then Clausha left again, and this time he went to a farm that was so close to the German border and it was a bid over the beautiful daughter. So the German officers used it as a bed and breakfast. And there were parties going on. Here the boy lived from age eight ‘til around eleven, partying with the German soldiers every night. And then in the barn they had hidden young men, maybe they were resistance. Because they had him run errands. So needless to say my brother never really got straightened out very well, after, actually ever.        

The third time that I was sent away, I went up North again. This time to the city of Heerenveen. And my dad had finally found me a pair of shoes. A boy had grown them out, the toes had been cut out. And a seamstress came and they sewed me a new coat out of my mothers’ coat with a flannel sheet in between so I had three layers. I would be really warm that way. And my dad took me, late afternoon, and I got to this bus, like a short school bus, and there were one man I knew and about 12 young kids. I think maybe I was the smallest one. And three what looked like German soldiers. And I was so afraid of German soldiers by that time.        

Well there was another incident before this. My dad was in the underground and he had me send messages to certain people a couple times. And one time on my way home, I had to be home before 8:00 because they would shoot – Germans always changed rules, every time – no more light at this time, no more heat, no more this, no more that. And this time anybody who was on the street after 8:00 would be shot. And this was about the third time I did this message thing for my dad. And as I got to the underpass there were two German soldiers and they had picked up two Jews or whatever; it looked like men from a distance for me. And they thought it would be a good place to break loose. And instead they didn’t get away with it so they was pushed up against the wall and they were killed. And now I have to go underneath there. And I am like eight and a half going on nine, and I was so afraid to go, so I thought, “Well I am going to turn around a take the long way home.” So I ran and ran and ran and I thought, “Oh I hope I am going to make it before 8:00.” And as I got real close home, this big school, what was only two blocks away from the house, was made into barracks for German soldiers. So there they were again with their rifles and their helmets, and I said to Daddy, “I can’t do this anymore.” So that’s when my dad again found me another place. But this time there was no way anymore for him to check it out, to see where I was going. He had to just take it, word by mouth.        

So I went on this bus, and I fell asleep on the back of the bus up against a little girl. And no sooner the bus started, which was really a nice experience. I found out that the German soliders weren’t German soliders. They were Dutchmen in German uniforms. So after a couple of hours I had fallen asleep. I heard this awful noise. And the man, the one man I knew was yelling at us, “Get out of the bus! Get out of the bus and come back when it is safe. RUN!” And he was bleeding. He had his ear in his hand; it was just really messy. So I saw that one of the soldiers was really wounded, so I followed him I said, “Come on.” And I started ringing a doorbell. The first one [unclear words]. And by about the fourth or fifth house, a woman (it was all dark there) quickly opened the door, pulled us in, and then locked the door, and then put the guy on the chair, and then put a light over him. And she worked on him for a long time and she said, “OK, I think I got you fixed up well enough that you can go to the hospital and finish it off.” And then she said to me, “Come under the light.” And here my new coat was full of holes but I didn’t have a scratch on me. Those three layers had really saved me. And we found out later that the allies – that was another thing, we had where I lived in The Hague, we were right on the track of the air planes coming from England and shooting, bombing Germany. And then another thing was every once in a while, they had orders from England to bomb one of our buildings. And they weren’t always correct, so I spent many hours underneath the stairway hoping to be, you know, safe. My dad always said if the house gets bombed maybe the stairway will stay up.         

So, all those things have happened and this is why our bus got bombed. They thought we were Germans. So as I got back to the bus, I found out that the little girl that slept right up against me, she got killed, and there were only seven kids left. So we were placed in a house for the night. We got hot tea, a slice of bread, and cheese. I’ll never forget that one.        

And then sometime later, they found us another little bus, and now we all have duty to sit by the window and watch and see if any airplanes thought we would be Germans and were going to be bombed or shot again. And we finally made it up north and this time I was placed in an older couple’s house. And now you must understand, we have no more soap, no more shampoo. But at home with the white sheets, and special combs, and a white sink in the bathroom, my mom kept track of this every day so we had it under control. But now I’ve been on the road with other people. And I got there and of course again I had a head full of lice. And the woman said to me, “Here is a towel and a bottle of vinegar. Go take care of that lice.” Thank goodness my room was on the front of the house and it had running water. The house had no more heat and no more hot water, but at least I had a sink and running water in my room. And soon I found out that this man was just, he was no good. So every morning, the first couple of weeks, I had school. But that school was made into a hospital for wounded German soldiers. And from there I would go to the soup kitchen every morning. Every morning I got my bowl of watery soup. And that of course wasn’t adequate. And then so I would learn to dig tulip bulbs, or I would go out of the little city, go into the field and find little turnips or a potato or a little wheat or something. And then I would go home as late as I could and quickly lock myself into the bedroom. There was no way I could call home or run away. I didn’t have a penny or nothing. 

