[Annotator's Note: This clip begins with Johannes Aalders speaking mid-conversation.] It was like the Germans were not even there in the beginning. There was no real battle to get in [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Netherlands, 10 to 14 May 1940]. Pretty soon, they started to mess with who was running the schools. They started teaching German in the fifth grade. English was not taught until secondary school. He does not know where they got all the German teachers. The next thing is that they could not have Jewish teachers; they were enemies of the state. After a while, the Jewish students disappeared. They put them in one school and non-Jewish teachers could not teach the Jews. Their existence was being sabotaged or being made difficult. They were disqualified from work. He had Jewish friends. None of the Jewish kids he knew in school survived. He had a close friend, Herman Nieuweg [Annotator's Note: phonetic; "nieuwe weg" in Dutch means "new road", which Aalders mentions]. His family owned a radio program distribution company. They did not let them keep that. They did not understand it. They were slowly moved to a concentration camp in Holland, Amersfoort [Annotator's Note: Amersfoort concentration camp in Amersfoort, Netherlands]. The Jews they could catch were sent to German concentration camps. It was possible to hide a lot of them. The butcher disappeared; the art dealer disappeared. Some of them bought their ways out. One guy was in the carpet business and came back from a concentration camp after the war. He was wearing a Russian uniform. He was a real survivor. some people are survivors and other people just disappear. All of the property or houses were stolen. The Germans were bringing in pregnant young women to live in the Jewish houses. They were called Gray Mice [Annotator's Note: unable to verify]. He remembers they were not very tall East German women. He does not remember what happened to them. They were coming to live off the Dutch milk and honey and were well fed.

Johannes Aalders started secondary school in 1943 [Annotator's Note: in Apeldoorn, Netherlands]. The headmaster had to be politically correct. The one they got was the nicest, kindest, mild-mannered Nazi you could meet. He was not a disciplinarian. Aalders and his friends were bad and a disciplinary problem. Their school was used for military medical supplies. They had chemistry and physics in the public gas factory. Other classes were held temporarily in a grade school. Everybody had bicycles or walked from one school to another. There was almost no paper or pencils back then. They would erase all of their homework to be able to use the paper again. They had to make do. It is evident that if you have a good teacher, you can learn. The local nut [Annotator's Note: slang for insane person] would take all of their bags on a cart for them between classes for 25 cents. They called him Hannes, somebody not too smart. He does not recall them skipping classes. There were not any Germans in the schools. They adjusted the curriculum a little. He remembers the day that word came through about the landings in Normandy [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. He was at gymnasium. They hung the Dutch flag out the window with a big orange sash [Annotator's Note: the traditional color of the Dutch royal family, House of Orange-Nassau, is orange]. The Germans made them take it in. They did not want to celebrate their nearing doom. The people had to dig trenches in case of air attacks. Most of the sports field had trenches and they were everywhere along the roads. There were also bunkers for vehicles to get off the road. Dive bombing was going on every day on the roads. It was tricky to be on an open road. You had to know how to run fast. At ten years old, you were old enough to dig. It was nice weather and instead of sitting in class, they got to dig trenches.

Johannes Aalders and his friends would run around after school and see if there were things they could steal. They made their own spears and bows and arrows. They had to find good, straight, flexible, branches. They took the bullet out of rifle cartridges and knocked the cap out. They would have a screw sticking out of the end. They made individual shields out of timbers they found. Then they needed a headquarters. They found wood from the coalmines and made a fort they covered with dirt. The Germans discovered it and attacked it. They found a bunch of 13 and 14 year olds with spears. They came with rifles to knock it down. They had one in town and one in the woods. They had too much movement and the Germans thought it was the underground resistance group instead of teenaged Medieval knights. There was a daily bombing of Germany and most of the flights came over the town at night. The next day the stragglers would be coming back and crash. There must have been hundreds. There is all kinds of stuff to be found in crashed airplanes. They would try to get things out. The plexiglas windows were very useful. Anything you could screw loose and take out, they would. They were like ants and would get there before the Germans could. There was a plane in a cow pasture that was loaded with incendiary bombs shaped like sticks. They found two machine guns and one of the cartridges went off. The barrel was bent so the bullet just fell out. They took the straight machine gun home. His friend got something from a bomb in his eyes and was blinded. He did not want to tell his mother, so he said he did not feel good and went to bed. After 14 days, it cleared some and he could see again. He had to ride his bike back and he could not see. [Annotator's Note: Aalders laughs.] They were about 60 miles away from Amsterdam [Annotator's Note: Amsterdam, Netherlands]. There were severe shortages of food. People came from all over, mostly women, pushing bicycles or prams or wagons to hopefully find some wood to burn or some form of food. They wanted grain and maybe some bacon. Money did not work so they brought linens, jewelry, or anything to trade. The farmers became pretty demanding of what they would take in trade. It was a time you learned to survive. He remembers coming home to ten people waiting for dinner with nothing to eat.

