This week’s entries come from a diary kept by Hannie Smink (born 1929), who was fourteen years old at the time. I previously shared her diary entry from July 19th, 1943.
She lived in The Hague during most of the Second World War. In her diary, which she addresses and writes to as a close friend, she talks about her family, going to the movies, and the war.
Saturday 30 October ‘43
Hello diary! How are you!? I haven’t written in such a long time, when I have so much to tell you! But I’m so busy.
At the moment of writing this, I’m in Schiedam! At Ellie’s1 house. Incredibly big! It’s so nice and cosy. We just had dinner (cauliflower etc.) I can stay here until Wednesday morning because it’s autumn break. This morning we were done at 10:10 (we only had two hours of class: French and history! In French class it was my turn to recite “Le train”, I got an 8.2) I won’t have to go back to school until Thursday morning.
It was incredibly busy on the train this afternoon and even busier on the bus.
But let me start from the beginning:
Sunday evening on the 24th of October we all started packing together. What a mess. Nice picture, right? Mart took it, using his film lamps (3, they use 1000 kwH in an hour!) They’re strong! He took two photos of me in his room, the one where I’m smiling is nice, isn’t it?
(I didn’t glue them in, I’m keeping them with my identity card.)
Monday morning at half past seven the moving van was supposed to be at the door (it was supposed to leave from Schiedam at 5). But no moving van at half past seven. It only showed up at 12!
Well, everything arrived in one piece, apart from a chair leg which went through the back of another chair! But we’re going to get that fixed. Mum went with El and Kees to get the house in order. I went to stay with Mart and Catrien, and then I was supposed to come here on Saturday. But when I heard we were off on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I immediately wrote a postcard asking if I could stay on those days too. Friday I got a letter from Mum saying she’d come get me on Saturday morning, and that I could go (she also had to pick up some things and exchange ration stamps etc.)
So that’s how it went, and I’m here now.
Now a bit about my sleepover at Mart and Catrien’s. It was a nice week, I slept and ate well. That little boy is such a sweetheart, that Martje! They let me give him his porridge in the morning, afternoon and evening and even let me wash him once, in the bathtub! So much splashing! I got soaked. He’s getting spoiled by Catrien (food), she’s also a bit careless.
Thursday evening Mart and I went to “Robert Koch” (a movie, playing at Corso). That was an incredible, interesting movie. Robert Koch discovered the tuberculosis bacterium, that germ caused tuberculosis. Such a battle that that man fought against the scientific world, especially against Dr. Virchov! I’m glad I got to see that movie!
Friday morning we did some splendid drawing, I finished my pen drawing of a well. And I started a drawing of a few barn swallows sitting on a branch. A lot of fun. In the afternoon we had a geometry test, difficult but I did know the material, I’m curious to see what grade I’ll get for it.
My handwriting is so ugly, isn’t it? That’s because I’m sleepy, but we wanted (‘we’ is mum and I) to wait for Kees because he has the pincher/clothespin dynamo torch3, and the upstairs, where we sleep, hasn’t been blacked out so we can’t have any light there. Kees went to The Hague.
Oh yeah, I got my provisional results. I failed one subject, physics, but passed everything else.
I visited dad this afternoon, I got a guilder4 and an old-fashioned (pre-war) pencil!
Apart from that, no news for now I think………..
See you tomorrow, probably, diary! Goodnight!
Monday 1 November 1943
It’s 12:255, I’m incredibly hungry but that will be remedied shortly, El is setting the table at the moment. I stayed in mum’s bed until around eleven this morning (I slept on the ground, but mum got up early and I took the opportunity to crawl into her bed.) My eye was swollen shut again when I woke up! I think I’m getting another boil! Isn’t that fun?
Yesterday we christened the house, and we had many visitors, Riet, Leo, Nel, Frans and little Fransje, Ada (Riet’s sister), and one of Kees’ aunts. I took Fransje walking for an hour to the Juliana-, oh pardon me, the Emma Park (we can’t call it the Juliana Park anymore, ridiculous right?)6
In the evening we went to that same aunt of Kees (who visited us during the afternoon) and there was some commotion in the sky again.
When we left we didn’t notice anything yet, but we hadn’t been on our way for 5 minutes before they suddenly began. That’s a whole different story than what we called ‘shooting’ in The Hague! Mama was screaming! She’s really one to cause a panic. Of course I thought it was scary too, but not that much.
We quickly fled into a doorway, and we hadn’t been there for long before the door opened, and a friendly man said: ‘Do come in, they really are back at it again!’ Of course we appreciated that a lot, especially mum. The shooting didn’t go on for that long, fortunately, but mum got a real fright. It’s so loud here. That man told us a convoy had arrived that afternoon and that usually that meant that they’d be shooting in the evening.
[…]
Tuesday evening 2 November ‘43
Uncle Joop’s birthday today. Uncle Joop is Aunt Corrie’s husband (Corrie is mum’s sister). He’s somewhere abroad, none of us know where, he was taken away suddenly without the chance to say goodbye to his wife and children! Unfortunately mum is here in Schiedam now and she can’t go visit Aunt.
The full scans of two of Hannie’s diaries can be found here (part 1) and here (part 2).
I haven’t been able to find any information about her elsewhere, unfortunately.
Thanks for reading today’s post! If you enjoy diary diving with me, please consider subscribing to the newsletter or sharing it with other history-loving and/or nosy people. Also, stay tuned for some updates - these diary dives will keep coming every Monday, but I’m considering some additional ideas that would fit in the diary theme. More information soon!
Ellie was Hannie’s younger sister, who had gotten married earlier in 1943.
The Dutch grading system goes from 1-10; a 10 would be a perfect score. An 8 is a very good grade (9s and 10s are rarely given) and would correspond to an A in the US.
I’m not quite sure what she means here. She refers to a ‘knijpertje’, which would be a (small) clothespin or a pincher, but from the context I’m guessing it’s got something to do with a lamp or perhaps a candle. Edit: my dad pointed out the ‘knijpertje’ she referred to here is most likely a dynamo torch. Mystery solved!
Guilders (guldens) were the monetary unit in the Netherlands until the euro was introduced in 2002.
‘5 voor half 1’, literally ‘5 to half (past) 12’. In Dutch, ‘half 1’ means 12:30 and it’s common to express 25 minutes past the hour as ‘5 to half (past)’.
During the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, the name of the Juliana Park in Utrecht was changed to Emma Park. The park had been named after Princess Juliana, who would become Queen of the Netherlands in 1948.
The extraordinary thing to me is that it all reads like the diary of any young girl until you get to the end of the second-last entry. Then you are reminded very vividly that there is indeed a war going on.
Impressive!