>> Today is Friday, February 28th,
my name is Adina Langer.
I'm here at the Museum of History
and Holocaust Education at
Kennesaw State University with Hank Van Driel to
record a legacy series Oral History interview.
Can we start by? Could you please state your full name?
>> Hank Van Driel.
>> And is Hank the name you were born with?
>> Well, actually, the Christian name is Hendrikus,
in passport is Henrdrikus Johannes Petrus Van Driel.
>> And do you agree to this interview?
>> Yes.
>> Fabulous. Could you
please tell me when and where you were born?
>> I was born in Schiedam the Netherlands.
May 10th, 1934.
>> And what were your parents' names?
>> Martinez and Maria.
>> And do you have siblings, where do you fit into that?
>> I got two brothers and two sisters. Yes.
>> Are they older.
>> And I'm the oldest.
>> You're the oldest.
>> Yeah.
>> And what work did your parents do?
>> My father did something like workman's compensation,
doing the paperwork and things like that.
>> For the government?
>> Yes. That was the government
or maybe say my government.
>> I'm so sorry, but that was supposed to be turned off.
>> I turned it off.
>> Let's see if we can really turn it off.
And then we'll get right back
into talking about your parents.
>> I turned it off there.
>> So if we can just go right back to you were telling me
about your father worked on workman's compensation?
And he was working for what agency?
>> I don't know exactly how to explain.
It's when you have to investigate whether or
not people should get paid when
they had an accident at work.
>> And your mother, was she a homemaker?
>> Yes.
>> What brought them to live in this neighborhood,
had they always lived there? Where you lived?
>> You mean back in Schiedam.
No. My father, actually came from Nijmegen,
where where the movie was
The Bridge too Far and there is a town down there.
Actually, there is a flash of
the name drill in
that movie the sign for the little town.
And my father used to live
there exactly how everything was.
And there are more people by the name of Driel,
we don't really know.
And where else she lived,
I don't exactly know,
but Rotterdam is extremely close to Schiedam.
I think that's where they met in Rotterdam.
My mother was from Rotterdam.
I believe she was born there.
The family was there, My grandparents.
[NOISE]
And that's where they met.
Then they [NOISE] excuse me.
[NOISE]
They rented the home in Schiedam.
And that was strictly availability,
that's the reason why they went there. [NOISE]
>> And what was the neighborhood like?
>> Regular [NOISE] I'm sorry.
>> Do you want a drink of water.
>> Really regular. For these days,
a middle class neighborhood,
like row homes but a pretty nice street.
And actually, the house is still in the family.
My younger brother.
They were renting, my younger brother,
eventually bought the place and they're still there.
So when I come back and which by the way,
I'm planning in April,
if we can travel.
I will be back down there and when I'm down there.
It's like you've never been away.
I was the only one that lived in
another apartment before when I was born.
And when I was about a year and a half old,
that's when they moved in that home.
And then my brothers and sisters were all born there.
>> And what were your earliest memories of your home?
>> Actually my earliest memory
is the beginning of the war.
Again, my birthday May 10th.
And I remember my sixth birthday that
everybody was forgetting about my birthday because
the city of Rotterdam was burning.
I may have the dates a little wrong
because my birthday is on the 10th.
I actively wanted to look up exactly the day stay there.
And Rotterdam got bombed I believe on the 14th.
So I don't know exactly,
but what I really remember is
that my mother used the seamstress.
And they made their own clothes and
their own draperies and
she had the seamstress on a regular basis.
And she came from Rotterdam
and she was at our house at the time
and my mother had enough work that
she stayed overnight and that was the case.
And the city of Rotterdam got bombed and she was worried
tremendously because of family back in Rotterdam.
Now, what further happened with other family.
I don't remember, but I remember being panicky.
I remember the sky being all orange because of the fires.
And that's one of my earliest memories,
the start of the war.
>> And it was May 10th,
1940 that Hitler and the Nazis invaded Holland.
Before the war started,
do you have any sense whether your family was affected at
all by the Great Depression or
whether they they struggled to get by?
