Never forget

Deepa Bharath

It happened 62 years ago, but Flory Van Beek will never forget it

until her very last memory is discarded.

Sitting at a table in the kitchen of her Newport Beach home, Van

Beek effortlessly rewinds her memories back to 1942 when Holland, her

homeland, was invaded and conquered by the Nazis under the

dictatorship of Adolf Hitler.

Van Beek and her husband, Felix, survived the Holocaust, thanks to

two Dutch families, the Brandsens and the Hornsvelds -- who opened

their homes to them, shared their meager food supply and protected

them from the wrath of the Nazis.

Last week marked a reunion of sorts in Newport Beach, more than

six decades later. As they sat around a dining table at the Van

Beeks’ Newport Beach home, the Van Beeks, Hank Hornsveld and Nico Van

Der Veer, grandson of Piet Brandsen, who protected the Van Beeks,

talked about those days they can’t fathom having gotten through.

It all started in June 1942, when Flory Van Beek received her

summons from the Germans to head to a “camp,” which in post-war days

gained notoriety as the “concentration camp.”

Van Beek had gone grocery shopping that day. She had to because

Jews were allowed to shop only on certain days between 3 and 5 p.m.

On her way back home, she stood on the bank of the River Eem. Her

heart trembled under the star of David she wore on her blouse, the

star that marked her for eventual annihilation. She took one look at

the beautiful landscape and picturesque Amersfoort, the town by the

river where she had grown up. In that moment, the beauty she had

known all her life seemed cloaked in indescribable ugliness.

“With the summons in my pocket and a heavy heart, I stood in front

of the river thinking about killing myself,” she said. “I felt

hopeless.”

That was when a tall man riding his bicycle by the river called

out to her.

“He asked me, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’” Van Beek said.

“He told me to rip the star off my blouse and follow him.”

The man Van Beek followed without argument that day was Piet

Brandsen, a dynamic, daredevil Dutchman who opposed the Nazi regime

and worked underground to protect the oppressed. Brandsen took Van

Beek into his home and promised to protect her.

Flory and her boyfriend, Felix Van Beek, were married in

Brandsen’s house because the man was a staunch Catholic and didn’t

want them living together under his roof unwed, she said.

Brandsen had the courage, the will and the resources to resist the

power of the Nazis. He published an underground newspaper called

Parool, which means “give your word” in Dutch. He built bomb shelters

and secret passageways in his home.

That came in handy when the Van Beeks had to escape after Gestapo

officials arrested Brandsen in 1944 and sent him away to a

concentration camp.

This time, they sought the help of another family in town, the

Hornsvelds, who took in the Van Beeks. They lived there for three

months with the Hornsvelds and their two sons, one of whom was Hank.

Hank Hornsveld was a street-smart kid, all of 18 years old. But he

knew how to wheel and deal. He feared none, not even the Nazis with

guns and bad tempers. Hornsveld even managed to get fake papers,

which authorized him to do things he otherwise wouldn’t have been

able to do.

“The Nazis made a mistake,” he said. “They made a friend of my

father’s, a guy we used to go fishing with, the leader of the town. I

got the papers from him and no one, even the Gestapo, could question

me about where I was going or what I was doing.”

Hornsveld’s heroism saved his family and the Van Beeks when the

Nazis launched an attack in Amersfoort. With the rest of the group

huddled in an air-raid shelter, the Hornsveld boys ran over to a

nearby lumberyard and returned with a circus wagon and an old horse.

It was in that wagon that they fled to safety to the home of Rika and

Henk Brandt, where they heard the news that the Nazis had been

defeated and the war was over. They had been liberated.

The Van Beeks moved to the United States in 1948. They sponsored

Hank and his brother, who also moved to Newport and got into the

construction business. In fact, the brothers built the home the Van

Beeks live in.

It’s not a bond that severs over time, Flory Van Beek said.

“After all these years, it’s still hard to think about those

days,” she said. “Our whole life seems like a miracle.”

Hornsveld said he doesn’t know how he did what he did.

“Sometimes, I sit back and think about all this,” he said. “I

wonder how we survived. I guess, because we were young. We had the

will to survive.”

Nico Van Der Veer, who has heard stories about his grandfather’s

heroism, said it was special to be able to meet with the Van Beeks

decades after the war with his wife Jacquelien and his 16-year-old

son Lex.

“Generations have gone by,” Nico Van Der Veer said. “But those

stories will never be forgotten. They should never be forgotten.”

Those stories have become chapters in Lex’s history books. He has

taken school tours of concentration camps in Amersfoort and in

Germany. But it all still seems unreal.

“It’s crazy,” the teenager said. “I can’t believe it sometimes.”

Nico Van Der Veer says he admires his grandfather for his courage

to find hope where there was none.

“When you are faced with a situation, you find the guts to go

through it, and I guess that’s what happened,” he said. “You just do

it.”

The families on Friday participated in a service at Temple Isaiah

in Newport Beach. The Van Beeks sang a special song for the Van Der

Veers, Jacquelien Van Der Veer said.

“Havenu Shalom Alechem,” Flory Van Beek said. “It means ‘May Peace

be with You.’”

“It was perfect,” Jacquelien Van Der Veer said. “It gave me goose

bumps.”

* DEEPA BHARATH covers public safety and courts. She may be

reached at (949) 574-4226 or at deepa.bharath@latimes.com.