BLOOMFIELD: But finally the day came that I heard rumbling at night, so I knew there were soldiers coming. And then I was told I was not allowed to leave my room. And I stayed in that room for three days. And I saw, first I saw all the officers leave, German officers go to the highway, back to Germany. Then I saw all the soldiers leave, and leave it to Hitler. All the Hitlerjugend kids [Hitler youth] on stolen bicycles left, and then finally I couldn’t stand it any longer, I said, “Now I know there are soldiers here and I’ve got to see where they are.” So I found out where they were, and the first ones where I was were English. And they were really on the ball, building, rebuilding the bridges that were blown up. And they didn’t have much extra, so I would stand by the concert hall at night where they had their kitchen, and they would just come out and wash out their plate, put them back on their belt, and on they went. Then the Canadians came, then the bars opened up. I had, you have no idea whether there are holidays or if you have a birthday, you just survived from day to day. But I do know that I must have just turned ten years old because I was 10 in April and the war was over in May. So this must have happened sometime May, June, somewhere in there. And I checked out the bars, I figured maybe there’s food there. So then the Americans came and I did the same thing. And sure enough, I must have been quite a site, freckles, filthy hair, holes in my coat, my toes cut out of my shoes. But sure enough one American soldier took me; he didn’t just pass me his left overs. No he took me into the mess hall, made me two slices of bread with butter and strawberry jam. It was wonderful. 

Then, shortly after that I was told to be at a certain place and there would be a truck to take me home. Thank goodness my dad had taught me not to ever panic or be scared. I got to that truck, and it was a flatbed truck. And who was there? My little brother, five years old. Somehow my dad had managed to get him out of the city, and I had no idea he was in the same little city as I was. So we were dropped off at the post office, the main post office; we got our hair sprayed with DDT, and told us not to wash it for three days. Didn’t have a dime on me, not a bottle of water. But I was taught not to be afraid, I would find my way home, which I did. And of course the first thing I did was go upstairs, look for toys. No toys. Everything was gone. So I ran downstairs, looking for my scooter. No scooter. Well of course at first you don’t know if you house is standing up, if your parents are still alive, if you can find your house back to begin with. Then no toys, then no scooter. So I felt, that’s when I blew it at my dad. I said, “You thought I was dead; you thought I was never going to come home,” and I was pretty sad. And he said, “No. No, no. While you were gone you had a little baby sister and I found somebody who had food. But he wanted (I had to keep her alive) but he wanted your toys.” So he said, “That’s why you don’t have toys.” So that gradually was the end of the war. It took a long time before everything started rolling again, but that was quite a bad time for a little girl. 

BLOOMFIELD: My mom’s youngest brother I never knew until the last year. He moved into our house. And he came in dressed as a nun. And then he stayed for the night and he spread out his clothes because you never knew when the Germans were coming to check you out. And then the next day, he nicely got dressed again.        

Another thing I did, my brother quickly taught me, before we left the first time – of course he was send away twice, I was send away three times – that I could sneak out on my blue scooter with him and go see Grandma. So the first time I did this, there was still a little candy. The second time I did this there were just hugs. But then quite a bit later on in the war I did it again. I sneaked out again and went up to see them. And this time it looked like a dirty little old warehouse. The lace curtains were gone and Grandma quietly took me in, and Grandpa looked so sick and old by that time. And then the roof, the ceiling came, part of the ceiling came down like little steps and down came my father’s younger brother. He lived up in the attic for three years. Three whole years, yes. But he made it. 

Interviewer: Your father was extremely… 
Another Man: Well he worked for Shell, and he was selling oil to the Germans, so he knew what was going on. 

Interviewer: But I mean he prepared you, you know, amazingly well, for conisdering that time. 
Other man: The other part of this that you have to understand, it took her a couple of years to reconnect with her father, but she never reconnected with her mother. Because you’ve got to remember, they never told the children anything. So they kept them in the dark because if they got caught… 

Interviewer: Yeah, they talk, they’re kids. 
Other man: They don’t know, well they don’t know, yeah, they don’t anything. 

