·He was going on 9 when the war ended.
·He lived in a village called Drachten. Their village was the last to be liberated.
·He didn’t have to move for any reason. He stayed in the same house.
·His life changed because he went from having almost nothing, or very little, to having plenty when the war was over.
· Some outstanding things that he remembered from when he was young were the following:
-Thousands of British bombers flying over their house, the sky was black; and the noise was deafening.
-The Germans all in uniform, raiding their dad’s orchard (but leaving enough for them to live off of).
-When someone shot a German, the Germans would often shoot down ten civilians in place of that one soldier.
-The Germans constantly hunted his two oldest brothers. His family would hide them under the floor, or in sheds, or marches, or anywhere they could think of to hide them from the Germans. The Germans would even hunt them with their dogs; but thankfully they were never caught.
-One time a British bomber landed in their yard and they helped hide him. The Germans came looking for him and also the parachute (because obviously if they were caught hiding a British bomber they would be shot right there on the spot), but they did not find the parachute because his father was a tailor, and he made his girls wedding dresses out of the silk –white parachute.
-His biggest memory was being liberated by the Canadians in their tanks.
· He learned from this time that the National Socialists were a very evil, utterly cruel system.
· He saw God’s faithfulness in this time by seeing that there was delivery for God’s own people. And that after mourning there will be joy.
