United Academics Journal of Social Sciences - May 2011

WAR, MEMORY AND BIOGRAPHY A British Woman's Mission Abroad - Susan Cohen Glasgow's War and Masculine Identities - Alison Chand Peg's War - A Story Told in Letters - Charmian Cannon Biography : Resistance Fighter Hannie Schaft - Elke Weesjes Book & Author : Rob van Ginkel on"Rondom de Stilte"

ARTICLES

A British Woman´s mission Abroad.

Doreen Warriner and the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslowakia 1938 - 1939 Susan Cohen

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Glasgow´s War and Masculine Identities in the Reserved Occupations 1939 - 1945 Alison Chand

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Peg´s War - A Story Told in Letters Charmian Cannon

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BIOGRAPHY

Hannie Schaft Elke Weesjes

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“Rondom de Stilte” Rob van Ginkel Elke Weesjes

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Submissions and contact Focus & Scope The United Academics Journal of Social Sciences is interdisciplinary, peer reviewed and interactive. We provide immediate Open Access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. In doing so, this journal underlines its publisher’s ethos, which is to ‘Connect Science & Society’. United Academics, an independent platform where academics can connect, share, publish and discuss academic research.

Furthermore it facilitates online publications while respecting the author’s copyrights.

We will publish themed issues monthly, each consisting of a collection of articles, work-in-progress pieces and book reviews showcasing the broadest range of new (interdisciplinary) research in Social Sciences from both established academics as well as students.

While many academic journals are online and a growing number are available in openly accessible venues, the internet has not been utilized to its full extent. Therefore we have created a journal which truly does tap the power of the web for interactivity. To begin with research papers and other contributions published in this journal, contain interactive media such as videos maps and charts in order to make research more accessible and engaging.

Secondly, in order to extent the peer review system, which is currently still limited with only a few colleagues reviewing papers, we want to invite the United Academics community to submit commentaries. By opening up the commenting and feedback process we will foster better critique of work. We want to encourage researchers to interact with the research, provide feedback and collaborate with authors.

We wish to emphasize that the United Academics Journal for Social Sciences publishes work of post-graduate and post-doctoral researchers. To encourage the crossfertilization of disciplines we have chosen a plurality of fields and facilitate a productive interaction between the widest possible range of post-graduate authors and the public. The Social Sciences are the disciplines that explore aspects of human society. This term includes anthropology, archeology, geography, history, law, linguistics, psychology, political science and sociology. To maintain a high academic standard, articles submitted should be based on research undertaken during post-graduate or post-doctoral studies. Articles should be original in approach and subject matter.

Each month the journal is dedicated to a specific topic, but we also encourage academics to submit on any facet of Social Sciences. Articles should be sent as an email attachment to: elke.weesjes@united-academics.org.

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We reserve the right not to publish articles which do not conform to the standards established by the peer review process.

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EDITORIAL

War, Memory & Biography As shown by a constant stream of articles, books, TV programmes and films, our interest in the First and Second World War seems insatiable. We are fascinated and intrigued for all kinds of reasons. These wars were vast struggles, affecting most of the world in one way or another, and encompassing almost every form of conflict known to man. Their cost in death and destruction was immense and even today we can still see the remnants. No wonder we have a keen desire to understand these conflicts and explore what kind of impact they had on people. To examine the latter, diaries, oral history and (auto) biographies can be particularly illuminating. These sources provide a goldmine to those scholars who are interested in life during the First and Second World War. Key events are generally well documented. However, looking beyond the headlines and focusing on the lives of ‘ordinary’ people through oral history and autobiographies, we see that these people experienced very different aspects of the war, which challenges how we choose to remember events.

This current issue presents a collection of articles whose subjects will be in many cases unfamiliar to many readers. The articles are derived from the Memories of War Conference held at Greenwich University in October of last year. This conference brought together people from different disciplinary backgrounds who examine new narratives previously untold stories of war. Susan Cohen and Charmian Cannon discuss the lives of two equally brave British women who both experienced hardship and pain, but also success and happinenes. One experienced these emotions abroad whilst helping refugees, the other at home looking after her family whilst her sons and son-in-law were fighting in Belgium.

The female perspective is also central to Alison Chand’s article. She looks at opinions of the contemporaries of men working in the Reserved Occupations in Glasgow and Clydeside during the Second World War.

Lastly, questions about his recently published book ‘Rondom de Stilte’ about war commemoration and national memory in the Netherlands, are answered by the author Rob van Ginkel.

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CREDITS Editor-in-Chief: Elke Weesjes Executive Editor: Mark Fonseca Rendeiro Design : Michelle Halcomb Editorial Board : Mark Fonseca Rendeiro, Anouk Vleugels, Ruth Charnock, Nikolas Funke, Daphne Wiersema.

Questions and Suggestions: Send an e-mail to journal@ united-academics.org Advertisement : Send an email to advertising@unitedacademics.org Address : Warmoesstraat 149, 1012 JC Amsterdam

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Susan Cohen University of Southampton

‘A British woman’s mission abroad

Doreen Warriner and the British Co for Refugees from Czechoslovakia,

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Article

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ommittee , 1938 - 1939

This article, which combines war memory and biography, provides an insight into the refugee work undertaken in Prague between October 1938 and April 1939, by an English academic, Miss Doreen Warriner. The starting point is Warriner’s decision, in the autumn of 1938 following the signing of the Munich agreement, to abandon her academic travel plans and instead undertake an unspecified humanitarian mission in Czechoslovakia.

Her role quickly became one of refugee activist, working alongside like-minded people from Britain and elsewhere, including many Quakers. zThis article describes the nature of her work in organising the escape of political and other refugees, and it highlights the personal risks she took as well as some of the journeys she made. Most importantly it recalls how she came to be appointed representative of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia in December 1938, and of the support she received from Robert Stopford, the British Treasury official in Prague. Her personal recollections of this time, which she recorded immediately upon her return to Britain in April 1939, remained unpublished until some years after her death in 1972. Had it not been for the persistence of devoted friends and her sister-in-law, who ensured that her short memoir was published in 1984, the story of this woman who was responsible for saving the lives of untold numbers of refugees, would have remained in the shadows. 1

1 D.Warriner ‘Winter in Prague’, Slavonic and East European Review (62) April 1984, 209-39

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In October 1938, 34 year old Doreen Warriner, anassistant lecturer in Economics at University College, London decided to abandon her eagerly awaited research project in Jamaica, in favour of a humanitarian mission in Prague. She had no clear idea of what she would do or find there. All she knew was that, at a political level, she was ashamed of Britain’s betrayal of Czechoslovakia as a result of the Munich agreement, signed between Hitler and Chamberlain on September 30, 1938. The resulting occupation of the Sudetenland, the areas of Czechoslovakia b o r d e r i n g Germany that were in part German speaking, resulted in thousands of refugees, Jews and political opponents, fleeing the occupation.

In the search for refuge and escape, Prague became the focus of this movement. Warriner was not alone in considering that Britain had a responsibility towards these displaced people, but it was not until early 1939 that any official financial help was made available to Czech refugees by way of the so-called ‘Czech loan’. Meanwhile several voluntary funds were launched for Czech refugees, including the Lord Mayor of London’s Fund in September 1938, and by the Trades Union Congress, the Labour Party, the News Chronicle and the Manchester Guardian.

Acting intuitively, Warriner felt that her intimate knowledge of Eastern Europe and its people, acquired from having travelled extensively in the rural areas with the support of a Rockefeller Travelling Fellowship, could be put to good use in this time of crisis.

