‘I increasingly turn off the news when I see how disrespectfully some politicians talk about others. Worthless’

alie Verheij-Markerink is a cheerful woman who cannot exactly be called petty. Half an hour before the start of the interview, her daughter calls to say that her mother has fallen and has probably bruised a few vertebrae and her left leg. Despite the pain, the almost 101-year-old still wants to continue the interview. “Distraction will probably help,” she says when we meet her in her one-room apartment, rubbing her sore leg. And she immediately starts, telling about the ‘Chapel House’ from 1769 on a squire’s estate, where her father grew up. The tiny house has been renovated and has recently been rented out to tourists. With amenities that her father’s generation could never have imagined: a dishwasher, Nespresso machine and Bluetooth speaker. ‘You have to see everything in time’, Alie Verheij-Markerink will repeatedly say.

What do you know about life on the estate?

‘That the house was very cramped. Downstairs there was only a living room with a table and a kitchenette, where my grandparents and the seven boys, including my father, slept. Above a small attic, there the three girls all slept in one bed. There was no money and no wealth, but always food.

‘My grandfather was a gardener for the Boreel family of the Beeckestijn estate in Velsen, on which this house stood, so it was actually a staff residence. He also grew fruit and vegetables, such as strawberries and potatoes. As a child I liked to go there, walking from our house in Santpoort-Zuid, to visit my grandparents. The house later became the property of the municipality. Only after the renovation was I invited to the opening. It has become very luxurious, it now has a bathroom. It is rented to a maximum of two people. Consider: the family in which my father grew up lived there with twelve of them. You have to see that over time.’

You have led a life of service, according to your daughter.

‘That happened naturally. As a child, I was used to helping my parents at an early age because you could see that they were always busy. I helped my mother with the housework and my father with the farm. I had three brothers and two sisters. I always had to make all the beds. “Can’t the boys do that themselves?” I said to my mother. “No, they can’t,” she replied. My mother was strict and always busy, but she also paid attention to us children. She only had a few years of primary school. When I was doing homework, she often joined in. “I also want to learn to do sums,” she would say.

‘My father had his own horticultural company next to our house in Santpoort-Zuid, where he grew fruit and vegetables and tulip bulbs. In the summer we all stood in the shed peeling bulbs. My three brothers were allowed to continue their education after primary school, but I was not. I went to work as a maid for a family with a sick mother: making beds, fabrics, beating out rugs, everything by hand. I have sometimes asked my parents if I could do something other than working in the house, but I was told that it was not possible because there was so much to do. Developing yourself as a girl was not possible at that time. On the one hand I thought that was a shame, but I was also satisfied. I wasn’t the only one with a life like that.’

What choices would you have made if you were young today?

‘Then I would have wanted to learn to be a social worker or nurse and look for a job in healthcare. Even after my marriage, I always worked hard. I never got paid for it, but I enjoyed doing it. My husband was a sexton of a reformed church in Bussum for thirty years. We lived in the house next door. There was a large hall complex in the building where many events were organized, including in the evening: meetings, clubs, parties. We were busy with it every day of the week. I always took care of planning activities, coffee and tea, even after church services, and cleaned the room after a meeting. Members of the church often came to me to talk, including young people who wanted to tell their story about their situation at home or their faith. I was always good at keeping quiet, I never told anyone anything. I had learned that during the war.’

How did you experience the war years?

‘It was an exciting time to keep your mouth shut. We had six people in hiding in the house, in the shed and in the attic. My brothers also lived in the attic, to avoid employment in Germany. They came out alone in the dark. That was annoying for me and my sisters, because it gave us extra work because they couldn’t do anything. We were lucky that our house was repeatedly missed during German raids.

‘I still remember saying goodbye to my neighbor Wim, before he had to go to Germany to work. I had to cry. We were dating, it didn’t mean much, we just shook hands. You have to see that over time. Two years later he came home. I was nervous; what would it be like again, after all this time? I was allowed to come over the second day after he came home, but I was stubborn and went first. Then we hugged each other for the first time. Wim said: ‘We give each other a kiss.’ The next day we cycled together to Schiphol, to a family he wanted to see. That day our love truly began, and has always remained so. It wasn’t until seven years later, in 1952, that we were able to get married, because we didn’t have a cent and had to save first.’

Did your husband talk about his experiences as a forced laborer?

‘When I asked about it, he became restless and said, ‘We don’t talk about that. We have not been served well by the Germans’. I never managed to get anything out of him about that time. What he went through must not have been very good. I do know that he was very ill there and had contracted pleurisy. As a result, he was never able to work as an electrical engineer underground again, as he did before the war. He became a sexton, but he would have preferred to continue practicing his old profession.’

What is the biggest setback you have faced?

‘The fact that Wim and I only had one child was the worst thing. I was almost 30 years old when we got married, and then you think: now we will have children. But I had one miscarriage after another, four in a row. We ended up having one child. Then I had another miscarriage and the doctor said it was better to stop. Was it me, was it Wim? It’s up to both of us, we said. There were more miscarriages in our family. Could there be a connection with the bulb region where we grew up? Fortunately, because of our work as a sexton, we had many children from the church around us.’

Her daughter Suze, present at the interview, says: ‘You had many surrogate children. That was because you had a listening ear for them. They often came to stay. You were always there for the other. Your lives revolved around church. I got tired of that and left home when I was 16.’

Did you think it was a shame that your only child left home so young?

‘That was very normal, she started studying to be a nurse.’

She also left because her parents’ lives revolved around church.

‘It was simply that way, it was our work, it consumed us seven days a week. Maybe that’s why it was a good thing that we only had one child.’ (After a pause, in a whisper:) ‘My daughter was lacking, I didn’t have enough time for her.’

Suze: ‘Afterwards I understand that, you did the work with conviction.’

Do you have an explanation for your old age?

‘No. I am the only one from the family still alive, while as a child I was always the weakest. I had all kinds of problems: pneumonia, appendicitis. I’m still up to date and I like to have a lot of people around me. Until I moved here a year and a half ago, I was always on the road, by bike, by train and later on my mobility scooter. Here in this house I am almost never alone in my room, I am downstairs as much as possible, among people. You shouldn’t sit with your arms folded and do nothing, or just watch TV, then you won’t live.’

Do you never watch television?

‘Yes, I watch the News. But more and more often I am able to turn it off halfway when I see how disrespectfully some politicians talk about others. That doesn’t make me feel good. It’s worthless. There is no more respect for others and their opinions. I don’t understand why it’s happening so hard. I’m not saying that we used to do everything better, but we did respect each other.’