Remarkable Journey of Mr Prins , livre ebook

Brown Dog Books - Aletta Stevens

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177 pages

English

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The greatest journeys are escapes. Night-time, suitcases of cash, chaos, the final burning of papers. 56 people flee in a small boat. In 1940, as exiled Dutchman Eli Prins arrives in England and makes his way to Bath, he instigates a longer journey, one from war and uncertainty to safety and solidarity. Based on personal testimonies and unpublished sources in English and Dutch, this book vividly reconstructs the experience of war in Alkmaar and Bath. It is a story told in full for the first time: how the Jews are expelled from Alkmaar; the fate of Eli's parents; the Bath Blitz; and then in 1945, after the Dutch Hunger Winter, how the people of Bath chose to help Alkmaar and its children. This is both a local story and a European one, written not just to commemorate history, but also to remind ourselves that we still need such heroic and uplifting stories.

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Publié par	Brown Dog Books
Date de parution	23 avril 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781839521393
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0450€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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First published 2020
Copyright © Aletta Stevens 2020
The right of Aletta Stevens to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Published under licence by Brown Dog Books and The Self-Publishing Partnership, 7 Green Park Station, Bath BA1 1JB
www.selfpublishingpartnership.co.uk

ISBN printed book: 978-1-83952-138-6 ISBN e-book: 978-1-83952-139-3
Cover design by Kevin Rylands Internal design by Tim Jollands
Printed and bound in the UK
This book is printed on FSC certified paper
To the people of Bath and the people of Alkmaar. May your friendship continue to flourish.
Contents
Foreword
Part 1: Escape
Part 2: War
Part 3: Friendship
Text notes
Bibliography, sources and photo credits
Acknowledgements
Index
About the author
Foreword
Chris Davies , Bath-Alkmaar Twinning Association
Anyone driving into Bath will see on the road signs welcoming them mention of four international twin cities. One of these is Alkmaar, located some 20 miles north of Amsterdam, in North Holland.
Like Bath’s other official sister cities – Aix-en-Provence in France, Braunschweig in Germany, and Kaposvár in Hungary – Alkmaar regularly hosts a variety of sporting, cultural and school visits. Many of these visits, going back and forth, have been continuing for decades. The trips are invariably much enjoyed by the participants, for Alkmaar and Bath are two pleasant, convivial places, with much in common.
So far, so normal: twinning activities continue in communities across the UK, mostly low-key and perhaps generally viewed as worthy and unremarkable by the majority of residents not directly involved. And most residents, if they ever think about their home’s twin cities at all, probably assume the links have been chosen by their local council, for well-intended reasons. This is generally true. But sometimes the trigger for the links, the seed from which an entangled, organic relationship grows, has something more to it than praiseworthy good intentions. There are deeper reasons. And the story behind this particular link speaks especially strongly to the nature of the places and people involved, in both the past and the present.
Bath and Alkmaar’s relationship originated in 1945 – in fact, perhaps uniquely, at a time when the Dutch city was still occupied by the German Army, before the end of the Second World War. The strength and breadth of this relationship remain strong, and the story told here perhaps explains why.
Surprisingly, until recently the full story of how the link came about had been largely forgotten. Partly this fading away of the tale was for understandable reasons: many of those involved found revisiting old memories a painful experience, shedding light on some of the very darkest episodes of the 20th century. There was also a laudable desire to move on and leave behind the past; to focus on the future, and build a new spirit of fun and fellowship. But importantly it was also because many parts of the story had lain buried in archives or had simply never been told. Elias Prins – the Mr Prins of the title – has many surviving friends and acquaintances in his adopted home of Bath. They have been taken aback as our Bath-Alkmaar Twinning Association, with the active involvement of his son, Gwythian, has begun to share parts of Elias’s story which he revealed only towards the end of his highly eventful life.
In 2017, in an effort to boost interest and participation in the link, the Twinning Association organised a varied programme of cultural events and activities. As part of the publicity, the Bath Chronicle newspaper published a photo of the children from Alkmaar who had made the original trip to Bath in December 1945. By happy chance, this was seen by author and translator Aletta Stevens, who made contact with the Association, joined, and was soon invited onto the committee. Aletta brought her knowledge of the war in the Netherlands, and her rigorous professional approach, to the Association’s embryonic efforts to rediscover the history of the link. As we found out more, and shared parts of the story more widely, including through the local media and the BBC, the same thing kept being asked: “This is an incredible story. Why isn’t there a book about it?” Now, thanks to Aletta’s scholarship and skill, there is.
The story of the Bath-Alkmaar link is partly the story of one man’s escape from a brutal persecution almost beyond imagining, and of everyday folk responding to the horrors, cruelty and deprivations of war. It is also the tale of a living friendship between two communities from different countries, a friendship which continues to flourish today despite, or perhaps because of, the current challenges facing friendly relations between European peoples. This is a tale from a past now at the very edge of living memory, but also one which, like all the best stories, holds highly pertinent lessons for the present.
In Alkmaar there is a plaque on the former Prins family home, honouring those who were lost in the war. Its final words, in Dutch, are “ Vergeet het niet ”; in English: “Do not forget”. Hopefully the story told here will help ensure that we and future generations never will.