With £300 from family and friends, £20 from the Royal Institute of International Affairs for

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her fare and expenses in return for the promise of reports, and £150 pounds from the Save the Children Fund, she flew out to Prague on October 13, 1938. After establishing herself in the Hotel Alcron, right in the heart of the city, she quickly made contact with a number of Quakers, including Tessa Rowntree (nee Cadbury), Jean Rowntree and Mary Penman,

all of whom were there to undertake voluntary relief work. Any vague notions Warriner had of soup kitchens and helping destitute refugee children were soon dispelled when she realised that the people in the gravest danger were the ‘politicals’; Sudeten German communists and Social Democrat leaders who opposed Hitler and who urgently sought political asylum abroad. Penman soon introduced her to Wenzel Jaksch, the leader of the Sudeten German Social Democrats, and to representatives of the British Labour Party, including the MP David Grenfell, who were trying to secure visas from Britain to get the political refugees out of the country. 1 Her Labour Party contacts introduced her to people at the British Legation and to the Passport Control Officer, who all realised the urgency of 1 For Grenfell’s involvement with Czechoslovakia see Susan Cohen, Rescue the Perishing. Eleanor Rathbone and the Refugees (Middlesex: Vallentine Mitchell, 2010) 115, 120

the situation. Grenfell soon secured Doreen’s assistance, urging her to stay and help organise transports for refugees, whilst he returned to Britain to secure the necessary documents. 2 There he had the support of activists including the Independent MP, Eleanor Rathbone, who, since the Munich crisis, had been spearheading a vigorous campaign to get the government to expedite financial aid and to issue visas for the endangered Czech refugees.3 In late October Doreen was put in charge of arranging the transport of 250 Sudeten Social democrats for whom short-stay visas had eventually, but somewhat grudgingly, been granted. She was soon accompanying a group of twenty men on the lengthy and dangerous escape route by train to Poland. She recalled: Full of qualms, and with flu, I set off with twenty men, on the 25th of October.

It was a long journey, all night by slow train into the depths of Slovakia, then by a motor train, passing the ruins of Ostrava Castle, up over a pass in the mountains to the tiny border post of Sucha Hora….here we had to wait a whole day in this poor Slovak village….at last, at night, another tiny train appeared on the Polish side, we walked over the frontier….

After that mission, Warriner made the journey back to Prague via Warsaw, arriving by midday on October 27th, ready to repeat the whole exercise. Most of the 250 men were led to safety by November 9th, but this left vast numbers of men, women and children still in danger. The refugee problem became especially clear to Warriner when she began to visit the camps – schools, castles and village halls housing around 5000 thousand Social Democrat men. She described the worst of these, a seventeenth century castle uninhabited for years 2 Re: visa agreement see Sir Walter Layton to Halifax, enclosing memo, `Emigration of refugees from Czecho-slovakia’, 28 October 1938, NA T160/1324/F13577/05/1 3 Cohen, Rescue the Perishing, 101-27; L. London, Whitehall and the Jews 1933-1948. British Immigration Policy and the Holocuast (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 147-67

as ‘ filthy, walls covered in fungus, floors and walls cracking, windows broken.’ Typically there were no washing facilities and very little food.

With £ 300 of the money she had brought from London she purchased and began to distribute blankets and medicals supplies. In desperation, she wrote a letter to the Daily Telegraph and the Manchester Guardian, highlighting the desperate need for ‘visas, not chocolate’. This letter would cause trouble with the Lord Mayor’s Fund and prevent a large amount of money from being given to the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia (BCRC) for refugee support.

She was then told to not make any more such pronouncements.

The BCRC had been established in October, mainly to arrange hospitality for refugees when they arrived in Britain. Despite Warriner’s faux pas, she was asked, in December 1938, to become their representative in Prague.

The job came to mean much more than this under Warriner’s watch as she used her position to aid the rescue of refugees. She had an unexpected ally in Robert Stopford, the Treasury representative sent out to Prague in early November 1938 to supervise the Czech’s use of the British financial aid. He had a sympathetic attitude towards the refugees, and his ability to manage the Germans after March 1939 proved invaluable in getting endangered people out of Czechoslovakia and into Britain. Warriner was soon accompanying another group to safety, this time it was 150 women and children who were taken across the German border en route to rejoin their menfolk in Britain. She recalled leaving on the eleven o’clock train to Ostrava, after which the train had to go though two strips of German territory, with illuminated Swastikas on either side of the line. Despite the impending danger of them being turned back at the border, they crossed the frontier safely, and she handed the refugees over to the courier and returned to Prague. It was somewhat of understatement for her to comment later that ‘…This episode was rather nerve-racking because it showed how the work –which depended on speed – could be held up by the business interests of the travel companies.’

In her memoir Warriner did write about

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fifteen children she had living in the YMCA for whom she had already found homes in England but for whom she could not get visas. What she failed to mention were the hundreds of other children who she did help. John Eden, who, aged 13, recalled how his mother and Warriner rented two extra flats in the apartment block where he lived, specifically to house children for a few weeks, before their escape to England. In all, some 109 ‘official’ children, children of Sudeten refugees, as well as those of German or Austrian origin, and more than 100 unregistered children passed through the flat from the end of 1938.4 As Doreen’s work was primarily dealing with the escape of political refugees, she was very pleased to be able to hand over the actual emigration of children to Nicholas Winton and Martin Blake in late December 1938.5 Winton could not have succeeded in his mission without Warriner’s’s help and that of the BCRC, where they would appoint him ‘Honorary Organising Secretary of the Children’s Section of the BCRC’, a wholly fictitious department which nevertheless gave him the ‘official ‘status he needed. While he worked tirelessly in England initiating arrangements and finding guarantors for children, Warriner worked closely with his people on the ground in Prague compiling lists of children for him, matching names with sponsors, and providing safe houses for them. Her YMCA children left on a special Winton plane in early March 1939.6

Warriner would use any means at her disposal, however unconventional, in her pursuit

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4Author’s correspondence with John Eden, May 2008.

5 M.Emanuel & V.Gissing, Nicholas Winton and the Rescued Generation (Middlesex: Vallentine Mitchell, 2001) 6 Stopford papers RJS 2/2/2/3 Imperial War Museum. London (IWM)

of freedom for refugees. Having discovered the Polish consul was a collector of rare postage stamps, she bribed him with some in order to get refugees out of Czechoslovakia by the only

safe route. On another occasion she persuaded a ticket collector to keep her compartment door locked and even helped herself to the visiting card of a senior general that she noticed while waiting for an appointment with a minister. That card, as Jean Rowntree recalled, got them into a lot of places whose doors would otherwise have remained firmly shut. Stopford had no doubt that Warriner had a connection with the elaborate underground organisation which helped those people in the gravest danger who could not get official permission to escape. 7 At this time she and some of her staff had been given an office in a room next to Stopford’s in the Legation, and he would tell her of any such cases, and then turn a blind eye to what she did with the information.

He considered this to be an unfair division of risk, but accepted that it could not be avoided if he was to maintain his legitimate work .

Warriner persuaded Eleanor Rathbone to make a five –day visit to Prague in mid January 1939 to assess the situation for herself, and to then lobby the government at home regarding 7 My thanks to Sybil Oldfield for passing on Jean Rowntree’s recollections

the urgency of issuing visas.8 Despite Warriner, Stopford and Rathbone’s efforts, London seemed unable to grasp the reality of the immense danger in Prague, and with no new permits issued, Warriner visited London herself in late January 1939 to try and exert pressure on the Foreign Office (FO) to speed things up.

With the German invasion of Prague imminent in March 1939, Stopford sent an urgent telegram to the FO urging them to immediately approve all the names on BCRC lists, and once the Passport Officer agreed to issue collective visas and abandon the time consuming form filling and issue documents, Warriner swung into action.

She ordered a special train for the following night and started to call in the women and children from their camps and hotels outside Prague, and, with approval from London, then got the Polish visa stamp. By 9.00 pm on March 14 she was standing on the Wilson railway station platform with 500 women and children, and under the supervision of Ingham, one of the two British couriers, the train travelled safely through the new military controls into Poland. But another 300 or so women and children were still waiting for their papers and she had to find shelter and food for them, keep them safe from the Gestapo, and at the same time get false passports where necessary. She witnessed the brutality of the Gestapo as they hunted and ‘seized’ wanted women at the railway station;those whom she could not save faced certain death. The seizure of Prague on March 15, 1939 caused havoc in the office, with papers being rapidly destroyed and passports being secreted away in the Legation.

Warriner was now urged by Stopford to leave the country, for fear she would unwittingly lead the Gestapo to refugees on their ‘wanted’ list.

In fact the Germans were already considering her arrest, having found evidence that she was helping illegal refugees. Even as late as March 31st, 1939, she was able to arrange for a number of Communist women and children to leave by train. By April, when her departure from Prague became essential she left on one of the Czech refugee trains carrying women and children.

Stopford wrote to Butler on 13 April 1939, recommending that Warriner be given some 8 Cohen, Rescue the Perishing, 116-18

recognition for her work, and in 1941 she was made OBE.9 Warriner wrote her own account of these eight months in June 1939, only weeks after her return home, and then filed them away.

