-TITLE-KLAAS VAN HOUTEN -I_DATE-16 JULY 1988 -SOURCE-CHRISTIAN RESCUERS PROJECT -RESTRICTIONS- -SOUND_QUALITY- -IMAGE_QUALITY- -DURATION- -LANGUAGES- -KEY_SEGMENT- -GEOGRAPHIC_NAME- -PERSONAL_NAME- -CORPORATE_NAME- -KEY_WORDS- -NOTES- -CONTENTS- Mrs Van Houten = W Interpreter = P 0041 V: Since this book is a book that examines the personality and character of those who helped during the war, we'd like to ask some questions about your background, to get a clue about motivation. We've asked all the rescuers these questions... Born 1904 in Groene (ph)... you had brothers and sisters? K: Oldest of 5 brothers and sisters...father was an agricultural architect. V: Was your family religious?
K:...yes, reform church. (wife offers interviewers coffee and sugar) V: What were your parents like? Are you more like one than the other? How so? K: My father...active. V: Can you give me an example? K: As a publisher... P: As a publisher, I was more busy with the work itself than with the poetic work. (wife offers cakes) V: And your mother, what was she like? K: She was paralyzed...she was severe, I was the eldest. V: Did you know many Jewish people? K: In Wienzhoten there were very many Jewish people there. V: How old were you at the time? K: From 6 to 15...my neighbors were Jews. We played with them, we fought with them... V: Did your family have Jewish friends? K: Yes, they had Jewish friends. (interviewer requests water) My wife is a little deaf. W: I can't hear too well.
02:30 V: After high school, you went to the university. K: In Amsterdam, the Trie (ph) University. V: When you were a child, did your parents help people? K: Yes, in Church they organized things...i don't know what, clothes...i was a little boy. V: When you were growing up, who else influenced you? K: My friend Koenig (ph)...he knew me better than my parents did...i was 16 then, he was 29. He brought me into the publishing house. I should like to be a psychiatrist...i had an uncle who was a director of an asylum, he told me not to be one... P: they thought he would be crazy like one of the patients. V: and Koenig... K: I knew him by Zoener (ph). He took a holiday...he was a publisher...i put very good but my friend had difficulty... P: Just by hearing I could...the father of his friend, his friend had to double a class.. K: He asked Koenig to... P: Just by hearing... V: OK, Zoener and Mr Van Houten were the same age. P: Koenig came in as tutor. V: Oh, a tutor to help Zoener, and you too. But you were faster, OK. Very good. OK. When you finished the university, you went right into business with Koenig... what year was it? K: '29. We rebuilt during the war, then after the war, it was
bombed by the English, so we rebuilt after the war... P: There was a little left, but there needed improvement. 04:75 V: In 1929, you went into publishing. What were your dreams? K: To get into politics...in America it would be Congress? V: Did you want to change things about Holland? K: Oh, no. V: Did it just seem glamorous? P: I finished law, and I finished my studies, and I thought it would be nice to do politics. But after 2 weeks, I was in publishing. K: I had no more time. I was a year in publishing, my friend Koenig asked me how do you like it? P: I didn't like it at all, I said. Why not? Well, I'm busy all day, but I feel like I'm not doing anything. K: I should like to make something. Then my friend told me I make books... P: One sold very well, others didn't. After, I started doing advertising. 05:68 V: Then, you did more marketing and sales than editing...when was your first recollection of what Hitler was doing to the Jews...before the war? K:...In 1937, I was driving into Berlin... P: We were walking through town, and then I saw a few Jewish boys.
