September 9th, 2009

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Wednesday Sept 9. The odds got even smaller..

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Yesterday I had the odds at 650 women outof a 10  million Dutch population, back in 1944. To-day we are down from 650 to about 10 …. Turns out that Bart’s (the Ostar racer) grandmother,  Tiny Boosman-van Delft, worked in the very same resistance group as our mother. For many years we have tried to find other members of the group and all our efforts led to dead ends. I will meet this coming Monday with one of the survivors of the 650 women who arrived 65 years ago in Ravesnbrueck and in the next weeks I’ll try fit the pieces of this puzzle together.

It remains a miracle to me that this all came about from a short conversation on the short wave radio in the North Atlantic Ocean. I had hesitated to even attempt to talk to Bart. The routine is that the sailors call in their positions in the half hour before Herb Hilgenberg comes on the air. After he is done some boats rendez vous on the same frequency. And it is not really appreciated if boats chat in that half hour prior. But I was afraid Bart would have signed off by the the time Herb was done. You want to stay in Herb’s good graces.  We exchanged e-mail addresses and I met Bart here in Amsterdam and then the mention in the article in PAROOL prompted Bart to inquire. And I hit the “mother” lode.DSC_0006

 

The Spiders are hemming me in my moorage. It’s time to take the old girl out for a sail….