August Smoorenburg

Kepler: We’d like to begin by you telling us your full name and spelling, the date and the place of your birth.
SMOORENBURG: OK. My name is August Frank Smoorenburg. I was born October 14, 1921. I grew up in Amsterdam, about a mile and a half north of where Anne Frank was living on the Prinsengracht. However, I just grew up there. After I was four years old, we moved to [Wessen?], a city in the center of Holland. From there we went to Heemstede, which is south of Haarlem, pretty close to the west coast of Holland.

Kepler: Can you spell those places?
SMOORENBURG: OK. Bilthoven [spells out]. Where I mainly grew up was Heemstede [spells out]. It is north of all the tulip fields. When I went to school there, I was one of eight kids. I’ve got one brother above me and six below me. We all went to private schools located in Heemstede by a Catholic religious organization, who were of the Johannes Baptist La Salle. They had two white panels here where you could distinguish [referring to the neckwear worn by the De La Salle Brothers]. Brothers who didn’t make the grade to get to priesthood. Anyhow, I grew up mainly there. We were living on Jacob de Witt Street. It was quite a big house.

Kepler: Is that the street?
SMOORENBURG: That’s the street.

Kepler: Can you spell the street’s name?
SMOORENBURG: Jacob de Witt Street.

Kepler: How old were you when you . . .?
SMOORENBURG: I remember the first years we played with the metal hoops with a ring on it, other small kids’ toys — top, you call it here. Once I went to school, in the beginning I didn’t do too good, but later on I found out that I’d better study to get anywhere, mainly because in Holland, even in elementary school you have to take three languages. That includes Dutch. You can take French or German as the second and third language. You can choose also, for example, French and Spanish as a second and third language. However, once you get to high school, then you have to stick with those three. They leave you up to that point.

So in high school, I took German and French, and that was because I thought at that time that if I had to go to a country where they [where they] speak English, I had to go across the canal to England. And it was a lot easier for me to go to France or Germany; I could do that by bike. So that’s the reason why I took that. Then after two years I switched French to English because, you never know, maybe I get to a country where they later on speak English. We had some friends living in the neighborhood who went to the same school, but then we come to May 10, 1940.

Kepler: Can I stop you for one minute? Can I ask you a little bit about your family before we get to that point? You said there were eight in the family?
SMOORENBURG: Eight children.

Kepler: All boys?
SMOORENBURG: No, not all boys. There were five boys and three girls. The oldest one was Hank, then Gus (me), then Frank, and Gerard, then Liz, then Anthony, and then Yvonne. That was the whole family besides my parents. My dad had been all his life in the printing sales business, so after I finished high school I wanted to go the same direction. I started in a print shop in 1949, and that is of course different in Holland again. You can’t have your chance to choose whatever you want to do, so you go to, for example, a carpenter, and you have to stay there for a half year in that business. If you don’t like it, then you can still get out. I chose the printing field. So after that half year I still liked it, and I said I wanted to stick with it. Then you have to sign up for four years by that particular printer. That four years you have to go daily to school, except for Saturdays and Sundays, in the afternoons from three until six. From the AM and up to 6:00 PM you have to work at that printing plant.

Kepler: Now what year was this when you started?
SMOORENBURG: That was in 1937 when I started. If you count three more years, I really graduated in May 1940. However, once the war was there, there was no more paper. But let’s back up. When I went to school, then we come to May 10, 1940. So I was ready to go back to work at that plant where I had to go in the morning. At 6:30 AM, all of a sudden I woke up to a strange kind of noise, a kind of a racket. Shooting was going on. I heard planes going. My bedroom was on the second floor, so I went to the window and I saw people standing down on the sidewalk under a lantern — because it was still dark — in their pajamas. I said, “Now what is this?” So I dressed myself, went downstairs, went outside, to see if maybe they know more.

So I asked the people. They didn’t know more either, but some thought we were in some kind of a war because those planes — when we were talking about it, they said, “Let me find out from the radio.” Usually at 7:00 AM we had a radio newscast. It was still was quarter to seven. When I went back home from across the street where the people were standing in their pajamas, all of a sudden, a plane came right over the treetops and the house, “tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.” Then I knew that was the Führer. It was not what they call “maneuvers,” a French word. So I went inside. My dad in the meantime was awake too. He was listening to the radio, so I asked him, “What’s going on?” He said, “The only thing I recognize is military messages.” I said, “What kind of military messages?” He said, “This unit has to report in a particular city, Rotterdam. Another unit has to report to [Susterbercht?]. That is a town in the center of Holland, a military airfield. So I suppose we have some kind of war going on.” That was between quarter to seven and 7:00 AM. At 7:00 we usually have a newscast, but once it came to 7:00, there was nothing there. So about five minutes past seven, they came with a message that we have to try to get in contact with the eastern towns like [Neimeche?] and Arnum, but all the telephone lines are cut, so we cannot tell you what is going on.

Well, I had to go to work at 8:00 AM, so at 7:30 I went to work and I saw all the people standing outside too. They thought, too, that we had a war going on, but nobody knew really what happened. So work went on that day, but nobody was really interested in doing anything because we didn’t know at that moment that if the Germans would come, what kind of money would we have? Would they institute German money? Is the Dutch money anything worth? So at 5:00 PM we went home. There my dad said, “Yes, we have a war going on because the Germans are on the [Hederbare?].” That is in the center of Holland.

The first thing that they did, the Dutch government, they said that all the people on May 10 had to move out of the lower areas. I can come later to a map and show you what the lower areas are, but this was roughly about the center of Holland. So they moved out within six, seven hours. The same evening, they flooded all the areas that were below sea level. Then when the Germans come with the first line of defense, they couldn’t get any further because most of the roads were 12 feet under water. Then they stopped them right there. What they did then was . . .

Kepler: Excuse me. Who did the flooding, the Germans or the Dutch?
SMOORENBURG: No, the Dutch. To keep the Germans away from The Hague, which was the government seat, and Amsterdam, which was one of the main cities on the west side of Holland. They didn’t want them to get to that point, so they flooded the roads so the Germans could not reach it. However, what they did once they were stopped, they threw thousands and thousands of paratroopers in the parts of the counties of north Holland and south Holland, the two counties on the west coast where the main seat is. But when they came in Rotterdam, they came in a wasp’s nest from Dutch resistance, like the navy, the main headquarters, and they all had to report there, so they had a really hard time. Then we picked them all up there, the Germans. So the Germans found out that they went too slow; they couldn’t get Rotterdam, so then they bombed Rotterdam, and we lost thousands of Dutch civilians there.

So what the Dutch did, the next morning, on May the 11th, they put Dutch military beyond the waterline because they put those paratroopers down. The Dutch government put on all the bridges Dutch military people, so anyone who would cross the bridge — and a lot of Holland is known for having bridges and water — anyone who passed the bridge would have to say to him [Haveninge?]. Now there’s no language in Europe or not even in the United States who can say Haveninge like we do. If he could not pronounce Haveninge, then they had to pick him up and brought him in schools that were reserved for people who could not pronounce it. But by the same token, we had a neighbor who was married to a Dutch lady. He was picked up, but they were living 15 years in Holland. I haven’t heard after that how they got loose again. This was the second day.

The third day we heard messages from England now because in the meantime, the Germans had — Hefferson one and Hefferson two were two radio stations what they took. TV wasn’t there yet. So we didn’t get only messages from the German propaganda, though we didn’t believe it anyhow because they said it’s all they were in Belgium there and they were in French there. Because in the meantime when they tried to conquer Holland, they also invaded France and Belgium. So the only messages we got from the Germans were how big progress they made on their way to Paris. So then we had to resort to the real news, which had to come from England. At that time we had two radios.

After five days, Holland had to give up, and then you saw all kinds of German uniforms in town. In the meantime, there was not really much going on. We could maintain our money. Within four months they put something new in. That was in July or August. We had to have food stamps. Really there was food enough, but we figured that there must be some hoax to that. So what I did is, anyone between the ages of 17 and 35, they had to go to Germany to make more military guys free for the front in France or wherever. We got the food stamps for the whole family for quite a while.

The only thing to get the whole family settled was for me and my brother Frank to go to Germany. That was only what they told us, for three months to help on the harvest. I had to go. They gave us I think something like 50 gilders — that’s money — and a transport to a little town called [Harvesbeck?] that is pretty close to Muenster [spells out]. That is in Westphal in Germany. When I came on with the train in Muenster, there was a farmer with a horse and a buggy, and he picked me up.

Kepler: Were you with your brother?
SMOORENBURG: Yes, I was with my brother. However, he went to a different farmer.

Kepler: Was he the oldest?
SMOORENBURG: No, he came under me.

Kepler: What about the oldest one?
SMOORENBURG: The oldest one, he went about three months later to Germany, and he was connected with a Dutch outfit who was forced to work in [Ausnebruck?], also a city close to the Dutch border but further north than Muenster. But we were first. My dad was still at home.

Kepler: He didn’t have to go?
SMOORENBURG: No, he was older than 35 at that time. So what I had to do is — they had sugar beets and chop with some kind of device, chop the leaves off the sugar beets for acres and acres. They taught me all kinds of farmer stuff, even riding horses. That was kind of fun. In that particular farm, there were three other guys. One guy out of Serbia, one French prisoner of war, and the third one, he was from Poland. He knew farming, and he was telling us basically how to do it. And then me.

At nights, after they plowed the fields or whatever, or mowed the fields from the weeds, we had to bring the horses, say a mile away where there was grass, so the horses at night could stay there. The next morning, to pick the horses up again. But at nights, there were three girls. This is interesting. Three girls were there, too, and they had to work also in that farm. It was quite a big farm. I don’t know how many hundreds of acres. Those girls were in the what they called a [bunddosmale?], a female Hitler unit. They cooked and did the wash and did all the kind of stuff necessary for those so-called forced labor people to keep them alive.

Kepler: Where did you sleep?
SMOORENBURG: There were by-buildings. The farmhouse was in the middle. There were two buildings on the side, one where they kept hay and all that kind of stuff. But the other building, they had upstairs maybe 15 or 20 separate rooms of maybe 12×15 feet with a bed and everything in it. At nights we could sleep there after we ate. In the morning at 6:00 AM, they knocked on the door and we had to go back to work. However, this just lasted about three months. After those three months, I had to go back to Holland. I had a piece of paper that I was there and I could stay in Holland. Every other month you could claim your food stamps again. So from then on I was living there.

