The Green Police sealed off whole sections of cities, went into houses, even went on the roofs, and drove out young and old and took them off in their trucks. No difference was made between young and old. We have seen old women of over 70, who were lying ill at home and had no other desire than to be allowed to die quietly in their own home, put on stretchers and carried out of their home, to be sent to Westernborg and from there to Germany, where they died.
I myself remember very well how a mother, when she was dragged from her home, gave her baby to a stranger, who was not a Jewess, and asked her to look after her child. At this moment there are still hundreds of families in Holland where these small Jewish children are being looked after and brought up as their own.
M. FAURE: Can you state whether, apart from these measures against the Jews, the Germans concerned themselves with other confessions?
VORRINK: From the beginning the Germans always tried to get the churches into their power. All the churches, the Catholic as well as the Protestant, protested whenever the Germans violated human rights. The churches protested against the arbitrary arrest of persons, against the mass deportation of our workers, and the church never failed to testify for the Jews.
Of course, the church dignitaries, the priests and pastors, had to suffer for that; and hundreds of our pastors and priests were taken to concentration camps, and of the 20 parsons and priests whom I knew in the concentration camp in Sachsenhausen, only one has returned to Holland.
M. FAURE: Can you state what measures were adopted with regard, for example, to culture, propaganda, and teaching?
VORRINK: What incensed us most in Holland was not so much our military defeat. We were a small people, and I can say that during those 5 days we fought as well as we could. Perhaps it would have been possible to maintain a correct attitude with the occupation forces, if it hadn’t been for the Nazis’ determination to dominate us, not only in a military sense, but also to break our spirit and to crush us morally. Therefore, they never lost an opportunity of encroaching on our cultural life in their efforts to nazify us.
In regard to the press, for instance, they forced us to publish in our press editorials which were written by Germans and to print them on the front page in order to create the impression that the editor in chief of the paper had written them. One can even say that these measures were the starting point for the very extensive underground press in Holland, because we wouldn’t allow the Germans to lie to us systematically. We had to have a press which told us the truth.
Also in regard to the radio, it was soon forbidden to listen to foreign stations; and they dealt out exceedingly harsh punishment to people who defied this ban; and there were a great many people in Holland who listened to the foreign radio, especially the BBC. And we in Holland were always glad to hear the British radio which never hesitated to give the people, in extenso, all the affecting speeches of Hitler and Göring, while we were not allowed to listen to Churchill’s speeches. In those moments we were deeply conscious of the reasons why we had built up our resistance, and we also knew why our Allied friends strove with all their might to deliver the world from the Nazi tyranny.
It was the same in the field of the arts. Quite a number of guilds for painters, musicians, and writers were forced to organize themselves. An author could not even publish a book without submitting it to some Nazi illiterate.