Esther Posner - March 11, 1986
Nearly Being Discovered
The uh, ??? house where my parents--the lady with the grocery store--they had the same kind of hiding place we had had at the Kleinjan's, which was uh, that uh, bookcase that turned with the--in front of the false wall. It seems like somebody must have written a book about how to hide people because everyone had the same set-up. But um, they didn't have that--they had an attic with a door that led to a crawl space in the attic and the feeling was whoever was hiding would just crawl as far as they could. And somehow those roofs attached. And when my father ran up there and they went through that house with a fine tooth comb because they knew there were Jews there. Apparently the Talsma's had hidden Jews before and had told some friends about it. And these friends--their daughter was there and their daughter had a boyfriend and the boyfriend found out about it and the boyfriend was a, a uh, a German collaborator and belonged to the NSB and decided uh, that he would tell someone about it. This must have been like almost six months before and these people had left me while I got settled down. And uh, so they immediately sent out word that I was not to return to the house and that my mother was not to return to the house and that my father was not to return to the house. And we all met back at Mrs. ???, the, the widow lady. And my father crawled through the roofs and somehow got to the school and there was a given the uniform of a painter and a bucket of paint and that way walked back to the house. He didn't know where to go and then was told in the same uniform to go to Mrs. ??? and the underground met us there. And this time we were taken--we were told that again we were going to be separated, my parents and I. And I was taken to a small town called Delden and this was the winter of '44/'45 which was that really, really rough winter.
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