>> That actually, I don't know.
It must have been because I'm born in 34,
which was right in the middle of the great depression,
but I don't know.
For one thing if you think about it,
my family was able to start renting
their home and furnishes and start a family.
So I don't know if they were tremendously
impacted by the great depression for
one thing my father had a job.
Can't remember my father ever been without the job.
So that must have been okay.
>> And before the war started,
what food did you eat?
Was it easy to get food [OVERLAPPING]?
>> Before the war started, yeah.
And in the beginning of the war,
it wasn't that bad either.
That gradually got worse and worse
and the rationing started and all that.
And I think at I saw that some place on,
where did I see this.
It doesn't matter. My father is
talking in the letter about 500 calorie a day.
But then I read somewhere that was down to
340 calorie a day per person near the end of the void.
>> So before the Nazis came and occupied?
Was religion important to
your family? Do you remember that [OVERLAPPING]?
>> We were Catholic,
and in Holland the Northern
part where more Protestants
and the Southern was more Catholics,
but not really big division,
but that is actually not still the case.
>> Do you remember any Jewish
families in your neighborhood?
>> It's a good question. And I'm thinking
if I can remember if the Jewish family being picked up.
I think they must have lived generally
in separate neighborhoods or something like in Amsterdam,
they had as we all know,
they had a lot of Jewish family in a Jewish neighborhood.
I don't remember family
being picked up because of the Jewish.
>> And right before the war started,
do you have a sense that
your parents were worried about it at all?
>> [OVERLAPPING] I really don't know.
>> So what do you remember about
the first changes once the Germans came and occupied?
>> No, I remember and again,
it's not that easy to remember things
between the ages of six and basically,
I would think five, six,
is when you start remembering things and
between the ages of six and 11, it's still difficult.
But I remember things gravely getting worse.
In the beginning, I believe they were trying
to cooperate with the Germans.
But then, the rules and regulations,
they became harsher and harsher.
And they are all things.
You really have to watch out for.
And they were starting to taking things.
There were no more cars.
They were even taking the bicycles of people.
There were all kinds of
problems with all kind of regulations,
and they rounded not only Jews people,
they rounded up able-bodied men
to work in the factories in Germany.
And my father and my mother,
they were worried that would happen to my father,
but I think he might have had a, what you call that?
An exception that he didn't have the COVID
because of the job that he had, something like this.
>> And did you go to school?
>> Oh, yeah. And I remember this well.
First of all, I was in
kindergarten and at the beginning of the war,
when I was six,
I started elementary school,
and that particular school is still in existence today,
built in the '30s.
And the kids of my nephew's nieces,
they were there recently.
School is still in existence,
and the school was divided.
Actually, there was a real wall in one building,
but somewhere in the middle was a wall,
you cannot get from one half to the other.
One side was boys,
the other side was girls.
And during the war,
the Germans took over the whole building,
knocked out that wall.
So they were using the whole building.
And after the war,
they actually decided to put the wall back
in and have again a boys school and the girls school.
But anyway, during the war,
the Germans were in there.
They had a big red cross on top,
make believe it was a hospital,
and the people were flying over,
the Allies were flying over.
So that school was occupied.
So then one thing that also
happened with the schooling during the war,
that we only had
part time school because I remember having
to cry the distance
to go to a school that was still available,
but it had to be shared by other schools that
also been taken over by the Germans,
and I believe I went to school maybe two days a week.
And I also remember
that there was quite a distance, like I said,
and I was extremely
weak that I still remember me sitting on
the curb resting because
I was so tired to get to the school.
But I believe near the end,
we hardly ever went to school.
>> So how did your family get
information during the occupation?
>> The underground, what
they called out the people there,
and I knew some of those people,
but I was told by my parents don't ever talk about that.
And the other thing,
you were not allowed to have radios,
but my father did have a radio.
And in the corner space,
he hid the radio and he tried to listen
to the British radio.
But there's quite a distance and it's
not like today's radio.
It was hard to get any reception out
there but they tried to listen to the radio,
and they were doing special broadcast
for the people in Holland or the Netherlands.
