Figure 1.-- A few Dutch women proudly transporting their newly acquired foods homewards. This was a common sight during the Hunger Winter.

By Harty van Engelen

The situation in our large cities following the railways strike, stoppage of city gas and electricity, becoming quite unbearable, soon with shortages of food and the most necessary conditions for survival. Almost immediately we saw the caravans of people, many on bicycles, others with baby carriages, others with two or four wheeled carts, all heading to outlaying farms, trying to trade their heirlooms, jewellery, anything of any value for food. Once they had successfully obtained their foods, it was not uncommon that they had to undergo inspection by German soldiers, who frequently confiscated their prized foods. Cut off from the countryside, our lives became a struggle for survival as so little food was available. This was the beginning of the terrible Dutch Hunger Winter. It was Hitler's way of teaching us a lesson. My father that time was like the Rock of Gibraltar, finding friends and farmers who knew about the composition of the van Engelen family and readily donated food of any form. Even so, it was hard to feed thirteen mouths every day, sometimes sixteen when we were feeding the Demoed’s family next door also. Now without school, I started to cut down trees in the woods, first dead trees and later trees that I was allowed to cut by special permission of the forestry ranger, each time two trees at a time, with the heavier parts placed on the steering bar of mom’s bicycle and the tops of the trees sliding across the road on the other side of the bicycle. Listening to the radio we learned of Allied and Russian advances in their battles with the Germans, but the front here in the Netherlands was static at the Rhine. The cities in Germany were regularly bombed during the day by American bombers and at night by the British bombers. Still the Dutch people north of the rivers, were clearly suffering of hunger, inadequately heated homes, eating tulip bulbs that made the people sick, the same with eating sugar beets. Meanwhile, Mother’s kitchen was still able to provide mostly meatless meals for the many people she was cooking for in a big laundry tub. Sometimes there were only the potato skins which she had saved up on previous peelings. Cooking for 13 people was quite a task, sometimes for 16 people, when we counted the Demoed family as well. Every evening one could see me loaded with many pans, cycling to the addresses of our regulars, my Mission of Food.

Foraging

People in the cities to survive went foraging into the country to trade valuables with farmers for food. This meant traveling some distance, usually on bicycles so we could carry more. There were various problems. we had to fund a sympathetic farmer willing to trade. We needed something to offer. And then there were the Germans. They did not shot foragers, but they often confiscated some or all of the food. In November, Mother and Annie Dekker, now Annie Karp, decided to go on a food foraging expedition to our family in Kampen about 100 kilometers north of Soest. They left on their bicycles one fine day in early November 1944, filled with the hope that they would return with needed foods. They stayed at my grandparent’s home and soon one of the family members arrived with foods of many sorts, flour, butter, cheese, sausage, brown beans, yellow beans, meat, cereals, rye bead, sandwich bread, and some snacks for the ride back home. Once their bicycles were fully loaded, the two women started thankfully on their trip home. Meanwhile the weather had turned cold and when they approached Amersfoort, a town of about 10 kilometers distant, it started to snow, making their final trip with blowing snow in their eyes pretty difficult, but finally we heard the door between the house and the garage, open and utterly tired we chased the two women indoors, while we were unloading their bicycles and putting the many foods in the cellar for storage keeping till the next day while they told us their stories, being glad to be home again.

Father and Mother

My father that time was like the Rock of Gibraltar, finding friends and farmers who knew about the composition of the van Engelen family and readily donated food of any form. Even so, it was hard to feed thirteen mouths every day, sometimes sixteen when we were feeding the Demoed’s family next door also. Mother, on the other hand, was now without the gas to heat her food. The first thing had to happen was to replace her gas cooker by a stove that demanded to be fed by wood. I also started with my first electrical engineering project to provide electricity in the kitchen, the living room and one lighting fixture above the one who was going to operate an electric generating spinning wheel with just a simple bicycle electric dynamo with an output depending on the speed of a bicycle wheel.

Firewood

Now without school, I started to cut down trees in the woods, first dead trees and later trees that I was allowed to cut by special permission of the forestry ranger, each time two trees at a time, with the heavier parts placed on the steering bar of mom’s bicycle and the tops of the trees sliding across the road on the other side of the bicycle. Wood now also became one of our means of survival, mother was able to cook but the wood also provided us with the comfort during the winter months. A special saw-horse was already in place in the back of the garden and together with Mr. van Eimeren we started to saw the trees in easy to be handled chunks of wood, that disappeared inside the house, where Leo and Bep were already in place at the marbled hall floor with their axes, admitting that our marbled floor was our only physical war damage. Tree cutting now became my daily duty that saw their demise not only in our wood stove but also as its supply for heating the room in the back during the winter as well, assisted by the three male members of our family, who carried the split wood into the garage for drying or outside the garage wall. We were now slowly approaching the Christmas period.

Desperate Food Shortages

Listening to the radio we learned of Allied and Russian advances in their battles with the Germans, but the front here in the Netherlands was static at the Rhine. The cities in Germany were regularly bombed during the day by American bombers and at night by the British bombers. Still the Dutch people north of the rivers, were clearly suffering of hunger, inadequately heated homes, eating tulip bulbs that made the people sick, the same with eating sugar beets. It were the old people who directly suffered most when medicines were no longer available, then the young children, no milk and other nutritious foods that they needed so badly. Soon the number of deaths, especially in the Western part of Holland in the big cities started to rise, even with the use of emergency kitchens that were able to distribute a kind of a vegetable soup, without any nutritious values, filling the stomachs temporarily for those people that still could walk to these kitchens.

My Missions

Meanwhile, Mother’s kitchen was still able to provide mostly meatless meals for the many people she was cooking for in a big laundry tub. Sometimes there were only the potato skins which she had saved up on previous peelings. Cooking for 13 people was quite a task, sometimes for 16 people, when we counted the Demoed family as well. Every evening one could see me loaded with many pans, cycling to the addresses of our regulars, my Mission of Food.


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Created: 2:35 PM 1/5/2018
Spell checked: 9:24 PM 1/5/2018
Last updated: 9:24 PM 1/5/2018