Last days I was sick, Influenza, most of the time I was laying in bed or on the coach, sleeping or watching the television.
World wide rumble, last thing I saw was the auswitch concentration camp memorial.
I had to think about a lady I knew, years ago, an octogenarian, she died some 20 years ago.
While sipping a cup of coffee and enjoying cookies she told me things.
Her husband was imprisoned by the nazi's in one of their concentration camps, he was on a list, an alphabetical list, people who should be punished if a resistance group had the courage to oppose the nazi's.
His name started with a B, so after a resistance action they arrested him, this was at the end of 1940, he never came back alive.
Since this was at the start of the war they still had a little decency left, and he was not Jewish, so his dead body came back, she buried him, a young widow with two kids.
She must have been furious, I'm guessing here.
After some time a resistance group asked her if she could help them out with some Jewish people, to live under the protection of her and her kids.
Food was no problem thanks to stolen food stamps she got from the resistance.
She never left her house after the war, living there till the day she died, she showed to me the entrance of the hideout for the Jewish people whenever there was a danger in her street, like Germans soldiers, Dutch police, men in black..
A closet, upstairs, just large enough to stand for one person, and a hatch in the floor, at first sight too small to crawl through.
I looked inside it, I saw a space that looked just high enough for people to crawl in, flat on their belly, not suited for obese people, a space between the upstairs floor and downstairs ceiling.
That must have been a dangerous thing to do, but not in vain, all the Jewish people survived.
In the last year of the war Dutch traitors came for her son, 17 years of age at that time, he had to work in Germany, they were there to take him away.
She refused, saying that they had taken the life of her husband, they won’t get the life of her son, surprisingly they never came back.
After the war she was not able to forgive the Germans, she hated them, and never travelled through Germany during her trips.
However, there was one exception, a young German(about 35) living in her street was a friend of her, he did her grocery shopping's and jobs in and around her house.