Morning Thanks--The Spakenburg Socks - ii

Thirty years ago, there were still some Hollanders who didn't know English--not many, but some. Still, it came as a surprise that the people in the church, the people we met that day, didn't understand me when I tried to explain how it was an entire American family had just walked in off the street--and it wasn't even Sunday. We knew that Spakenburg, an old fishing town, had a reputation as a really conservative place and that we'd be dealing with conservative country people, maybe those least likely to get along well with the English language. Today, I'd guess, the vast majority of Dutch are English speakers. 

We parked the car and even before we walked in we realized that something was happening in the church; ours wasn't the only car in the lot. I can't imagine that we didn't make quite a stir. Suddenly, a entire family of Americans walked into the church for no apparent reason. 

They were no unfriendly, but language was a problem. I'm fifth-generation Dutch-American, so the mother tongue is really some long lost ancestor. I'd taken German in high school and in college, long enough to realize that I wasn't blessed with extraordinary gifts, but also long enough to understand that things like word order in German and Dutch weren't all that much different. My kids were just old enough to be embarrassed and were at the way their dad used a combination of wild-eyed gesticulation, too much volume, and strangled German to try to communicate. 

Somehow, to my kids' chagrin, I went at it. "Professuuur," I said, pointing at my chest. "Schaaps," I told them, trying to lasso the whole bunch of us with my arm. "Professuur at Gereformeerde Universitat in America," or something lamely equivalent, I told them, trying to let them know these strange foreigners were not to be feared. They straightened up, looked at each other as if to share their vital understanding that as professor this American was some standing. Had I claimed to be a rock star, it wouldn't have mattered--but a professor!

Our initial attempts at conversation were enough for them to going to look for a man who knew some English--emphasis on some. To him, I was able to communicate that I was writing a book that included a story about Noordekerk. That was impressive, fascinating. I told them the book was about the occupation, told him, in the same language stamppot, that I wanted to see for myself the church where this young couple had taken communion on a Sunday night in 1944, resistance fighters very much in love.

He raised a hand and started walking. He wanted us to follow--I had no idea why. He took us into the nave--it's a big church--and then to a back corner stairs we took up to the church balcony. He wasn't explaining anything, just kept pulling us along as if what he had to show us was something I would most certainly appreciate, something, obviously, he did. 

When he got us up behind the balcony pews, he kicked at a fairly substantial throw rug, then reached down and swept it out of the way. There, beneath, was a door, maybe ten feet long and three feet wide, cut into the floor of the upper balcony. He grabbed at an inlaid handle and swung that door open and pointed.

I don't know if he used the word razzia or not, but immediately I knew the story he was telling me, or some equivalent. What he was showing me was an otherwise invisible hiding place where people like Diet and Hein could have gone in to that Sunday night they were together here--if the SS had suddenly pulled up outside the church to look for young men to ship to Germany to some munitions factory, an action the Dutch called a razzia. What he was showing me was a hiding place for onderdijkkers, those who "dived under" to avoid conscription or prison or even death at the hands of the Gestapo or the Dutch Nazis, the hated NSBay.

Hein didn't carve his initials into one of the pews, and there weren't any  inscriptions with hearts or valentines. Our tour guide couldn't have known either of them, of course, although he was old enough to hold memories of the Occupation. In all likelihood, Diet and Hein were in attendance at Spakenburg Noordekerk only once in four years, although, like the church itself, both of them were Gereformeerde.

What the man with some English had shown me was exactly what I came to see, to note, to witness. I could not have guessed that this particular church would have built-in hiding places for people like Diet and Eman, sanctuaries in the sanctuary to hide those who feared being discovered; but there it was, cut into the floor of the church balcony, visible proof of what only my imagination could generate from the harrowing tales Diet Eman had related. 

There were other great moments on that initial trip to the Netherlands. We did the normal things people do when they visit--found the towns where our ancestors lived before immigration, in the province of Friesland and on the island of Terschelling.

But the church at Spakenburg had already given me what I'd come to see, to witness. 

Not to worry. I haven't forgotten the socks. They're on stage only for Act III--tomorrow.