Interviewer: Well that’s what I am saying, they didn’t know, because if they did know they’re going to tell. 
BLOOMFIELD: Then those darn rockets. Once they started going up, 10 minutes away from our house, my dad had to teach us, you know, you gotta watch ‘em, because – [interrupted by a man] – 

Other man: Oh, you didn’t tell them the story about the school. 
BLOOMFIELD: One time they went up and I had just left the school and I thought, “Oh I better run back and see.” There wasn’t a window left in our school, but they had gone just a little bit further and had fallen down on a boys orphanage. That was just so sad, we stood there. You have to remember there were, we went to school but the only thing we had was the books that they had. There was no more paper, no more pens, no more nothing. My mom tried to keep us going to school as much as possible. 

Other man: And the other thing about the mill. You didn’t talk about the mill that your father had up in the attic. 
BLOOMFILED: Yeah, my dad he acquired a little mill. And first, he did it electric. But then, typical like the Nazis, you were not allowed so much, you were only allowed so much electricity. And so we had thought we called the guy at the NSB (we called him the Gestapo guy). We were afraid, my mother was afraid that they would catch us that we were using more electricity than we were allowed. And wanted, he maybe wondered what on earth we were doing. Because it wasn’t just us using the mill. My mom, she had stored up grains and soap and you name it, whatever she could before the war started. But sometimes people would come down, and say, “Mr. Siebol can I use your mill?” So our electricity bill went over. Then we had to get some guy who knew how to work it, but it got to be too tricky, so back it went to that. But then my dad, if you see pictures of how old he looked, and his ulcers were getting so bad. He biked, one time he biked, one day up and one day back for maybe six or eight ounces of cheese. And the bicycle had no tires, otherwise the Germans would have already taken it. He had wood, he’d taken little strips of wood and put it around them. 

Other man: The rims?
BLOOMFIELD: Yes. What that man did is unbelievable, keeping us alive. 

Other man: Why don’t we bring out the story board and let them see the story board?
BLOOMFIELD: Ok. [describing photos]
And this is the dike, this is the way I came back from up North. 
That’s kindergarten.
I think that is at least first grade.
Father was born and raised. And this is kind of like the street, but those houses are fancier and bigger. 

Interviewer: Is your mom and dad, is it a passport is that what that is? [Interviewer talks over Anneke trying to answer]
BLOOMFIELD: No you had to carry a special ID card. And you had to carry it, I believe you had to be 10. And there were no ifs and buts, if you didn’t carry it on you, you were in…
This here was our townhouse, the three story house. And this is how the street was, you see. You couldn’t get out. Once they closed each end off, there was no way out.

Interviewer: Looks like Queens.
BLOOMFIELD: And then this is the house where I stayed, where the last house, where the last house, where the man was, you know, not nice. This is something I show the kids. The last two years of the war, for a family of six, we could get a loaf of bread which was this size. Per family, six, one a week. 
Those are the shoes, you know, so you have the idea what kind of shoes he found me. This, he took a strip of wood, from the floor in the attic, and he cut it to fit my feet, you know the size of my feet. And then he took ribbons and glued them on. Now ’43 and ’44 were the two coldest winters in Europe, and that’s what I wore in the winter, until he finally managed to get me those.         

I am sure they did a lot of trading. What people wanted was fine china, jewelry, and linens. And my mom didn’t have a whole lot of jewelry. And the fine china she hung on to. But I am sure she lost a lot of linens. She had a lot of it when she got married, a lot. 

These are food coupons. And a potato and a turnip or something, I show them to the kids, you know. And then I have some wheat, wheat sticks, so they can identify, show them how I survived. The last two years of the war I never gained an ounce or grew an inch. 

The house my grandfather lived in, they had no plumbing until just before the war. I have seen them one time, must have been one time that I sneaked over. They had those little boats come in, and the guy wore a big leather apron over his shoulder. And they would carry a clean port-a-potty up and then bring the dirty one down, put it on the boat. Like the eves here, well those neighbors here they were Swiss and French, and they allowed my dad to cut a hole. So they could scoot back and forth. And that’s when my mom’s youngest brother, and maybe my dad did too, because for some reason or another, my dad was never around when the Germans came. As a kid you don’t realize that, you know. Oh daddy wasn’t home? Hmm. 

And you can imagine, you think I had it bad. Can you imagine how my father felt? Having four kids. He didn’t know how they were doing. The last place he couldn’t come and check, check me out or anything. And then getting a little baby at the end of it?
They got away with the whole plan, yes. 

Interviewer: But you never got with your mom again though?
BLOOMFIELD: No, we were never close. She was a good mother, you know, she was a good mother. She really was. She always had dinner ready, always had the house clean, she always made sure we did our homework. But… nope.