This novel won the 2024 Colorado Book Award for Historical Fiction.

Chapter 6

Amsterdam
Spring 1943

By 1943 we lived in a universe of yellow stars. The worst thing about the stars was how quickly we got used to them. I say “we” but of course it was different for Sonja and Philine. Even once I’d stolen I.D.s for Philine and Sonja, they had to make the decision every day about whether to go out with the fake I.D. and no yellow star, or wear the star and carry their real I.D.s. It was a risk either way. A Jew who got caught using a fake I.D.— one without the big black J stamped across it—was cause for arrest and deportation to a so-called labor camp. But to go out wearing a yellow star was to invite avoided eye contact with citizens and harassment from the soldiers. They were especially drawn to pretty Jewish girls since they were now legally forbidden from ignoring their advances. Duos and trios of Jewish girls walked together for safety. 

The main way Philine and Sonja solved the problem of whether to wear the star or use the I.D. was the obvious one: they just stopped going out. They’d leave home for necessary trips to the grocer, the baker, the bank. And Philine spent much of her time at Sonja’s. Not only was it more comfortable, but it was in central Amsterdam while the Polaks’ apartment was in the eastern part of the city, a neighborhood once known simply for working families and scattered parks but now officially designated as a Jewish neighborhood. 

“It’s a ghetto,” Philine said sharply, when I asked her once about how things were at her father’s. We’d heard about Jewish ghettos in Germany and Poland. But this was Amsterdam. How does evil spread? Like a disease, from person to person? Or like the weather, storm by storm? Nothing so dramatic. The new Nazi rules sifted down into the private lives of Dutchmen like dust in a closed room, mote by invisible mote. Until one day we turned the key in the lock and found ourselves trapped, then looked back at our little room and discovered it so entombed in filth it was no longer fit to live in any more. 

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And yet. Despite all the Nazi propaganda shoved in our faces, we knew the Soviets had defeated the Germans in Stalingrad. Nazi propaganda did not mention it. But that wasn’t our war. We saw roundups of Jews and “subversives,” packed into vans and disappeared without a trace. We saw the casual violence of German soldiers when they were bored, whether it was brawling with each other outside the bars or just kicking children’s bikes into the canals for fun. 

By now I was only attending school as a way to remain in Amsterdam. Most of my favorite professors had either been arrested or simply fired for being Jewish, and the lectures by their struggling teaching assistants felt like a waste of time. All the Jewish students were gone, of course, which meant my best friends were no longer at school. The focus of all my career aspirations, the League of Nations in Geneva, had already dissolved by 1940. Mostly I was staying in school as a conduit for Sonja and Philine, so their educations could continue, even if it was through third-hand notes by me, copied from the nervous ramblings of overworked junior scholars pretending to be law professors. It was something to do. 

Just another day in early March. I decided to swing by the Red Cross offices, something I did when I was feeling low.Walking into the bustling rooms amongst the white-uniformed nurses calmed me: at least someone was doing something useful in this city. And Nurse Poldermans’ stern, steady presence always made me feel reassured that there were still people in this country who hadn’t lost their moral bearings completely. 

I pushed through the front doors of the offices and stopped there. A catastrophe. The beautifully organized shelves of supplies, from medical instruments to emergency blankets to the boxes of rubber baby bottle nipples, looked as if they’d been ravaged by wild animals. The spotless white tiled floors were streaked with mud, clods of dirt, and harsh black streaks of bootsoles. Only Lottie, one of Nurse Poldermans’ assistants, was there. She started talking as soon as she saw me.

“They stormed in last night and took everything, Hannie,” she said. “Just box after box of supplies and even the paperwork in the offices, everything.” Lottie’s normally pink face was ashen as she sat on the floor, placing the remaining scattered things into boxes.

“Where’s Poldermans?” I asked.

“Hannie,” she said. Nurse Poldermans stood in the doorway to her office, her thick arms crossed over her chest, her face set in disgust. She looked like Prime Minister Churchill, his massive bulk and perpetual grimace comforting in their immovability.  “Come in,” Poldermans said. 