And there was Nazi brown shirts. They started beating these boys... K: And the police don't come, they don't look. I told the police...i could no longer stay in Germany, I went through Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, Austria, France, Belgium, I could not do that way anymore. I met many German people then - they do many bad things with the Jews and I knew that. In '40 when we were at war and occupied, there was nothing organized. 06:49 V: Where did you go into the resistance? K: We were not organized. As publishers, we should take things from the Germans, but we didn't do that. We were the first weeklies and monthlies to be forbidden...in '40 they started, with Spiegel... P: We were trying to work with the resistance here...even before - it was a Jewish boy that went into hiding with them, with my friends. And then all the personnel started wearing fake paper stars. V: So Koenig was also part of this with you. And Zoener was the father of your friend. K: Zoener was an officer during the war. P: He went into hiding on the day he was supposed to present himself. They came looking for him in the publishing house. V: Did they come after you? P: Yes, the Gestapo came twice for me, in '40 and '41. The same
night, they let me go. I was living with my parents then. They took all the books, they were German books. I had Mein Kampf. I read 30 pages, it was total crazy. I said, that book is safety...i go to my mother, I don't know why they come back. And then they go for my friend Koenig... P:...There were 3 men, 2 Germans 1 Dutchman, to search the office. I had some illegal pamphlets in a desk in Koenig's room. They searched my desk and said everything's OK, nothing's the matter. K:...and after the war... P: This Dutchman was put in jail as a collaborator. V: What sort of illegal pamphlets were you printing? K: No, we didn't print them...we made identity cards. 0863 V: So you made false identity cards in the publishing house. K: Especially for the region...we did it in the evening, with Koenig and the printer. V: So the main resistance started with these cards. How many Jews were in the area? K: I had 178 Jews, to give these cards and food stamps... P: This group was formed where they went to the town hall to take the food stamps, they took a gun. K: They gave me the food stamps and I distributed them. V: So little by little the resistance became organized. Were you one of the organizers of this.
K: I organized myself. I didn't like to help the Dutch people. We had to help the Jewish people, or the Jewish people would be killed. I asked the most important organization...to make a special department for helping the Jews. They said it's too dangerous. But they helped me with the Bunkcarte (ph) and the Mulegarte (ph)... P: In the business, we had a man who could imitate the signatures... K:...of the Germans. V: That's helpful. How did the Jews begin to hear about you? K: I don't know. They came. The family of my wife helped Jews too...we had Jews from Amsterdam, brought them here... P: I was engaged for half a year, then you could get extra food stamps. V: What year was this? K: I was engaged '41, I was married '42. V: What was your brother-in-law's name, who got those Jews from Amsterdam? K: Kay (ph) Chardon. P: C-H-A-R-D-O-N, he died, was taken to concentration camp and he died. He sent a note, "you take over the work of help." He didn't know that I was busy doing that all the time. V: And his family? P: The ones that lived at home were all taken...they had 5 Jews in
the house, they were making false identity cards with fingerprints. They were all caught...he took a lot of risks. 10:75 V: You said that the first Jew who came to you was this Jewish boy from the north in 1941. K: Very early. He was Dutch...my friend hid him. The whole war he hid him. Then at the end of the war, we should evacuate here. The front was coming. All the Jews had good papers. I said, go away to melt in the towns... no one was caught. V: Did you hide anyone in your home? K: No, I was married. But my friend, he hid 6 people. (phone rings) V: Did you help find places for Jews? K: Yes. V: You found houses. K: Yes. (wife answers the phone, talks in background) V: Did any of these people stay here? K: No, I had to find another place. V: How many people? P: I had to take care of food, all their needs, of 178. V: So you had to go visit them and bring them food. That must have been a full-time job. K: Yes it was, but I did some espionage...
P: I was in the espionage for the last 10 months. I did not do direct work. They had safe papers and could take care of themselves. K: In the publishing house, I did only illegal work. All publishing was forbidden. In the beginning, only monthlies and weeklies were forbidden. I did stories, novels...we printed...the Germans took everything from us. In 1944, the police from Utrecht, said we were all bakhras (ph). P: Like foreign bookstores. K: Then the Gestapo sealed it, but not the rooms. We would go to Utrecht... P: All the papers were mixed up...100 hiding people, the Jewish people, they sorted all the papers. The denouncers, some of the printers, were wrong. K: They sent a letter to the police. After the war, they took some of the printers. I didn't know it... P: The Germans just came in to ask some questions. All these 100 boys sneaked into the meadows, only 7 came back. 12:49 V: Of these 178, were any of them families? K: Most were...there was 1 lady...there was born 21...After the war, they helped the lady... P: I didn't go there myself... V: Were there some of these people you became friends with? K: Yes, I have a professor that dealt with the...
