My father left because the germans were looking for him and maybe because an uncle, a priest, was betrayed and shot by the nazis in 1942 because he didn't give them any information.
When dad left he didn't say anything at home.
And he never said a word about how he reached England.
On one of our travels we stopped in Paris for a few hours.
None had ever been there, hadn't seen a map, and it was pre-Google.
We were walking at Place du Tertre and he knew his way to the steps, small alleys, etc. There were no signs.
How could he know?
He never anwered that question.
"Sometimes people have a feel for a city."
We never returned, he never had any interest to go there any more.
I have been told he might have taken the southern route.
The time he arrived in England fits with this route.
As he had his own resistance contacts it must have been easy to arrange an escape to Belgium. Guided by someone of the underground Dutch-Paris escape line or another group of contacts.
There he must have been put on a train, and smuggled across the Belgian border into France.
On his way he would have been prepared with precise, strict oral instructions, with brief glaces on maps.
He would have known exactly what to do, which turn to take without any hesitation.
He looked a bit French, with his hair very curly, black, longer in the front, so easy to hide his eyes and look just shy. Perfect not to draw attention of the german Gestapo or French police.
Paris was the nerve center of escape networks.
There were lots of hiding places, for instance in appartments. During the stay dad would have had instructions how to behave in the city, navigate between trainstations or metro lines blindy. He'd probably had at last one change of guides, and he had to wait for forged travel permits, so he also had time to learn some language.
When we were in France, dad would never say a word in public. He gave us instructions what to do. Even at the bakery he'd rather have us stumble over out tongue to ask for bread, than help us with the language.
Internalised during ww2?
From Paris he would have traveled south to Toulouse or Perpignan, assisted by the French-Spanish escape line network.
Then he would have made his way by foot over the Pyrenees.
Almost all Engelandvaarders who crossed the border into Spain were arrested by the Spanish Civil Guard.
Many were sent to the Miranda de Ebro concentration camp.
The Dutch government-in-exile would have negotiated their release and then they were sent to Lisbon or Gibaltar, from where they were brough to England by ship of plane.
There he would have been taken to the London Reception Centre, where he would have been interrogated about the route, about facts, people, what he saw, etc etc.
This is in a file, containing his original passport photo from the war, transcripts of the interviews, the exact routemap of his escape.
It should be in the Dutch National Archives. (Nationaal Archief)
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A request has been sent (with death certificate) ... was bounced back..."Look for yourself online" ... requested again ... bounced back referring to the Law of not giving out information of people born later than 1924 ... requested again, referring to the already sent death certificate and diving deeper into the fact that his family has died, my sister has died, and the reasons why I need this information...
Waiting for a reply...
