VIII). The torture.
Anda could be tortured, but she did not speak! She was put in solitary confinement
alternately with and often without food. They beat her up with rubber sticks, ( by Lehnhoff, Vonk and Bouman ), but she did not tell anything.
J.Kindel chased his German shepherd dog, named Astrid (like one of the dogs of Adolf Hitler) up against her, who bit her in the head!
Not a word from Anda! She was forced into very hot and cold baths, for hours on a stretch, alternated with stone cold baths, locked up for one-and-half-day double folded in a small cupboard...... Anda endured! They even treated her in the baths with terrible electric shocks..... She did not talk!
On the contrary, she defies her executioners: "I do not say anything, I will be beheaded anyway..." She got the reply: "Yes, your head goes off, but you shall speak"...
Everytime, when she returned from a torture, she said to the others in her cell : "Please don't ask me anything"(!)
Once, an agonizing incident occurred, when she gave away one -false- name of a
man of whom she - entirely correctly - surmised that he would have disappeared
"underground". In fact this incident truly has not had any unpleasant consequence at
all for the person in question, but it deepened Anda's agony with a feeling of self - reproach....
She even managed to fool her "interrogators" by giving them the impression that
she was deeply involved with a certain large group of underground activists witch were
terribly wanted by the Nazis. She was not involved with that group at all, but through her suggestive talking - to lie, even against enemies, was contrary to her principles -
she convinced the secret police that they had got the head of that group.
Consequently further searches for that group were cancelled! The gratitude of that group for her sacrifice can easily be imagined, for Anda most probably saved all their lives!
It must be emphasized that above description is based on the very scare facts that have
become known. Undoubtedly the reality must have been indescribably much worse! One of the true facts known which might emphasize this belief is the following:
It seems that Anda in her unbearable despair and agony, in order to prevent
herself giving away details against her own will, had decided to commit suicide if she
ever got the occasion to do so.... On a certain day she saw a possibility and jumped
from behind her guard; Jenny Rijnsbergen, from the top gallery of the prison. To her own desperation and to everyone's surprise she landed unhurt on both strong legs....!
The unanimous opinion everyone who had (some) approach to her was that she was
remarkably strong and unbroken in spirit during that whole ordeal of hers which - bear
this in mind please - lasted almost three months! She tried to cheer up everybody,
ignoring her own unendurable woes. Each spoke about her with love and admiration,
inclusive a Dutch police detective (not N.S.B. for sure) named Jan Kerkhof, who could
sometimes witness Anda's ordeal.
[ Even Sleifer had some respect and said once:"What a girl, she can handle more
then many men!"]
IX). Interludium
It may, at this point of the story, be entirely unnecessary, but I wish to point out that
Anda, since her arrest, never appeared before a judge, never got a defence lawyer, and so on and so forth. Her case, as so many others during the Nazi tyranny, was a perfect example of THE MOST SERIOUS INJUSTICE.
Here an entirely innocent girl whose only "wrongdoing" was helping "onderduikers" ,
who had never committed any act of violence (as she could not even stand animals
being hurt), who sacrificed herself physically, mentally and financially for the sole
purpose of helping others (who were, mind you, provoked by the enemy! ), without doing any damage even to her enemies, was intimidated, abused and physically as well as mentally tortured in a way to provoke a Saint, by a specially trained bunch of the worst criminals, expertly appointed for this purpose by the tyrant who murderously
had managed to occupy her national country.
AND ANDA, ALL ALONE AS SHE WAS, HELD OUD. SHE ENDURED.