P: I had a professor, he always wants to talk. K: Yose Yetta (ph) was his name... P: Later, there were some German Jews... V: Were they staying with people or did they stay by themselves? K: I don't know how they came. They came to me and I found addresses for them with people... (camera shows scenery outside, boats on the river and cows in the fields) P: If they had the right papers. They were not recognized as Jews. And they could become like my own. But there were too many... 1334 V: Did all of these 178 survive? K: All but one. Joachim Staff (ph) didn't in Amsterdam... P: There was this girl who said, I'll go anywhere as long as I can play the piano. So I took her to a couple. The woman was a piano teacher, she could play the whole day. The couple was getting a divorce so the atmosphere was very unpleasant. She said, I want to go back to Amsterdam. I advised her not to go but she insisted. So we went together to the station and brought her ticket. I said, just lock yourself in the toilet, and don't get out till you're in Amsterdam. In Amsterdam she got caught...a week later...she was hanging out of a window looking outside. K: She didn't know.
P: She wrote me from Westerbork...I've never seen her again. There is a lady who maintains that she did see her. But I also heard she went on to the children's train. 14:11 V: Have you stayed in touch with any of these people? K: Some have gone to Israel, and they come here every two years. This woman, 2 months ago she was here. V: Did you feel a lot of tension during the war? A lot of fear? K: No. When I was passing controls... (wife offers cameraman coffee) 14:59 P: Usually at control posts, men would stop me but I could go on. On my bike, I had bags. And these bags had secret pockets. In these pockets I had stamps, everything. I was really scared...once I was in the middle, they were throwing granites? - grenades - and one splinter of it got into my back. K: But I was too far away...i was hit. But that evening... P: I forgot to say. I was wearing a very thick coat so it couldn't hurt me. Later I was at a friend's and I started shaking.
K: It took me 3 hours. I couldn't read, I couldn't do nothing (shows how his teeth chattered). But the doctor said it was very good that I had this stress, this tension. I had very much stress...then I did something. I steal something from the Germans, when it was possible. We had this organization. Then I was not afraid, I could do that. But afterwards... V: So while you were doing it, it was fine, but later it would hit you. I see. Why do you think you were able to do this? Why did you risk your life this way? K: I had to do it. Not why. I was very angry at the Germans, when they came here. I was... P: The Germans were invading my country, and it made me very angry. I had read the German literature, and I spoke the language very well. And I had a poker face, so I could do the work very well. I had nightmares for 25 years afterwards. K: Then I had the cancer. And they operated me and took the cancer away... P: After the operation...i was not mad anymore. I could talk about the war without getting emotional. I could talk about Koenig's death...without getting overemotional. V: When did this operation happen? K: In the '70's. After that I had no nightmares.
V: Until then, it was difficult to talk about the war. A mysterious disappearance. K: Yes, in my brain it was mixed...then I have no nightmares... P: To my great surprise, I got cured. Then I said, well, let's get some work again. 16:44 V: In looking back at this time, would you say that the war changed you in some way? How? K: I became more religious...i understood God. Before the war, everything goes normal, I had a very good life. But in the war, we...lived through with very little food, very little everything... P: I was living in the maid's room with my wife and 2 children. V: This was during the evacuation. K: We could do that. It was possible. I learned during the war that it wasn't necessary we have all these things. And that I understood, I could do more things than I thought I could do. V: You were stronger after the war, is that right? K: I had worked with Trau (ph), that was a paper during the war, an illegal paper. After the war, they told me, you be the publisher... P: The publishing business grew, 1000 people working for us... 17:14 V: How many children do you have?
