Free The Heart Has Reasons by Mark Klempner Page A

of Poland’s 3.3 million Jews had been murdered.
    My father went on to enjoy a full and comfortable life in the United States. But without that ship, his life would have ended in another era, in another country. It would have ended before he learned to speak English, before he worked in the clothing store with my grandfather, before he enlisted in the U.S. Army to go back to Europe and fight the Germans. It would have ended before he went to Brooklyn College on the GI Bill,before he met my mother there, before my sister and I were born.
    If not for that ship, he would have suffered exactly the same fate as all my other relatives in Poland.
    Or maybe, just maybe, he would have run across someone like Hetty or Gisela. . .

    Pages from the passport used by Lillian Klempner to emigrate to the United States with her children, including the author’s father on left. The stamp indicates that passage took place on August 25, 1939 aboard the M.S. Batory, the last passenger vessel to leave Poland before the Nazi invasion a week later.

TWO
~ HEILTJE KOOISTRA ~
FAITH LIKE A ROCK

    Whomever the Lord has adopted and deemed worthy of His fellowship ought to prepare themselves for a hard, toilsome, and unquiet life, crammed with very many and various kinds of evil. It is the Heavenly Father’s will thus to exercise them so as to put His own children to a definite test.
    —John Calvin
     
    To fully understand heiltje kooistra’s narrative, some background is needed about the “hunger winter”—the period towards the end of the war when the Nazis reduced, and then cut off, the food supply to those 4.5 million Dutch still under their control.
    Early in the occupation, the Nazis issued ration coupons that the Dutch had to present when purchasing food. Though they appropriated all the choice foods, the rations were still considered adequate fornutrition, if not for taste. By November 1944, however, they lowered the rations to 1,000 grams per person, or just over two pounds per week. The result was widespread undernourishment, especially in the densely populated cities of Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Rotterdam where people did not have gardens or livestock. Processions of hungry people began journeying into the farmlands to beg or barter food directly from farmers.
    In December 1944, the ration was decreased to 500 grams per person, per week. “So this at last is the phantom of starvation,” read a newspaper article at the time. “It attacks unexpectedly, in a cool and businesslike manner. Older people feel it first in their hearts, for they see that their children are hungry, really hungry, and there is no remedy.” A later article referred to the eerie silence that had fallen over the cities: “Those who are hungry shout, but those who are starving keep still. The traffic has stopped, all enterprises are paralyzed. Footsteps are smothered by the thick snow and this immense silence is penetrated by one single thought: that of the daily bread which is lacking.”
    By February 1945, the ration had been lowered further to a life-threatening 350 calories a day. Before Red Cross packages and U.S. food drops brought relief in early May, more than 18,000 Dutch people had starved to death.
    ....
    I first heard about Heiltje Kooistra from her friend Hetty Voûte, who told me that I must talk with her. At the time of the Nazi occupation, Heiltje and her husband Wopke lived with their three young daughters in a small house in Utrecht, a house that soon became the scene of much secret activity. Now in her eighties, Heiltje still lives in that same small house on the same quiet street.
    She came to the door smelling of soap and rosewater, a tall woman in a vivid blue dress. Her face was broad, without any sharp angles or gauntness, and her hands, as she offered them to me in greeting, were plump and soft. My first impression was that of a sturdy woman who was also very gentle.
    As she told her stories, Heiltje seemed, at first, to be all about