UMATILLA COUNTY
A12 • HERMISTONHERALD.COM
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8, 2022
Escaping the Holocaust
Survivor Anneke
Bloomfield has
packed house for
presentation at
Pendleton Library
BY JOHN TILLMAN
Hermiston Herald
Anneke Bloomfield was 5
years old in the Netherlands in
May 1940 when Nazi Ger-
many invaded her country.
The occupation regime
ordered Dutch males ages
16-40 to turn themselves in
for forced labor. German
troops blocked off streets and
searched houses. Bloomfield
was traumatized when sol-
diers pounded on their door,
demanded entry and searched
every room, including hers.
“I was so scared when he
came to my bedroom,” Bloom-
field said. “I had nightmares for
a couple years after that.”
Now 82 years later, Bloom-
field, an outreach speaker for
the Oregon Jewish Museum and
Holocaust Education Center,
recounted her young life under
the Nazi occupation to a packed
house Tuesday, May 31, at the
Pendleton Public Library. The
presentation was in conjunc-
tion with the traveling exhibit
“Americans and the Holocaust,”
on display at the library until
July 1.
Her partner, Jerry Paster,
said Bloomfield dedicates her
talks on her experiences in
World War II to her father,
Thomas Siebel. He worked
for oil company Royal Dutch
Shell. Her mother was a former
school teacher.
AVOIDING THE ‘J’ STAMP
Bloomfield was born in The
Hague, seat of government of
the Netherlands, in April 1935.
She said her father saw the
threat Nazis posed before the
war began in 1939. He made
every effort to remove Juda-
ism from his family’s life. They
moved from the Jewish quar-
ter of The Hague to a Chris-
tian neighborhood, where they
bought a three-story house.
They stopped going to
temple and instead attended
church on Sundays. Her father
started working in the church
library, so community mem-
bers would see him and think
he was Christian.
Bloomfield and her siblings
were taken out of Jewish day
school and put into Christian
schools.
“There was a big school open
to all just two blocks away,” she
said, “but he sent me to a Chris-
tian school seven blocks away.”
Bloomfield’s maternal grand-
parents were rich but stuffy. She
adored her father’s poor but
loving parents. Even though
they lived in Delft, 7 miles dis-
tant by road, she visited them
on the blue scooter she got from
her rich grandparents on her
fifth birthday.
Under the Nazis, every-
one 10 and older had to get ID
cards. By acting indignant when
asked if he were Jewish, her fa-
ther managed not to get a “J”
stamped on his.
Bloomfield had three broth-
ers, Claas, born in 1934, Bert in
1938 and Tom in 1940.
Their circumstances grew
progressively worse. Her dad
kept his job for a while. Shell
continued to pay him, even
though he couldn’t work later in
the war. They suffered wartime
food and fuel shortages and
German soldiers conducting
searches, sweeps and roundups.
One neighbor was a Dutch col-
laborator with the occupiers.
FAMILY SENDS HER AWAY
Shortages worsened. Bloom-
field’s father made her shoes
from wooden planks in the at-
tic floor.
Bloomfield said her family
sent her three times to live with
house they approached and
waited until it was safe again.
When she returned to the
bus, only seven children re-
mained, but they resumed their
journey. By the time Bloom-
field arrived at her new refuge,
she had lice and was hungry.
Food and fuel were scarce. In
the mornings she would go to
the soup kitchen for food and
warmth. There was no way for
her to contact anyone she knew,
so she continued to live in fear
and hunger.
“In Eastern Europe, the Nazis killed people who hid
children. In the Netherlands, the penalty wasn’t
always death, but the consequences were severe.”
— Anneke Bloomfield, Holocaust survivor
strangers. Her parents feared
the situation in The Hague had
become too dangerous for her
and her siblings to stay there.
They might be outed as Jews at
any time.
Her older brother was sent
away first. Her parents didn’t
tell their children the real rea-
son why they were being sent to
the country. They said it was for
lack of food.
“Imagine how little kids
would feel,” Paster said. “What
did we do wrong? Don’t you
love us?”
The first time, Bloomfield
went south to near the Belgian
border, to stay with a couple
without children. When it be-
came riskier to hide children,
they returned her home.