K: Six. The youngest son had died. Five lived...i have 9 grandchildren. V: You had children during the war. K: The first 2...one 2 weeks before the troops landed, before the evacuation...we had to gather up the papers, the diapers, some clothes. It was 10 months before we came back. V: The evacuation was in what month? K: September... 17:39 V: In May of 1945, then... K: Then they had a telephone wire, my friend and I lived on the street to look were the Germans go... P: Through the electric cables, there was a telephone line... K: There was no electricity then...i could hear the Germans and I could give instructions...till the end of December. Then a bomb dropped on the line. V: That was your espionage warfare. Did the Germans ever try to convince you to, ah...because you had a publishing house? K: There was a German officer, in February of 1944. He said no we won't demolish the publishing house. But they bombed it, the English. V: The English bombed it? K: They bombed it... P: When we started rebuilding then it was for the second time. And we had very little. We just started ordering things. We didn't have money to pay, we just ordered. And then a year after the war we got
this... K: From the government... P: And we could pay the bills. 18:21 V: What you did was unusual. Not many people did what you did. K: I don't know... P: A lot of people were scared, especially Roman Catholics in the monasteries. K: At the beginning we told them you can do something with the Jews, you can cover them. My friend Koenig spoke to the archbishop for help... P: And I had a nick-name, "Jews-safe"...my nick-name in the war was claush (ph) and I was called Jews-claush...sometimes 15 minutes before the curfew they would bring Jewish people at the house. K: And I had to find places for them. V: Do you have any regrets about this time? K: No, I had to do it. I had to do it. I would only help Jewish people because it was very dangerous where the Germans took them. We knew it in 1932, in the first...i had a girl here in the little village there...i asked my brother-in-law to answer them. He saw the parents of the girl, they took them away. And I had to tell the girl, your parents are away. She said, will they be finished? I said, I think so. 1911
V: Many people said they heard stories about the Germans but they really didn't believe what was happening. K: But I had seen the Kristallnacht...I was not there, but I saw the newsreel. There it was, I felt it so horrible. And my friend Koenig, his brother died... P: From '37 I'd been sure there be war. I took Koenig to a German hospital in the winter, and I was sure there would be war. K: From '37 I saw the burnings, and the browns with the Jewish boys. And I said, that's not possible. I didn't trust the people, I didn't trust them at all. Then the German Jews came here all the way... (confusion because much was said in Dutch and the interpreter can't remember all of it) 20:40 P: There was a lady, a Jewish woman. She was taken to prison. K: Police prison. P: They went to pick her out, and there were more people there, resistance people. And they took them out, and also the lady. K: The husband was there too, but they couldn't find him. The lady had much time, she had only 3 or 4 minutes. P: The lady found out they didn't take her husband and she started screaming...
K: Crying and screaming through the town for nights. And the people had to bring her away. Every month, at the full moon, she started screaming. She had this effect... P: His friend brought the woman here by train. K: He was a policeman, he had a uniform. He said to the Germans, I have a Jewish woman. He took her, but he didn't tell me. And I found the address in the Nazi Hillberg..They had the doctor and he give her something to calm her down. But they had to take her away to psychiatric asylum. I had the car with gas...the car of the Dutch people, you could have benzene, gasoil. But just before Wehrmachtzen (ph), it wouldn't go...an ambulance car came. P: And this man from the fighting unit came... K: She was on the backside of the car, I was with the chauffeur in the front. He was afraid... P: Usually he was not scared at all, he fought with the Germans... V: But this crazy woman scared him. P: So he tied her up totally. K: Totally. Then he stood before the Wehrmachtzen and said "Very ill people! Go away!"... P: I felt like a doctor. I could see into his coat, and I could see 2 coats. I kicked him in the car and I said take off your coat! Take out your guns! K: I went into the Wehrmachtzen and called for another car...we
arrived at the asylum with the second car, it took 2 hours. I brought her, and the woman was much better now. P: She was only a little dizzy. K: And I brought her to the asylum, that was the fighting unit. And the director of fighting officers. P: Then there was the head nurse, and she didn't trust me. K: It was 4 hours before the doctor came. And I said to the boys, go home...about 10 o'clock, the doctor came. P: They asked if she's a relative. I said no, no, she's a neighbor. I lied a lot... K: I got a paper from the doctor, I needed one from the judge. We could quickly arrange that, but then I would send the car over here... P: I told him she was a Jewish woman. K: I said, you have control. It can't be difficult, you have her sleeping a little...i said, after this comes another time, you should take her. P: So at my uncle's house I called. K:...the asylum sent me every month a bill. And I paid the bill. 22:52 V: Were any of your brothers and sisters involved? K: I was the only one. Only once I brought a little child, 2 or 3 years old...but there was an NSB Youth House across the street...they had to take him to the hospital.