>> And were those broadcasts in your language?
What language were they in?
>> I believe it was in Dutch.
For the broadcast, they
were broadcasting to the Netherlands.
And my father was not that fluent in New England.
>> Do you remember curfews or anything? [OVERLAPPING]
>> Yeah. We had those too.
And actually, the windows of all the houses,
everything, we had
black paper that was over the windows.
If there was any kind of light,
and that's another story,
what kind of light did you have.
But all these windows had to be completely blackened.
So we put black paper on the windows or
somehow they were able in
the evening shut everything down.
>> Do you remember air raids or British bombings?
[OVERLAPPING]
>> Yes. And the reason for that was that
the British planes wouldn't be able to find a raid.
So I really think they must have tried
to block out the whole city of
Rotterdam that they could not see that.
Near the school and near
my home because the school wasn't that far away,
there was a shipyard.
And they had camouflaged that thing
all over the whole shipyard,
but it did get bombed anyway.
And some of the bombs, they strayed,
and there was a house
that got bombed within a block of the school.
And like I said,
we weren't living that far away from it.
We got concerned about
that and that something might happen.
And so we actually moved to an aunt and
an uncle in the suburb of Rotterdam,
some place, and we moved in with them
because we were concerned about
the bombings that close to the shipyard.
And so we moved in with them,
and I remember living there with a house.
I don't know how many,
maybe 12 or 14 people.
>> All crammed into there?
>> All crammed together.
>> You were a child at this time.
Do you remember trying to do
anything to lighten the mood,
playing games with your friends?
>> The thing is that I realized
because also when you
look at all the situations all over the world,
somehow, people learn to deal with whatever they have
to put up with and that situation was really,
really terrible, especially in the end,
and still you move on.
You try to continue life.
You hang on and
I'm really thinking about that kind of situation.
Every time I see like
those refugees in camps and all that,
and the kids are still playing,
sometimes you see that,
and people somehow,
they learn to deal with the stuff.
>> I remember when we spoke over the phone,
you mentioned there were
a couple of moments where you witnessed
violence that the Germans
have perpetrated against people around you?
>> Well, the one thing that I
also remember is the Razzias,
I believe in September '44,
when they were rounding up all able-bodied men.
They brought home bones of troops
and cordoned off the whole neighborhood,
and then door to door to
see if there were any men and they were all
told to gather together a little square or something.
Everybody closed down there,
and the people were all picked up and put
on pickups and trucks and carted off.
That I remember seeing that,
and that was a pretty serious situation.
And the other thing,
you couldn't do anything that
displeased the Germans or they'll just shoot you.
Down the street, they have taken a nice corner home,
just a few doors down.
And I remember a girl wasn't able
to get to the side door which
led directly into the kitchen,
and she went in there
and grabbed a loaf of bread and run away.
And there was a soldier standing on the balcony and
he saw her running away with a loaf of bread,
and he shot her right down
there in the middle of the street.
Another thing I remember.
The neighbor two doors down,
he had a little marigold in the window,
orange is the Dutch color,
and the soldier just
shot the flower right through the window.
>> And I know you mentioned that food and clothing,
everything was becoming increasingly difficult.
What did your parents do to try to go get food?
>> Because my father,
the job he had he of course,
had contact with all kinds of businesses.
Quite a few. And you know,
he wasn't really easily able to get food,
but I remember one time he called the bag of potatoes,
but you would never recognize them as potatoes.
They they were almost rotten and tiny.
But anyway, and I remember
he went to pick the bag of
potatoes up and it was winter time.
Again, that must have been in the middle of
the winter and he went with the sled and
he put the bag of potato on that
sled and had me walk behind it.
Now, how much protection,
I am the age of 10,
but I think my father
was afraid that while he was pulling it,
somebody would grab the bag of potato.
But we made it home but that's
the only only time I remember
my father really got anything substantial.
We really run out of everything.
>> And remember, you told me a story about
your father defying curfew
at one point or going out to a farmer's.
>> Yeah, people used to do that.
