Elisabeth was born in Hengelo/Holland during the holocaust. She had three brothers and her older sister Jenny died tragically during the Nazi-occupation of Holland. Her dad was a manager of a large factory. He also was a City-Councilor and was once chosen to be the mayor of their city, but declined because of his many activities. During the Nazi occupation her dad and a co-worker were forcefully taken from his office by occupying SS soldiers and dragged into a “death-train”. This was a train that transported people to death-camps in Germany.

Understanding a bit of German he overheard the German guards saying that the train would leave after midnight. He decided to get out of the train through a little wooden window whilst the guards were not looking and went into hiding under the high old-fashioned steam-train, crawling all the way up to the locomotive just outside the platform. No-one saw him.

At midnight a whistle blew and the train slowly went off without him. He escaped the terrible death-camp and his co-worker never came back. Mother could not sleep that night and was praying on the top-floor of our double-storey house for dad to come back.

There he was and from that moment we had to go into hiding as we had no documents and were on the black list.

In the early morning-hours mother pushed Elisabeth’s pram with all the belongings on top and dad walked 200 meters ahead of them not to identify with them to protect his family.

They had to leave their lovely house in the city and walked by faith to an unknown destination God would show for safety. They must have walked for miles as they finally reached a small farm, where a believing Baptist family lived far away from the lights of the city. Mr. & Mrs. Dilling did not really know them and yet they gladly took them in to protect them.

A special hiding-place was built under the floorboards of the living-room. As the sirens went off and heavy vehicles approached the family were all hiding under the floorboards, whilst the Dillings sat at the Dining room table with a cup of coffee.

As a baby she cried a lot as there was hardly any food and so they had to hide her under the floorboards during the day for safety sake so that no-one would see or hear a baby cry. This went on for many months towards the end of WW II. Due to a lack of calcium and little food in the holocaust Elisabeth had rickets (a lack of vitamin D) and the bones on her head (fontanel) never closed properly. Another problem was fear. She grew up with tremendous fear for people, fear for soldiers and fear of being left alone in the dark. What a blessing to see such a difference today as the Lord changed her life.

As the American soldiers liberated Holland there were big celebrations. Elisabeth’s brothers had fled to England and fought with the RAF in Japan with the British and American forces. The 5th of May was Freedom Day in Holland and people were dancing in the streets.
The first years of Elisabeth’s life were very sad as her sister Jenny had died so tragically at an early age and mom never got over that. Mother was very depressed and could not take any noise. Dad was strong and during the war he helped 23 Jewish children to a safe place being part of the wonderful “Underground Movement” to help Jewish people get to freedom. He did very dangerous things and risked his life to safe Jewish people. Having access to the Town-hall archives, he took all the Jewish names out of the town register and put them in his desk. These names could not be found by the German occupational forces. He made sure the Jewish children could get good education and allowed them to be at the schools, of which he was chairman on the board. Elisabeth’s grandparents had a big double-storey house in Borne/Holland and even today, long after they died, one can see a hiding-place in this home. That house is still standing there. New owners live there who have put a menorah in front of the hiding-place on the second floor.

Elisabeth was brought up in a Baptist home with a lot of love for Israel and the Jewish people. I never knew why “opa” grandpa gathered his little family together in December and blew a horn (Shofar) and blessed each one of us visiting for a meal on a Friday night speaking a strange language. Was it Hebrew? Now I know it must have been the Hanukkah Feast.

I also did not know why grandma walked to a little building called the synagogue in Borne, Holland on a Friday night. Yet they went to church on Sundays. I did not know why they kept special pots for milk and special ones for meat. Much later in South Africa a prophetess called me out and said: You are a true daughter of Abraham. Find your roots. She wept and I thought this was very strange. It was as if God was saying: Find out, who you are and where you are coming from.
Dad admitted a few years before he died, that we were from Jewish descendants from both sides of the family and urged me to always respect and love Israel as he did.
I realized that I belonged to the strange group of “hidden Jews” and so my love grew for the Word of God wanting to find out who the God of Israel really was who kept me safe during the war throughout the holocaust.
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