The Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944-45: my Mother's Story

A commemorative tile representing women affected by the Dutch Hunger winter

75 years ago, Holland was in the grip of the coldest winter in living memory and 3.5 million people were close to starvation. It was just weeks from the end of the war, though nobody knew it.

Food rationing, if you were lucky, consisted of a bowl of watery soup or a few meagre potatoes. When faced with this choice, my Dutch grandmother opted for potatoes, as she thought they would be more nutritious.

‘But the Germans lied to us. We never saw one potato. All the shops were shut - they made sure of it,’ my mother told me, the bitterness still noticeable in her voice decades later.

One day, a friend gave my mother a tip off about a food source several kilometres away out in the polders. It meant she would need to ride her rusty bike without tyres out of town and run the risk of having it confiscated by German soldiers.

‘Don’t worry about us,’ urged my grandmother, who sat day in day out with my grandfather next to the stove which hadn’t been lit in weeks since the fuel had run out. ‘You must go and fetch food for yourself.’

My mother wrapped herself up as best she could in her threadbare coat and thin scarf which she tied under her chin, and set off. She had the streets to herself, as so few people were out in such bitterly cold weather, preferring to stay indoors to conserve what little energy they had. It was an uncomfortable ride, clattering over the cobblestones - she was bone-thin and every jolt was painful.

Out along the long empty polder road, with a brisk easterly wind whipping against her face and hands, she eventually saw a cluster of people ahead and was careful to hide her bicycle behind the stump of a willow tree. Relieved to see there were no Germans in sight, she approached the field and found they were digging tulip bulbs from the frozen soil.

Disappointed, she was about to turn back, when a thin woman in black called out to her. ‘They make a delicious soup,’ she said. ‘You should try them.’

My mother took the small knife from the pocket of her coat and set about hacking at the frozen soil. Soon she had enough tulip bulbs to fill her pockets and the small canvas bag she’d brought with her.

‘Those tulip bulbs saved our lives,'“ she recalled. ‘They were nutritious and versatile: we found many ways to use them, including drying and grinding them to make bulb flour to make bread of sorts.’

Dutch people digging tuiip bulbs for food in WW2

My mother made many more trips out to the bulb fields to steal tulip bulbs for food. Every trip was fraught with danger, but she was always resourceful.

On one occasion, she was crossing the bridge over the canal close to home, when a German officer stepped into her path and ordered her to stop. She managed to swerve to avoid him and made off as fast as she could, jolting haphazardly over the cobblestones in her haste to escape. But she wasn’t fast enough and he caught up with her. She had no choice but to dismount and was expecting to have to hand over her bike, when he spat, ‘What a heap of rust. That’s no good to me.’ Without a moment’s hesitation, she jumped back on and away, exuberant at her lucky escape.

Somehow, she managed to beg and steal enough food to keep the family from starving. When the first drops of food by the Allies came, she and her neighbours climbed on to the roof and waved and waved as the Lancaster bombers roared overhead. “I was overcome with emotion,” my mother told me, her voice breaking again, after telling her story for the umpteenth time.

And as I write this, I find my tears welling up. I know that were it not for my mother’s bravery, I would not be here to share her story.

Manna from Heaven … Allied food drops finally get through to the millions of starving Dutch people