Yeah and he went on a bicycle and if I remember well,
he didn't even have tires on the bike.
And you couldn't get anything in those days,
but then he went to the farms and there was
quite a distance and tell you something else in a minute.
But anyway, so he took all family heir looms, anything,
and the farmers really
realized these people are starving,
but they couldn't always help either.
But he came home once in a while a little
piece of bacon and things like that.
It was quite difficult.
And then actually in the letter,
my father was talking about
a 12 and a half year wedding anniversary
in the month of March
and they were able to gather some food with with
the rationing tickets and family and friends,
they were able to put some kind
of family gathering together.
They must have had something.
>> So tell us a little bit about this letter.
This was written in March of which year?
>> This letter, 28 March in '45,
two months before the war ended.
Actually what's also interesting
is we still have
the typewriter that this letter was written on.
My brother still has that.
Well, the one thing with this letter here
also the whole page is about food.
That is the only thing you were living
for that's the only thing.
And the action prices in here,
but that is very difficult to translate in
today's prices because I don't know.
And the only thing I read somewhere or heard
somewhere that a bag of wheat,
the whole wheat, you know,
did you still have to ground was you had to pay about
a yearly salary for the bum bag of
wheat, extremely difficult.
And they're talking about bread down here.
But I remember my father saying
saying there was a poster in the bakery.
That what bread used to look like.
That was the bread.
But what we were carrying
the soggy piece of stuff. I don't know.
>> Don't know what it's made out of.
>> Yeah. We don't even know how they made that.
And and the lay in the board need at the end of
the board Red Cross got permission to
start dropping food among other wheat flour.
But even then the Germans Swiss had
good flour for the lousy stuff that they were using.
So then the baker said,
here comes the flour.
You can start making bread again,
but it actually was still
the crappy flour that that they had in the wall.
>> So you could go to a bakery with
your ration coupons and
the Germans administered those ration coupons.
So it was all controlled by the occupation?
>> Yeah. And you
must have heard the story out of there trying to steal
those ration coupons or make fake ones you know.
I know how I found out some of the stuff.
I'm looking at the dutch news sometimes on the computer.
And one of the papers is
having already a couple of months
a series going on of the news from exactly 75 years ago.
And in there,
they tell the stories if you watch it today,
you would see what happened in February 28, as 1945.
And that's where I found out some of the stuff.
But yeah, the situation was not very good.
Anyway, let me see. You know what?
One thing one thing that
was like like currency was a bottle of gin.
You could take a bottle of gin,
take it to the Germans
and maybe they were going to give you some food.
He was talking about 60
[inaudible] and then 90 and all
the way up to 200.
And for three liter,
you could get a bag of potatoes.
Yeah.
Out here.
And he said under those circumstances,
did we celebrate to
the 12 a half year wedding anniversary?
And then finally saying luckily,
we are still okay except weak.
My mother was 62 kilos,
which is about 130 pounds.
And she lost another 15 pounds.
Thank you that's me and great my sister.
I was only 44 pounds, 10 years old.
I'm going to have to translate this.
>> We will certainly look forward to your translation,
but thank you for sharing it.
So some of this really dire time,
which I had read it's
been referred to as the hunger vendor.
That happened after the allies liberated part of.
How did your family hear about that?
How they feel about it?
>> We had I think it was in November,
one date in November,
we had crazy Tuesday
because they were thinking that that couldn't be
liberated real soon because they started
coming into the southern part of
Holland and they thought they were going to
liberate the whole Netherlands in no time.
[NOISE] And then we got that it's called operation,
the card or something.
But anyway, you got the story of
the Bridge Too Tar and they couldn't get
over the an River and then
the northern part of Holland remain occupied.
And the Germans or the allies,
they were thinking, well,
we marching up to Berlin before the Russians get there.
So they decided to leave that little piece of
Holland or the Netherlands officially,
they leave that occupied.
And then we were in big trouble because now
between the war from
and the North Sea and nothing was coming in.
And whatever was there,
the Germans took, the sold this.
