“I was a saboteur,” he told me, eyes crinkling with mischief at the memory of it. He stretched out a shaking hand and pointed to a bridge over his shoulder. We were standing on the Quai des Célestins and I was lost, which is how I usually attract storytellers. “We blew up that bridge…it was a risk, vous comprenez?” Yes, I understood. Paris under German occupation made daily life a series of risks; attaching dynamite to the bridges was another level. “Mais on avait courage…les allies venaient.” We had courage. The Allies were on their way.
In the brilliant novel, The Baker’s Secret, Stephen P. Kiernan weaves a story about the war years in France in a small town in Normandy. In contrast to my elderly friend in Paris, inspired to acts of sabotage with hope for liberation, the main character in The Baker’s Secret has lost hope of ever seeing the promised liberators on French soil. Despite her lack of faith, the Allies were on their way.
In an epic scene that surprises both the protagonist and the reader, when the battleships arrive and she witnesses the sacrifices of strangers coming to rescue strangers, her hard shell of resilience cracks, and she’s left shattered and grateful.
Growing up war stories were common in my home. Chapter one of my family’s roots in Canada begin with WWII in the Netherlands, and the liberation of Dutch villages in April 1945 by the Canadians. I am a Canadian today because something in the courage and bravery of the thousands of Canadian infantrymen who drove the occupiers from my ancestors’ villages inspired my relatives to leave their crumbled homes behind and cross the ocean to the land of the Allies.
During the years I researched WWII in the Netherlands for my novel, I spent a lot of hours reading memoirs of the soldiers who left Canada for Europe in the 1940’s. So many of those men were barely older than the students I now teach. They fought alongside the Brits, the Americans and the Poles, and witnessed the starvation of Dutch citizens after a cold, hard winter when their efforts to liberate the country north of the Rhine were thwarted.
The Allies were outsiders who witnessed the horrors of war—the camps, the betrayals, the hunger, the destruction—and put an end to occupation.
Canadian troops entering Terborg on March 30th. Source: Bevrijdingskinderen
For some, the rescue was right on time. For others, it was one winter too late.
“Christine,
Opening the Bible at random I find this: “The Lord is my high tower.” I am sitting on my rucksack in the middle of a full freight car. Father, Mother, and Mischa are a few cars away. In the end, the departure came without warning…We left the camp singing, Father and Mother firmly and calmly, Mischa, too. We shall be travelling for three days. Thank you for all your kindness and care. Friends left behind will still be writing to Amsterda; perhaps you will hear something from them. Or from my last letter from camp. Good-bye for now from the four of us. Etty”
This card, thrown out of the train by Etty on 7 September, was found by farmers outside Westerbork camp and posted by them. Etty Hillesum was murdered in Auschwitz on 30 November 1943.
What inspires me this Remembrance Day are not battle tactics—I don’t need to commit to memory the precise military strategies of the past to understand the significance of the sacrifice of strangers for strangers.
I don’t need to be in the midst of a war to notice that there’s wrong in the world that still needs to be set right. There are horrors to resist, lies to counter, propaganda to unmask and violence to disarm.
Maybe someday I’ll see a young man walking through the streets of my city. If he’s lost, and happens to look up from his device for a moment, I’ll lift up a shaky arm and tell him that I once was a saboteur, that I fought back against the darkness because I had a feeling…the Allies were coming.