Audrey Hepburn and the Dutch Resistance

Audrey Hepburn was born in Brussels, Belgium, on May 4, 1929. She was the daughter of Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston, a former Honorary British Consul in the Dutch East Indies, and Baroness Ella van Heemstra, a Dutch noblewoman. After her parents separated in 1935, she moved with her mother to her family's estate in Arnhem, Netherlands, while her father moved to London. However, Joseph wanted Audrey to be educated in England, so she was sent to a private school in Kent two years later.

 

When Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, Ella moved Audrey back to Arnhem, hoping that the Netherlands would remain neutral and be spared of a German attack, as it had happened during World War I. For the next five years, Audrey attended the Arnhem Conservatory of Music and Dance, where she developed an interest in theatre and trained in ballet.

 

Audrey Hepburn with her mother in 1929 (left), and with her father at their home in Linkebeek, Belgium, in 1934 (right).

As tensions grew in Europe, Ella became deeply involved in helping create a Dutch resistance movement in the likely scenario of a German takeover of the Netherlands. The movement revolved around activities in Arnhem, where Ella hosted informal gatherings in an attempt to bring in more volunteers to the resistance. After the Germans occupied the Netherlands in May 1940, the resistance joined forces to blow up trains, bridges and ammunition dumps in an effort to hinder the invaders.

Some members of the Dutch resistance were caught and subsequently executed. These included Ella's nephew, Frans, and her brother, Willem, an attorney who was killed by firing squad in the town square with five other men after destroying a train filled with German soldiers. Fearing for her daughter's safety because of her English-sounding name and background, as well as the fact that she spoke that language, Ella changed Audrey's name to Edda van Heemstra and instructed her to speak Dutch only. She maintained her new identity for the duration of the war.

 

The city of Rotterdam after the German bombing during the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940.

 

After the Netherlands was incorporated into Adolf Hitler's Third Reich, the van Heemstras — just like every other aristocratic family in Nazi-occupied countries — were devastated financially. Although they were allowed to remain in their home, the Germans confiscated all of their gold and personal jewellery, and liquidated their banks accounts. Amidst all the hardship, Audrey found solace in music and ballet. She started giving dance and piano lessons to younger girls at the conservatory, using the money she earned to aid the resistance, for which she worked constantly.

 

It did not take long for Dutch adolescents to take the example of their elders and throw themselves into the battle against the occupying power. Two of these «youthful patriots» were Audrey's older half-brothers, Alexander (1920-1979) and Ian (1924-2010), born of Ella's first marriage to the Dutch aristocrat Hendrik Gustaaf Adolf Quarles van Ufford. They defied the German invaders by refusing to join the Netherlands Institute of Folkish Education, a Nazification youth group located near Arnhem in which boys fitting the Aryan ideal underwent arduous physical training before being recruited by the Nazi movement. When Alexander went missing in 1941, his family assumed him dead, but in reality he had been fighting with the Dutch troops and was captured after they surrendered. He managed to escape and hid for the remainder of the war. As for Ian, he was dedicated to serving the resistance, handing out fliers, working for an underground radio station, helping organize student riots and encouraging railroad workers to go on strike. Ian's disobedience eventually had him deported to a forced labor camp in Berlin, where he remained for the rest of war.

 

Audrey Hepburn and her brothers, Ian and Alexander.

The terror that had spread throughout Europe after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 was soon felt in Arnhem. That same month, about 700 young Jewish Dutch men were sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany, where they were eventually murdered.

Non-Jews did not escape the Nazi brutality either. In May 1942, 70 Dutch citizens were executed as reprisal for alleged crimes against the German occupiers, while hundreds of others were mercilessly slaughtered for providing help to British pilots who had been shot down over the Netherlands. Audrey later recalled, 

«We saw young men put against the wall and shot, and they'd close the street and then open it and you could pass by again [...] Don't discount anything awful you hear or read about the Nazis. It's worse than you could ever imagine.» 

Audrey's maternal uncle, Otto van Limburg Stirum, husband of her mother's older sister, Miesje, was also executed in 1942 in retaliation for an act of sabotage by the resistance movement. (As it happened, Otto was not actually involved in said act of sabotage; he was targeted simply because of his family's longstanding prominence in Dutch society.) 

 

Audrey pretended to be oblivious to the tragedies and dangers surrounding her as she continued to play a role in the resistance. Reportedly, she forged signatures of identity cards and carried coded messages in the heel of her shoe to members of the Dutch underground.

 

LEFT: German police rounding up Jews in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, in February 1941. RIGHT: Dutch Jews standing during a roll call after their being transported from Buchenwald to Mauthausen concentration camp, on June 26, 1941.