>> Because they felt
this pressure that they knew the end was near, but begin.
>> They were celebrating.
They thought the end was near and then they realized,
no, it's not going to go that fast,
and then it turned out to be a whole force.
>> So when liberation finally came,
it was your birthday again,
May 10th, 1945?
>> The official the official date
in the Netherlands is 5th of May.
That's liberation date.
>> What do you remember about that?
>> People were really priest was finally over.
And also around the same time,
like I said earlier,
the red cross got permission to start
dropping food while we were still officially occupied.
But people were dying on the street and
the situation was really
bad and said we need to do something.
We need to get these people some food.
And I remember going to,
we live near the river,
the river that goes from Rotterdam to the North Sea.
And then you could see the airport on
the other side and you can see
the parachute coming down with all the food.
[NOISE]
But basically, the food didn't get to
us until after deliberation.
It was all around the same time.
>> And how did you know you were deliberated?
What happened?
>> Oh, that was pretty clear.
And the people, I think
they may have thought that may be coming soon.
And so we kids we also knew,
we were all waiting and
hoping that it would be pretty soon.
So I remember when the Germans
capitulated the whole all of Holmes in the Netherlands,
they were all celebrating like crazy.
We had street parties all
over the place for for quite a while.
I remember they had all things going on
and the biggest thing
really was that we were getting food again.
And then they started thinking about
replacing all the stuff that was worn out,
I remember my father putting back together for me,
but we had to wait for the tires because again,
the rubber was, hard to get.
So they were still getting rationing, I think.
You had to wait for it before you
could permission to buy instead of tires.
So I remember that [NOISE].
>> Do you remember seeing allied soldiers around?
>> Long stay came in. We had a lot of Canadians.
The Canadians were the ones that came to
Western Netherlands, Holland.
And some of them, for example,
in in Amsterdam, between the rails for the street cars.
They used wooden blocks with
tar and the reason for that was they give.
So when the rails get hot
in the summer or cold in the winter,
they expand to a contract.
And the wood gives,
they putting wood between these rails.
[NOISE]
And the people
dug all the wood up to burn in the stove.
And the first Canadian soldier
on a motorbike that came in,
drove right in one of these holes and got killed.
Killed or hurt, but,
the streets were broken actually broken up.
During the war the other thing we were doing we had
gas dump with coal.
There was a gas factory and
they brought coal in it
was a really dirty way of doing it.
And you talk about the environment today.
But they used the coal to make gas for the houses.
But what was left over from the coal, the cinders,
they used that to fulfill for streets,
and things like that,
and people started digging all that
up again because some of these coals,
they would still burn.
And so a lot of places got dug up,
people looking for coals.
And then the other thing that
happened in the parks and all that,
they had no more trees.
People chopped them all down.
There were no dogs,
there had no cats, they all had been eaten.
And some people to stay warm,
they were just burning the trimming
the house or the fences in the yard,
everything, to stay warm.
>> So all of that had to slowly come back to normal?
>> Everything had to be rebuilt.
Well, the real big thing in Rotterdam was to
rebuild the whole city in
the harbor because everything was gone,
all the cranes and everything was gone.
>> Do you remember getting supplies
from the US or from other allies?
>> We got some of the first things that was coming in
was C-rationing from the soldiers.
I remember meat and potatoes in cans.
But the one thing that also happened,
we had to learn to eat a.
We had a hard, the tardy stuff for the soldiers.
We had a hard time digesting that.
We really had to be
careful what we were doing with the eating,
to learn to eat a can.
We couldn't digest the food that easier anymore.
And another funny story is the ship came in with
dried apples and the men
unloading the ship ate some of the dried apples.
And then they caught thirsty and drank a lot of water,
and the apple started swelling up
and one of the guys actually died.
>> I've heard stories like that where,
you get someone who's been starving,
they can if they don't go very slowly.
>> I think I remember,
people had to be careful of
getting diarrhea or something.
Everything had to get back to normal really.
>> So before we talk about what you
decided to do with
your teenage years and when you were a little bit older,
do you want to show us
the flyer that was dropped that you saved a copy.