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Johannes Aalders if life noticeably changed in his home when the Germans occupied the Netherlands following the Battle of the Netherlands, 10 to 14 May 1940.] Before the war, his parents had bought a lot of stuff for emergencies. Most food was supplied locally. Processed food did not exist. They had bread, butter, jam, sugar, ham, sausage. They ate potatoes and had cooking oil. They ate a lot of bread. In the end, they made bread out of tulip bulbs. They would take milk powder and mix it with water and pretend it was butter. The Germans had their own food problems. The ones in their building had to find food for themselves. Near the end, they would go to the farmers and get some food and bring some back to Aalders' family too. During the Hunger Winter [Annotator's Note: Dutch famine of 1944 and 1945, known as Hongerwinter in Dutch] at the end of 1944, it was total scarcity. The Allies made a deal with the Germans to drop food instead of bombs [Annotator's Note: Operation Chowhound, 1 to 8 May 1945 and Operation Manna, 29 April to 7 May 1945]. The people were beginning to starve to death in large numbers. The Allies came over with B-17s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] and Lancasters [Annotator's Note: Avro Lancaster, British heavy bomber] and dropped food. 1944 was really cold weather with a lot of snow. The Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] was not very far away from them. He went skating and played in the snow. Sometimes they could get eggs. They had beans but they were just boiled in water and pretty inedible. They would get sugar beets they would cut in little pieces and cook it. They could go to the local windmill with wheat and trade it for ground or milled grain to make bread with. There were allocations of food and they would get bread that was made with cake flour but that was because the baker was their friend, and they would share milk with him.

Johannes Aalders says that to be in the resistance you had to be 18 years old. His cousins would ask him to do some things but that was within the family. They would get nails and put them under the tires of German trucks. The Germans attached brooms in front of the tires, and they would sit on the fender to look for the nails on the road. They cannot fight against so many children doing that. He knew they were frustrating the Germans. There was no question that they were the enemy. [Annotator's Note: Aalders talks of a news program that discussed arming the American population now.] The Germans never had guns on them. They had a bayonet but never carried rifles unless on a mission. German officers usually had a pistol. Most of the time, they did not carry guns. He thinks that some of the soldiers in the field used to sharpen their bayonets and use them to eat bread and cut sausages. On 2 October 1944, he woke up and on every street corner there was a dead body, usually somebody they knew. There was an American pilot and an English pilot. One was Kenneth Ingraham [Annotator's Note: unable to identify], who had his eyes and mouth open. He can still see most of their faces. One was a police sergeant, and he was in his uniform lying in the gravel. It struck Aalders that they looked fragile and defenseless. Then he got a feeling of wanting to kill. His mother decided to pray by one of the bodies. There was an old German standing guard over the body. They were not supposed to pray like that. [Annotator's Note: Aalders speaks several phrases in German.] The old man was desperately trying to stop her. They were well-known people. They were shot because the head of the SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization] in country was heavily wounded in an ambush by the resistance [Annotator's Note: SS-Obergruppenführer, or Lieutenant General, Johann Baptist Albin Rauter; 6 March 1945 in De Woeste Hoeve, Netherlands]. The executions were reprisals [Annotator's Note: ordered by SS-Brigadeführer, or Brigadier General, Karl Eberhard Schöngarth]. It was followed by Arbeitseinsatz [Annotator's Note: drafting of civilians for forced labor]. Everybody between 16 and 45 was ordered to go to the marketplace and present themselves for work in Germany. Two Germans from across the street to Aalders house said that they would stay there and protect his father until the end of the day. They just visited but would act like they were arresting his father if anyone came. The bodies were left all day and they each had a guard. People had no way to heat their houses. They put newspaper in between their clothes to keep warm. They found ways. A man who died was half-Dayak [Annotator's Note: indigenous peoples from Borneo]. His mother was a native from Borneo. He was cool. He later on became a Dutch Marine Corps officer. In 1944, the snow was high, a truck with oranges came in somehow. Another truck ran into it, despite almost no traffic. The oranges flew everywhere. His half-Dayak friend said they were not interested, and they kept walking. It was cold and nobody was outside. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Aalders if any incidents like the executions happened again.] The Germans were trying to intimidate the population. They told everyone to come to the marketplace or they would wind up the same way. His mother told his father she would rather he be shot at the doorstep so she would know where he was. His father said he finally knew where he ranked. [Annotator's Note: Aalders laughs.] Aalders was just a few months too young to have to go. His friends went, but they got paid. They were digging. At the end of the day, they would fill the holes back in and dig them again the next day.

