Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

• Contents
• Map

Miriam Troostwyk - May 28, 1998 and June 3, 1999

Eight by ten--maybe?

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Here was a little window and under that window slept that young couple. Edith went--and her mother slept here on this side. In the middle was a dining table and on this side was a folding bed for two. It was for Gita and for Laynee. Six in that small room. When you went out of that room, there was an attic. On the attic were sleeping the children from the uh, people who were hide--uh, who hide us. That was Raymia, that was Tony, that was Willie, that was um, Jan--four boys. They were sleep--it was a small house. We will show you on the film. Um, well the house is not there, but I can show you from the neighbors that I went to.

What's the last name of the family?

Vandenberg.

Vandenberg.

Yes. And the family who were hiding was uh, who came from Arnhem were the Bade family.

Yes. And the Vandenberg...

Bade.

was V-o-n-d...

Vandenberg is...

-e-r-b-e-r-g?

Vandenberg.

Vandenberg.

Yes.

Okay.

V-a--b-e-r-g.

Yeah, okay.

Um, so at the attic they had--they made a bed for two people. There was uh, Jacque Bade, the furrier, with his wife, pregnant, in that bed. Let's, let's say the bed was here, then here you could walk through to the room from Edith. And when you--and then you went around, there was a ladder that--to go downstairs. It was a ladder, it was not uh, a staircase, because it was very poor people, very, very poor people.

This is from the attic? The ladder went from the attic?

The ladder came from the attic...

Attic, okay.

down.

Yeah.

So we had to go down and then you were in the kitchen. They had um, not um, a toilet that you could flush, they had uh, a, a wooden thing with a, a pot with a round thing, when you sit on the pot and after that you close it with a wooden, uh...

A door.

Yeah. And all that fertilizer went in the garden. They had a garden with twenty, twenty-eight fruit trees. The garden was most beautiful. Twenty-eight fruit trees and they were uh, having uh, Kohl--cabbage and salad and, and green beans and there were two little rabbits in the garden in a--in a cage, like uh, on a farm.

Were...

But no cows and no sheep and only fruit trees and they had uh, beans, green beans on that little things, that goes around and this kind of thing.