>> We can do that.
>> And Kathy, if you want to tell us where to
hold it so it can be seen.
>> Now, this is actually a copy that they framed,
but I have the original somewhere.
And one of those days,
I will get you the original and then you can
make maybe better copy
because this one already is a little discolored.
But I should have the original somewhere.
>> And what is it that you're showing us?
>> This is a paper that they used to drop out of plane.
They were printed in Great Britain.
It's in Dutch and it tells you what was going on.
And you asked me before how did you learn about, well,
this is one way we learned about what was going on.
But this one is May 10th, 1945, my birthday.
And what it says,
the headline is Germany capitulated.
And it also says this is going to be the last one we're
going to drop because you are liberated now,
and there's no need for these papers anymore.
Because that's the other thing that
happened, newspapers stopped.
We didn't have any newspapers anymore.
>> When we're through, we'll just shoot this
[OVERLAPPING]
>> That's great. Well, so shifting gears a little bit.
Can you tell me how you
began working on the Holland America Line?
>> I looked for them in 1962.
>> '52?
>> '62.
>> So that was already quite a few years later.
One thing about education and career,
that is another thing that I had to get back to normal,
go back to school.
And I don't quite remember when that school got
back to normal and we went back to the school.
But I had a little trouble with
the whole learning because of
the war and because of my hearing.
So I wasn't doing that great in school.
And then we went to middle school.
Make the long story short,
I went to vocational school and I learned
about the culinary art
and the restaurant business and I liked it,
so that's what I did.
I became a chef.
And I worked in Rotterdam,
several hotels in Royal Yacht Club,
where we had all the dignitaries that visited Rotterdam.
They usually went down to
the Royal Yacht Club for dinner.
And then after a number of years
I worked in Switzerland for a year,
I worked in Great Britain for a year,
and then I decided I wanted to come to the States.
No, actually, I was on the Holland America Line,
and the people upstairs they were all making dollars.
But the shift downstairs, nowadays,
they defied the tips among all the people,
but they didn't do that in those days.
And I told them I want to make dollars too.
So that's how I decided to find a job in the States.
>> And what year was it that you
went to the United States?
>> In 1965.
And I was telling
how I just cleaned out
the storage space and one of the boxes,
and maybe of course,
had no time to go through all the boxes,
but I just opened it up and then on top is
a menu from the Mountain [inaudible] the Poconos,
my first job, 1965.
And that was a drink menu for
the big holiday where they had the entertainment,
the singers and all of them.
[inaudible] was down there, Jane Morgan.
Anyway, the menu I was just looking at it
yesterday, drinks were $1.
Cocktails and all that,
$1 in a place
where you had big entertainment and everything.
Probably today you pay 12 or something.
>> It's a lot of inflation.
>> So that's how I got started in the State.
>> So what did you enjoy the most about
cooking in these resorts?
>> Say that again?
>> What did you like about cooking?
>> Well, basically,
working in the resort, it's a job.
And in the Honeymoon Resort,
you have to cook for an awful lot of people all at once.
And one time we had to run these convention,
and we were feeding 2,000 people all along.
We did the best we could,
but it's not fancy restaurant cooking.
But I've done that too.
>> And you told me
a little bit about how you got your green card,
how you became a resident.
>> Yeah. When I found the job in the States,
which was the Poconos, the Honeymoon Resort.
I went to the American counsel in Rotterdam and I said,
I need a visa.
And they told me go and ask for a yearly visa,
and that you're a teacher with other words
a temporary visa, easier to get.
And the counsel said to me,
what are you going to do when you like it down there?
I said, well, find some way to stay.
Which is a big no-no on a temporary visa.
You're supposed to go back.
And the counsel said to me,
you know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to give you a green card.
And I got a green card visa six weeks.
And the reason they had
quotas in the beginning and shortly after the war,
during the Cold War in the '50s,
lots of people immigrating not only America but Canada,
Australia, South Africa, a lot of people.
But for America, they had quotas.
Which I think they filled up pretty good in those days.