About a half year after that, a couple of boys from the underground — I didn’t know at that time — they asked me to help them out. I said, “What are you doing?” These two guys from the underground, they were ripping up all the signs. When the Germans have their directions for where to go for their head guy — what do you call him, [ortz?]? Commander? There were no mayors anymore. After the war, the mayors had no more say-so, so they put a German officer in place of the mayor. When they nailed all kinds of signs on the outside of town for the directions, like hospital or mayor, then we ripped up those signs and nailed them somewhere else. You nailed them to telephone poles, trees, wherever. At nights we went with a couple of boys, ripped off those signs, put them elsewhere, so if they came into town and tried to find the mayor, they couldn’t find it there, and [inaudible word] out of town.

So then some more guys said, “Gus, can you help us again?” I said, “Sure. What do you want me to do?” He said, “You got a whole box of nails, nails about that long. Cut the heads off and grind points on there. Once you got them [inaudible] steady, bend them about 100 degrees. So that’s what we did. And then he welded them together. And these are the things that we made. I would say hundreds, boxes and boxes full. Anytime those fall on the road, there’s always a point up, so when we knew when there was some transports from the Germans from all kinds of movements, then we put them off the bridge, on the road, and then they were standing on the side of the road because of those pins.

So that was really my introduction to the group of what was called the underground. It was not really organized, but we got in the meantime, from England, those tricks to do. Two of our group, one was a Catholic priest, a schoolteacher by the name of [Father?] Joseph. And Case Moret, he was one of our group. His father had a Chevrolet dealership in the town [Hankseder?]. Together they soldered together a short-wave radio, so now we could contact England. England gave us all kinds of messages to do, so we wanted to tell them what we were doing. I can go later to how we came to those messages.

Kepler: Did you feel that you were in any danger?
SMOORENBURG: Personally, not at this moment. Later on, yes. When I go through it.

Kepler: At this time, what did you think about what you were doing?
SMOORENBURG: At the time, I would say bravery. The Germans occupied Holland, and we wanted to get them out, and any time you can do something to pester or aggravate them, those were our main objectives.

Kepler: Did your family know what you were doing?
SMOORENBURG: No, not really, because this was all hidden. At the end of 1942, after we did all those crazy things, like for example — I can show you later on in a drawing what we did. In 1942 the B-15s and B-17s came from England, right over Holland, to bomb Dusseldorf, Essen, where there was the Krupp manufacturing. [Wupitahl?], Duisburg, they were all cities what was German warfare. They flew in groups. British, Canadian, Australian, and American pilots flew over Holland and bombed the heck out of Germany. After that was going on for a month, the Germans put a searchlight, real big, about eight feet in diameter, and they put a cannon in a field about a quarter of a mile from where I was living. It was a wheat field with wheat about three to four feet tall.

One evening we saw a plane coming down. There was shooting going on, then a big bang. Boom! I looked up and saw kind of a flash and a lot of smoke, plumes of smoke. Then I saw that they had shot a plane down. You saw them flying in groups of five. The plane that was shot down was going in a small circle. It was in flames. It breaks apart. That’s the main thing that you see. However, once the plane is going almost straight down, then you see little white specks from the paratroopers who ejected out of the plane.

After three weeks, we saw at one time that they shot two planes down with one shot. Then I told Case Moret, a friend from the underground [inaudible]. I said, “We’ve got to do something about that. What about if we find a little boat?” There was a river with a side canal and a bunch of houses on there, and the side canal people had sailboats. So we were looking for a small boat to go across a 20-foot canal and go to the wheat field. Anyhow, he agreed to it.

So one evening we went there. We walked up to one of the houses across the fence to find a small boat because we couldn’t go with a 20-foot sailboat across the small canal. So we found kind of a dinghy. We untied it, and I had a hacksaw between my belt. We crossed the canal and I crawled through the wheat field, but all of a sudden we came to a path about two feet wide. It was trampled flat wheat. I knew that couldn’t be the end of the field, and so I looked left and right, and all of a sudden I saw in the dark. It was 7:00 PM. They established at 8:00 we had curfew, so we had to do it in the dark. It was in September or October. Dark at that time was around 5:00.

At 7:00 we got the dinghy, crossed the canal. Case, he was hauling that little boat on the shore, and I crawled through the wheat field and then I came to the path. I saw all of a sudden a light going up and down, a little faint light. It went up and down. I didn’t trust that. I thought there were no Germans there, but I figured it must be a German soldier. I couldn’t see that because it was about 30-40 feet away from me. I couldn’t see anything. He was sitting there, but I figured he was smoking a cigarette. I didn’t see the light anymore. I was still waiting, and I still didn’t see him, so he must have walked to the searchlight or the cannon. I can show you later how the situation was.

So I crossed that small path, and crawled and crawled until I found a cable about three-quarters to an inch in diameter, a black cable. I got the hacksaw, got the cable, and cut it. Now you have to understand, around 9:00 PM are those planes coming over, so we had plenty of time; however, we had to be at 8:00 home. When I came back it was already at least 7:30. I came by that little boat, and Case said, “Man, that took you long.” I said, “Yes, but there was a German soldier sitting there, and I couldn’t cross on the pathway.” “OK. Then let’s go.” So we tied that little boat back to the sailboat where we got it and went home.

Kepler: What was the original plan? What did you think you’d be able to do in the wheat field?
SMOORENBURG: Way in the beginning, the generator, a big diesel engine, they set it pretty close to the searchlight, and sometimes there were planes that came over. They kept the searchlight on. They shot at that searchlight, but they also killed the generator. Then we set those things about 30 feet apart, so now I knew I had room to go and cut the cable. At 9:00 PM when the planes came over, you could hear it. “Vo, vo, vo, vo.” He said, “OK, start the diesel engine.” Then they put the light on, but once the cable was cut, they had no light. So at least three or four days it took for them to find where the trouble was. They though first it was the engine, then they thought it was in the light. So for four days you didn’t have any shooting down the planes anymore.

Kepler: How did you feel about that?
SMOORENBURG: We felt great about that!

Kepler: Did you report back to the group what you had done?
SMOORENBURG: Yes. We said, “Hey! We accomplished it.”

Kepler: It was your idea?
SMOORENBURG: Yes, it was my idea. Once I saw those two planes coming down, I said, “This is hairy.” And I wanted to avoid that.

Kepler: Can you tell me a little bit more about the group? Was it more organized as it went?
SMOORENBURG: No, not at the beginning. When they asked me to put those pins together . . .

Kepler: Who were “they”?
SMOORENBURG: There were three boys, two out of my high school class. One was a neighbor boy. They later added on some more guys.

Kepler: Did you know them before?
SMOORENBURG: I knew about those two who were shot because I went to the same school with that priest. And I knew Case Moret. I knew half of it from the names. Now it had to be kept very secret. England told us, “Don’t go by your own name.” Give some kind of a fictitious name so that if some of the boys are caught, they really wouldn’t know my name. Of course, the four knew my name from school, but it was pretty safe to do that. But organized? No. Only the leaders from the group, the instigators. Ours was Case Moret at that time. He was the only one who could have contacts with other groups. Going by the size of Holland, I don’t know how many groups there were, but there must have been at least 800 groups, somewhat more.

Kepler: How many were in your group?
SMOORENBURG: Nine. England told us, “Don’t make the group any larger than ten.” Because if one of them gets caught, then the other ones would be in jeopardy, not 500 of them, but just eight or nine.

Kepler: Your sole purpose at that time was to get the Germans out?
SMOORENGURG: Aggravate them.

Kepler: To try to sabotage . . .
SMOORENBURG: I don’t think we could get them out because we didn’t have any firearms, and they had all the firearms you could [inaudible word]. We only could aggravate them. Like for example, I wasn’t being there, but the fact is that when Router was one of the big [inaudible] from Hitler, he came to visit [inaudible word]. He was the head guy from Holland, put in by Hitler. He [inaudible] in The Hague. When he drove back to Germany, he came through the city of Putten [spells out], and you from the Holocaust should have more information on that. But when the underground went a little bit too far there, when Router went in his open Mercedes back to Germany, he drove on an expressway to Putten and [inaudible] a hand grenade in to kill Router. They didn’t kill him, but what they did that same evening, they killed, I don’t know how many, but I suppose maybe 25 or 30% of all the menfolk from the city of Putten. They killed them outright. They shot them. So then we knew that we could not throw any hand grenades. Don’t go beyond that.

However, they told us to try to get pistols. That was then to keep the “Quislings,” the French called them, the sympathizers to the German cause. In Holland that was the NSB, Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging [National Socialist Movement], this group, whatever. But you could distinguish those guys; they had a special insignia that meant they belonged to the NSB. They told us, “D-Day will come,” and that’s what they told us already in 1942. Around 1944 we didn’t believe that anymore because they were telling us every day, “D-Day will come.” But we prepared that if it comes, we want to know who are the Quislings, the people who are pro-Nazi. “See that you get guns.”

It was prohibited in Holland to be in possession of any gun, no matter what gun, except for the military, the queen, and the royalty. They had specific areas where they could hunt once in a year, acres and acres. That was only in the specific forest. So how did we get guns? Well, one of our underground group, his nephew was working for the border patrol. They started smuggling guns into Holland. They were confiscated, so once in a while we got a gun.

One gun we had was — Case came to me one day. He said, “Gus, can you fix that gun? You have a vise and files and all kinds of equipment, a drill. Can you fix me the gun?” I said, “I’ll try.” I tried to take the gun apart the next day. I saw a broken part, so I manufactured a part that was pretty close to what it was before. On the gun is a slot where you cock the gun, about an inch long. For those nine-millimeter bullets to come through, you just keep on cocking. As long as you don’t pull the trigger, you keep on cocking, those bullets come out on the side. The bullets have to come from the magazine over into the chamber. I said, “Let me find out if it works.” What I did was file it and try it. But it didn’t work the first time. I took the gun apart again, filed it again a little further, and I tried it again. All of a sudden, “Bing!”

I had in my room about five windows three by three feet. I’m lucky because my dad would like that I kill some windows [?]. Besides, if I would tell him that I had those pistols in the house, God knows what would happen. When that bing bang came, I’m lucky. Self-consciously it felt like a mosquito bit me and it struck my fingers. And then I saw blood on my fingers. I said, “Oh my gosh, now what do I do?” I had on the desk where I was taking this thing apart a glass plate [inaudible]. I dropped the pistol on the glass plate and ran downstairs.

The Germans before that took all the bicycles. You could only have one bicycle, and I know my mother had the only bicycle still left. I had to go to a hospital. So I went downstairs, three flights down. I hoped for no objections, but then I saw my mother sitting in the kitchen cleaning vegetables. I said, “Mom, I need your bike for a minute.” She said, “Yes, but be careful now. Be home at 6:00 PM for supper.” I said, “OK. No problem.” I went on the bike like a wild guy to the nearest hospital, and that’s about three and a half to four miles away from the house.