Her useful war work continued in the Ministry of Economic Warfare in Britain and Cairo, she worked for the political intelligence dept of the FO and was chief of the food supply dept. of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration Mission to Yugoslavia from 194446. She returned to academia in 1947 and had a long,successful career. It was not until 1972 that she began to consider writing a small book abouther experiences, along with Stopford, who was trying, unsuccessfully, to get his memoirs published. Her sudden death at the age of 68 halted any such hopes, and it was only as a result of persistent friends and her-sister-in-law, that her memoir was eventually published, as an article in the Slavonic and East European Review in 1984.

Warriner was a shining example of what one determined and courageous woman could do, without large funds, when confronted by enormous difficulties.

Susan Cohen was awarded her PhD from the University of Southampton in 2005, where she is now an Honorary Fellow at the Parkes Institute. Her monograph, Rescue the Perishing. Eleanor Rathbone and the Refugees was published in 2010. Besides this, Susan is a contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and has written a history of District Nursing in Britain and of The Women’s Institute. She has also published and lectured widely on the welfare and rescue of refugees from Nazi Europe, and is currently researching the role of women as refugee activists in Britain during the Second World War. 9 Letter of RS to RAButler, 17 April 1939. Stopford papers RJS/3/9/5/47 IWM

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Alison Chand University of Strathclyde

Masculinity is a relatively new area of historical research, which emerged in America in the late 1970s. Within 1

the context of the First World War, British historians are increasingly exploring the subject of masculinity, which has generated much discussion.2 However, with the exception of the work of Sonya Rose, the concept is overlooked in most historical writing on the Second World War, which frequently views men in military terms and neglects the experiences of civilian men, including those in reserved occupations.

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The findings presented here form part of a larger research project examining how the masculinity of male civilian workers on Clydeside relates to historical discussions of social

Glasgow’s War and Masculine Identities in the Reser ved Occupations 1939-1945:

change and wider discourses on masculinities and gender identities. This article will discuss the range of attitudes expressed by civilian women about men working in reserved occupations in Clydeside during the Second World War. 1 John Tosh, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity and the History of Gender’ in

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Stefan Dudink, Karen Hagemann and John Tosh (eds.), Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004) p. 41.

2 Michael Roper and John Tosh, Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain Since 1800, (London: Routledge, 1991); Matthew McCormack, The Independent Man: Citizenship and Gender Politics in Georgian England, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005); Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); John Tosh, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle Class Home in Victorian England, (Bath: Bath Press, 1999); Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War, (London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 1996); Joanna Bourke, The Intimate History of Killing: Face to Face Killing in Twentieth Century Warfare, (London: Perseus, 1999); Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behaviour in the Second World War, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).

3 Sonya Rose,‘Temperate Heroes: Concepts of Masculinity in Second World War Britain’ in Stefan Dudink, Karen Hagemann and John Tosh (eds.), Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004); Henri Michel, The Second World War, (London: Deutsch, 1975).

W a r t i m e Wo m e n ’s Perspectives on Glasgow’s Working Men

R. W. Connell’s work on ‘hegemonic masculinity’ attempts to understand masculine identities using Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony. In the 1930s, Gramsci’s analysis of class relations used the term ‘hegemony’ to refer to the cultural dynamic by which a group claims and sustains a leading position in social life.4 Connell uses this concept to identify culturally exalted forms of masculinity, existing alongside multiple other masculinities.5 Historians have

Noel Coward

used Connell’s theory to discuss the social and cultural meanings of masculinity in history, linking ‘hegemonic’ masculinity to attributes of aggression, strength, courage, endurance and competence.6 Graham Dawson identifies the link between these traditional images and military virtues during the First World War, defining them 4 R. W. Connell, Masculinities, (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1995), pp. 3-44.

5 Ibid.

6 Juliette Pattinson, Behind Enemy Lines: Gender, Passing and the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), p. 16; Joshua Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 252.

as inherent qualities of manhood, attainable only in battle.7 This article will build on such understandings by analysing attitudes towards men in reserved occupations in relation to the theoretical concept of hegemonic masculinity.

A number of cultural representations of men working in reserved occupations suggest that male civilian workers in wartime were emasculated. For example, Noel Coward’s 1944 poem Lie in the Dark and Listen, a tribute to RAF Bomber Command, belittled their roles, referring to the sacrifices made on behalf of those sleeping at night in ‘warm civilian beds.’8 Such representations validate Dawson’s argument that military masculinity occupied a culturally exalted position in wartime, defining the masculinities of male civilian workers against those of men in military service.

Cultural representations, however, indicate that men in reserved occupations sometimes adhered to alternative hegemonic masculinities.

Such representations include the novel, No Mean City, set in 1920s Glasgow.

Central protagonist Johnnie Stark comments on the ‘fantastic wages’ paid to those in wartime shipyards, ridiculing those who volunteered to fight in the First World War. 9 It is evident that alternative views of men in civilian occupations, elevating the importance of employment and earning, did exist. However, despite these revelations from cultural sources, the testimonies of civilian men and women and the impact of their views on the masculinity of reserved workers are largely absent from the historical record. This article will address this lacuna, primarily using oral histories. In particular, this study used the Glasgow Museum’s 7 G. Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities, (London: Routledge, 1994) p. 1-2.

8 Noel Coward, ‘Lie in the Dark and Listen’ in Graham Payn and Martin Tickner (eds.), Collected Verse (London: Methuen, 1999), pp. 137-8.

9 A. McArthur and H. Kingsley-Long, No Mean City, (London: Transworld Publishers, 1956), p. 70.

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oral history collection, including 65 interviews Peniston-Bird’s argument that constructions of completed with Clydeside women of working civilian masculinities in wartime were uncertain age in wartime, as well as eight new interviews on the feminised Home Front.11 with women conducted by the researcher.

Implicit within Dawson’s notion of a wartime hegemonic military ideal is the idea that those not conforming to this ideal experienced resentment. Some testimonies demonstrate animosity towards male civilian workers in Clydeside. For example, Jessie MacPhail, employed as a telegraphist in Greenock in wartime, described reserved men as ‘right skivers.’12 Such suggestions, that reserved workers ‘shirked’ military service, reflect the disparaging tone of cultural sources such as Noel Coward’s Lie in the Dark and Listen.13 Views indicating greater acceptance of older reserved workers appear in oral testimonies of a number of Clydeside men and women. For example, Irene Williams remarked on her father’s reserved work in Fairfields shipyard in Govan that ‘soldiers were not the only ones who [...] died because of the war.’14 She ascribed her father with masculinity because of the contribution of his work to the war effort. However, when asked if younger men also worked in the shipyards during wartime, she responded ‘if they weren’t at the war you rather thought they were maybe not well enough or strong enough to pass the test.’15 Such testimonies suggest that masculinity Personal testimonies of women who for younger men was more closely linked to lived through the war reveal a diverse range military service than for older men. of interpretations of male civilian workers.

While much oral evidence supports the findings Much evidence supports Dawson’s assertion of Summerfield and Peniston-Bird that civilian that serving in the armed forces represented men were viewed as lacking masculinity, ample a hegemonic masculine ideal in wartime, evidence also suggests that those in reserved indicating that other civilians viewed men in occupations were regarded in high esteem reserved occupations as lacking in masculinity. because of their contributions to the war effort.

Most evidently, a number of interviewees For example, Margaret Callaghan discussed her overlooked male civilian workers. For example, family’s wartime roles, noting that ‘my lot did Betty Connell, a nurse at Yorkhill Hospital during the war, asserted that all men in wartime ‘were 11 Penny Summerfield and Corinna Peniston-Bird, called up, unless they were physically unfit.’10 Contesting Home Defence: Men, Women and the Home Guard in the Second World War, (Manchester: ManchesShe assumed that all men not undertaking ter University Press, 2007), p. 15. military service were too old, medically unfit or 12 Jessie MacPhail, interviewed by Alison Chand, 27th conscientious objectors, ignoring the existence of May 2010. able-bodied young men in reserved occupations. 13 Coward, ‘Lie in the Dark and Listen’, in Payn and TickSuch testimonies support Summerfield and ner, Collected Verse, p. 137-8.

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10 Betty Connell, interviewed by Alison Chand, 20th May 2010.

