© Privécollectie Paula Bakker
Paula Bakker – Hartog Frank
When I was about eight Hartog Frank – also known as Harry – lived with us. He really was a house mate and really nice to me. He played with me. He had a son and a daughter and was divorced from his wife, who wasn’t Jewish. He himself was Jewish. He lived with us until 1942 or 43, and then he had to go into hiding.
Mr. Harry gave me French lessons. He was a good influence and brought creativity into the home. Later I became a fashion illustrator, maybe I was influenced by Harry Frank. He went to the Arts and Crafts school in the Metsustraat during the war. He was protected here because the headmaster was a communist.
He used to joke with my mother. “Madam, will you come a tidy up the scullery please.” Frank’s room was next to the kitchen and my mother used his washbasin to cool the soup in sometimes. Any wonder that the soup didn’t always taste too good. In this scullery Frank sometimes ate his dinner, along with other guests.
During the war there were a lot of worries about Frank. He had contacts with someone high up from the Euterpestraat who warned him if there was going to be a raid. Then Mr. Harry made sure that he wasn’t home. I do remember the Germans coming in the middle of the night. My mother had long black hair and a white nightdress, she looked Jewish. They said: “Watch out, if the other Jew isn’t here, we’ll take you instead.” Fortunately that didn’t happen. When I was twelve Frank went into hiding. In the café opposite us, where there’s a sweet shop now, he’d heard from a German soldier about the terrible treatment of the Jews. He came back from the café and told us about it. Frank survived the war, but his daughter, Mary, didn’t, despite the fact that she was only half Jewish. She was a warden in Westerbork. They deported her.
When Mary came over from Westerbork my father asked her if she needed anything. “Yes. Sanitary towels. We haven’t got any there,” she said. My father bought a whole supply for her. When he was walking back through the Spuistraat, he was stopped by a German who naturally wanted to know what he’d got in that big package!”
Paula Bakker
Paula Bakker is 10 years old when war breaks out. Her unmarried mother runs a boarding house on the Singel with Paula’s stepfather. 10 people live in the house: people who rent rooms and those who are boarding house guests. Most of them are unmarried or divorced and with some of them she has a lot of contact with others none. Paula experiences the occupation in many different ways.
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