While I was riding I thought, “Gus, stay on your bike. Stay vertical. Don’t fall over. Keep pedaling.” The next mile I thought, “What’s the doctor going to do now?” I figured he must have a really long tweezers to pull that bullet back out. I hoped the bullet went all the way through, but how would I know? I had a jacket on. I felt a real cold flopping against my chest, but it was open in the back side.

Once I got to the hospital, which was run by Catholic nuns, there was a glass window about four feet in diameter and a split sliding glass door. I was standing there and the nun shoved the door, “Can I help you?” I said, “Yes, I shot myself.” She said, “You shot yourself? Did the Germans do that?” “No,” I said, “I did it myself.” “How did you get so dumb?” she said. “OK, go through that door, and I’ll meet you outside and tell you where to go.” So I went to the door and then I met her. She said, “Go to the third door to your right. That is an emergency room.” So I walked up there. The only thing I was interested in was finding a mirror whether the bullet went all the way through. I thought he could just tape it up and I could go home and hide those — seven pistols at the time — hide those pistols so my parents wouldn’t know.

When I came in the emergency room, I luckily saw a mirror, so I took my jacket off and I turned around and it’s all bloody. I said, “Man, I got lucky. It went all the way through.” In the meantime, I saw a nurse coming through another door. She took a look at me, and maybe five or six seconds she came back with a doctor. The doctor comes up to me and said, “Breathe a couple times deep.” And I didn’t do it that deep because I didn’t want him to find out any bad things. I wanted to go home. He said, “No, deeper.” I tried to fake it again. He said, “No, deeper.” Then I had to breathe real deep.

He said, “Where are you living?” I said, “I live in Heemstede.” “You came by bike over here?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Oh! Well, if it hit your heart, you wouldn’t be here, and if it hit your lungs, they would have given up blood. Boy, you are lucky!” I didn’t feel a thing. Then he says, “What kind of a bullet was it?” I said, “A nine-millimeter brass bullet.” And I knew I made a mistake there. Because brass, usually if it gets wet, it gets green and gives infection. He said, “If you don’t get any infection and you don’t develop any fever, I’ll keep you for three days, and then I’ll let you go.”

So by the afternoon around 3:00 PM there came my mother in there. They wrapped me all up. I couldn’t understand it either. They [inaudible], and then they wrapped me up and gave me a sling. I didn’t feel a thing. Yet. When my mother came in the room upstairs, I had to lay in a bed, and that I even couldn’t understand. My mother said, “What do you have?” I said, “I shot through my arm.” “You shot through your arm?” she said. “With what?” I said, “I have to tell you, but there and there in a closet I ripped out a piece of wood, and I hid pistols all over on the third floor.” I said, “What you do now, once you come home, see that you get those pistols to Case Moret. He is the head guy in our group.”

So then in the meantime, when we were talking, she was looking. My jacket was hanging over. She was looking at the sleeve and couldn’t find anything. Then she looked at the other sleeve and couldn’t find anything. Finally she opened the jacket. It was all blood on the inside of the jacket. She said, “No, stinker, you didn’t shoot through your arm, you shot through your chest.” “Oh, well,” I said. “The doctor said he’s got to keep me here for three days for infection, and then he’ll let me go home.” They asked me all kinds of insurance information, but I didn’t know. She said finally after a half hour, “I’ve got to go downstairs and give all the insurance information, and we’ll go from there.”

The next day my dad came and I said, “What did you do with the guns?” He said, “I buried them all under the garage.” Now you have to understand that between the house and our single-car garage is about 50 feet, and that was our backyard. The garage had a concrete floor, so he dug a hole under the concrete floor and buried also the second radio that we had because we wanted to know from England what was going on. My parents did. I got other information via the underground, but I couldn’t tell that. So he got his information from Radio Free Europe, or as it was called then, Radio Orange. This Radio Orange, you have to understand, the clock was divided into four sequences. They gave us, for example, in English and in French and in Dutch and in Swedish. What they did is after they split the clock in four, in five minutes we get from England Radio Free Europe, or Radio Orange, first five minutes of general news and ten minutes all news from what the underground should do, what they receive some messages, all kinds of coded messages. Nothing was really direct for us. I have one of those coded messages here. Maybe at the end of the tape I can show you.

So I was afraid now. Although I bicycled in the daytime, I was really hidden and I didn’t have any food tickets. I was hidden. But when they saw me in the daytime on my bicycle going to the hospital, that maybe gives some trouble. When nothing happened, the underground, the other eight boys, didn’t show up for 14 days because they were afraid that they saw me on the daytime riding my bicycle. So they kept all quiet. But after 14 days nothing had happened. Let’s see what else.

Kepler: What did you tell your parents the guns were for?
SMOORENBURG: They knew. We had a special day, what we called — we were promised D-Day. The Dutch should that day keep people sympathetic to the Germans and hold them at bay. Don’t shoot them, but hold them at bay. That particular day was called [Baljazar?] X, like an X-Day. Those guns were meant for that, not to shoot anybody but just to hold them at bay, that they don’t go anywhere until Dutch military could take over.

Kepler: So your parents understood that was what they were for.
SMOORENBURG: Yes, they understood then that it was for the good cause.

Kepler: So they knew then that you were in the underground?
SMOORENBURG: Then they knew that I was in the underground, right.

Kepler: Can I just go back a little, back to the late ’30s even? In Holland, what were you hearing about Hitler and what was going on in Germany?
SMOORENBURG: What I recall, that was in 1933. There were three guys: Hindenburg was 84 years old at the time, and he couldn’t really do the job because Kaiser Wilhelm he [knew where to took over?]. Three guys — von Papa, Streicher, and Hitler — all three wanted to get elected. In the papers it was said that von Papa was really the guy who should be the head guy of Germany.

However, in the meantime, Hitler put an organization in to get as many people with him, mainly from Austria where he came from, so he really got more and more votes. I have somewhere a list from [Doug Koo?], in five years a million and a half or two million people. Those were mainly for Hitler to get elected. So with a dirty trick, Hitler got Streicher out. Now it was only Hitler and von Papa. Von Papa was a guy who had really the main votes, but when it came close to election, von Papa wanted to make an agreement with Hitler that von Papa would be the head guy and Hitler would be his helper. Hitler didn’t go for that. In the final analysis, after the vote came, I think it was 1933 or 1932, then Hitler came to power.

Kepler: What did the Dutch people, how did they feel about that?
SMOORENBURG: We saw what was going on, but we were not concerned. Mainly we weren’t concerned because in the First World War we were neutral, and we thought we can be neutral again. We just don’t take any sides. But we knew that Hitler’s war machine got bigger and bigger. We knew that. But we had no idea how big. We just had no idea. Once they started building the Maginot Line and the Siegfried Line that is between French borders, Germany and the southwest of France, once they started building that, they built big metal triangles for tanks and the tank falls [there were tank traps on the line]. We didn’t trust it at all. We wanted to still be neutral, but May 10, 1940, Hitler just came into the country.

Kepler: Was that a surprise?
SMOORENBURG: That was a very big surprise.

Kepler: People really were not prepared?
SMOORENBURG: In one of my former speeches with the Anne Frank exhibit, one of the people asked, “Did they ever declare war?” I said, “No, he just came in overnight.”

Kepler: And it took five days?
SMOORENBURG: For Holland it took five days. For Belgium it took seven days. But France took a month and a half before they . . .

Kepler: At what point in all of this did you become aware of what Hitler was saying about the Jews?
SMOORENBURG: To be honest, he didn’t like Jews. Something sounds to me because they were people who were sucking the so-called welfare system. They didn’t produce; they were just living in the ghettos. And he didn’t like the Jews because most of the German newspapers were in the hands of Jewish people, and they were before and during that election against Hitler. That’s where it really started, that Hitler got against the Jews. But it wasn’t really that bad yet. That started in 1942.

Kepler: Did you hear about that?
SMOORENBURG: No, I saw about it. The first time I saw about it, all of a sudden people came on with those yellow stars on. I said, “Hey, what is that for?” We didn’t know; there was no newspaper anymore. But all of a sudden we saw that Jews had to wear stars.

Kepler: Did you have any contact, your family, with other Jewish families?
SMOORENBURG: Yes, we had in our street a family, their name was Levi, an old lady [inaudible] and a gentleman. By some kind of a crazy thing, they left in 1942. A neighbor told us that they elected — I just say what they say — they elected to go to Poland because the Jews could live in Poland without the star and without any problems. That’s what I was told. Whether that’s the truth, I don’t know. Later on, in 1942, we found out that all of a sudden Jews were hidden. Two nieces were hiding Jews in Amsterdam.

Kepler: Two of your nieces?
SMOORENBURG: Two of my nieces and a nephew. My nephew, he sometimes, how to tell it? During the war, it’s strange, but we also had contact with German officers who were sympathetic to the Dutch cause, anti-Hitler. In our street there was a lady. She was befriended with a German who was anti-Nazi and pro-Holland — he got pro-Holland because of her. He told her beforehand, “Thursday, they’re going to give you a razzia [roundup]. Now a razzia is when all of a sudden the Germans come in with 20-30 trucks and block off a whole city block and search all the houses for people who are illegal in Holland, like me, or Jews.

But that was in 1942. This was also going on in Amsterdam. In 1943 I heard that one niece was caught for hiding Jews. She was caught in Amsterdam and they put her in Ravensbruck, not really a specific Jewish camp, but for Dutch or resistance fighters. Not particularly for Jews, but Jews were also there. I heard right after the war that she died there. The other niece, who was also living in Amsterdam, she died also in a concentration camp because of hiding Jews. My nephew, he was transporting Jews. He took the signs off between [Mettle?] and [Helferson?]. He rode a train. They grabbed him because they found out that he was in the underground. They got his name. He was known for hiding Jews. Then they shot him right in the train while the train was running.

Kepler: How were they related to you, these nieces and nephew?
SMOORENBURG: My nephew is a son of my uncle, my brother’s brother, and the two nieces also, brother from my father was one, and another brother of my father. My father was also one of eight, so we had . . .

Kepler: So were they actually cousins?
SMOORENBURG: Are they cousins? What do you call them? I’m not that familiar.

Kepler: Father’s brother’s children. In this country, it’s your cousin. Your father’s nephew and niece. Because I was thinking you only had one older brother.
SMOORENBURG: Yes. My uncle’s kids.