14 Irene Williams, interviewed by Alison Chand, 30th September 2010.

15 Ibid.

their bit in the war.’16 Included in ‘my lot’ was an unknown family member killed in the Merchant Navy. She did not elevate the armed forces above the reserved occupations, suggesting that men in both military and civilian work were doing ‘their bit’ for the war effort. Such remarks support Peniston-Bird’s argument that occupational pride could provide an alternative to military service in shaping masculinities.17 However, emphasis on the contribution of the reserved occupations to the war effort also indicates that military masculinity remained a hegemonic ideal in Clydeside. Although masculinity was ascribed to men not in military service, such masculinity was still defined by contribution to the activities of the armed forces.

Evidence from oral testimonies also suggests, however, that Clydeside men and women ascribed importance to different aspects of masculinity, notably employment and earning.

In Western industrialised society, masculinity is bound up with work and ‘breadwinning.’

Tolson asserted that a boy’s entry into the work force represented his initiation into manhood and Johnston and McIvor have emphasised the relevance of the male ‘breadwinner’ status in industrial Clydeside.18 The value placed on distinct hegemonic ‘breadwinner’ masculinities, not defined by militarism, is demonstrated in a number of oral testimonies. Janet Carruthers, 16 Margaret Callaghan, interviewed by James McKenna, 23rd September 1997, 2000 Glasgow Lives Project, Glasgow Museums Resource Centre.

17 Peniston-Bird, Corinna, ‘Classifying the Body in the Second World War: British Men In and Out of Uniform’ in Body and Society, Vol. 9, 2003, pp. 31-46.

18 A. Tolson, Limits of Masculinity (London: Tavistock Publications, 1977); Ronnie Johnston and Arthur McIvor, ‘Dangerous Work, Hard Men and Broken Bodies: Masculinity in the Clydeside Heavy Industries 19301970s’ in Labour History Review, Vol. 69, No. 2, August 2004, pp. 135-146; R. Johnston and A. McIvor, ‘Narratives from the Urban Workplace: Oral Testimonies and the Reconstruction of Men’s Work in the Heavy Industries of Glasgow’ in R. Rodger and J. Herbert (eds.), Testimonies of the City, (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2007).

for example, commented: ‘at five o’clock at night Govan was absolutely teeming with men going home.’19 Such testimonies give no indication of a belief that these shipyard workers should have

joined the armed services.

Other oral testimonies demonstrate notable pride in Clydeside’s industries during the war.

Frances Doran described Glasgow’s shipyards as ‘world famous.’20 However, she laughed at her husband’s participation in the Home Guard.

Historians of the Home Guard have emphasised the organisation’s development into a strong and effective force.21 Frances Doran’s laughter indicates that she considered his Home Guard service to be less important than his work.22 Glasgow’s industries and their capacity to provide employment for men were thus often more relevant to women than the activities of the armed services. The existence of multiple hegemonic masculinities within Clydeside meant that external attitudes did not consistently encourage male reserved workers to aspire to a hegemonic military ideal in wartime.

19 Janet Carruthers, Jean Melvin and Margaret Collins, interviewed by Kirsty Devine and Elizabeth Henson, 13th June 1996, 2000 Glasgow Lives Project, Glasgow Museums Resource Centre.

20 Frances Doran, interviewed by Shona Sinclair, 28th November 1996, 2000 Glasgow Lives Project, Glasgow Museums Resource Centre.

21 S. P. Mackenzie, The Home Guard: A Military and Political History, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 4.

22 Frances Doran, interviewed by Shona Sinclair, 28th November 1996.

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However, the notion that everyday reality dominated attitudes towards men in reserved occupations is perhaps most evident in oral testimonies. Wartime arguably represented a temporary disruptive influence on day-to-day existence for the men and women of Clydeside. Marion Grundy commented that ‘life carried on just the same’ during the war. 23 Although aware of the dangers of war, everyday ‘life’ took precedence in her perspective. Wartime did not represent a watershed in the lives of many Clydeside men and women as oral evidence is dominated by the idea that everyday life continued relentlessly through the war and was fundamental in shaping attitudes towards male civilian workers.

the wide-ranging discourses linking masculinity to multiple abstract hegemonic ideals such as militarism and ‘breadwinner’ status, evident in cultural representations, official documents, and the views of other men and women, the latter identified in this article. The wider research project will incorporate the findings of this article and consider the relevance of historical discussions of social change and discourse on masculinities and gender identities in terms of the experience of men working in reserved occupations in wartime Clydeside.

Oral testimonies thus reveal a spectrum of ways in which male civilian workers in wartime Clydeside were viewed by civilian women.

Evidence indicates that some men and women considered Clydeside’s working men as lacking in masculinity and ‘shirking’ military service, validating Dawson’s argument that hegemonic military masculinity existed in wartime. Other oral testimonies ascribe men in reserved occupations with ‘alternative’ masculinities, linked to the contribution of their work to the war effort. By continuing to define masculinity by association with the war effort, however, such Alison Chand is evidence continues to validate the argument a second year that a hegemonic masculine ideal associating PhD student masculinity with militarism existed in wartime. with a strong inHowever, Connell has noted the possibility terest in social of multiple hegemonic masculinities, and these history based at arguably existed in wartime Clydeside. Oral the University of evidence often ascribes male civilian workers Strathclyde and with alternative masculinities not defined by Glasgow Museums Resource Centre, and militarism. Such viewpoints celebrated workers’ funded by an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral fulfilment of ‘breadwinner’ masculinity, ascribing Award. Her work principally focuses on the importance to earning. The most significant masculine identities of men who worked in factor shaping the masculinities of male civilian reserved occupations in Clydeside during workers was, however, the everyday reality the Second World War, looking at the ways of the men and women of Clydeside. War did in which gender identities, particularly masnot represent a watershed for many men and culinities, are remembered and reconstructwomen, with continuity of life remaining the ed within oral history interviews. She is also main driving force in terms of attitudes towards currently the conference convenor for the male civilian workers.

Historical Perspectives Postgraduate Society This research forms part of a more extensive based at the University of Glasgow, and is project examining the extent to which male co-convening the Scottish Oral History Cencivilian workers in Clydeside were affected by tre Seminar Series for the academic session 23 Marion Grundy, interviewed by Nancy Russell, 18th 2010/2011.

16

July 1996, 2000 Glasgow Lives Project, Glasgow Museums Resource Centre.

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18

Charmian Cannon

London Metropolitan University

Peg’s war- a story told in letters This is the story of my grandmother Peg and her experiences of the Great War during the years 1917-1918. Based on monthly letters written as her contribution to a round robin which circulated between her and her brothers and sisters, I aim to reconstruct the wartime lives of Peg and her daughters as seen from her perspective. She was part of a Unitarian middle class family; the daughters and sons were brought up in the Edwardian period with traditional gender boundaries. Her husband had moved out in 1913 while continuing to support and keep contact so she was the matriarch who determined family culture. In the last two years of the war both her sons and her sonin-law were killed. In the same period three grand children were born. The letters tell the story of this recurring experience of death and mourning and new life and hope.

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A Box of Letters The main source of this war story is a box of letters passed on to me by my mother from her mother Peg. Using personal letters as historical sources is fascinating but full of pitfalls1; they must be interpreted with an awareness of the relationship between the writer and the recipient as well as of how the writer attempts to present a particular image of herself. My letters date from 1902 until 1943, and were written monthly to Peg’s siblings. The recipients were her four brothers and sisters, and their spouses as they became part of the family. Peg organized the letters and presents herself as the central focus of the whole enterprise, chivvying up any dilatory siblings. The letters were usually written by the women with comments by the men, exclusive to family members, and recorded apparently every detail of their lives.

Peg’s letters are characterized by humour and comments on the world as well as family news, expressing attitudes characteristic of the middle class liberal Unitarian culture of the family. They are stoic even under the stresses of war; and serve to reinforce family solidarity in a time of separation and anxiety .

The use of these letters is meant to examine the question: How did the war affect the lives of women ‘Keeping the Home Fires Burning’ rather than those heroically serving as munition workers or as nurses or ambulance drivers.2 Just as Peg was selective in the way she chose to present herself when she wrote to her family I must select which letters and which excerpts to use in order to illustrate my theme.

Fortunately they are full of factual detail which is often supported by the family archive and by secondary material.

