I had no real communication with anyone at the time, so I was totally dependent on God. And he never failed me.
(Thinking while being interrogated by the Germans) You big shots think you can decide on my life, but I have news for you: you can’t touch a hair on my head without the will of God my Father, because He is on my side.
I would stand there at times and remember how beautiful God created this world, and then I would be reassured that he would certainly take care of me and all of my loved ones.
By the end of the war, I could pick out Jewish people almost as if I had a sixth sense about it, even if they had blue eyes and blond hair. I would have been a very valuable Gestapo person.
After the prayer they executed an armed robbery. That sounds very strange this many years later: prayer and then armed robbery.
All during that prison time I really lived by prayer. Be in prayer always, we’re told, and back then I was.
But miracles still happen, even if we don’t think they do.
I felt peace, even though I was still scared to death. I thought that, whatever would happen to me – I could still be killed. I didn’t know – and in what I’d already been through, God was in control.
To me it was real war and my life was at stake, and I believe that all those clandestine spy games we played as children helped when the Occupation came.
They thought we were stupid to do it, (hide Jews) of course; in fact, it was beyond their comprehension that we would risk so much for Jews.
I’m sorry to say it, but it was hard on me to see life continue all around.
The worst is, I remain so stone cold. Does this war make you an ‘alive-dead person’? Is it not possible to remain yourself in this chaos? How long still?
The sound of natural things was wonderful to us. In the middle of all the suffering, it seemed pure, untouched.
And here we see again that we do not decide our own lives. Dieneke, even if we won’t see each other again on earth, we will never be sorry for what we did, that we took this stand.