Kepler: Did anyone else in your family participate in the underground or hide Jews?
SMOORENBURG: No, not really. What they did also, they pestered the Germans. Particularly at the end of the war, there was no food anymore. What they did was cut the trees from the streets. You had a little can. You put little pieces of wood in there to cook because there was no gas, no electricity, nothing anymore. They had to cook. This was what my sister did, Liz — lives in Louisiana now. My brothers below Liz, they were really too young.

Kepler: Was your family religious Catholic?
SMOORENBURG: We were raised Catholic, but I wouldn’t say that we were really that religious. We went at Christmas or Easter to church and sometimes in between. My mother was really; she was more religious than my dad was. But my main upbringing, I went to private Catholic schools.

Kepler: Were they involved in any political causes before the Germans came in?
SMOORENBURG: No, they were not affiliated with any — it was completely different in Holland. They don’t have two groups; they have 12 groups there. Like Republicans and Democrats, but they have the Labor Party. It’s completely different there. We choose mainly the best guy. You don’t have to be affiliated. You say, “Hey, that’s just like a guy I like.” That’s the way we elect there. Could I take a little drink somewhere? I feel like I’m getting hoarse.

Kepler: Do you want to stop for a minute? [Pause.] Why I was asking was I was wondering how your conscience developed in terms of serving in the underground.
SMOORENBURG: Mainly they were anti-Hitler too; 80-85% was anti-Hitler. We knew that, and they would know there were people. They needed all the people. What England told us also is that since we knew where Jews were hidden and we had to move them sometimes — because if we know that the Nazis were coming, we moved them to another place outside that circle where the Germans would find them.

We brought food. Even my dad, for example, he went out with the horse and buggy and went to the farmers and got food. Then in 1943, the farmers didn’t take any money anymore, because we knew that after D-Day we had no idea what kind of money we needed then. So then you had to go with gold rings and watches. He took bed sheets and all that kind of stuff. They didn’t want money anymore.

Kepler: What was the fantasy of what D-Day was going to be?
SMOORENBURG: The fantasy was that we expected nothing but paratroopers all over the place. We knew that they would come from England and invade, or Holland or Belgium or we had no idea where. However, they told us via message from England, and that was already a year before D-Day, they told us, “Wait for the message that we tell you, ‘The dice falls on the carpet.’” And that is the message that we should do more than what we have been doing all the time. That was the only thing that was told to us.

Right at D-Day I was caught again. On D-Day in the daytime, I was in [Dortmund?], so I didn’t hear the message, “The dice fell on the carpet.” It was to come later. They blew up the munitions depots, and they had to save the bridges. The Germans wanted to blow the bridges, so they had to try to get the Germans off the bridges because England told us that we need the bridges.

Kepler: The other question I have is, what about the Dutch sympathizers? Were there large demonstrations in the streets? Pro-Hitler?
SMOORENBURG: That was before the war. Yes, they did. After the war they didn’t do that no more. Maybe they were satisfied that they were there. But I have never seen any groups anymore after the war.

Kepler: So what happened to you and the bullet in the hospital?
SMOORENBURG: After three days they let me go. I didn’t have any fever and infection.

Kepler: And you were OK?
SMOORENBURG: I was OK after three days, so he let me go.

Kepler: Then what happened? What did you do then?
SMOORENBURG: I stayed home, but the underground kept away from me because they were afraid that they would have seen me riding my bike to the hospital. If one of those German sympathizers, “Hey, there’s a guy” — what was I? 22 years old. That could be dangerous. So they didn’t even come close to where I was living. But after three weeks or a month they came back again, said, “It must be safe.”

Kepler: What did the group do then after three or four weeks?
SMOORENBURG: The group come back together making those things again, did more crazy things. For example, one time one of the guys said, “Hey, Gus, let’s go to town and find out what we can make a stink.” I said, “OK.” This was around 6:30 PM. We walked to town. There was really not much going on, so after half an hour, I said, “Let’s go home.” But then we came to a crossing point close by a bridge over a canal. All of us heard a lady screaming, “Help! Help! My husband!” Because it was dark and foggy, I thought that the guy fell in the canal. The bridge had some kind of a metal barrier. But when the bridge ends, there was a some kind of a [catch?], so he fell in the canal. We walked in the direction of the canal. I come about three-quarters of the way to the canal and I saw a faint, two people standing against each other with the arms straight up. I saw that one was in German uniform, and the other one was a civilian. The German was holding a pistol straight up in the air, and I thought, “Man, I’d like to have that pistol.”

What I did, I jumped out, grabbed it by the barrel, broke it out of his hands and came down with the pistol. I took about three to four steps back and said in Dutch to the guy, “Get rid of the German because I got his pistol.” So then I took a couple of more steps, and we had little clickers, what we called a frog, to stay in contact with the underground. With that clicker, I got hold of Case, who was with me. When I was walking home, I said, “Boy, if one of those Germans catch me” — I had a raincoat on — “with a pistol in my raincoat, it’s dangerous.” When I walked home, the only thing that you could hear was footsteps in the gravel from the walkway, so I took the pistol out of my hand and threw it in someone’s front yard. Then when he passed me, or us, then we tiptoed back and were seeking in the grass where I threw the pistol. That was about four or five times that we had to throw the pistol in somebody’s front yard. Anyhow, we got a brand-new pistol there.

Kepler: Was this after curfew?
SMOORENBURG: No, it was before 8:00 PM. It was around 7:30, maybe quarter to eight, because that was about a mile and a half from where I was living.

Kepler: Were there any women in the underground?
SMOORENBURG: Yes. Not in our particular group, but there were plenty of women in the underground group, yes.

Kepler: Did they do the same things as the men?
SMOORENBURG: Yes.

Kepler: Were there any Jewish people in those groups?
SMOORENBURG: No, not that I know of, because it was kind of dangerous if they were to be in the underground, and they got to be hidden anyhow because they couldn’t be outside without that star on. Not that I know of, but there could have been. One of those guy’s name was Harry Molisch. That sounds to me East German, a Jewish name. Molisch is “s-c-h” on the end. But I have to gamble on that.

Kepler: At what point did things begin to dramatically change?
SMOORENBURG: Dramatically change? You mean from the normal Dutch living?

Kepler: From the activities in the underground that you were doing. Did things get worse? Did you become more active?
SMOORENBURG: Things got worse. Like welding those things together, that went on for the whole four years. We did several things. For example, there was a thing every week that we did. I don’t know how the underground got it. Sugar was also food stamps, but all of a sudden we got boxes of sugar. What were we supposed to do with it? Mostly by bars at night, those German motorcycles with side wagons on them, or trucks, from Germans who went to having a good time in a bar. What we did with the sugar, we put it in the gasoline tank. They told me we’d never see any of the results, so it was really no fun. But they said if the engine gets hot, then the engine burns out. The bad thing is you don’t see any direct results.

I have a photo of it that’s not here now, but what we also did was when a German transport with war material, we put a piece of 2 x 4 between — what do you call it when a train changes direction, a whistle? How to explain it. A train can go right or left, but they have in between a thing that shifts the train forward and back. So what we did, we put the 2 x 4 pieces in there and cut the cable. Two miles out of town, it was directed from the central station by big handles — I’m talking about 1940; this is no more now. We cut the cables so when the train had to go, say to town, and the piece of 2 x 4 was in between, the train went around town or out of town. We have seen several times that the train was backing up for a mile and a half because he went the wrong direction. And most of those German trains were manned by Germans, so what the heck did they know?

Kepler: So you got some results?
SMOORENBURG: Yes, we got plenty of results. If a train, say, had to go to one town, we put them straight to another town. Not only we did it, but anywhere else the underground did it also. That was really playing havoc to the Germans.

Kepler: Did people get caught?
SMOORENBURG: Yes. I have some kind of a statistic. After the war, Reader’s Digest came out with [inaudible] the amount of civilians. One that stuck with me was that 2,600 people connected with the underground died in Holland during World War II.

Kepler: Did you personally know?
SMOORENBURG: I knew of two of our group, yes. They shot them the next day because they were sending and receiving messages to England.

Kepler: What year was that?
SMOORENBURG: That was 1943.

Kepler: What else happened to you?
SMOORENBURG: What else happened to me? [inaudible]

Kepler: What else is on your list?
SMOORENBURG: What else is on my list? There were pilots. That’s quite a long story but very interesting. Also in the underground, we had the order to go with those little clickers that we had, a kid’s toy like you get in a box of Cracker Jacks. When we knew of the — particularly to the north of us, when pilots came down, “See that you get those pilots before the Germans get them.” Then we had to hide them like we did the Jews. When we got those pilots we did have to sometimes move them around because it was very dangerous to leave them long in one spot. At one time we moved them around. I had two pilots with me, and there was a store with cheese and butter and eggs. It’s different in Holland also. You have a typical [booster?] store, and a typical dairy store. We go by the dairy store and hear a motorcycle coming from up the hill and come down. They knew by then that those signs were that we messed up.

So then they drove about 300 yards past, and then they turned around. I said, “Oh, my God. They want to ask questions.” So I told those two pilots, “You look in the store. Let me do the talking.” Then he wanted to know the road to [Helihom?] out of town. I said, “You go there and there, and then you get to Helihom.”

Kepler: Is that true?
SMOORENBURG: No, of course not. There was a road that was to the left, but I had to bring him to the left, so I sent him to the right. It was a hairy situation there. So we moved them around until — after the war was all over, I met one of the head guys. I started my own print shop after the war since I had been in the printing field all my life. I started my print shop in Nuth [spells out]. It’s about 25 miles north of [Marstrecht?]. My parents right after the war moved there since my dad got the job there from Heemstede to Nuth.

Having my print shop there, I ran into a guy and he was also a head guy from the underground. That was the guy who had a cement factory. He had to bring cement to the French coast. He did that for about a month. First of all, the Germans said, “What would be necessary to open the cement factory?” Because it was closed for two years. He said, “I need 20 men and a couple of trucks, and then I can do it, but you have to pay for it too.” So once that cement factory was going, [Sanga?] was his name — his code name was [Chalkie?] — after a couple of months the Germans came to him and said, “You charged us for cement, but it never arrived on the French coast.” He said, “OK. I have a solution to this. If you give me a high-ranking German uniform and all the papers, then I will stick with that train and I’ll see that the train gets to where you want it. Nobody will steal that cement because I’m going to lock and seal it, those boxcars.” He went there three or four times, forward and back, and nothing happened. All the cement came there.

