Dutch and German Immigrants The Prins Family - Pier 21

watched your shin bones. We always played before school started andduring recess. Later, this school became the post office and some timeafter I left for Canada it was demolished. Presently there is now a newhome for retired people where Uncle Phil and Aunt Lena now live. This isthe same street where I used to live; the Houtmanstraat.The German army was building trenches quite close to where we wereliving and they had a huge barn there where thy stalled their horses(never mind the 'mechanization' of the Wehrmacht!). Most of thesehorses were requisitioned from the Dutch farmers.In the beginning of the war live mainly went on as usual, but more andmore changes and restrictions were imposed upon us as the warprogressed. Of course this is all seen through the eyes of a twelve-yearold boy. In the movies about the war, you quite often see rifle-totingsoldiers at every corner of the street. This, I definitely don’t remember.Later on when the underground resistance came into being, they hadmore to fear from the Gestapo, Sicherheidsdienst and Dutch informers.(A German you usually would recognize him by his accent; a Dutchinformer you wouldn’t). The underground resistance groups aided Jewswho faced deportation to the concentration camps and other personswho refused to go and work in the German factories with hiding placesand rationing cards. As he war progressed more and more food rationingcame into effect.All the news on the Dutch radio stations was censored of course by theGerman authorities, but people tried to listen to the BBC stations fromEngland but this was illegal and the stations were 'jammed' and it wasimpossible to get a clear sound. Later on, all the radios were to behanded in but not everybody did, so the underground press had stillaccess to radio Oranje in England.By the end of 1942 half of the town of IJmuiden was being evacuatedbecause the Germans needed room to build their 'Atlantic Wall. Nonessentialand older people were moved to Friesland in the northern partof Holland and considering what followed in the 1944 'hunger winter'those people were relatively well off. Opa and Oma Prins moved acrossthe North Sea canal to the Geelvinkstraat because Uncle Cor, who wasstill living at home, worked at the Hoogovens Steel Works. They livedthere for year and a half and then they had to move again.During this time the underground resistance assassinated a policemanwho collaborated with the Germans; he lived in the same neighbourhoodas my grandparents. The Germans retaliated by conducting a 'razzia'(door to door roundup of people). Young men found would be deported toGermany. They were just having breakfast at Oma’s house and Uncle