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Chapter Eight. Picking Up the Pieces
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
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CHAPTER EIGHT Picking Up the Pieces while my family was settling into our new life in amsterdam, i managed to find out where my friend Ado Broodboom was living. It was not easy to track him down. He’d spent most of the war on the road with the band, travelling all over Holland. In 1944 he’d married Melly Sudy, who sang in several bands, including the one Ado played with. They travelled and played together until the end of the war. After the liberation of Holland,the band went on the road again.They made a grand tour through the country to honour the Canadian liberators. In 1946 they played in Switzerland, and in 1947 they travelled by army truck to perform in Spain. Fortunately, when I went looking for him, Ado was in Amsterdam. The people living at his old address were able to tell me where he had moved. He was living on the third floor of a house. I rang the outside bell and somebody opened the door from the top of the stairwell. I called up, “Is Ado in?”And then I heard Ado’s voice reply,“It’s about time you picked up your watch. It has been ready for a long time!”The watch he was referring to was the same watch that I had asked him to take in for repairs before Yettie and I were arrested in 1943. His greeting tells you a lot about who Ado is. After I had been back in Amsterdam for a few months, I also ran into someone who told me that he had just spoken to Joe De Jong. I told him in no uncertain terms that he must be crazy. I had practically seen Joe die before my very eyes in the burning sick bay that was bombed by the Germans when we evacuated the Buna camp. I had no doubt whatsoever that this man must be talking about somebody else. Still, I gave him my address 63 and told my friend to bring the man over. Imagine my shock when the very next day he walked in with Joe. I thought I was seeing a ghost. Joe had brought his wife, Lineke, with him. She had also survived the concentration camps. The four of us, Joe, Lineke, Rika, and I, became best friends. Joe told us the story of how he had been saved from the fire by the Russian army. He had been knocked out in the bombing, but two other patients had picked him up and carried him to another barracks. The Russians, who had arrived in the camp while the barracks were still burning, found Joe unconscious, but alive, and took him to Odessa, in Russia. After he had recuperated, the Russians had put him on a freight ship and sent him back to Holland. Joe had news about another Dutch survivor from the Buna camp. When Joe had the job of picking up electrical cable and supplies from the storage room at Buna, he was given his supplies by another Dutchman named Baby Prins. Baby let Joe know that he had a pretty good idea what Joe was doing with all the extra cable. Joe had promised that if Baby agreed to look the other way, he would give him a loaf of bread. When Joe and I were reunited in Amsterdam, he told me that Baby Prins was in a hospital there. We both went to visit him and brought him a loaf of bread. A promise is a promise! During this whole time, my eyes continued to give me trouble. I had to go through an elaborate ritual just to get them open in the morning.First, I put ice-cold compresses on my eyelids. When I was finally able to open my eyes, the eyeballs were rolled back in their sockets. Before I could see anything at all, I had to wait for the pupils to come forward again. At that point my vision was actually quite good, but, as I have described, it was an ordeal. An eye specialist in Amsterdam sent me to a university clinic in the city of Utrecht where they specialized in eye problems. After doing a lot of tests, the doctors finally told me that my eyes could be cured, but the treatment might take up to two years. They prescribed electric shock treatment at a special clinic in Amsterdam.At the clinic they also massaged my eyes...