So now he had a chance. At that moment there were 127 pilots all housed by people, but food was scarce. You wanted to get rid of them somehow. So what he did, he put in every boxcar three or four pilots, some Americans, Australians, British. There was a whole array of different pilots. He stuck those pilots in the boxcars, sealed it up, and then told the message to England that on a certain day — now in those messages we had to tell it so that the Germans could not get hold of it. For example, we said that 12 boxes of grade-three pieces — that’s part of the sentence. That number “12” meant 12 pilots. That “grade-three” meant three days after and three hours after. Three pieces — that first “p” was sometimes different, but the “p” stands for pilots, so that the French underground would know there were pilots in it — they’ll arrive next Tuesday in La Forclaz. That’s a town on the French coast. Now comes the three, from the grade-three. It will be three days later and three hours later. From that particular Tuesday at say 6:00, so now the French underground knew that not Tuesday, but on Thursday at 10:00, they could come in there and get those pilots out of there. Kind of tricky . . .

Kepler: How long did he do that?
SMOOREBURG: For about a year and a half. All the messages went forth and back all the time. They asked us just to relay messages in Dutch. The Germans, of course, don’t know Dutch, so the risk is less. Still coded in Dutch to England. England translated for the French, and so went the messages forth and back.

Kepler: Did you have a code name also?
SMOOREBURG: “The artist” [laughs].

Kepler: How do you say it in Dutch?
SMOORENBURG: We are designer or they are the artist. It’s the same word.

Kepler: Same word.
SMOORENBURG: Yes. And that was because I went to art school before I went into printing.

Kepler: Did you work during this time? During the German occupation, were you still working?
SMOORENBURG: No, that was done in. In 1940, in September, there was no more wood, so [bills?] were not there anymore. There was no more printing paper, so that was all that.

Kepler: What did your family live on?
SMOORENBURG: They lived on . . .

Kepler: Food stamps?
SMOORENBURG: Yes, food stamps. But you have to still pay for it. And it’s beyond me how they got along. What my mother and dad went through, not knowing and finding me being shot, now afterwards I say, “Boy, this is crazy.” Of course, at that time, it was mostly all boys mainly, boys between 18-19-20, up to 24 years of age in the underground group. Also, some of the leaders from the underground group were former Dutch military. They were more up-to-date by how to do things with revolvers, pistols, whatever. They were mainly underground leaders. They were former Dutch military before the war.

Kepler: Was there socializing going on as well? Were people getting together?
SMOORENBURG: Well, yes. There was a lot of talk. We heard this and we heard that and we heard this. There was some socializing going on. However, it got worse and worse. In 1943 and ’44 you didn’t know who to trust, so you wouldn’t talk to a stranger because they could be sympathetic to the Germans.

Kepler: So the only people you were in contact with were the other people in the underground?
SMOORENBURG: The underground and people we knew beforehand you knew you could trust. Like they told me — I feel bad that I didn’t know about it — but they told me that Anne Frank, for example, was caught by a someone who was pro-Nazi or whatever. But that is beyond me that — if there was a Dutch underground group, they should know when they [were going to] block off those streets, because that was known to us in Amsterdam.

Kepler: So you think maybe that shouldn’t have happened?
SMOORENBURG: I think it shouldn’t have happened. No. Of course, if that particular underground group didn’t have any German military who were against Hitler, then they were out of luck. We had someone useful who told us, “Hey, next Thursday [for example,] there is a razzia.” So we could really transport people somewhere else with other families temporarily.

Kepler: Did you personally help take families from one place to another? Can you tell us about that?
SMOORENBURG: Yes. Once we knew that there was a razzia going on, then we said, “Hey, we have to go there where Jews are hidden over there.” Then we cut them in some other [luck?]. We said, “We are with the underground.” Well, they knew that by then. That was even then at nights, at 1:00 or 2:00 AM. Move them around, even after curfew. Because the curfew in our town was really not that strong. The curfew must have been in Amsterdam way worse, or in the main cities, where I was living. So we had the possibility to move them, say, four or five blocks.

Kepler: You would escort them to another house?
SMOORENBURG: Escort, yes.

Kepler: Did they take things with them?
SMOORENBURG: No. We asked them not to carry baggage because that would be too dangerous. They knew that they were just being moved for three or four days, and then they would go back to their old place.

Kepler: Approximately how many times did you do that?
SMOORENURG: I would say maybe 12 or 13 times, somewhere in that area.

Kepler: Were you alone or with another partner?
SMOORENBURG: Mostly I was alone. Several occasions we were two or three boys in the underground help them out. A couple of times past the curfew time, they got a guy there, “click, click, click.” And you knew it was dangerous. Then we would hide them somewhere between houses or whatever. Any more questions?

Kepler: Probably. Any more on your list? Anything else significant?
SMOORENBURG: Yes. The second time, that was really when they found out when those two guys were shot. They found out that a particular guy who was living about four blocks away from us in another section of town, they knew that I was illegally in Holland.

Kepler: What do you mean by that?
SMOORENBURG: Illegal in Holland because I was at the age that I should have worked in Germany. So that’s what you call it, illegal. I didn’t have any food stamps either. If I would go for food stamps, you don’t get any because you are between 17 and 35.

Kepler: But you went and came back.
SMOORENBURG: I came back, and from then on I was in the underground.

Kepler: You didn’t register.
SMOORENBURG: No, of course not. What happened is that they caught me. Two guys came to our door in civilian clothes, and they told my mother that we know that one of your sons is here at home, and he has to come with my other brother to a particular guy who was a Nazi sympathizer with a uniform. So when we went there on a Sunday morning, we were amazed. That guy was really pleasant and he gave us pastries. I don’t know where he got the pastries from. They had all the luxury you could think of. He said, “You boys, you know that you have to work in Germany, don’t you?” I said, “We went, then we came back.” He said, “No, I’m talking about not last year, but now too. I have a friend living right across the Dutch border, and then you can work there. However, I’ll let you choose. But I’ll give you no more than two weeks.”

In the meantime, in the two weeks another brother of mine was working in [Meunster?]. We wrote to him in what predicament Frank and I was. Then we wrote to him and said, “We have to work in Germany. Does your outfit have some kind of another outfit in Germany where we can go?” We didn’t want to deal with a German outfit because God knows what they do to you. The company from Mr. [Dronkers?] and Mr. [Hudd?], they had the one in Dortmund. So then I came into Dortmund after 14 days. There we had to clear the streets after they bombed all the houses. We had to clear the streets so the trucks or whatever could go through. This was in the town of Dortmund in Germany.

I think it was November 18. The Allies came and bombed the heck out of Dortmund. Before that, you hear a siren that was an alarm to let the Germans know that planes would come and bomb us. All the people go in thick-walled cellars. They made a metal door in it with two handles on it. So on November 18 they bombed the heck out of Dortmund. At that point, you hear the banging outside and you feel the whole building shaking like an earthquake, and all the [sawdust?] falling from the ceiling. I tried to comb my hair. It was impossible.

But anyhow, after about half an hour we thought it was over with. We did have no idea what was going on outside, so we opened the door and all of a sudden a kind of an orange smoke came bursting though the door. Meanwhile, we were interested to know where this orange came from, so we closed the door immediately. The door was not fully open, maybe a foot and a half, not even that. The people inside the bunker were all Germans [inaudible], mothers with children and old folks. They were hollering at us to open the door. But another half an hour later, the guys I was working with in Dortmund to clear the streets said, “Boy, I’d like to see what’s going on outside.”

We opened the doors, and another guy, a German, said, “OK, if you want to take a look, then take a look.” So we went out, there were three guys and they closed the door. That was a half an hour later. They went and blew some of the smoke away. Now because of that, the Allies threw kind of sulfur bombs. They were about a foot long, hexagon, and kind of a silver-leady color. Once they threw that out and as soon as it hits something, it starts burning like a flare that the police have on the street here. But then there was white light like electrical welding. They were dangerous. I tried one time to extinguish one with a barrel of sand. It didn’t help. They burned to the end and that was it.

So once we came outside the building where we were housed in — it was in a school, what they call a gymnasium, [Hindenburg Oberacht Gymnasium?]. That was where they played basketball. There were beds set up for those guys to sleep, and they had in the other side of the building a kitchen set up. It was a seven-story building. Once we were walking downstairs, we saw all the bricks and walls. You heard, “bang, bang, bang” still. However, the planes were all gone for at least an hour. When we came upstairs, up to the seventh floor, there was kind of a door where those air conditioning units are on there. I was amazed at what I saw. All around, as far as you could see: fire, fire, fire. And still the bang. We couldn’t understand that because the planes were all gone.

So then we went downstairs, and in the meantime, some more guys got out. Not all the houses were burning, but I would say at least 50%. Once we came out and we walked around the school building, there was a big hole in the library. There was a bomb that fell in the library. There I found two very interesting books, and maybe after you can take those books. Two books that I tried to save through end of my life because there was one book that said Adolf Hitler, all written in German with German typeface, how good Hitler was. How nice guy he was. How he played with kids and all that kind of stuff. Also a book that was printed right before the war: How Hitler Really Came to Power. It was called [Dorsen er Wacht?]. It means the awakening of Germany. It describes how Hitler started from 1928 on and how he really came to power. Those are very interesting books. I still have them [laughs].

But anyhow, I found those books. Then I walked my brother to where I was housed. I went back to the street, and I saw in the meantime five or six of the guys I was working with, underneath on the floor. And they were digging, getting all stuff aside. Once I crossed the street and I came there, I heard, “Help. Help.” The people didn’t go to the bunker from the school, but they stayed in their own kind of wine cellar or whatever that was. But that was a five-story building and they bombed that. It didn’t burn, but all the five stories were piled up on the exit from those houses, where of course there was on every floor a family living. So they were digging, and it’s unbelievable what you find if you start digging out: pots and pans, pajamas, beds, you name it. Everything was all piled up. We had to clear it all out. There was a walkway to that place about maybe ten feet in the hallway, and after the ten feet there was a [inaudible word] where you could go down in it. So after digging for four hours, we got all the people out.

Kepler: Did you have to stay in Germany after that?
SMOORENBURG: Yes because D-Day was in the meantime going, so I knew it wouldn’t take too long anymore. Besides, since they forced me to work in Germany again, I was afraid if I would go back that they might do something else to me. It was in September 1944, which was practically the end of the war anyhow. The way I got home from Dortmund is another story.