 

At the same time, the lack of food had reached unprecedented proportions in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. Audrey subsisted on lettuce, bread made with peas, and an occasional potato. When the potatoes ran out, she would eat tulip bulbs, which she sometimes used to make flour to bake cakes and biscuits. Since she had gone so long without proper nourishment, she began suffering from malnutrition and lost a considerable amount of weight. Despite her ailments, Audrey continued to combine her love of dance with her work for the resistance. She and other dancers would put on recitals at the homes of underground workers, including the van Heemstra residence on several occasions. They would lock the doors and windows, draw the blinds, dim the lights, and then perform routines that Audrey had choreographed herself, as a friend played the piano. Because of the fear of retribution, no one would clap when the show ended. Instead, they would pass a hat, into which those who could afford it would place money to support the resistance movement. Audrey would later say,

«The best audience I ever had made not a single sound at the end of my performances.»

 

LEFT: Dutch people digging tulip bulbs for food. MIDDLE: Dutch children eating soup during the famine of 1944-1945. RIGHT: Audrey Hepburn at a dance recital at Arnhem Conservatory, in 1944.

Shortly after D-Day, British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery devised a plan called «Operation Market Garden,» in which Allied airborne troops would capture key bridges at Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem, to allow ground forces to advance across the Rhine and into Germany, thus bringing the war to a quick end. The operation was initially successful, however it failed in its final and most important objective: securing the bridge at Arnhem. The British 1st Airborne Division was unable to secure the bridge, as it found itself isolated and overwhelmed by German SS Panzer divisions. In the ensuing battle, German tanks destroyed much of Arnhem, and thousands of Allied soldiers were either killed or captured. The failure of Operation Market Garden caused an embargo and blockade on food, which precipitated the Dutch famine of 1944-1945.

 

The van Heemstras were among the 90,000 Arnhem citizens who were ordered to evacuate. Audrey, Ella, and Miesje left their home on Oosterbeek and moved in with her grandfather, Baron Aarnoud van Heemstra, in the nearby village of Velp, where they struggled to survive in a house without food, light and heat. Once again, they were forced to eat tulip bulbs to stay alive. Audrey's legs began to swell with edema, and she suffered with jaundice, acute anemia, and respiratory problems.

 

LEFT: Men from C Company, 1st Battalion, Border Regiment of the British 1st Airborne Division during the Battle of Arnhem. MIDDLE: The Arnhem Bridge after the battle. RIGHT: British paratroopers moving through a shell-damaged in Oosterbeek, to which they had retreated after being driven out of Arnhem.

 

In April 1945, British and Canadian troops finally liberated Arnhem and other eastern and northern Dutch provinces. On May 5, one day after her 16th birthday, Audrey heard people singing outside the house, as the smell of English cigarettes wafted towards her. The family went upstairs, slowly opened the front door, and saw British troops surrounding the property. The German commander-in-chief in the Netherlands had surrendered to the Canadian Army and all major combat operations in the country had come to an end. On May 8, Germany unconditionally surrendered its armed forces to the Allies, bringing the war in Europe to a close. Three weeks later, Alexander returned home to Arnhem with a pregnant wife, who gave birth to Audrey's nephew that July. Shortly thereafter, Ian also appeared at the front door, having walked most of 325 miles (523 kilometres) from Berlin to Arnhem. 

 

Audrey asked the British soldiers for chocolate and was handed five bars of it. She devoured them all at once, which made her violently ill. Soon, she and millions of others were fed far more nutritionally through the efforts of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), later transformed into the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF). The UNRRA placed food, clothing and basic medical supplies in local schools, where Audrey picked out sweaters and skirts that had been shipped from the United States. However, her health problems persisted and she became gravely ill. In October 1945, Ella sent a letter to Micky Burn, a former lover and British Army officer with whom she had corresponded while he was a prisoner of war in Colditz Castle, in Germany, asking for help. He sent back packages with food and cigarettes, which Ella sold on the black market to buy penicillin to treat Audrey, perhaps saving her life.

 

LEFT: Crowds gathered in the streets on Liberation Day in Netherlands, on May 5, 1945. RIGHT: Civilians surrounding a Sherman tank of the 4th Canadian Armoured Division during the liberation of Hilversum, on May 7, 1945.

The hunger and terror that Audrey Hepburn experienced during World War II sparked her interest and devotion to humanitarian causes later in her life. As a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, she dedicated her final years to helping impoverished children in some of the most profoundly disadvantaged communities in Africa, South America and Asia. She visited several orphanages and participated in food, water and immunisation campaigns. In recognition of her extraordinary humanitarian work, she was awarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992. After her untimely death in 1993, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented her with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, which her son Sean accepted on her behalf. 

 

 

[Originally posted in Back to Golden Days: Audrey Hepburn and the Dutch Resistance]

 

 

___________________________________

SOURCES:
Gitlin, Martin. Audrey Hepburn: A Biography. Greenwood Press, 2009.
Spoto, Donald. Enchantment: Life of Audrey Hepburn. Harmony Books, 2007.