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Johannes Aalders about the Battle of Arnhem, part of Operation Market Garden, 17 to 26 September 1944 in Arnhem, Netherlands.] A train came in with a lot of dead people in it. It had been strafed and was brought into the station. It was confusing because they had a railroad strike, and the Germans were running the trains. The people were in cattle cars. He had to help carry them off. It is very hard to pick up a dead person. Dead bodies flop all over the place. He did not know what to think about it. He could see they had holes in them. He does not think they even talked much about it. It was only this once. It made him want to be in the middle of it. Whenever there was something he could get into, he would. It was a train of the people who had volunteered to go work in Germany. He did this work as part of Civil Defense. Luftsbiskarming [Annotator's Note: phonetic; unable to translate or identify] are organized to do things in disasters. It actually translates to air defenses. Air attacks create all kinds of problems. He does not recall how his mind was working then. It was difficult to do. Dead people are heavy. There were a lot of German wounded from the Russian front who came through. He saw a lot of amputees then. He mostly saw that they are out of luck. It was usually lost legs. It just what is there. In the Battle of Arnhem, there were English wounded. There were two British doctors who went between two hospitals all day. An old German on a bike escorted them. They were marching in the rapid English style which is why the German had to ride the bike. They would slow down then so he could not stay on the bike. They played games like that for weeks. The Canadians were already around town and the German doctor made a phone call to another hospital and asked if they had been liberated. The war is almost over. The German Gestapo [Annotator's Note: German Geheime Staatspolizei or Secret State Police; abbreviated Gestapo] got hold of that phone call and were going to arrest the German doctors. The German Army was digging in around the hospital to stop the Gestapo from taking them. Crazy things were happening. They had SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization] prisoners who refused to fight the British in Arnhem. They wanted to fight the Russians instead. They were made to clean the bricks of the synagogue that had been blown to bits. It was pretty nasty, but they did not shoot them. He could look down on them from his balcony. A guard shot at him and he fell down the steps while running away. [Annotator's Note: Aalders describes his fall in detail.]

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Johannes Aalders if he watched the Battle of Arnhem, part of Operation Market Garden, 17 to 26 September 1944 in Arnhem, Netherlands.] The Germans were told there were tanks and Afrika Corps troops in Apeldoorn [Annotator's Note: Apeldoorn, Netherlands]. They did not believe it. That afternoon, Aalders was told to go get milk from a farmer in the opposite direction. He went to watch the Germans go to the front line instead. They had new types of personnel carriers and were careening around the corners on the way. Aalders and his friends went on their bikes to see how close they could get. After two days, the Germans were coming back with captured Allied vehicles. That is when he saw his first jeep. Nobody had ever seen a vehicle that looked like that. It was driven by two German soldiers with scarves. All of the ammunition baskets dropped by the British by air had bright yellow and red silk material. The Germans were making scarves out of them and would not give the kids any. The first British prisoners starting coming in. They were whistling at the girls and waiving. It was a sunny day, and they were strolling to be prisoners of war. They were brought to the railroad station where Aalders grandfather had grown up. Arnhem was bout 150,000 people and they were all coming out of there at once. They were all coming towards where he was. A part of town was called the Goat District, gypsies who were ill and had fleas and all walked into town. The Allies were dive-bombing everybody and shooting all day long. Everybody runs off the road and then when they are gone, they come back out. It is noisy. Six airplanes dive within three or four hundred feet and are shooting at the same time. The percussion shakes your chest. That did not stop he and his friends from going to see it. Their parents never knew where they were. He did not know it was the end of the war. They knew the Allies were coming but they were not thinking it was ending. He recalls one time being in the street wondering how it would be if he could just go eat or get chewing gum. There was no gasoline, so the buses ran on charcoal gas. They had trailers and were burning charcoal to produce gas. A portable gas factory.