Anyhow, it was coming daylight, say 7:00 AM in the morning. It got daylight again. And still that banging was going on. I couldn’t understand what was going on there. The planes were gone for a long time. But then I found out that besides the regular explosive bombs, they put also a timing device on them. So now we had explosives for 24 hours all over town. It was really dangerous to go out anywhere. After I heard one of those bangs — I wasn’t too far — I went around the city block, and right when I was looking around the building, I saw a dog running with part of an arm. He dragged it away. Of course, the dog was hungry too, but it must have been from someone who was exposed to a time bomb and blown to pieces.

After then, no [inaudible], this was getting too hot for me. I went with a boxcar train. I tried to get back to Holland. In the meantime, the Allies had Paris already. So I thought maybe I’ll encounter them somewhere, or maybe not, but at least I can get close to where I was living. When I came with three other guys from the Dutch outfit that was clearing the streets, we came to a railroad station at night, that train goes west to [Alt?]. I said, “Let’s try to get in there.” So it was dark. There was at the railroad station no lights anywhere. You have to understand also that, when the Allies came with the planes, everybody had to put black paper on the windows. Even the Germans had to put kind of a cloth on there with a little slit, maybe a half-inch wide and two and a half inches long. But on the railroad station there were no lights at all, so any light that you could get from the moon, that was helpful. We went to the train, and the steam engine was in front of it. We know it would go west, so we opened the boxcar and that boxcar was full. And the next boxcar. We finally found a boxcar that was roughly half full.

So by feeling, I thought there were metal pipes. The feeling was they were round and long. I said, “Well, you can’t sleep on that.” There was a [Red Cross?] station over four or five railroad tracks, so we went to the station, picked out a couple of [stuff sack?], hay or whatever was in it. But anyhow, it was better than sleeping on metal. There were all pipes in there, so we put the stuff sack in between those pipes and we can at least lay down and wait for the train to go back to Holland. When it got light in the morning, [inaudible] two guys pulled the door open from the boxcar, and then I heard beeping sounds: beep, beep, beep. It couldn’t be pipes. It must be something else to do that. Once we shoved the door open, then we found out we slept on five-hundred-pound bombs [laughs]. So now we are waiting because the train was going 60 mph. I said, “Hey, you can’t jump out now.” However, Allies came with smaller planes — because we were already into Paris — they came with smaller planes and killed all the train traffic because the Germans were still transporting all kinds of stuff.

Then all of a sudden the train slowed down. I said, “Man, if it goes 20 miles per hour, I’m going to jump out.” The train came up to a point of five miles per hour, so we jumped out, and there were still from those metal signs from the underground we cut. There were also signs for stopping the train or the train go. We clipped those signs also that when that thing fell down, then the train had to stop. Those things were sitting there for hours and hours because the line was cut. They had all those lines in there. I had a little wooden suitcase, and I stumbled out over the lines because I jumped out of the train.

So once we were all down there, then we went to walk to where the train had to stop because there was a little rinky-dinky town. Once we were out, the train picked up speed again. We saw a train platform and a kind of a house where they had some signs. Then we walked up the platform, and there I got the shock of my life. There were two piles about that tall and about six to eight feet in diameter, two piles full of dead people. Some were partially clothed, didn’t have any clothes on top, and this was wintertime, December by then. Some had still the shoes on. Some didn’t. Oh, it was a mess. I tried to find what kind of people they were. Some of them had long coats on them. Nor the Germans, nor anyone else, but Russians carried those long coats, and there were, out of those two piles, maybe 30 of them. So what I think it was, when the Germans transported those prisoners of war and someone else, they froze to death or starved to death, and they just dumped them on the railroad station and took off.

Kepler: Where were you? Where was this?
SMOORENBURG: It was town of [Halvoron?]. I was sitting there and waiting there, and there was a guy, an attendant at the railroad station. We said, “When is there another train going back to Holland?” He said, “Well, I think about 8:00 PM.” This happened early in the morning, so I was sitting there on the railroad station waiting for 8:00 at night. Normally all the traffic went at night because in the daytime you can see those English or American small planes killing those steam engines. That comes later. Anyhow, what happened then is I was sitting there and around 2:00 PM in the afternoon, all of a sudden comes a truck with five German soldiers — all with their bayonets on it — and some civilians, picked up those dead people. I got to back up another two hours.

An old man comes to the railroad station, and one of them had boots on, and that old man he tried to get a set of nice boots off of him. He was pulling and pulling, but he couldn’t get them off because that foot was frozen. There was no way he could get it off. So I was sitting there and sitting there. The Germans loaded those two piles in the truck and then they drove off. So around 8:00 PM I thought there was a boxcar train, but this was a regular train with wooden benches. I caught the 8:00 train, and then we stopped again for a while, then we drove, then we stopped for an hour. It slowly moved.

But by daylight, people in that train — there were some more Germans in the train that were moving around — people in the train got kind of anxious to do things. They had overheads like in an airplane cabin where they had suitcases and all kind of stuff. So they picked up the suitcases, and they said, “Why now?” But it got lighter and lighter, and all of a sudden I hear screaming, “Jabos! Jabos!” I didn’t understand the word, but in German language, jagd means hunt, and bos is from bombers, so “jabos” comes from jagd bomber. Hunting planes that can bomb also. I didn’t see a thing, but all of a sudden the train stopped. It had a big steam engine on the front that stopped. So I jumped out. So did a whole bunch of them. Once we were out, all of a sudden the train went backwards, and I was wondering why.

I walked about 15-20 feet from the double track. Once I saw those three planes coming in a circling motion, I lay flat on the ground. Over me: dit-dit-dit-dit. And the next plane: dit-dit-dit-dit. And the next plane: dit-dit-dit. Now they shot at the steam engine, but the steam engine — there was a kind of a bridge, a big overpass from an expressway. The railroad was kind of in a diagonal way. So the steam engine tried to get under that overpass so that the planes couldn’t shoot the steam engine. That’s the reason the planes had to go really low to get to the steam engine because they couldn’t shoot through the bridge. So I was laying down. Oh, boy, I was shaking. After they were gone, I looked up and saw the steam engine with steam coming all sides out. I knew that train was not going anywhere.

Then I walked up to the bridge to see. I saw hundreds of little metal pipes about an inch sticking out in the concrete under the bridge [inaudible sentence] through the steam engine. Some missed it but were stuck in the concrete, hundreds of them. That was really the end of that trip, so we didn’t go the next day. I was back in Holland.

Kepler: I’m going to ask you some more questions about — when you were doing your underground activities, were you armed when you were going out in the streets?
SMOORENBURG: No. Nobody from the underground was armed because if for some reason Germans with a motorcycle drove all the way through town, any day at any time, if we would have arms with us, they could arrest us or whatever, or shoot us on sight.

Kepler: So you never had to use your pistol, except on yourself?
SMOORENBURG: [laughs] Right.

Kepler: And back to what was happening with Jews, when did you become aware of the existence of concentration camps? Not just Jews, but . . .
SMOORENBURG: That was in 1943 when my dad told me that two of my nephews — what do I say?

Kepler: Cousins.
SMOORENBURG: Two of my cousins died in a concentration camp. Then we knew. But we didn’t know at the moment that Jews were exterminated too.

Kepler: When?
SMOORENBURG: We only know that Jews went somewhere.

Kepler: When did you find out about the gassings and . . .?
SMOORENBURG: After the bombing of Dortmund, I was in a small town in Germany. It was a farmer’s town. I wanted to get hidden. I didn’t want to go direct back to Holland because I didn’t know what was going on there. The main event in that small town that was called Neustadt, the main thing there was on Sunday they get together at church. After church all the people started talking about where they came from because there were all strange people for that little town. I asked one time a lady, “Where are you from? Why did you come here?” She said, “I was living in a town, and the Germans wanted to increase the tire factory. They had to destroy our house and put new railroad tracks to it.” So I asked her, “What town was that?” She says, “It was Dachau.” That proves to me that even a lot of Germans didn’t know that Jews were gassed or exterminated. She said, “We had to move out because it was a stinky mess anyhow.” But they knew that there was a tire factory in Dachau. After the war we found out that Dachau was not a tire factory anymore.

Kepler: So you didn’t really find out the extent of . . .
SMOORENBURG: Yes. That was the first moment I found out that Jews were exterminated, yes. Not before.

Kepler: Were there ever any reprisals from the Germans because of any of your underground activities, or your group?
SMOORENBURG: Yes. Like I said, two of my cousins, actually three of my cousins died. One was [inaudible]. I personally, the only thing that was kind of a close call was I had to go to that German sympathizer, and he said, “Hey, you have just one way, [inaudible] Germany,” or you know.

Kepler: OK. So you said you then returned to Holland. What year was that? What month?
SMOORENBURG: That was February 1945. At that time when I came back, Americans were already in Holland. It was way after D-Day.

Kepler: Another question: had you heard of Westerbork, the camp outside of Amsterdam?
SMOORENBURG: Westerbork, yes.

Kepler: What did you know about that camp or that place?
SMOORENBURG: Really not much because at that time I didn’t live in Amsterdam. But Westerbork was the place where underground people got a house for a while. We also had another one in Haarlem. They called it [Horem?]. It was a place where they had Jews also. That was in Haarlem.

Kepler: So the Americans were already in Holland when you came back?
SMOORENBURG: When I came back, yes. All of a sudden, no more German uniforms. Allied uniforms, Americans or whatever.

Kepler: Did you feel safer?
SMOORENBURG: Oh, yes. A lot safer.

Kepler: So then what happened?
SMOORENBURG: Slowly everything went on normal. For example, Sweden dropped loaves of bread down. They came over with airplanes and dropped all over Holland loaves of bread. It was a daily kind of a business. Then slowly the farmers from Holland itself got into supplying eggs, and slowly everything went back to normal like it was before the war.

Kepler: Did you go back to work?
SMOORENBURG: Yes. I started my own print shop right after the war.

Kepler: So the family moved then?
SMOORENBURG: They had moved already. Once Holland was liberated, my dad got a job in Maastricht, in another county. They had moved already, but I didn’t know. So I went first to Heemstede, and I found that they moved out. Then I had to go to Maastricht.

Kepler: So the whole family moved? All eight children?
SMOORENBURG: Seven of the eight. The eighth one was married.

Kepler: So at that point you opened up your own business?
SMOORENBURG: I started my own business in Nuth, yes. Then I had a problem because before you can start a business in Holland, you had to have seven diplomas. For example, composing. You have to know about paper. You need seven diplomas. One of the main one is the [inaudible] diploma that is for someone who wants to start a business. I had them all but that [inaudible] diploma, so they closed the shop. Now I could prove that the law went into effect on, say May the 1st, but I was busy before May 1st, so I could prove that before the law went in effect, I already had a print shop. I could prove it by bills that I sent to the customers, so they had to open it up again.