Peg and her five children - two boys Edward and Bernard, of military age; three girls, Win, Daisy (my mum) and Evelyn, in a big house in the village of Potters Bar. The start of WWI is met by the household with a combination of anxiety as the boys join the military, and determination to do their part through local VAD nursing, knitting and helping to settle a Belgian refugee family in the village.

In the years 1917 -18 numerous events would forever change the lives of Peg and family.

Two of her daughters, Daisy and Evelyn were married but living at home, and Daisy had a baby daughter. Peg’s two sons were serving in France as was one son-in-law.3 All this in 1917, which

1 I was first introduced to the value of letters as sources through Margaretta.Jolly’s book ‘Dear Laughing Motorbyke’ Letters from women welders of the second world war. Scarlet Press 1997. ������������������������������������������������������� For example Vera Brittain in ‘Testament of Youth’ Fontana 1933 or the collection edited by Joyce Marlow The Virago Book of Women and the Great War 1999.

3 Daisy’s husband Roy (my father) served in the Navy based at Dover and Daisy came home to have her babies and look after them. ���������������������������������������������������� R. Van Emden and S.Humphries All Quiet on the Western Front. An oral History of life in Britain during the First World War. Hodder and Stoughton London 2003 p.89.

was characterized as the ‘Year of Hunger’4. Food shortage meant the introduction of rationing. In Peg’s Family. spring Peg writes: ‘The food question is much In 1914 Peg’s husband was living apart from the discussed... but we have no queues in Potters family while maintaining contact and support, Bar. Either you get it or you don’t. If you are poor making it a matriarchal household consisting of probably the second.’ Later that year: ‘We are

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not yet reduced to dormouse pie or cockroach stew or I should be in an asylum.’

In these last two years of the war the tragedy of deaths and casualties, and the joy and hope of births are juxtaposed with descriptions of daily privations in almost all of Peg’s letters.

Edward died of wounds on February 17th 1917, in the aftermath of the Battle of the Somme.5 On 28th Peg writes: ‘Dear brothers and sisters, you won’t expect much of a budge from me this month; but we must not forget the living in thinking of our dead.’ She was looking after Daisy’s baby at the time. ‘We carried on, and the little helpless life needing our care was really a blessing, though it seemed impossible at first to

think of it. How is it for the many mothers who have no good daughters to help them in their trouble?’

Peg was an active member of the British Women’s Temperance Association. At a meeting soon after Edward’s death she records: ‘My courage was melted by a hymn about building up broken hearts…why did they choose such a hymn! We 5 Edward is buried at Thiepval which was one of the last villages to fall to the Germans. Obituary of Edward Vezian Ellis University College School and S. Robson The First World War, Longman London 1998 p.54.

house-cleaned the night nursery without calling in extra help, except that of the sweep. It now smells nicely of beeswax.’ The rest of the letter is devoted to a sugar and flour free cake recipe.6

Evelyn had married Raymond in January 1917 and when he returned to France Evelyn came home to have his son Edward, called Teddy (named after his uncle;), in December 1917 Peg writes:‘ The new young lives are coming to cheer up the sad old world. By next Budge I may be trebly Grandma.’

Indeed she was. Daisy had her second child Dennis, in January 1918 so there were then three baby grandchildren living in the house, which she sometimes referred to as ´baa lambs´. In March when a visitor arrived she opened the door with her granddaughter in her arms. ”Who’s this?” he exclaimed...Evelyn came in with Baa-lamb.”Hulloa!” cried he. Presently Daisy with Dennis. “What another?” I think our household amuses and interests everybody.’

’Old Granny Ellis had a little creche, With a Ba-ba here and a Ba-ba there, Here a baa, there a baa, everywhere a baba.’

But by the end of the month she had other things on her mind. Her second son Bernard was in hospital in France. She immediately set off with her daughter in law Marjorie to visit him, getting permission from the Foreign Office through a relative. She writes a detailed account of their journey and they were in time to see him before he died.

‘On Sunday he said “I cough too much,” I sat with him quietly some time, Later when [Marjorie] came to say goodnight to him, she came running down the stairs saying “Mum! He’s bleeding again.” And we both knew what that meant, because the doctors had said that another haemorrhage would be fatal He had a soldier’s funeral. The soldier’s cemetery is on a sunny hill near the sea where larks sing.’

This letter, apart from its moving account of the death of Peg’s second son, raises the question as to how usual it was for relatives to visit wounded soldiers in French hospitals. It 6 The servants left as they turned to better paid war work as is apparent from the amount of house work mentioned in Peg’s letters.

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seems extraordinary that a middle aged mother and her daughter-in-law could enter a war zone with such ease, yet she was not the only one. Peg seems to have ‘pulled strings’ to get permission to go but there are several other examples recorded. One couple who received a message that their son was wounded decided to travel to France immediately. They took the boat train, reached the base hospital at Calais and saw their son for an hour.’7

These visits are also an example of the “Ridiculous Proximity”8 of the War Front and the Home Front. In spite of mines in the Channel, ferries continued to run and men came back and forth on leave, spending one night at the theatre in London and the next back in the trenches. The postal service was excellent so that hampers from Fortnum and Mason were received by officers;

or in the case of Peg’s sons, parcels of knitted socks and regular letters. Raymond even sent lice-ridden washing home. But for Peg to cross over to France was -in effect- to break briefly through the boundary between the women’s world of support and nurturing from a distance to the men’s world of death and violence; an experience familiar to the many women who served supportive roles in Europe.

By the summer of 1918 her letters are full of accounts of the comparative development of her three resident grand children, aged from seven months to eighteen months. But her pleasure in the new lives was soon overtaken by the death of Teddy’s father, who never saw his son, having had no leave for months.

Peg was out when the telegram came announcing his death and got back to find Evelyn “alone with

7 Brittain V. 1978 edition pp.396-8. She also describes the horrible symptoms resulting from gassing. Many such cases didn’t return to England. See also Winter J M.‘Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning.’ The Great War in European Cultural History Cambridge University Press1996 p.32.

8 Fussell P.The Great War and Modern Memory1975.

‘What makes experience in the Great War unique and gives it a special freight of irony is the ridiculous proximity of the trenches to home. Just seventy miles from “this stinking world of sticky trickling earth” was the rich plush of London theatre seats.’ p.64.

her grief.” Marjorie, Bernard’s widow, who had also lost her brother, came to visit them Peg feels for her too; ‘Poor girl, she has the hardest burden of all. No husband or brother left, and no child to live for. She was overflowing with love and sympathy. We were cleaning the china cupboard. Such are we; work is our best help .

All hands to the job and it was done by lunch.

There has been no time for house cleaning with

three babies here. Little bits alone have been done and the house is dirty. ‘

By the end of the war Peg had lost two sons, a son-in-law, and two nephews; her letters are filled with reports of casualties from friends and extended family members.

The letters in cultural context.

Peg’ letters are a private expression of the themes found in public discourse as well as her own personal voice. The long tradition of pastoralism in English literature was accentuated when the French rural landscape was being devastated, and the guns could be heard booming over the Kent countryside.9 The contrast between manmade devastation and burgeoning nature is symbolic of the opposition of death and birth, decay and regeneration. Flowers are planted on graves, poppies the colour of blood become the symbol of remembrance. Birds singing over the trenches represent the triumph of life over death.

These themes are dominant in the war literature in both poetry and prose. A well known poem encapsulates them.

‘In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses row on row That marks our place, and in the sky The larks still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.10 These themes constantly recur in Peg’s letters.

She preserved a sprig of heather sent in a letter from Edward when he served in the Dardanelles.

She reports in another letter after he had died how a relative went to Thiepval to find his resting place; “he found a little dell by the wood and sent me cowslips, anemones and violets pressed; the first flowers he had seen in France.

He says: ‘Perhaps they are ashamed.’ Not even a daisy had he seen in his ten mile ride.”

In her own household during the latter years of the war there is a constant alternation of death and birth, grieving and hope. She concludes her letter reporting Raymond’s death in 1918, “Hardly any of the young men who were happy here is left. Now we must draw close to those of us that remain and give thanks for the babies that promise new life. It is rain, rain now: but wonderfully do our souls recover if we look to the light that is sent.”