Memorial plaque, Bierkade 15, Alkmaar.

In memory of:
Eli Prins (1904–1995) Rosette Prins-Vlessing (1879–1943) Isaac Prins (1873–1943) Aron Prins (1902–1943) Rose Tobin-Prins (1908–2001)
Part 1: Escape
O afflicted one, storm-tossed, and not comforted
Isaiah 54:11 *

The Netherlands, 9–15 May 1940
A small number of determined individuals are moving ever closer to their destination, unaware that their paths are about to cross: Eli Prins, Alfred Goudsmit, Bertus van Loosen, Ben van Hasselt and Frouk Tromp, Loe Woudhuijsen and Loes Spaander.
Thursday 9 May, the eve of war Blaricum, 20 miles south-east of Amsterdam, shortly after 10 pm
ALFRED GOUDSMIT
Through the moonlit streets, a well-dressed, 53-year-old gentleman is walking home. He is Alfred Goudsmit, managing director of the beloved Dutch department store, de Bijenkorf, known for its quality goods. Alfred can look back with pride at his twelve years in charge of the business. Who would have thought that it would grow into a chain of luxury stores, with a staff of several thousand? A Jewish family firm with many Jewish employees. * For a moment, Alfred stops. Smoothing down his moustache, he looks up at the sky. Under the starry firmament his small stature – neatly presented in a three-piece suit, white starched shirt collar and shiny cravat – seems diminutive. His mind ponders the fact that this beautiful evening is marred by only one prospect.
Alfred continues on his way through the wide, leafy avenues, past large, old houses and well-kept gardens. This affluent village offers comfortable country living with a touch of the bohemian. He reflects on his conversation with the dinner guest he has just accompanied home, 48-year-old Mrs Gertrude van Tijn. * Since her divorce three years ago, she continues to live with her teenage son and daughter at the ‘Houten Huis’, close to the woods. The house has a chic interior with antique furniture and an impressive library, whilst the exterior boasts a tree-lined driveway and a tennis court. Alfred knows Mrs Van Tijn from the Stichting Joodse Arbeid, a Jewish foundation of which she is the Secretary and he is the Treasurer. The foundation supports the Nieuwesluis ‘labour village’ in the new Wieringermeer polder in North Holland, a farm complex where young Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and Austria receive training in agriculture and trades.

Alfred Goudsmit.
During their walk they talked about the possibility of war in the Netherlands. Thus far, the Netherlands has maintained its policy of neutrality, as it did before, during and after the First World War. To Mrs Van Tijn, a German-born Zionist and leading light in the Committee for Jewish Refugees in Amsterdam, the prospect of a German invasion is not only abhorrent, but also suffused with a cruel irony. For seven years since Adolf Hitler came to power, she and the Committee have been helping thousands of German-Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied territory cross the border into the Netherlands to look for permanent settlement or onward travel to Palestine or the Americas. With Denmark and Norway under German occupation since last month, does the Netherlands await a similar fate? And what should they, as Jews, do then?
Enschede, a Dutch city close to the German border, evening
BEN VAN HASSELT
28-year-old secondary school head teacher Ben van Hasselt is meeting family friend Tammo Wolt. Tammo works at the nearby border crossing near Glanerbrug, a small place between Enschede and the border with Germany. The border post is closely guarded by military police. Despite closing the border with Germany on 17 December 1938, the Dutch authorities are still trying to curb the huge influx of refugees. To accommodate them, the Dutch government built Westerbork Central Refugee Camp a year later in a remote corner of Drenthe, a province in the north-east, near the German border. Since then, Jews from Germany, Austria and Sudetenland – the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia – entering the Netherlands illegally will be treated as ‘undesirable aliens’.
Tammo and Ben discuss the chances of war breaking out. It is difficult to imagine, as there has been no fighting on Dutch soil for more than one hundred years. *
Ben has become involved with refugee work. There is a network of Dutch people who rescue Jews from the Nazis and smuggle them across the border into the Netherlands. Recently, such a netwo