Esther Posner - March 11, 1986
Moving to Delden
The Hunger Winter.
And my mother uh, was going to take me. She was going to meet--she was--she put me on a sled and she tied the sled to the bicycle with a long string, and she bicycled on the side of the road for thirty kilometers to meet a man she had never seen before and to just hand her child over to him. And uh, I just held on to the sides of the sled and wasn't scared but my mother said it was the most frightening, horrible experience in her life because uh, you know, there were cars whizzing by on, on the road and uh, the sled just went from one side of the road to the other and she was, she was just afraid that she would--wasn't going to make it but she did. And this man who met me--I was cold and my feet were icy and he took me back to the house and he was--they were very kind to me. And lo and behold, I walk into this house and there was my aunt Ula--my aunt who had originally gotten us the hiding place through the Mos's. The uh, the underground just--I guess had limited number of hiding places and they just kept using the same ones over and over. And uh, this was almost a, a country like uh, existence. Again, very uh, it just seemed like this was a, a nice middle class family, certainly not poor in any way.
Do you remember their name?
Uh, I will ???. And this was in a little town called Delden, which is the most idyllic looking town. I mean, you hear again and again that Holland has no woods, Delden had woods. You know, Holland has a big aristocracy as far as uh, uh, prince or princesses. They have like gentry. I don't know what it is but uh, royalty of different sorts with all kinds of different uh, titles. And there were castles in those woods with uh, where these people lived but they weren't living there. It had been taken over by the Germans, so. This family had two children--two boys--and uh, we used to go walking in the wood. We used to look at this house--very big old castle with a moat around it and uh, the, the German cars would drive in and out and we would just hide and watch. It was just very exciting to watch.
Were you afraid?
No, in that time I wasn't frightened anymore. Uh, we didn't see too many uh, we saw very few Germans. And my parents were taken to a family named Mussing. And ???...
[interruption in interview]
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