But by the '60s,
things had slowed down and they had extra quotas.
So it wasn't that hard to get the green card.
But they changed the agreement,
immigration law on 1965, '66.
So I got in just in time,
after that it changed.
>> So did you pursue
more education or anything
like that once you were in the United States?
>> Yeah, I did. Because I never really had
an official college education
in the Netherlands, just vocational school.
I got CDC,
I think that's what it's called,
high school equivalence.
>> Oh, GED.
>> Right, GED.
That what I did. And I got that
and and I did take some college courses,
mainly because of work,
like marketing and things like that, communication.
>> And how did you eventually come to settle in Georgia?
>> That only because my daughter started a family here.
And I lived in Connecticut because of my job,
but I retired in 1990.
And I consulted after that
but the house was really
no longer too suitable for me alone.
And my daughter started the family,
so I decided to move to Atlanta.
>> So tell me about your family.
>> I have one daughter.
And I'll be honest,
I never became an American citizen
because I have some much family in the Netherlands.
I didn't want to be a foreigner
then I went back to the Netherlands.
The Netherlands doesn't allow
or I'm not saying this right.
At the time, they didn't allow dual citizenship.
If I had been still married,
but my wife passed away early,
you could be a dual citizen.
But in my case,
I could never do this.
So I didn't find it that
necessary to give up the green card,
so I'm still here on my green card.
And I look at myself as a bold citizen.
Some people never get married and there more committed.
Then are actively married and the same thing with me.
I've done very well down here in the states,
and I'm very grateful.
But on the other end in the beginning,
I didn't want to give up my Dutch citizenship.
And later I was thinking, why really.
So now, you asked about my family down here.
So my daughter, because she had a Dutch father,
she's a dual citizen.
And my grandchildren, are dual citizen but not me.
I'm still 100% Dutch.
>> And what was your wife's name?
>> Michelle.
>> Did you mean your wife?
>> Oh, my wife. My wife's name was Marianne.
And I met her here.
I started looking for Nestle.
The last shop I had was the Baltimore Country Club.
And the only day off is Monday
and never had anything else off but Monday.
And so social life wasn't that great.
And the one day off you have,
you have to take care of
your laundry and things like that.
And what the heck is going on on Monday anyway?
But then when I started voting for
Nestle and started doing research and development,
I had 9-5 job.
And I started going out more and met
my wife in Baltimore and got married.
>> And then your daughter's name is Michelle.
>> Great.
>> And you have grandchildren now too?
>> Two. I have Lila
10 years and Willem which is a typical Dutch name.
The king's name is Willem also.
Willem is eight.
>> And have they been back to the Netherlands?
>> Yeah.
>> And you go back pretty regularly when you came back?
>> Well, how often they've been down there?
They have been there maybe twice,
but they're talking about going again.
I come back on a regular basis.
So there's another reason why
I kept my Dutch citizenship.
I've been going back
almost every year and sometimes twice a year.
>> What are some of the main differences you've
observed between the Netherlands and the United States?
>> Well, that is a story.
For example, you really want to talk about that.
We're now in the middle of the election business.
To me, it's a big mess down here.
None of that stuff they have here
like a photo suppression,
redistricting, juryman ring, all that stuff,
they don't have in the Netherlands.
Everybody's getting this photo registration in the mail,
if you're an eligible citizen
and you get it automatically in the mail.
And then folding comes around the folding places all over
the place like old age homes, assisted living homes.
They have their own folding inside.
These people don't even have to go anywhere.
And they're talking about
all that money that they spending down here.
That is not the case whatsoever.
Candidates don't spend money like that.
They get some free time on TV.
And then the other thing
is you come to a two party system.
Everything is black and white.
That's not the case down there either,
they have a dozen parties.
You have a party for
the animals and they have the green party.
You may think the mayor in
town is doing a great job and he is a labor party.
And then somebody else in the government,
maybe another party, but you think he's doing great.
Well, the other thing.
Well, like Bernie Sanders,
he is doing really good.
And what he's talking about.
Some people they think socialism and this and that.