There is no doubt that the war shaped the experience of Peg’s family, particularly that of her widowed daughter. Nevertheless the family life revived and had a new central focus through Daisy, who together with my father produced a large new generation of my family. Daisy’s letters joined Peg’s and carried on the family story.

So the letters are not only a source for telling this story of Peg’s war, but also, as I contend, a central element in preserving the continuity of the matrilineal family culture through constant communication and an expression of solidarity.

This was particularly significant in the time of anxiety and separation caused by the war.

������������������������������������������������������� Fussell. P.1975 expands on this theme in Ch. vii Arcadian Recourses.p.231. �������������������������������������������������������� John Mc.Crae ‘In Flanders Fields’ was first published in Punch in 1915.Fussell p.249. He is buried in the cemetery at Wimereux where Bernard lies.

Charmian Cannon has a degree in Sociology from the London School of Economics and most of my career has been in the higher education of teachers. Since retirement she has become involved in Women’s History through the University of the Third Age where she worked with a group of women to trace back the lives of their mothers and grandmothers. She is currently completing an MA by research in Modern British Women’s History at London Metropolitan University. This article is a small part of her dissertation.

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Elke Weesjes

Hannie Schaft

Resistance Fighter and Cold War Victim

Hannie Schaft – The Girl with the Red Hair

On April 17, 1945, less than three weeks before the liberation of the Netherlands, Hannie Schaft, a resistance fighter from Haarlem, was shot by the Germans in the dunes near Overveen. She was only 24 years old. This young woman, who was also known as ‘the girl with the red hair’, had been active in the armed resistance and was responsible for the assassination of five collaborators. Hitler himself had demanded her arrest, urging the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) to find her. In his eyes she had made a mockery out of the German intelligence service. The SD succeeded and Schaft received the highest penalty for her ‘crimes’. She was one of the very few female resistance fighters executed by the German occupation during WWII.1 A shy and frumpy girl Jannetje Johanna Schaft was born in Haarlem on September 16, 1920. Her family and friends

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1 Ton Kors, Hannie Schaft, het levensverhaal van een vrouw in verzet tegen de nazi’s (Van Gennep Amsterdam 1976) 10.

called her Jo or Joop, but once in the resistance she started to use the name Hannie. Her father, Pieter Schaft, worked in education and was an active member of the Dutch Social Democratic Party (SDAP). Her mother, Aafje Talea Vrijer, had also worked in education, but quit working once she got married. Schaft had a sister called Annie, who was five years older, but died of the horrible disease diphtheria when she was only 12 years old. The family was devastated and consequently Pieter and Aafje became very protective of their daughter. Hannie’s friends remember that even when it was very warm outside, Hannie was always wearing a cardigan.

Apparently her parents were terrified that their daughter would catch a cold.

Because of her protective parents, Hannie grew up socially isolated. She was very shy and didn’t have many friends. Her classmates thought of her as a bit frumpy and teased her because she had red hair and lots of freckles.

This didn’t stop Hannie from excelling in school.

She was a very bright student and finished school at the top of her class. After finishing high school in 1937, Hannie decided to study law at the

1 92 0 -1 945

Biography

t University of Amsterdam (UvA). She specialised in international law, because she wanted to work in Geneva for the League of Nations, the predecessor of the United Nations. This goal was no surprise considering the fact that her parents were politically active and socially aware. At home, Schaft was used to discussing politics and current affairs with her parents. She was raised with socialist ideals and values like social justice and equality. Hannie’s old school essays underline these values, but also her interest in the international situation of the 1930s. The rise of Hitler and the dangers of his national socialist party were reoccurring topics.2 Early resistance Hannie moved to Amsterdam in 1937 where she joined the Amsterdamse Vrouwelijke Studenten Vereniging (AVSV), an organisation for female students. Within AVSV, along with two other students, Hannie founded the Gemma society. It was here that she met the two Jewish students, 2 Sophie Poldermans, Hannie Schaft, haar rol in het Nederlandse verzet tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam 2003) 7-10

Philine Polak and Sonja Frenk. The three girls soon became best friends. After the German invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939, Hannie decided that something needed to be done. Together with her friends she helped imprisoned Polish army officers by sending parcels via the International Red Cross.

On May 10, 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands. After a five day war and 2,300 fatal casualties, the Dutch army capitulated.

The Germans occupied the Netherlands and after a few days of general panic, Dutch citizens returned to their daily routines. In December of that same year, a group of Jewish lecturers and students left Hannie’s university, which caused a lot of outrage. Fights on the streets of Amsterdam started to occur more regularly and the general atmosphere took a significant turn.3

In February 1941, a mass strike took place in the Dutch capital, which was a protest against the raids conducted by the Nazis in Amsterdam’s Jewish neighbourhood. This general strike, in which tens of thousands of people participated, was one of the first direct actions undertaken by 3 Ibid.

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non-Jewish citizens against anti-Jewish measures of the Nazis in occupied Europe. Hundreds of people, organisers as well as participants, were arrested, deported and executed in the months following the strike. From this moment onwards the resistance intensified and several existing groups started to cooperate in an attempt to create a national resistance.4 It was then that Hannie also became active and took part in several protest marches.

When Dutch Jews were forced to wear a yellow star of David in the spring of 1942, Hannie became more radical and began to get involved in more dangerous initiatives.

She attended all sorts of public events with unattended cloakrooms, like swimming pools, theatres and concert halls. Here she stole identity cards, which were then forged by the resistance and given to Jews. Two of the people she helped this way were her friends Philine and Sonja. Besides stealing ID cards, Hannie also helped Jewish people to go into hiding.

Some people were put up for a few nights at her parents’ house, before they were moved to safe addresses in the country side.

When the Germans found out that students were responsible for two attacks in Den Haag in February 1943, they decided to raid universities all over the country. Hannie’s university, the UvA, was one of them. The Nazis introduced strict regulations which required, among other things, that only a certain amount of students were allowed to attend university and that every graduated student had to work

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4 Hansje Galensloot & Susan Legene, Partij in het Verzet.

De CPN in de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Pegasus Amsterdam 1986) 78-79

in Germany for a period of time. Furthermore, all students had to sign a declaration of loyalty.

Like 85% of Dutch students, Hannie and the members of her Gemma society refused to sign this declaration. Consequently university life

was severely disrupted. Classes were taught and exams were given ‘underground’. Hannie finished her law degree when she did her final exam in a cafe at Amsterdam’s central station.

She then moved back to her parents’ house together with Philine and Sonia.5 Armed Resistance Once settled in Haarlem, Hannie joined the armed resistance. Her group, the Haarlem branch of the Raad van Verzet, was responsible for many assassinations, bombings and other acts of sabotage. Hannie worked very closely with two sisters named Truus en Freddie Oversteegen. Truus remembers: ‘I had joined the resistance when I was 15 years old. At first, the three of us, Hannie Freddie and I, did small things like bill posting and the distribution of underground papers. Soon we got involved in “the heavier stuff”, like sabotaging 5 Sophie Poldermans, Hannie Schaft, haar rol in het Nederlandse verzet tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam 2003) 10.

trains, damaging trucks and espionage. We looked really innocent, I had two blonde braids and was very child-like, so we weren’t scared to get caught.’6 From 1944 onwards the trio’s resistance activities focused mainly on the

Amstelveenseweg by Emil Rühl, a German SD member. He soon realised that the arrested girl in his car was ‘das rothaarige Mädel’, a wanted resistance fighter. Hannie was interrogated intensively and she admitted being responsible for five assassinations, but didn’t give the Nazis any names of fellow resistance fighters. Three and a half weeks after her arrest Hannie was taken to the dunes just outside of Overveen. She was shot in the back of the neck by the Dutch detective Maarten Kuijper, a collaborator who was known for being exceptionally cruel.8 None of her friends or her family knew she was executed and although they feared the worst, her parents had to wait until May 20th before they were formally informed about their daughter’s death. Pieter wrote the following to his family: ‘Dear all, our sweetheart, our darling Joop, has been killed by Gestapo brutes during the last days of the occupation. We are absolutely devastated’.9 On November 27, Hannie Schaft was buried in the same dunes where she was shot. Together with 421 other victims found in this area, she was laid to rest at the Bloemendaal Memorial Cemetery. Queen Wilhelmina, princes Juliana and prince Bernhard attended the funeral ceremony which attracted thousands of people who wanted to pay their respects to this brave young woman. Wilhelmina called her a ‘symbol of the resistance’ and bestowed a decoration of honour on her. Hannie was also decorated posthumously with the ‘Medal of Freedom’ from General Eisenhower.10

At frrst The three of us, Hannie, Freddie and I, did small things like bill posting and the distribution of underground papers.

