September 17, 2006
By Louise Lawrence-Israëls
After liberation in 1945, we started a new daily routine. We had regular mealtimes, but food was still scarce. My brother and I did not realize that it was normal to eat three times a day. For us, every time we sat down to eat was a surprise.
Daily we got a bowl of oatmeal and that was the one food I did not like. My mom found a way to make me finish my bowl though: If I finished I could go out and play. When I first came out of hiding, I was afraid to be outside. That did not last long; I loved to be with my brother.
With ration coupons, my mom was also able to buy biscuits. Sometimes they were too hard for the children to eat, so my mom picked out the softer ones and put them aside for us. One biscuit at teatime for each.
Our friend Selma, who had been in hiding with us, also got into a new routine. As soon as trains were running again, she went to the station every day. She had not given up hope that one of the trains would bring at least one relative back. One day after being outside with my brother, we went inside and saw a stranger in our apartment. He was talking to our parents.
It was Selma’s fiancé, from before the war. He had been in hiding in the southern part of the Netherlands, but Selma did not know that. He had walked from the south all the way to Amsterdam. It took him weeks. He was not in very good shape and also not so young.
My mom left our place to look for Selma and found her at the train station, where Selma had had another disappointing day. Mom told her to go home with her, where a surprise would be waiting for her.
In the meantime Jo, her fiancé, had been so nervous he ate all the soft biscuits. My brother and I were shocked. It was a happy reunion for Selma and Jo. They were married as soon as possible.
Selma did not give up her daily trek to the train station.
They lived with us until Jo got a job with the government in The Hague. After a few months, when they moved from Amsterdam to The Hague, Selma started to realize that her chances of seeing her family again were very slim.
Years later she found out that they all had perished in Auschwitz. Selma and Jo were happy together, and decided to adopt two war orphans, a brother and a sister.
Jo passed away in 1990 and Selma made aliya to Israel in 1992. That had been her dream since the endof the war. She passed away in Israel in 2003.
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