Excerpt from chapter 21 of my upcoming novel ‘The Storks came Back’

by | Jun 17, 2017 | Storks Came Back

Excerpt from chapter TWENTY-TWO of The Storks came Back

Once again it was Saturday. Morten came home from school at lunch time wondering what to do with his afternoon off. He let himself into the house through the backdoor, surprised to find his mother home already, an hour early.

She seemed terribly upset judging by her face, red-eyed and streaked with tears. He found it hard to believe that his mother had been crying. She never did – not that he knew of.

“You had better pull up a chair,” she said, sobbing.

Snap left her basket to sit beside Morten’s chair. He reached down and ruffled her ears, bracing himself for whatever the bad news might be.

Mother reached across the table and took his hand.

“Your father won’t be coming home today – not for a long time, I fear. Mr. Johansen called me away from class this morning, to tell me. The Germans have rounded up all of the Danish policemen they could find, and sent them to prison camps in Germany. We don’t right know yet where Father was sent. They seem to have gone to two different camps, one called Neuengamme, the other a place named Buchenwald.”

Mother squeezed his hand and Morten squeezed hers, fighting against his tears. For a long time they sat without speaking. Morten swallowed to keep his lips from trembling. Mother patted his hand. Don’t cry,” she said. “Mr. Johansen thinks because all the police in one unit are kept together, they’ll be all right in the camps as long as they help one another to stay healthy. People are rushing to collect food and medicine to send to them, like they’ve been doing for other prison camps. So far, the Red Cross is still able to deliver packages and letters to Nazi prison camps. Father will surely come back, Morten. We have to believe and stay strong.”

Morten jumped up. He ran to the door muttering, “I forgot something. I won’t be long.”

“Where are you going?” his mother called after him. “Have a bite of lunch first.”

“I’m not hungry,” Morten shouted. He ran out to the woodshed followed by Snap. He picked up the wedge and the sledge hammer, gauging their weight. With his father gone, it would be his job from now on to split wood for the kitchen stove. He put the tools down. His head was spinning with thoughts. He didn’t feel up to splitting wood right now.

 

Danish police and one British policeman imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp

Danish police and one British policeman imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp

by | Jun 17, 2017 | Netherlands

His first days in post-war England, remembered by a Danish student-visitor who worked for the summer on an English farm.

by Hans Larsen

It was a nice May evening, and I had just arrived on a small farm in England as an agricultural exchange student from Denmark. After milking the farm’s thirty-and-some Ayrshire cows in the field, I had come back to the farmhouse looking for dinner. But there was no such thing waiting for me, the already forgotten ‘hired hand’ from abroad. My employers, a couple who owned the farm and ran it (off-handedly) as a sideline to their publishing business, had gone out to visit someone.

Fortunately I had my own wheels – my trusted black bike had traveled with me on the ferry from Esbjerg in Denmark – and so I went into nearby Lambourn Village looking for a meal, only to be disappointed again: every eatery in the village was closed.

How about the village bakery? It was also closed. “Open till noon” it said on the notice in the window. I shrugged, turned around, and was headed back to my bicycle when I was halted in my tracks by a policeman who eyed me, a foreigner, with suspicion.

He asked what I was doing and where I came from. I told him I was an exchange student just arrived from Esbjerg to help out on a farm near Seven Barrows, and I was looking for something to eat after milking the cows for my new employers.

When he heard the word Denmark, the policeman’s hard stare softened. He invited me promptly to his house across the street where his wife treated us to tea with assorted biscuits and cakes.

The policeman’s story

Police uniform 1940sOver tea the policeman told me about his involvement with WWII. The war, ended eight years before, had left scars in people that were still fresh in those days. This policeman was still trying to come to terms with what had happened to him.

When the British army was evacuated from the beaches in Belgium, he and other members of his police unit were sent to Dunkirk to help with the operation. In the haste and confusion, he and others were left behind on the beach and take captive.

Unlike members of the military forces, those in the police force when captured didn’t qualify as POW’s, and so he was sent straight to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he languished from late in 1939, to the fall of 1943, emaciated and depressed, barely surviving on the scant food handed out to the prisoners. Adding to his depression and poor health was his deep sense of loneliness. Ignored by the guards, as well as his fellow prisoners – an ever changing crowd of captives from East Europe, unable to speak English – he felt profoundly abandoned. In September 1943, he was left to live all alone in his barrack, after his fellow prisoners from the east had been moved out as a group.

For days he remained the only one left in the barrack. Forgotten by the camp administration, he received no food at all, not even he standard camp swill. He began to prepare for death.