Soon we got into the `heavier stuff´. assassination of collaborators, in particular those within the police force. Hannie was eventually shot when her gun jammed during an attack on a ‘dirty’ detective named W.M Willemsen.

She survived and went into hiding, continued her activities as soon as the gunshot wound in her leg had healed. Unfortunately, Hannie had been seen by someone who witnessed the assassination attempt. She was described as ‘the girl with the red hair’ and the SD started a national search.7

‘Das rothaarige Mädel’ The SD caught her during a random check on March 21, 1945. The two soldiers in charge found underground newspapers in her pannier and a handgun in her handbag. She was taken to the Amsterdam house of detention on the 8After the war Kuijper was sentenced to dead, Rühl 6 Haarlems Dagblad 25-11-1995, interview with Freddy Oversteegen.

7 Sophie Poldermans, Hannie Schaft, haar rol in het Nederlandse verzet tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam 2003) 14-15.

received an 18 year jail sentence.

9 Trouw 5-5-1976 ������������������������������������������������� Ton Kors, Hannie Schaft, het levensverhaal van een vrouw in verzet tegen de nazi’s (Van Gennep Amsterdam 1976) 201 & 10.

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Cold War Victim Under influence of the Cold War, which had a huge impact in the Netherlands, non-communists resistance fighters became increasingly annoyed that communist youth organisations and the Dutch Communist Party organised yearly commemoration ceremonies in honour of Hannie Schaft. Communists were accused of portraying Hannie Schaft as a communist heroin, a symbol for the communist resistance. She became a role model, particularly for Dutch communist youth.

Heated debates about Hannie Schaft’s political beliefs followed and people wondered if Hannie had been a communist or not. Nobody knows for sure. All we know is that Hannie distributed the communist newspaper De Waarheid and worked together with communists, like Truus and Freddie Oversteegen. The memory of Hannie Schaft became something of a political football during the Cold War. Her name and memory were discredited and as such she became a victim of the Cold War.

carrying and walked towards the tank. Tears were running down my face. I shouted “Are you really going to shoot on us boy?” “I have fought five years for your liberation and you want to fire at us?” Some arrests were made, but no shots were fired.’11

What made matters worse was the publication of a novel called Het meisje met het rode haar (The girl with the red hair) written by communist author Theun de Vries. The book became available in November 1956, just weeks after the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Hannie Schaft and her political persuasion were once again the topic of a heated debate. De Vries was accused of portraying Hannie as a partisan heroin inspired

by Russia.12 Because of these prevailing Cold War attitudes, it wasn’t until 1982 that a memorial in honour of Hannie Schaft was erected in her birthplace Haarlem. A bronze statue called ‘Vrouw in het verzet’ was unveiled in the Kenau Park by princes Juliana on May 3 1982. The ban was also lifted and every year on November 28,

To avoid any clashes between the the city of Haarlem organises a commemorative communist and non-communist camp, the ceremony in honour of the life and deeds of Mayors of Haarlem and Bloemendaal decided to Hannie Schaft.13 ban the yearly commemorative ceremony at the Memorial Cemetery in 1952. Ignoring the ban, five thousand communists, resistance fighters and sympathisers gathered together to march to the cemetery to commemorate their heroin.

Tanks and riot police were waiting for them. ���������������������������������������������������� Sophie Poldermans, Hannie Schaft, haar rol in het Truus Oversteegen remembers: Nederlandse verzet tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog ‘We saw the tanks from a far and strengthened (Amsterdam 2003) 19. by the words ‘continue to walk comrades, they ������������������������������������������������� Ton Kors, Hannie Schaft, het levensverhaal van know we are unarmed’. Slowly we approached een vrouw in verzet tegen de nazi’s (Van Gennep the armoured vehicle. The gun on top of the Amsterdam 1976) 14. tank moved towards us. All of a sudden a rage ���������������������������������������������������� Sophie Poldermans, Hannie Schaft, haar rol in het came over me. I let go of the floral wreath I was Nederlandse verzet tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog

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(Amsterdam 2003) 21.

Elke Weesjes

Book & Author:

Rondom de Stilte.

Herdenkingscultuur in Nederland Rob van Ginkel 2011 ‘‘Rondom de Stilte. Herdenkingscultuur in Nederland’, Rob van Ginkel 2011 In his book Rob van Ginkel describes the Dutch culture of remembrance using a house as a metaphor. Large rooms in this neatly organised house were reserved for those people who had died fighting during WWII: allied forces, Dutch soldiers, resistance fighters and crew members of the merchant navy. Smaller rooms were reserved for other victims. But strangely enough, the house didn’t accommodate those victims who had suffered the most during the war. These victims like Jews, homosexuals, the handicapped and Gypsies, did not get a room to themselves.

They had to be satisfied with the basement, a cupboard, a crypt or a crack. As time went by these ‘forgotten’ victims crawled out of these dark places. But before they appeared, extensions were built for those who didn’t really belong in the house, like those who had

fought wars in Korea and Indonesia.

Although there were debates about who deserved a place in this ‘house of remembrance’ as van Ginkel calls it, there was a consensus about who wasn’t welcome. Some people were resolutely banned from entering the house: traitors, overt collaborators and of course ‘Kraut whores ’.

Rob van Ginkel’s clever metaphor sums up the complicated development of commemoration culture in the Netherlands. His book ‘Rondom de Stilte’ (‘Around the Silence’) explores in detail how Dutch people commemorate WWII. He shows that over time - from the period of liberation in 1945 until last year when a deranged man began shouting during the two minute silence on Remembrance Day – WWII commemoration has changed significantly. He argues that recollections of the war are not only multilayered but are also constantly changing..

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Within this context Van Ginkel distinguishes two different phases. The first phase covers the years 1945 until 1965 and is dominated by what the author calls ‘The Big Story’. This story emphasized and glorified the role of the Dutch resistance and focused mainly on military aspects of the war. In order to achieve national consensus the focal point of ‘The Big Story’ was the Dutch nation’s united fight against its German occupier with key words like bravery and sacrifice. Consequently, until the late 1960s, fallen resistance fighters and soldiers were centre stage during commemorative initiatives. The majority of war memorials erected in this period were dedicated to these two groups. Van Ginkel stresses that the Dutch government did not play a big part in the country’s commemorative culture.

According to the author, the government had a guiding rather than a leading role and most commemorative initiatives were taken on at the local level by private groups (ex-military or ex-resistance). The fact that these groups were responsible for the creation of a homogenous national war recollection worked well for the government. Nevertheless, as van Ginkel argues, the government did not create this so called ‘Resistance Myth’.

A change took place in the 1960s.

‘Another Big Story’ accompanied by a variety of smaller stories, replaced ‘The Big Story’ or ‘Resistance Myth’. War recollections would begin changing rapidly. Whereas war and occupation were initially a collective experience, in this second phase suffering became an individual experience. This change in the Dutch commemorative culture manifested itself in the erection of numerous memorials for ‘forgotten individuals, groups but also locations’. Commemorative initiatives became very personal, victims and fallen fighters were no longer anonymous and names of those who were killed were carved in stone and etched in glass. Furthermore, commemorations became increasingly politicized and were explicitly linked to universal issues like racism, discrimination and fascism.

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In the last decade people have repeatedly announced that it is about time that ‘the war becomes history’, but as van Ginkel rightfully notes, every year new war monuments are built and commemoration ceremonies still attract huge crowds. He concludes that today Dutch commemorative culture is stronger than ever.

‘Rondom de Stilte’ is the product of a more recent trend within historiography.

A move towards studies of ‘representation’, ‘myth’ and ‘collective memory’ has occurred in the last decade. Dutch historians (and sociologists) who study WWII are also increasingly focusing on national memory and commemoration. Several books have been published on the politics of commemoration, but as van Ginkel observes, virtually nothing has been written about the actual practices.

His book provides a fascinating and detailed account of Dutch commemorative practices and rituals. As such his study fills the many gaps which were left by other scholars. A book that can bring us this kind of cultural illumination is well worth reading, particularly if it delivers the message in a accessible and reasonable style.

