Simon Maroko - February 19 & 26, 1986
Avoids Deportation VI
And this is the second escape. From there on I went straight--okay, we had a funny thing in our house. There was an inner staircase, not visible to the outside, from the attic to the second floor, where in the meantime had been living two ladies. Gentiles who had offered me after the first escape to go underground. And I said, no I can't do this. This is way too dangerous. If they catch me I'll be terribly punished by the Germans. This time I said, "I'm ready for it. I'm willing to accept your offer." They said, "Okay, you go back." And, and we were spending most of our time in that--in our hiding place in the attic, next to the coal bin. Um, and they got in touch with us and they said, We have two possibilities. Either uh, right away in the province of Friesland, northern Holland can we find a place for you." Or later on, and it might be different. Or it was the other way around. Doesn't matter. Anyway, that Shabbat, for the first time in my life, that boy and I, we went outside, we took maybe a, how do you call them, attaché case, or something like this. And we were walking with our chin up passing the headquarters of the German police in Amsterdam. Officers, German officers passing us very close distance and we're just walking as if we were Dutch young men who were Na...Dutch Nazis. Going through the train station, we entered the train station, took the train to a particular place. We were supposed there to find a man who had a handkerchief in his hand. In the meantime we were lucky that there was no uh, checking because did a lot of checking of, of trains and so on.
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