Extract G – A Reckless “Double Game”
John’s membership in the SS and his assignment to the SD were the catalysts that determined his basic circumstances during the war. But his return to the insurance industry, his joining the Schutzgruppe, and, less clearly, his participation in the resistance were emblematic of how he responded to these circumstances and sought more room to mano euver. These developments appear to have reinforced an independence of perspective and behaviour. They also engaged his skills of deception and manipulation, especially in the Schutzgruppe where he and his unit probably started policing checkpoints and inspecting vehicles for contraband during the late winter or early spring of 1943….
In his career as a manipulator and liar, John achieved dual high points. One was with the Schutzgruppe, the other related to the front he presented to his family and possibly others. What he called his “reckless game” and his “double game” reached its apogee when he joined the Schutzgruppe, which knew he was German, while the SS understood he was Dutch. He played “the German authorities against each other,” he said. I also strongly suspect that he would have agreed with Hans Bernd Gisevius, who wrote in his memoir, To The Bitter End, that “in such dangerous times there is only one relatively safe refugee—in the lions’ den.” But he paid a price for the paradoxical safety of such a refuge.
He told me he constantly felt pressure from all sides, he was “never ever” able to relax, and he used words like “manipulation,” “alertness,” “fear,” to describe his situation. He said he trained himself to be alert even in his sleep…
* * *
Extract H – Silhouette of Shrapnel
The defining feature of [the Muiden] camp was what John referred to as the “ammunition factory” or “the gunpowder factory ‘de Krijgsman’” (the warrior). Located just outside the town, the factory was where some of the prisoners worked dismantling bombs…. When John was blown up [on October 15, 1946], no one expected him to live, he said. He and another man had been working in a large unheated structure, which John referred to as a barn…
John’s mate got off the stack and carried the bomb he was working on to the drill press in the middle of the room. For a moment John heard the drill; then there was “a tremendous, absolutely shattering explosion” and a sharp change in air pressure. John said he never lost consciousness. If this was true, he was nevertheless severely disoriented. When he regained his senses, his buddy and the drill press were nowhere to be seen. Then he discovered that he was covered in blood and badly hurt. Somehow, he got himself out of the barn. How he managed this was still a mystery to him when he told me about it. He said he never panicked. Nor did he feel any pain—“probably because of shock.” Men were running toward him. As he first sat, then lay down on the ground, he observed a fountain of blood spurting high into the air from his right arm. He learned later that a piece of shrapnel had severed the artery. It was one of the more serious of the numerous injuries he sustained…. He’d absorbed metal from one end of his body to the other but primarily in his head, chest, and arms. The most dangerous pieces were the ones in his chest, one of which came to a stop next to his heart but didn’t pierce it. He said the barrier of his clothes caused this piece of shrapnel to slow and twist just enough not to kill him. Other pieces penetrated his head but didn’t enter his brain. One eye had virtually been encircled by metal, but the eye itself was fine. At the hospital, four surgeons went to work removing shrapnel, resetting bones—John’s left arm had been broken in two places—and doing what else they could. When they were finished, there were still thirteen pieces of metal in his body that they had to leave. One of these was embedded in the palm of his left hand where it remained for forty years until advances in surgery permitted its safe removal….
Many months later, probably during the latter half of 1947, John said he returned to the barn. The wall behind where he had sat was, with one exception, pockmarked with seemingly hundreds of holes created by metal fragments that had exploded outward. The exception was a silhouette defined by John’s upper body, which had absorbed all the shrapnel that otherwise would have scattershot that part of the wall. (Chapter 25 – MUIDEN)