A few days later he woke up to a lot of noise, shouts and footsteps and slamming of doors. Suddenly he was surrounded by a throng of tall burly men in black uniforms noisily moving in. The men were quick to get organized and everyone took part in what seemed to be a standard physical workout practice. Afterwards, they returned to the lonesome prisoner in his worn British Police uniform. Among the newcomers were a few who spoke a little English. He soon learned that his new companions were policemen from occupied Denmark, rounded up all over the country and sent here to prevent them from lending support to the Danish Resistance.

Among them was a police doctor who helped him recover his health over the next few weeks. He was fixed up with a Danish police uniform, and urged to join their daily workouts as soon as he was able to. They shared their food with him – supervised by police medics, who measured out his rations by small daily increases.

It didn’t take long before he recovered in body and spirit. He was now wearing a Danish police uniform and he carried a new set of ID’s made in the barracks by a policeman with special skills. He went out with the others for role calls unquestioned, for it seemed that the British policeman rounded up on the beach at Dunkirk had been permanently forgotten by the camp’s administrators.

In 1944 the Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte arrived with staff of the International Red Cross and an assortment of white busses and trains. German authorities had agreed that the Danish police were allowed to depart for Sweden, to remain there until the end of the war. While the train rolled through Denmark on its way to Sweden, many of his Danish friends jumped off the train to join the Resistance, and others continued to Sweden where they helped to form the Danish Brigade – a liberation unit armed and organized in Sweden.

The lone British police officer regained his proper identity and returned to the UK.

I never met the policeman again after I left his house that day. I gave notice to my negligent Lambourn employer and moved to another farm a short distance away near Wantage. My move caused a small – potentially not so small – problem because my work-permit was only valid for Lambourn. I was quickly immersed with the farm work in my new place of employment, this time enjoying the hospitality of a friendly, welcoming, (authentic) farm family. I worked there for several weeks without a work permit.

Then, one day when I arrived home for lunch, a very small car rolled into the yard with a very tall and slim Police Constable at the wheel. He handed me a fresh work-permit and explained, “Thanks to the Constable in Lambourn, you’re now legal again.”

THE STORKS CAME BACK: A Boy grows up in Nazi-occupied Denmark

THE STORKS CAME BACK: A Boy grows up in Nazi-occupied Denmark

by | Jun 3, 2017 | Storks Came Back

My new novel (for readers 8 – 12 ) will be published this fall

Synopsis

THE STORKS CAME BACK

A Boy grows up in Nazi-occupied Denmark

A novel by Afiena Kamminga

Morten Mors is seven years old when the Second World War rolls over Europe, swallowing up one country after another, including the kingdom of Denmark. One spring morning in the year 1940, a German Army column rolls by the home of Morten and his family. The house is located on the campus of an agricultural college not far from Copenhagen, where Morten’s mother is employed as a teacher. Five years later the war has ended at last. The countries occupied by German troops are liberated, and Morten’s father returns from concentration camp. Now Morten needs to come to terms with the discovery that life will never again be the same as before the nightmare of war and occupation descended on the world.

Almost imperceptibly at first, then fast and furiously, life in Denmark changes under the crushing grip of the Nazi occupation. Morten learns there is power in terrorizing others – and weakness too. His older sister, Inger, is drawn into the resistance movement but Morten is considered too young to be involved with risky underground activities. Until one day a Nazi-raid is in progress on the college campus in the far West of Denmark where Morten and his family have found refuge — their former home has been commandeered to serve as officers’ quarters for the German forces.

The local Resistance unit has used the basement of the main college building to stockpile explosives – the very building which is now being searched. Most of the stored explosives, Morten learns, were moved out in time — most, but not all.

Can he think of a way to move the explosives from under the noses of the Germans and hide them in a safe place? He conceives of a daring plan and decides to act on it in spite of the danger to himself and his friend, Niels.

With the help of Niels and Niels’ Newfoundland dog, Morten succeeds in moving the remaining explosives from the campus, undetected, saving the local Resistance, including family and friends, from arrest and death by firing squad.

In the course of five war years Morten grows up faster than a boy ought to. He learns about courage and cowardice, generosity, loyalty, and mean-spiritedness. He also learns that it is useless to stick labels on people. Good and bad can be found any time, any place among people, regardless of their background.

Author’s Note

When I learned that the childhood memories of my Danish-born husband ran parallel to my own family history – both families, one in Denmark, one in the Netherlands, were forced out of their home by occupying German forces – the seeds for this fictional story were sown.

The Storks came Back is the result of our cooperation and the contributions of others who generously shared their memories of the Nazi occupation in Denmark.