“In Eastern Europe, the Nazis
killed people who hid children,”
Bloomfield said. “In the Nether-
lands, the penalty wasn’t always
death, but the consequences
were severe.”
Her family decided to send
her away again, this time to a
farm up north. There she stayed
with a family that took good
care of her. They had a daughter
about her age. Bloomfield had
never tasted pork, but loved it.
The rich food made the starved
little girl sick, so she was once
again sent home.
Her father was in the Dutch
Resistance. People could enter
a library without suspicion, so
he became a conduit of infor-
mation for the Underground.
At 8, Bloomfield said she car-
ried two “newspapers” — filing
cards with intelligence, to con-
tacts after dark, but before the
8 p.m. curfew.
If out after then, she’d be shot.
She saw two men try to evade
detention by German soldiers
beneath an underpass.
“It didn’t work,” she said.
“They got pushed up on the
wall, and they got shot.”
Bloomfield made it home
without being caught, but she
was too scared to work as a cou-
rier anymore. Her father de-
cided she was no longer safe in
The Hague.
LEAVING A THIRD TIME
Her mother gave her a coat
and a flannel sheet to make
warm clothing. Her father ac-
quired used shoes with the toes
cut out.
The third time Bloomfield
was sent away, she said she went
north again to Heerenveen on
a bus full of other children, and
a man she knew. The bus was
bombed. The man was bleed-
ing from his ear. Her new coat
was torn in many places, but
she didn’t get a scratch. She and
another girl ran from the bus.
They were let into the third
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“For a year, from 9 to 10, I
didn’t grow an inch,” Bloom-
field said.
Hitler was punishing the
Netherlands for its support of
the Allies after their liberation
of part of the Netherlands in
September 1944. She witnessed
the Germans evacuating the
Netherlands in 1945.
The British Army liberated
Heerenveen, but it didn’t have
enough food to share. Neither
did the Canadians, who fol-
lowed. Bloomfield foraged for
food. If she found a turnip or
potato, she dusted it off and
ate it raw.
Finally, the Americans ar-
rived and took pity on a lousy,
scrawny girl with frightful hair,
a coat shot full of holes and her
toes sticking out. They dusted
her hair with insecticide DDT
and told her not to wash it for
three days.
“The bread with butter
was the best cake I ever had,”
she said.
One day, she was told to re-
port to a truck. There she met
her youngest brother, now 5,
who, unbeknownst to her, had
also been sent north. They re-
turned home together.
NOTHING THE SAME AFTER
LIBERATION
Back with her family, Bloom-
field asked where her toys had
gone, including her scooter. Her
parents explained she now had
a baby sister, Henny, but her
starved mother couldn’t make
milk, so they farmed out the
infant. The family that agreed
to take her demanded all
Bloomfield’s toys.
“It took Anneke three years
to reestablish a relationship
with her father,” Paster said.
“They took long walks to-
gether, but she was never able
to bond with her mother.”
Bloomfield said that she
wasn’t able to eat normally until
she was 31.
Her older brother was the
most damaged, she said. He
kept running away to the farm
family that had fostered him.
Then, at 18, he left for Alberta,
finding work as a truck driver
in Calgary.
When she turned 20, Bloom-
field also went to Canada. She
was able to track Claas down.
Against her father’s wishes,
she stayed in Canada, married
a Swede, adopted a son and
moved to Phoenix, Arizona,
with her family.
She relocated 19 years later to
North Hollywood, California.
Her husband died. She eventu-
ally retired to the Portland area.
“Some people claim you can’t
be a Holocaust survivor without
having been in the concentra-
tion camps,” Paster said. “But
those who escaped capture suf-
fered as well.”
Kathy Aney/Hermiston Herald
Holocaust survivor Anneke Bloomfield shares her childhood memo-
ries to a large audience May 31, 2022, at the Pendleton Public Library.
Anneke Bloomfield/Contributed Photo
This photo on display May 31 2022, at the Pendleton Public Library
shows Holocaust survivor Anneke Bloomfield as a young girl. Bloom-
field was a child from the Netherlands who hid in safe houses to escape
Nazis in World War II.
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