However, about seven years later, after I ran my shop, they tried to get all to bigger outfits, all the small print shops. They put so much pressure on me. For example, I couldn’t hire nor fire anyone unless I had a permit from the government. The Dutch government has a booklet that you go by for quotation, to make a quote for printing. If someone asks me to do a particular job, then I go by the book. I say, “This is what I charge.” Assume that five printers know now that I got the job. They can also ask the government to investigate this quotation. You have to have it in triplicate, and you have to keep your own copy. If I was below the price that the Dutch government had in the book, then you could fine me, and all those crazy rules and regulations. So I told my wife at that time — she passed away in ’77 — I said, “Forget it. I want to get out of Haarlem.”

Kepler: When did you get married?
SMOORENBURG: I got married in 1956. No. Let me see, I went to Rome in the meantime. 1947.

Kepler: You married in ’47.
SMOORENBURG: Yes. That sounds kind of crazy. So she said to me, “OK. Let’s get out of Holland.”

Kepler: Was she somebody you knew before?
SMOORENBURG: Somebody I knew before, but it’s really strange what I have to say to that. In 1977, my wife Vera, who I have three girls with, died of cancer. Then I had someone else. I didn’t marry, but that lasted just five years. She died of melanoma, cancer. So now this is the third time that I’m having a problem. With Kay, Kay West. We hope for the best, but we’re trying to find out with the doctors now. Dr. Rosenbaum is busy with her now. They cannot find anything, blood pressure or anything; there’s nothing wrong. X-rays and all that. They cannot find out what it is. It’s similar to Alzheimer’s, what she has now. We hope for the best, but we don’t know. So that’s the reason I say, “[inaudible] I marry.”

Kepler: But the woman you married the first time, had you known her before the war?
SMOORENBURG: I knew her before because my brother married a lady by the name of Felicia, and her sister had to go for an application for a job next to the town where I had my print shop. Her name was Yvonne. He said, “If you have to sleep overnight, [you can stay] in my parents’ house.”

Kepler: So you married your brother’s wife’s sister?
SMOORENBURG: That’s right.

Kepler: You decided to leave Holland?
SMOORENBURG: We decided to leave Holland. You could only apply for the United States and for New Zealand, so we applied for both of them. We were hoping that we would go to the United States.

Kepler: Did you have any relatives here?
SMOORENBURG: I had a sister living in Louisiana; she got the papers. Before you immigrate from Holland to the United States you have to have a sponsor and someone who is willing to give you five years’ work. A sponsor has to also [guarantee] that I wouldn’t fall back on welfare. So those papers came to Holland, then we got our papers to go to the United States, and I started in a print shop in Morgan City, Louisiana, between Lafayette and New Orleans.

The owner of the print shop was about 84-85 years old. After two months my wife said, “Boy, I don’t think we can live on $65 a week.” I said, “I had no idea, but let me ask.” So I asked the general manager, “What about $65 a week?” He said, “That is what Mr. King” — he was the head guy, the owner — “that is what he established.” I said, “You’re telling me that he bought me for five years for $65 a week? No way.” He said, “Well, talk to him.” So I went to the owner, Mr. King, and he said, “Plenty of people live here for $65 a week.” “My wife says we can’t. I’ll tell you what, if my next paycheck is not at least $100, I’ll be gone.” He said, “You can’t.” I said, “Watch me.” You see, you can do that. You can leave the whole setup, but you cannot fall back on welfare.

But I knew what I was doing, so I could go anywhere. The next salary, there was the same $65, and I went to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and I showed what I did. The old man, he bought a German-made press, what’s called a Heidelberg cylinder, and no one knew how to run that thing, but I knew how to run it. When I came there, he had a white cover over the whole thing, and that press was just sitting there — the Cadillac among presses! He thought that for five years, at least he’d get some use out of the machine. I went to Baton Rouge and showed him what I did on that press, and they had three of them there. He said, “We’d like to have you here, but what do you want for salary?” I said, “It’s up to you. You don’t know me.” He said, “Let me start you out at $120 a week” [laughs]. That was double what I got before. Then we settled in Baton Rouge. That Morgan City lasted just for nine months. We lived for about eight years in Baton Rouge, and then I went with my wife, and at that time, three daughters . . .

Kepler: Already three daughters.
SMOORENBURG: Three daughters. We went on a trip to see — my wife at the time had an aunt living in Portland, so then we drove to Portland. We spent a couple of days there and went back down to California, back to Louisiana. Coming into Palo Alto, Yvonne said, “Boy, I like this town.” I said, “No problem. We go home, we put the house for sale, and we load our stuff up and . . ..” So what we did, we went back to Baton Rouge. We sold the house, loaded up the car with all kinds of stuff — the furniture we sold — and then we went to Palo Alto.

I wanted to get out of running presses and black ink on my fingers, so I went to several printers in Palo Alto. One said, “Hold on.” In the meantime, I printed a resume. He said, “Hold on. My dad, who is the owner, will see you tonight in the motel.” So on that same night, the old man, Mr. Blake, came in and said, “Yes [inaudible]. We have a salesman who doesn’t do anything. Can you be our salesman?” I said, “Yes, sure.” He said, “When can you start? Now? Tuesday or Wednesday?” I said, “I could start Monday.” So that Monday I started in printing sales. I got in connection with the head office of Hewlett Packard. It was on Page Mill Road in Palo Alto. Then I got in connection with Stanford University and some more big electronic plants. But I did the artwork — what was done for the printing industry — I did the artwork in my spare time. That got so big that I had to work until 10 or 11:00 PM. So I got out of sales and started doing artwork only. Then I had Stanford University and an array of different people, and that got too big.

In 1977, they established that my wife had a brain tumor that was right inside her head. They couldn’t operate on her, so she got paralyzed. Her sister Felicia came over to the United States to help me out since she was paralyzed and you can’t move her all by yourself. She was helping there for maybe two weeks, and then my wife passed away in ’77.

Kepler: Were your daughters not at home?
SMOORENBURG: Two were married at that time. One was home. So then Felicia, her sister, wanted to stay in the States.

Kepler: Where was her husband?
SMOORENBURG: They were divorced. She wanted to stay here. We said, “OK, we got three bedrooms here. You take your bedroom.” And she helped me with the artwork, typesetting, and support. I couldn’t sponsor her, but she had also a brother in the meantime living in the Rohnert Park or Santa Rosa area. Since he was a brother and he was in the United States, he could sponsor her. Within three and a half years, she developed melanoma. After they told her that they think maybe she had a half-year to live, she said, “OK, let’s get all the family together and move back to Holland.” Because she had kids in Holland. So we went with all of them to Holland. It didn’t last a half-year, but I stayed in Holland until she passed away. From Holland I went back to — in the meantime, I said, “Forget the whole thing,” and I retired.

Kepler: I assume your parents had died in the meantime.
SMOORENBURG: Yes, in the meantime.

Kepler: Did they ever come to the States?
SMOORENBUG: Yes. Several times between 1959 and ’77 they came to the States, and even later. Two months before my mother died, she was in the States. We traveled forth and back. I have been forth and back at least six times.

Kepler: How many of your siblings are living?
SMOORENBURG: What do you call siblings?

Kepler: Your brothers and sisters.
SMOORENBURG: One passed away at eight, Gerard. The rest are still all living.

Kepler: And one is still in Louisiana?
SMOORENBURG: Yes. One sister is in Morgan City, Louisiana. One brother, Frank, is in [Paleston?], Louisiana. Then I have a brother Anthony; he lives in [Conroad?], north of Houston.

Kepler: How did you end up in Portland?
SMOORENBURG: Once my wife said, “Hey, I like Palo Alto,” we went to Palo Alto, and we were living in California. We traveled sometimes forth and back. Or they come here or we go to there, go to Houston or Morgan City.

Kepler: When did you move to Portland?
SMOORENBURG: 1973.

Kepler: Your family moved then.
SMOORENBURG: Yes, my wife and three daughters. We all moved in 1973 to Palo Alto.

Kepler: Oh, to Palo Alto. Now what about Oregon?
SMOORENBURG: I was living in San Jose. I wanted to live a little closer to my daughter. One daughter moved from Reno to Portland, so I wanted to live a little closer to her. I lived in Gresham for a while. Then we sold the house in Gresham and drove around in McMinnville. I said, “Hey, I like this town.” So I bought a home in McMinnville. Then my daughter Mattie has a friend by the name of Joanie. Joanie’s mother was living in McMinnville, too, so she said, “Why don’t you visit her one day?” So I visited her, Kay. They thought it was a great idea that we get together, so we got together and I married her about two and a half years ago.

Kepler: And now she’s sick?
SMOORENBURG: Now she’s sick.

Kepler: Let me ask you, when did you start to tell people your story? Did you tell your wife? Did you tell your daughters when they were growing up?
SMOORENBURG: Yes, they knew. Maybe not as intricate as this. Sometimes I told several things, but this has been my best presentation, I would say. I don’t know how it comes out, but . . . [laughs]. The first time, I read in the paper that the Anne Frank exhibit would come to Sheridan.

Kepler: When was that, last year?
SMOORENBURG: That was October?

Kepler: It was after Portland, right?
SMOORENBURG: Yes, it was after Portland’s. So I went to the newspaper in McMinnville. I came to talk to someone who was at the newspaper who was in Holland, five, six, seven years after the war. I said, “If it comes to the war, I can tell you a big story.” So he sent me one of the reporters from the newspaper, and they printed a big article in the paper. The Holocaust exhibition people asked me to give speeches at the Holocaust exhibition in Sheridan and several different schools, and I’d go and I’d go. Then a lady from the library in McMinnville got a hold of me, “Would you be willing to give a speech there?” And TCI Cable said, “OK. We will tape it.” Because wherever I have given my speeches, they wanted a tape of it, but I didn’t have any. Then all of a sudden, I get a contact from you . . .

Kepler: Somebody called you?
SMOORENBURG: Yes, someone from your organization called me, “We’d like to know your story.”

Kepler: So when you were living in the States and you made friends with people, did you ever just tell them a little bit . . .?
SMOORENBURG: No, I kept it quiet for myself. Now with the opportunity from this, from the Anne Frank exhibit, that whole thing came up again.

Kepler: Are you glad that you’ve been talking about it now?
SMOORENBURG: Glad. I think for myself that if you see all the statistics, then I feel that I should go on a mission for all the people from the underground who died for the good cause. Only François Mitterand, at the big D-Day extravaganza, he was the only one who mentioned, “Don’t let us ever forget what the underground did.” Because he is an ex-undergrounder himself, François Mitterand. I feel that we have been misrepresented; we are just put under civilians. You see, for example, statistics that so many military died, so many civilians, so many Jews, but what were the civilians? People who were sitting around doing nothing? Or people who really did some good for the cause, for their country?