They don't really know what they're talking about.
And they're talking socialism,
they're talking Venezuela and Cuba that
dictatorships is not social
democratic right like they have invested in Europe.
People pay the taxes and all that,
but they're taking care of people too.
And they are generally
the happiest countries in the world.
Then it's Denmark, the next time in Switzerland,
the next time in Sweden.
Every time again, it's Western Europe.
People are happy.
And that's what Bernie Sanders is talking about,
but he may never get it done here,
but basically, that's what he's talking about.
>> I guess we can't all go to Western Europe,
even if you want to do there are sometimes.
So a couple of just concluding questions.
We're an educational museum,
what would you like students to take
away from your experiences during World War II?
>> So many people say about the holocaust, never forget.
And the one thing I really
sometimes I'm thinking about
there's still so many people that are suffering,
and I'm so often
wondering what the heck can we do about that?
And even myself I
give to charities that I think that helps these people,
but you still see all that suffering.
For example, in Haiti,
they had these problems.
Lots of money was collected.
I really think enough money was
collected to give everybody a new home,
but they're still living in tents.
Basically, I would say when you see all this,
remember to have compassion for other people.
What happened in Germany,
to me, it's almost unbelievable how that could happen.
And I really wondered, still wonder,
how much the Germans knew what was going on, but really,
what was going on,
like the holocaust,
to me, it's unbelievable
that something like that can happen,
that people can act like that.
And again, like we were talking earlier,
in those bad circumstances,
people deal with it.
On the other hand,
what these soldiers did I guess there is
a whole wide range of the way people can act.
It is unbelievable that they
could do these kind of things.
>> Under pressure people react in different ways.
>> Yeah, they really do.
And sometimes the real good way
and sometimes the real bad way.
>> Is there anything I haven't asked you
about that you would want to tell us about today?
>> I'm thinking there are other things that
really I think mostly you covered most of it, really.
And the thing for me also to do is translate that letter.
You catch some more insight
because really the letter is all about
is my father telling how things were going in March 1945.
And really, like I said earlier, the leather,
you can really tell
the only thing people were thinking about was
food and some of
the destruction that was going
on because everything was wearing out.
I remember in our home
we had the linoleum floors,
and they were all falling apart.
The furniture was falling apart.
Actually we had a tiny little stove
and we all were living in the kitchen,
and I really don't know how we did it.
The kitchen there wasn't much
bigger than a bathroom here.
We had a nanny during the war.
So the five kids and my parents and the nanny,
we're talking eight eight people all hunkering in
the kitchen because we couldn't heat the whole house.
We didn't have central heating anyway.
The living room had a coal stove,
but we didn't have that much coal
to heat the whole house.
So everybody hunkered down in the kitchen
and the tiny little stove was also used to cook home.
And the gas and electricity was often turned off.
And like I said,
the gas were generated by coal,
but we didn't have gas all the
time and neither did we have electricity.
And one thing happened also,
like I said earlier,
you had to blacken out the windows,
but the soldier came by and he saw light in
our house that was was a cavit lantern.
The very old cars used to have cavit lantern,
now that's what we had.
And again, that was hard to get also,
but that's the way people had light,
with a cavit lantern.
And these things were not easy to get
either or probably very difficult.
And the soldier had seen the light.
And the nanny we had,
I think might have been somewhat mentally challenged.
I'm not 100% sure.
To us kids,
it didn't make any difference,
but she helped us through the whole war and everything,
but anyway, the soldier rang the doorbell.
She answered the door bell and he
said that light, what was that?
Give it to me. Now we on the corner.
Given the cavit lantern,
you may not even be able to get another one.
And she knew a tiny piece of candle,
about that big, and she said that was it.
And he took off with it.
And my father said, you did a wonderful job down there.
The soldiers really,
the tiny little team,
they could give you a big trouble really.
>> Thank you so much for sharing your story with us.
It's really vivid what you've been able to remember.
>> Now, if there is any more
that I come up with, I'll let you know.
And for one thing, I will try to translate
that letter and then send you a copy of that.