Memories of Liberation in the Netherlands, 1945

by Ingrid Hamster

‘Opa Apeldoorn’, as he was referred to by us, with his five oldest grand children in 1952. I am the little one.

May 5th, 2025, marks the 80th anniversary of Liberation Day in the Netherlands, when Canadian troops freed the Dutch from Nazi occupation. I was listening to CBC’s Nahlah Ayed’s WWII special about this day, when I received a text from my Almonte friend George Bedard: “Thinking of you and your Grandfather this weekend”.

George had mentioned to me that her father had been Capt. Mike George, heading up the Baker platoon with the 48th Highlanders, liberating the Dutch town of Apeldoorn in April 1945.

April 13

Capt. Mike George’s Baker platoons were fighting partners in an excellent example of infantry-tank co-operation. Baker’s men were advanced along both sides of an 8-foot dyke, with a tank taking the dyke itself. Lt. Doug (D.B.) Scott’s platoon had the left side, with Lt. Ian Davy out of sight on the right. Lt. Art Webb had the reserve platoon. The men on each side were much worried because they were unable to see the others over the dyke. But each flank had the same tank to watch in the centre, and they were soon doing so with vast admiration.

April 17

There was then an historic explosion, one they had never before experienced-an explosion of the human spirit. The Dutch are supposedly phlegmatic and undemonstrative, but the Apeldoornians went stark mad. Their joy, and an almost unbelievable relief, made them alternately cheer and weep. They fell upon the 48th Highlanders with such abandon that the Regiment practically vanished beneath them.

Trembling, sobbing old men just watched; speechless mothers stood, and stared, and cried; and the thin, rickety arms of undernourished children waved and waved above their heads until they drooped like tired sticks. It all told the Highlanders that this was not a celebration.

It was an entire stricken city in an agony of relief. Even their joy was painful. It was a fantastic day.

Exerpts from Dileas, the 48th Highlanders of Canada 1929-1956, page 744 and 757, Victory Comes at Apeldoorn.

Captain George would be one of the few officers with the battalion for the entire campaign, from the landings in Sicily in July 43, through the full length of Italy and then the liberation of Apeldoorn in The Netherlands in 1945, shortly after which the battalion went out of battle. Returning to Toronto with the battalion for its final parade on 1 October 1945, Captain George rejoined the 48th Highlanders reserve battalion, becoming its commanding officer in 1949.

I knew little about my Grandfather Hendrik Hempenius’ WWII history.

He had married my grandmother in Apeldoorn in 1912 where they settled down and raised two daughters, my mother being the oldest.

My parents married in the Fall of 1940 and lived in Groningen during the war. By the time they moved back to my father’s birthplace of Hoogeveen after the liberation in 1945, they had four children. I was born here three and a half years later.

From the age of five, I was frequently sent to my grandparents in Apeldoorn, where I would spend afternoons ‘helping’ Opa with his extensive stamp collection.

When I was about eight, I started to understand that he had worked in the Apeldoorn resistance. By the end of the war, he was slated to be executed by the Nazi’s in April 1945.

By age 12, I had become very curious about the war. During visits, I would pull WWII books off the shelves, probably merely looking at pictures, only to have my aunt gently take these away from me,”You are too young to see this”, she would say.

In elementary, as well as during my high school years, talking about the war was avoided. All teachers, male and female, had survived German labour camps, Japanese prison camps or starvation. It was in the sixties when we re-discovered WWII propaganda and documentaries. The Diary of Anne Frank and several other books related to the war were slowly introduced. Memories were too fresh, too painful. On May 4th, we remembered the fallen. On May 5th, we all wore orange (the Dutch national colour) to celebrate freedom. It was a day off school all throughout my childhood.

During WWII Apeldoorn had a population of 70,000. The exodus of civilians from neighbouring towns where the battle of ‘Market Garden’ took place brought 70,000 misplaced citizens to Apeldoorn and its surroundings. Here a paragraph from ‘Little Jo’, memories from Dutch immigrant Joanna Testerink Van Essen, who was born and raised in Apeldoorn:

The Allies landed in Normandy in June 1944, but it was almost another year before they could liberate us. That summer, they fought their way through France, Belgium and into Holland. After unsuccessfully attempting to hold Arnhem (thirty kilometres from us) in September, the Allies were pushed back and refocused their energy on improving their supply lines and moving west across the line. In the meantime, thousands of Dutch civilians in the area were forced to evacuate while the Germans flooded the lowlands to protect their defences. We had a dozen refugees living in our barn for six weeks. Father made room for them, building bunks from wood and making mattresses from straw. Eventually, most of them found relatives to stay with, except for one family who stayed for six months.

I do remember how important August 6th was to my Grandfather.

This was not only Opa’s birthday, it was the same day when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, marking the end of WWII. We could only see Opa later in that day, because every year, in the morning of his birthday, friends from Switzerland would be visiting him… who were these people?

War counts for so many unsung heroes.

I asked my older siblings what they remembered of Opa’s role during the war. These were some of their responses:

Opa was very modest about his role in the resistance, he never spoke about it.
In 1941 he had begun to work for the L.O.(De Landelijke Organisatie voor Hulp aan Onderduikers) The National Organization for Assistance to People in Hiding
He succeeded bribing concentration camp administrators (in the city of Amersfoort) to release prisoners.
He kept two people in hiding in his home, gave away food to others in need.
Employees kept their salary even after the company Grandpa owned was closed in 1944. The building became a resistance office, pretending as if business was going on as normal.
We remember bullet holes in the walls; during the liberation. He was shot at by the Germans, they wanted him dead.
After the war, he spent some time in Switzerland, at the expense of a resistance foundation, to regain strength and recover from everything he had been through. To his resistance friends he was known as HEMP.