Fighting the Censor in the "Hunger Winter"

by Carolyn Korthals-Altes, AWCA Co-Founder
(Originally published in the The Bulletin, and reprinted in Tulip Talk - 1983)

In September 1944, the railroad employees went on strike at the request of the Dutch Government in London. Our coal supplies in Limburg were in the hands of the Allies. The "Hunger Winter" began. The three hunger provinces, North Holland, South Holland and Utrecht had to manage with whatever supplies were already on hand and potatoes brought by barge from the other side of the IJssel-meer. In October, gas and electricity were shut off except in buildings used by the Germans.

Our family still had about a ton of coal left over from a supply we had laid in before the invasion in 1940. Later we realized that we were not going to be able to get oil for our central heating. I had already cashed our coupons for 1944 in June, when they were issued, so we decided that we could afford to keep one stove going day and night. That would have to be the kitchen stove, a potbellied stove with a flat top that you could cook on. To heat it up for cooking you had to make a fire of paper and wood on top of the coal fire. To do that we burned up the floor of the loft above the attic and an antique windlass. The two maids had the use of the kitchen with windows on the canal. The family used the dining-room with a window on the inner court. The door between the two rooms was so arranged that you could leave it open without anyone in either room being able to see into the other.

In order to continue his work of making and repairing radios my son moved his work table down to the dining-room and put it next to the window. To use his electric welder he had to heat it in the kitchen stove and then run back to his table before it had cooled off. We had one radio to listen to. It was hidden behind some liqueur bottles and powered by the battery of the telephone central. Our telephone was shut off  but was not entirely dead.

In those days we lived by fictions. We said that we never listened to the radio but people would drop in to hear the news. My son was just tinkering for the fun of it and nobody asked why. Of course some other people could listen by stealing electricity from the Germans, charging a battery by pedaling fast on a bicycle or by other techniques. Otherwise my son's activities would have made no sense.

When he finished a radio set he would bicycle away with an expression of light-hearted innocence on his face and a radio set in a knapsack on his back. One time when he had already delivered a set and was on his way home he saw that no traffic was coming toward him and dived into an empty house. The doors and stairs had been taken away for fuel but the floors were still in. While he was looking around he saw a woman put down a ladder from the floor above. When he said, "I did not know that anyone was living here," she answered, "If you call this living," and offered to scout for him. She reported that further down the street Germans were taking bicycles away. He got home by going out through the garden into the next street where friendly people hid his bicycle for him until the next day. 

This time he was threatened with only the loss of his bicycle but once he was in real danger because he had a radio set in his knapsack when he saw German police examining people down the street. He knew how you must not act as he had once seen a boy run away from the police and get caught. My son got off his bicycle and tried to look like an interested observer while slowly inching into a side street. After he was out of sight he pedaled away as fast as possible and never ran into the police again.

In all that uncomfortable, dangerous and difficult winter our spirits were high because all the time we knew that the Allies were getting nearer and nearer and we could follow their progress without having to leave our own house.