V: Why do you think you were different? K: I was the eldest and my younger brother was 10 years younger than I, he was already married. He was not at home...i was a grown man. V: So they didn't work against the Germans, and they didn't work with them either. K: No. And I didn't tell anybody my work. I didn't tell my wife!... I acted like all was normal, and she accepted...i have to go to toilet. 23:07 V: Looking back on your life, which years would you say were the best? K: The war...i knew what I had to do, and I did it...that was the best time. And we rebuilt our publishing house, our printing house. It was demolished in '45. But we did it. And I worked with the Trau, the illegal papers. V: Were you disappointed after the war? K: Yes. The friendship was finished. Everybody that was in the resistance was helpful. After the war, everybody was for himself. Now a year, 2 years later, it was finished...i know some people, we visit from time to time. Everybody was for himself... P: After the war, the Jewish people came to me to say goodbye, to
Israel. I kind of blamed them, they did not stay here to help build the country more. V: Do you feel that they appreciated you enough? K: It was not necessary to thank me. I had to help them...they shouldn't be grateful to me, it shouldn't be necessary. Some people wrote me from South America, North America. 23:66 V: You planted a tree with your wife. Were you honored at Yad Vashem? Only your brother-in-law, but not you. K: It's not necessary. He was killed. In April 1945 he was killed. He was bringing his brother to East Germany. V: But you did as much as he, you just didn't die. K: I didn't die. I think God had helped me during the war, and after the war...i read a book, Why Six Million Died. I had published it here... P: I went to a man and said, I took care of you during the war. You didn't know it, but I took care of you. So now I want you to write a preface to this book. (interviewers talk among themselves about the book) 24:33
V: You know I'm writing a book for children about people who helped Jews. What would you want children to know about this time? (confers with wife) P: That's the reason we published this booklet about my [the wife's] brother: so that the children would know something like this would happen again. W: That she would be... P: That they would stand up to it, so they wouldn't take the easy way. V: Did you have any idea what your husband was doing? W: He always tried to say...never that there were real Jews in the house, that they were half, or a quarter...the Jews came from far...i never believed him. But better not to know. If they ask me, I could say that I didn't know anything. V:...About children, what would you say? K: Children should know something about the war, the difficulties during the war. My children do not know. A little, they are not interested. W: The eldest granddaughter was interested, but not the others. V: Does she know what her grandfather did? W: Only when she reads the little book about my brother. V: Will you tell her what you did? K: When she's interested and she asks me. I told my children right after the war, but they were very little.
(all talk people who referred the interviewers to Mr. Van Houten, request names of individuals he saved during the war) 25:42 V: Since the war, was there any opportunity to continue to help oppressed people? K: No, not much. I sent money to Israel, to the Social Department where they come new people. W: We plant the trees... (conversation about trips to Israel) V: It must have been a wonderful feeling to see these people...that were there with their families because you helped them. K: No, I don't feel that. It's not a feeling that I have helped them. I had to do it. V: For yourself. K: Not for myself. Against the Germans, I had to do it. (conversation about places visited in Israel) 26:03 P: When we were there a girl I had helped had arrived. It was on my birthday and she would never forget my birthday - it was the day she was presented to the house as a new maid. She came fresh from school, she had never touched a pan in her whole life.
W: Just a baby. And then I said to her, will you please now do the cooking? She had never seen a potato! 26:42 V:...How do you feel about what's happening in Israel now? K: I don't know. It's very difficult for Israel, with the Jordanians... P: But the children have been pushed... K: By Arafat, I don't know... V: Anything else you'd like to say? (confers with wife) I wish more people felt the way you did. 26:79 K: There should be in Holland, about 20 thousand people that feel the same as I. 20 thousand people helped the Jews. In Holland, that's about 3% of the people - about the same as the NSB, the Nazis. V: So for as many who were exceptionally good, there were as many exceptionally wrong. K: And the others were indifferent or afraid. NOTES There is no time clock on the video. The times given
correspond to the revolutions per hub as indicated by the VCR's counter. The story Klaas Van Houten has to tell is fascinating, but it appears to have been poorly translated. As a result, it is difficult to follow in certain sections. If subtitles were to be added, the interview would be a lot more interesting..end.