Poldermans sat in the chair behind her desk like a ship’s captain, her massive oak desk a tanker ship navigating the wild ocean of paperwork strewn around the room. Private medical files, daily memoranda, all the evidence of the Red Cross’ bureaucracy laid to waste at our feet. The Red Cross was exempt from this kind of thing, or supposed to be. They were officially neutral. Of course, so was Holland.

“I don’t understand,” I said. 

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“They came for the files,” she said. “But when they saw the supplies, they took those, too.”

I’d heard about a fire in the central offices of the National Department of Transportation, where the personnel archives had been bombed by Resisters. Death to bureaucracy. Down with the public spread of private information. 

“Can I help?” I said.

Poldermans shook her head. “I’ve sent all the girls home except Lottie, who’s cleaning up. You should go home, too.” 

A jolt of anger zipped through me. “But we have to get back to work,” I said. It was what Poldermans should have been saying herself.

“This office is now defunct, Hannie,” she said, a simple matter of fact. “I’ve been reassigned to Leiden.” She smiled, a rare blessing. “You’ve been so helpful, Hannie. Where are your parents… Haarlem, yes? Go there. Wait for things to calm down.”

“Calm down?” I said. Looking around, I could only imagine further escalation.

“We’re in a new phase. The work you’ve been doing for me”— she lowered her voice so Lottie couldn’t hear—“You can’t do it anymore. It’s too dangerous.” She stood up and for the first time since we’d met over a year ago, touched me like a mother would, holding me against the warmth of her broad chest. I smelled the starch and the bleach of her white uniform and the slightly sour scent of sweat. I’d never imagined her sweating at all. 

“I’m not going back to Haarlem,” I said,. “I have to finish school.” 

Poldermans just looked at me and nodded. She had never tried to talk me into anything and she didn’t now. “I have something for you. Come on.” 

I followed her into the back storeroom. It had been stripped of most of its boxes of emergency supplies and jars of cotton swabs, but a few items were still scattered across the shelves. Poldermans picked up a plain cardboard box and handed it to me. I looked at the label stamped on the top: CELLULOSE BANDAGES.

“This?” I had no medical training, as she knew. 

“I’m sorry to say….” She searched for the word. “The soldiers stole everything we had, even the sanitary pads and belts, if you can believe it. But we still have a few of these and they’re better than those old cotton rags, eh?” She smiled darkly. “Women are the real experts in blood.” 

I laughed, mildly shocked. She winked. “Go on, take it, Hannie, a thank-you from me.” 

As she said it, her stare lingered, communicating some subtlety I couldn’t quite follow. I was still blindsided by the destruction of this formerly useful space. “Off you go,” she said, walking me to the front door. When we got there she pulled a slip of paper from the breast pocket of her white uniform and slid it through a slit in the top of the box. “If you ever need to reach me.”

“OK,” I said, bewildered. 

“Hannie, look at me.” Poldermans held me by the shoulders to make her point. “You’re good at this. You’re a hard worker, a smart helper. And you’re a lot more cunning than that freckled face would appear.” 

I blushed. Not out of embarrassment. I was honored. 

“Who knows how long this will last?” Poldermans said. “How much worse will it get? I have no idea. No one does. But as long as it lasts, you can keep helping, Hannie. There’s always something to be done.”

“Yes,” I said, not sure what I was agreeing to. I felt a lump building in the back of my throat but refused to give in to it here, in front of her. The prospect of leaving the city now… I hadn’t even graduated from law school. Nothing that was supposed to happen in my life had happened yet. I needed more time. 

“You know how to get in touch, eh?” She tapped the top of the box again. 

“What will they do with the files?” I asked. Some of the Red Cross volunteers were Jewish, at least in the beginning. The thought of their private information — names, addresses, emergency contacts — in the hands of the Nazis made me nauseous.

She smiled. “Nothing. I destroyed all the files last week.” 

“Nurse Poldermans!” I laughed. How many times had she reprimanded me for not taking enough care completing the endless pages of paperwork and patient records the International Red Cross required? For simply using the wrong color ink? 

She shrugged. “God called me to be of service, Hannie. He does not mind what form His service takes.”

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