Children deployed to deliver resistance magazine Trouw: ‘You were less suspicious’

NOS News•today, 08:46

A significant number of the couriers of the resistance magazine Trouw were still minors when they were deployed in the Second World War. Research by the newspaper itself shows that one in ten delivery drivers was not yet an adult. There are even a handful of people known to have been younger than 12.

“As a child you were simply less suspicious,” says the now 88-year-old Cokky de Hoop, who was deployed as a 9-year-old. “I had newspapers under my clothes and I was not allowed to run, but I was allowed to skip. I had to pay very close attention and when someone arrived I did not ring the bell and walked around the block quietly.”

De Hoop says he was very aware of the danger, but helping was taken for granted. “It was just my job. I think many more children from resistance families had to do chores. I never put so much emphasis on it myself.”

93-year-old Nelly van Bommel-Den Hartog also joined the resistance through the family she grew up in: around the age of 13, her mother Dinah worked in Rotterdam for gangs and the illegal press. Even though she has Alzheimer’s, the newspaper interviewed her because she is one of the last survivors. Her statements were supported by other evidence and stories she previously told her son.

As a child, Nelly always got the new edition of the resistance magazine so that others could mimeograph it for further distribution. “I picked them up from a boy who said: ‘Nel, put them under your shirt.’ Then I said: ‘That’s good’.”

Things almost went wrong when she and her sister had to transport a mimeograph machine and they set up the heavy machine on a bridge. “And then the Germans came, like, ‘What are you doing there?’ My sister spoke good German. She said: ‘We have no food and we have to carry around and we are exhausted.’ And they listened. They were ashamed and went away.”

You are strong, but you are also not strong.

Scientific research is lacking, but little attention was paid to this group within the resistance after the war. Mother Dinah was decorated, but the request was rejected to also honor her three daughters for their contribution, even though the children carried the consequences of those uncertain times. Nelly says it has made her hard, something her son recognizes. “You’re pretending. You’re scared,” she muses. “You’re strong, but you’re also not strong.”

It still affects Nelly that her mother advised her to run away if she was caught. “Because then they shoot.” So it was better that the teenager would be shot than an arrest. “Yes, she preferred that. She was always afraid that I would talk. She did well in the war, but at the expense of her children. Children didn’t count for much then.”

It complicated her relationship with her mother. “Yes, it is double, but I am proud, because she did a lot for the resistance,” Nelly now says about her. “It was necessary. I always thought: we have to do this. Done. Don’t whine.”

For years, Nelly kept quiet about her contribution, until her son found a certificate from the war. A resistance leader officially stated that his mother “actively worked in the distribution apparatus of TROUW during the occupation and also provided important services to the BG organization in mimeographing and in the courier service.”

The note, once hidden away, now hangs framed in her room at the nursing home. “What a youth.”