Kepler: What do you know about how many people died who were in the underground?
SMOORENBURG: I have the statistic somewhere. I thought it was something like 1,648 Dutch underground people died. I even have written to The Oregonian. They had all kinds of statistics of their own. But I never heard anything from The Oregonian anymore.

Kepler: Did you keep in touch with the other people that were in the underground?
SMOORENBURG: Yes, I kept for a long time in touch with them. For example, Case Moret, the head guy, before the war he was studying for a captain of the merchant marine. The last what I heard of him, he was harbormaster in Montevideo in South America.

Kepler: Any others?
SMOORENBURG: No, not really. They’re all spread out. Since we moved out of the area, I’ve more or less lost contact with them. I’d like to pick up contact, but I wouldn’t know how.

Kepler: In the States, have you met anybody else who . . .?
SMOORENBURG: No, the only thing what I met in the States was — I’m the president of the Good Sam Club, people with the motorhomes who go to all places, an organization for motorhome people. I have been elected president of that. There’s one in the group, and he can vouch what the underground did. Right at the end of the war before it was liberated yet, they dropped him down in [Vechl?]. In Vechl, they had to keep the British in [Neimechen?] and Haarlem safe so the Allies would go over the bridges in Haarlem and Neimechen. I stayed in contact with him. I’m still in contact. He visits me daily. Chick is his name. Chick and Pearl Darcy.

Last year I went with my wife Kay to Holland and said, “The only thing I remember is the bridge where he dropped down. ‘We couldn’t cross the river. We couldn’t cross the bridge. We were just brought down there. A church with a tall steeple.’” So when I went last year to Holland with Kay, we photographed that church with the steeple and the bridge where he was brought down. That’s where I picked up contact again with the old story.

Kepler: Did you raise your family with any religion? Was your family Catholic?
SMOORENBURG: Yes, but not really. We didn’t go every week to church, no.

Kepler: But did you remain involved, or were you affiliated with Catholicism?
SMOORENBURG: No, only when I married Kay. She was Catholic; we married in a Catholic church.

Kepler: How about your daughters?
SMOORENBURG: My oldest daughter, Mandy, she is not religious at all. She thinks that we are here with a purpose, but what purpose we don’t know. Then my second daughter, she married, she moved to Caldwell, Idaho, and after a year there she married a boy who was in the Mormon Church. My youngest daughter, she lives in Cupertino, California. She still lives in the area where we originated when we came to California.

Kepler: Is she married?
SMOORENBURG: She’s married. She has two daughters.

Kepler: Any other grandchildren?
SMOORENBURG: Yes. My daughter in Caldwell has four boys and one girl on the way.

Kepler: The Mormons.
SMOORENBURG: Yes, the Mormons. Right.

Kepler: Any contact with Jewish people when you were living in the States? Did you talk to them about your . . .?
SMOORENBURG: No. I met a couple who gave a speech also in connection with the Holocaust. That was in Sheridan. So I listened to their experience about what they had. He was in labor camps. He was moved from one labor camp to another labor camp. She didn’t say that much about labor camps, so I don’t know really what happened to her. But it’s amazing to me how he come out alive after being in labor camps. Or maybe he was strong enough? They killed only the weak, or what? Six million Jews died. I’d really like to know how they shifted people. Do you know?

Kepler: There’s a lot written about it, and a lot that people know about what happened. That’s why we interview everybody. We have quite a lot of videotapes of people’s personal testimonies. If you ever wanted to borrow some of them, you could hear about the selection process.
SMOORENBURG: I’d really like to know how. I was told that they could go to Poland for free, or they could have worked, of course, but they didn’t have to wear the star anymore. That’s what I was told. But that could be German propaganda too.

Kepler: I think it was.
SMOORENBURG: I’m pretty sure about it now.

Kepler: Not everybody who was in a camp died; people did survive. Those are the people that we’ve talked to, and then the . . .
SMOORENBURG: They must have survived somehow.

Kepler: Some people were in hiding; some people passed for . . .
SMOORENBURG: Yes, they were in hiding until the end of the war.

Kepler: But there are many people that were in camps that did survive, and we learned how by hearing their stories.
SMOORENBURG: Yes, because once they move out of the area and the Dutch underground couldn’t get food anymore, where did they go?

Kepler: Most of them were picked up and taken to concentration camps.
SMOORENBURG: Yes.

Kepler: And that’s what was in Poland. They weren’t going to be free.
SMOORENBURG: Yes, that’s what was told to us. The same thing that the German lady told me that she was living in Dachau. She said, “The only thing I know is they put the surrogate tire factory there.” So even they didn’t know, living in the same town.

Kepler: Or they didn’t want to know.
SMOORENBURG: Yes, maybe that. But if they didn’t want to know, why should she tell the story of the rubber tire business?

Kepler: Did you ever run across any people who don’t think that the Holocaust happened?
SMOORENBURG: No. I’ve read about it in the paper. It’s just plain crazy. If you see the movie, the really skinny people, you cannot say that. It’s just crazy to think that. They just want to deny it for some reason. But those people, they ought to ask me because I have been there. Those people who say it never happened, they were sitting here in the States. This is crazy. You ought to ask the people who were there, not the people who were here sitting high and dry.

Kepler: Is there anything that you would want to tell younger people that are growing up today? Like how did you find the courage to do what you did?
SMOORENBURG: The courage grew. In the beginning, it was the first half-year making those pins. The first half-year was just bravery. I said, “Boy, I would like to do that.” And it was bravery to just see what we can accomplish. But that got more and more dangerous, cutting cables on the — I could have been caught right there.

Kepler: Yes, a lot of times. So how should our young people today get that kind of courage for a cause?
SMOORENBURG: It’s strange, but every country has their nationalism, like Hitler with the Hitler youth, “real Deutsche.” So have Holland had our own thing: “Dutch are the best. Their [inaudible word] are the best.” Hey, we are all people, came from one original person or whatever. We are all the same. Why that nationalism? There’s where we get borders between countries. This is crazy. We made the borders; God didn’t do that. Right?

Kepler: Yes.
SMOORENBURG: So what I want to say is get along with everybody. I say that’s a real good thing. I have said it for a long time. Just read “Desiderata” [poem by Max Ehrmann]; it tells it all. I have said that for years and years.

Kepler: [to the others] Did you have any questions you want to ask?
Reich: I had a couple of questions. I was just wondering if you could tell me a little bit about the relationships you had with the friends of yours and the people that were in the underground with you?
SMOORENBURG: The relations between the people of the underground? You mean with all undergrounds?

Reich: People that you saw, that you met.
SMOORENBURG: It was mainly bravery among high school kids in the beginning, but that started growing. We kept people connected. He trusted them, and he trusted someone else again. But England told us don’t get any bigger than ten people.

Kepler: But were you close friends?
SMOORENBURG: We were close, right. We were very close. There was no way that you distrust anyone of our group. I would go to the fire for any one of the nine people.

Reich: How did your group come together? Did you recruit . . .?
SMOORENBURG: It grew. It started with three boys from the high school and me, and it grew with another guy and another guy. We had no girls in our group. It came to seven people, and then two came to the group because I went to the school from those priests with the special order. They saw the radio station get together so that they could send messages. Then we had a group of nine. So we couldn’t go any higher, maybe one more guy.

Reich: I want to ask you if that really intense experience with those comrades in the underground, if after that part of your life, was it hard to duplicate that kind of relationship with people?
SMOORENBURG: Let me tell you this. If something would happen tomorrow here, that the Russians would come in, now I’m married and have kids I wouldn’t do it. But at that time I was not married; I had nothing, except for my parents. But even my parents after they knew, they knew that it was for the good cause.

Kepler: I think maybe what we’re wondering is were you ever able to get those close kinds of connections again with people? Did you end up with close friendships?
SMOORENBURG: Not in daily life, but I think if — for example, it’s over now, but if we would have got the Russians here and I was in the same state, I would do it again, yes. Not that I would particularly kill anyone, although it may have happened. One time when we railroaded from the one direction, that steam engine had a row of boxcars. But if anyone was killed, I don’t know. We tried to avoid killing as much as possible.

Kepler: John, do you have anything?
Herschel: Yes, I have a question. You mentioned a while ago that you thought the underground possibly could have prevented the deportation of the Frank family, of Anne Frank?
SMOORENBURG: Yes. Our group, and some more I know of, they were told that the people were in dire need. There were also gypsies, not only Jews, and some more groups. Since they knew in England that there were food stamps, they said to help them with food whenever you can. At one time, all of a sudden someone who was a gardener, who did our garden work, an older gentleman — he also did a garden for a big house, a multi-million dollar house that had a big shed, a barn kind of a deal — anyhow, one day I was there and I saw him coming in with a cattle truck with a cover over something. He drove the truck into that big barn. There was a dead horse in that. So with a block and tackle, they hung the horse up. He dissected the whole horse, and the meat was brought to people in need. My dad wen out several times with the horse and buggy to the farmers and tried to trade stuff because they didn’t want to take money anymore in the end. But in the beginning, they took the money.

Kepler: Were you wondering how . . .?
Herschel: You mentioned that the underground would sometimes have inside information about when the Germans would do roundups?
SMOORENBURG: Yes, we had inside information because of a particular German officer. It was not a little guy; it was a German officer who knew that I was illegal in Holland. He knew in advance when there would be a razzia, a Dutch name for a roundup. He told me or someone else from the group, or my brother, “Watch out because next Friday they plan a razzia in that particular city block. Whoever is in there, get them out.” Or nail everything shut. Like when Jews were sitting in an attic, nail it shut because once they get in those houses, they throw everything over to find any hidden deals. Maybe at one time they had Jews that way, that they knocked on a hollow deal and found them. But once we got them out, there was of course nobody there anymore. So they said they had that block and nobody was there. And they searched a whole city block for seven, eight, nine hours and mostly didn’t find anything then. And all those trucks, 20 trucks, they were gone.

Kepler: Is there more to your question? OK. I think we should . . .
SMOORENBURG: Am I clear here now?

Herschel: Yes, thank you.
SMOORENBURG: OK.

Kepler: Unless there’s anything else you want to add, I think we’ll stop the portion of the talking, and we’ll photograph some of your things. Thank you very much.
Herschel: Thanks.
SMOORENBURG: You’re welcome.