The Germans occupying Johannes Aalders' family house stayed until the night before the Canadians came in [Annotator's Note: 17 April 1945]. They disappeared overnight. There was no noise; they did not hear them leave. They would have to come upstairs [Annotator's Note: he shows the interviewer how they would have to move]. They took most of their things with them including the bathtub. It took more than a year and a half to get another bathtub. The days before the Canadians came in, Aalders and a friend found a way to get in the middle of the Canadians and the Germans. They had white helmets and their civil defense badges on. [Annotator's Note: Aalders relates a report he read of the Canadians losing a tank coming into his town of Apeldoorn, Netherlands, which he saw happen.] There was a tank trap, and the Canadian tank was trying to get through it. Aalders and his friend were watching. There was a German antitank gun that hit the tank. Everything got quiet. In the morning, they were not having war. During the night, the bagpipes were playing as they were getting closer. The underground [Annotator's Note: Dutch resistance fighters] got across and told the Canadians to stop shooting and not start an artillery bombardment because the Germans had left. Aalders and his friend went across the canal to a pasture. There were five 88s [Annotator's Note: German 88mm multi-purpose artillery] sitting there. Aalders saw a helmet and grabbed it, but it was on a dead German, so he left it. He went over to the Canadians who gave him rice pudding with raisins. He and his friend each got a loaf of bread. The Canadians made a tank bridge and rolled into town. There were so many Sherman tanks [Annotator's Note: M4 Sherman medium tank] coming in that within an hour the concrete roads were turned to dust. They kept going to the front line that was moving. There were still Germans and Nazi sympathizers being arrested. The Canadians wasted no time looking for girlfriends. Within days they monopolized all the women. The Allies did not occupy his house. Many of them stayed and there are connections that exist today. They had a parade and 900 of them came back, all in their 80s and 90s [Annotator's Note: after the war ended]. The bond is very strong today.

After his hometown [Annotator's Note: Apeldoorn, Netherlands] was liberated [Annotator's Note: on 17 April 1945], Johannes Aalders started back to school right away. Food took a while. They brought SPAM [Annotator's Note: canned cooked pork made by Hormel Foods Corporation], all emergency military food. Apeldoorn is a town with farms all around. They always had potatoes. There was rationing. He has no memories of being deprived of anything after liberation. A massive amount of stuff came in, but mostly military food. There were no supermarkets then. The grocery store was where they bought coffee, tea, oats, and things like that. If you wanted vegetables, you went to the vegetable store. Meats came from the butcher. He returned to school and took exams. They did not lose any time. [Annotator's Note: Aalders laughs.] He thinks his dislike for police came from the occupation. When he came to this country [Annotator's Note: the United States], he felt the American police were Gestapo-like [Annotator's Note: German Geheime Staatspolizei or Secret State Police; abbreviated Gestapo]. They were uneducated, had big guns, and they were quick to intimidate people, especially in the 1950s. Not so much anymore. But there are things like that that get him going. Everybody has PTSD [Annotator's Note: post traumatic stress disorder] who went through that. The people like him have to die out. The way they perceive things will only go away [Annotator's Note: when they die]. They never get away from scarcity, similar to Americans from the Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. When he came to America in the 1950s, people did not talk about the war; they talked about the Depression. They were very much marked by it. Aalders cannot throw things away.