Author Q&A In the past decade there have been several books on commemorative culture and collective memory in post-war Holland.

Jolande Withuis published ‘Erkenning: van oorlogstrauma naar klaagcultuur’ (recognition: from war trauma to complaining culture’ (2002) and ‘Na het kamp’, vriendschap en politieke strijd’ (2005). In 2000, there was Pieter Lagrou’s comparative study ‘The legacy of the Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe, 19451965. Withuis is a sociologist and Lagrou is a historian, what have you, as a cultural anthropologist, contributed to this research area?

“I cross over between several disciplines.

Besides cultural anthropology, I have studied sociology at the University of Amsterdam. I specialised in sociology and history, a specialism that was heavily influenced by Norbert Elias.

Virtually all my work is characterised by a historical dimension, although I can only call myself an amateur historian. For me, it doesn’t make any sense and it is a waste of time to strictly demarcate anthropology, qualitative sociology and history. I apply methods from all of the above disciplines which I think is vital to illuminate certain issues or phenomena. This isn’t always easy since there are significant style differences between these disciplines, which aren’t always clearly visible. Most historians, that is if they don’t ruin the flow of their argument with countless footnotes, are able to make their research accessible for a wider public. Sociologists and anthropologists find it generally much harder to do the same, not in the least because of their often idiosyncratic jargon. ‘Rondom de Stilte’ is meant for a general audience. Therefore I have tried to keep things fairly simple and accessible by not engaging in difficult and specific debates.

Although I am definitely interdisciplinary I do characterise myself as a cultural anthropologist.

I systematically ask myself the question: “What does this mean?” This attitude results in a very distinctive way of doing research. To

mention just two things, within the context of ‘Rondom de Stilte’ I wondered what the meaning is of the alternation between silence and sound which is at the core of the Dutch commemoration ceremonies or the use of certain re-occurring words used during ceremony speeches signifies. Things like these have never been researched or analysed by sociologists and historians before. Furthermore the attention for the variety of smaller ‘stories’ and remembrance rituals that exist outside of the dominant discourse provide a new anthropological perspective. The same counts for considering monuments and memorials as indicators for changes in war remembrance.”

In what way is your choice to focus on commemoration practices rather than commemoration politics related to your disciplinary background?

“Right from the start of my project I noticed that existing studies about war memories and the remembrance of WWII focus on political debates on who is legitimate to commemorate, who attempts to monopolise ceremonies and who is implicitly or explicitly kept away from initiatives. These questions are indeed very important and I too discuss these issues in my book. Nevertheless a somewhat one sided canonised view has appeared. This view is the result of or is linked to the ‘Resistance Myth’ which was surpassed by the ‘Victims Myth’ in the 1960s. From that moment onwards those who were persecuted and randomly hit civilians take the centre stage in the theatre of commemoration rather than resistance fighters and the military. Another dominant theme within these studies into the politics of remembrance is the fight over commemorative ceremonies between communist and noncommunists during the Cold War. I, on the other hand, was much more interested in what people do when they commemorate.

An important source of inspiration was the wonderful book ‘De stilte van de Salient. De herinnering aan de Eerste Wereldoorlog rond Ieper’ written by Belgian anthropologist Johan Meire. He focused on pilgrimages to war

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cemeteries and museums in the area where Belgium’s most important battles during WWI took place.

Through Meire I came to the conclusion that I wanted to focus on commemoration practices and within this context I decided to discuss the changing trends. The nation’s attendance of ceremonies has fluctuated significantly, a nadir was reached in the 1960s and 1970s. Paradoxically, in the media and historiography, we see an increased interest in WWII. These fluctuations differ regionally and I discuss these regional and local differences in detail in order to achieve a greater depth.

This is where my anthropological background becomes important: commemoration is both dynamic and diverse.”

Lagrou emphasizes the significant role played by the Dutch government when it comes to commemorative initiatives: ‘Post-war governments strove for a political consensus concerning the commemoration of the resistance, and were well aware of the disruptive effects of veterans’ leagues claiming particular merits.[...] Only in the Netherlands did such a ‘national’ memory succeed in establishing a hegemony for about two decades. The State succeeded in sidetracking all kinds of veterans’ associations, in persisting in its rejection of separate laws of social assistance and of medals and in creating a homogeneous monuments policy’.

Lagrou describes how the Dutch government, in particular during the Cold War, the commemorative initiatives orchestrated and sometimes even monopolized. Especially in the context of commemoration of communist resistance fighters or war victims or the erection of war memorials. ). In ‘Rondom de Stilte’ you discuss this historian’s findings before arguing the exact opposite. You emphasize that the role of the government was very limited. Can you elaborate on this very important statement?

“First of all I’d like to say that Pieter Lagrou has done remarkable research. His book ‘The

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legacy of Nazi Occupation’, examines how France, Belgium and the Netherlands emerged from the military collapse and Nazi occupation they suffered during the Second World War. Pieter Lagrou offers a genuinely comparative approach to these issues and as such this volume is a true achievement. Nevertheless his analysis that the Dutch government succeeded to monopolize national memory is not supported by any factual evidence. After all, it were often private organisations and groups who took the initiative when it came to the organisation of commemorative ceremonies or the erection of monuments. The state’s role in all of this was not unimportant but definitely secondary to that of private organisations. I was surprised to say the least when I studied Lagrou’s conclusions and it has to be said that in a later article he admits that he took a reductionist approach. The Dutch state did not create homogenous war memories nor did it create the ‘resistance myth’ in order to achieve national consensus. This portrayal is far too one-sides. National commemoration was an interaction between public and private organisations.

Lagrou also discusses how the State was responsible for erasing communists, from this artificially created national memory under influence of the Cold War. The fact that communists felt alienated from commemorative initiatives was not exclusively the result of government policy. This feeling was predominantly caused by the expulsion of communists from private ex-resistance organisations, like the Vereniging van ExPolitieke Gevangenen (Expogé).”

How about Liberation Day, wasn’t that introduced by the Dutch government?

“One of the only specific government directives about national commemoration was the State’s decision on August 7 1945, to celebrate Liberation Day yearly on May 5. Local committees were instructed to organise a short remembrance ceremony in the morning, but were free to celebrate this day in whatever way they saw fit. Certain ex-resistance groups did

not agree with commemorating their dead comrades and celebrating freedom on the same day. The Commission National Commemoration 1940-1945, existing out of one man, researched the possibilities and managed to introduce a separate ‘Commemoration Day’ on May 4.

Interestingly, from the late 1980s onwards, the government gets an overall much bigger role in the Dutch commemorative culture. Through the organisation Nationaal Comité 4 en 5 mei (founded in 1987) the government became very active and started to orchestrate ceremonies and created a more uniform national experience.”

before ‘Rondom de Stilte was published’ told me that her very good friend had died during the bombing. I was stunned and wondered if she had repressed these memories? I was aware of the fact that people have distorted memories and that often people repress certain tragic events, nevertheless it was a strange experience to see it happening from up close. Why had my mother refrained from saying anything when I asked her explicitly about her war experiences?

It made me realize even more that a researcher should be very critical when writing up other people’s memories.”

And on a more general level?

“On a less personal and more general level, I was stunned by the ‘grieving competition’, ‘memory jealousy’ and ‘commemoration envy’.

Victims have tried to monopolize suffering, as if acknowledging the suffering of one group takes anything away from the other. There has been so much noise and bickering about our yearly two minutes of silence, which undermines the contemplative atmosphere of remembrance. I prefer to reflect in silence on what people do and have done to each other.”

Rob van Ginkel You have written an exceptionally detailed history (844 pages) of Dutch commemoration practices. In your introduction you mention that as a child you were fascinated by and grew up with the war. A war which was at a distance, but never that far away. Related to your research, what were your most remarkable findings? In what way have these findings influenced or changed your previous image and memories of the war?

“In my book, I describe how in 2009 a monument was unveiled close to the house where I grew up.

It was to commemorate an allied bombing which had happened on September 17, 1944. I had never heard of this bombing, not in school nor at home from my parents. After the ceremony my mother who sadly passed away a month

graduated in Sociology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam.

In 1993, he obtained his Ph.D. from the same university with a dissertation on transformations in two fishing villages on the Dutch island of Texel . Currently, he is a senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Amsterdam

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