My father, Daniel Bate Boerop, was born in 1931 and was a boy when Nazi Germany invaded and occupied the Netherlands during World War II. Despite his youth, he got involved with a Resistance cell in his hometown of Utrecht, attending meetings, making plans, and carrying out, in secret, acts of resistance both great and small.
My father was once tasked with transporting a case full of firearms from one location to another on his bicycle. He could not have been more than 12 at the time.
I imagine that, riding through the city of Utrecht on his bicycle, he must have avoided the main thoroughfares, and stuck to the secondary streets and alleyways, but only so much as to avoid suspicion. That was key: Always avoid suspicion. If you’re going to do something, do it as openly as the occupying power permits. Sometimes the best place to hide is in plain sight.
Coming around a blind corner, my father ran straight into a roadblock at the intersection ahead. It is too late; if he were to stop, veer away, or turn around at the last minute, he would be conspicuous and arouse attention. The German soldiers would undoubtedly yell “Halt!” and search him and his cargo, discover the contraband weapons, and that would be the end of Daan Bate Boerop; and once the interrogators got through with him, his comrades in the cell, too.
But young Daniel was cool as a cucumber, and in control of himself. He chose the only viable option under the circumstances: Hide in plain sight. He got off his bike and walked with it to the back of the line. He didn’t draw attention to himself. He didn’t avoid eye contact. He stood patiently in the queue of people with their bicycles waiting to get waved through the checkpoint, advancing a few feet at a time.
The German soldiers must not have been taking this assignment too seriously. They waved most people through without searching them, including my father and his bicycle laden with guns. One soldier even gave him a pat on the head, tousling his hair, and saying something about Daan reminding him of his own son back home.
Or at least that is how my father tells the story. In truth, Daan was not a hard-working student and his grades in German were not the best. I have seen some of his report cards. He was a C student, B-minus at best, and his highest mark by far one particular year was in Christelijke Religie (Christian Religion), an added irony considering my father got his metaphysics more from Sartre and Wittgenstein than from Calvin. But perhaps that was later in life as he, like so many others that lived through those horrors, tried to make sense of his lived experience.
Later, a meeting of the resistance cell was raided, and all present were arrested. My father had been told not to go to that meeting. Perhaps he was not needed, perhaps they were planning something that they did not want him to be a part of because he was too young. Regardless, my father went into hiding on a farm far from the city. This turned out to have been a blessing, as he was close to a food supply. Towards the end of the occupation, the Germans confiscated most of the food produced in the Netherlands, starving the Dutch. His brother, my uncle Gijs, spent a couple of years hiding in the chimney of a friend’s house. Given the choices, I’d take the farm.
At the end of the war, Daniel Bate Boerop discovered that of the 32 members of the resistance cell, only 3 were still alive.