Hanneke Ippisch - 1925
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I. Biography Hanneke Ippisch was born as Ippisch Eikema in Holland in 1925. She and her sister were raised by her mother and father. Her father was a minister, a dominee, in a nearby
Holland church. In 1938, Ippisch belonged to a Girl Scout troop in northern Holland. They often went kayaking on the canals and small rivers.
On May 10, 1940, Ippisch and her family awoke to the whirring of heavy airplanes flying above. They turned on their radio and heard "HOLLAND is at war!" The attack lasted
three days, and eventually Holland was under German occupation. Occupational forces had entered Holland. They wore faded green uniforms, some rode bicycles, and others
simply marched. Ippisch's town was spared from the fighting and bombing, leaving her house undamaged. Three hundred Dutchmen committed suicide after their country surrendered.
Everyone in her town and in Holland had begun to hoard anything they could find. One old lady even bought the only thing left on the shelves, three hundred twenty-four tins of
shoe polish. During October 1941, the Germans had ordered all Dutch citizens to hand over their antique copper, brass, and pewter items to the Germans. All the possessions were to
be melted down to make ammunition. Some Dutch people gave in, however others dug holes in their gardens to bury the priceless items. Ippisch and her father hid sacks full of
vases, kettles, and plates in the top of the old church. When Ippisch was sixteen she and her family moved to a nearby town. One day the sirens
rang and everyone was instructed to move downstairs at her school. Ippisch stayed upstairs and watched the smoke as the nearby town of Rotterdam was bombed. The next
day there was a new girl in class, the only thing she said was "It all burned, and there was no water to stop the burning." After Holland had been occupied for two years, the Germans issued a curfew to eliminate
the pursuit of illegal activities after sundown. Ippisch and a few of her friends from class would sneak out to a teacher's house to study Hamlet secretly. The Germans had strictly
forbidden the study of the English language. On her way home one night after curfew she noticed members of a Jewish family being shoved into the back of a large truck, to be taken away and never seen again.
After high school, Ippisch enrolled in the Academy for Physical Education in Amsterdam. After hearing about the sufferings of the Jewish people in concentration camps, Ippisch
had become very determined to help in any way she could. One night Ippisch overheard her father talking with an elderly woman about something called the "underground." She
followed the woman home and told her she wished to join the resistance. The woman simply told her, "I want you to go back to your studies and think about it for a long time."
Three months after their first conversation Ippisch returned and told her she had no doubt about joining the resistance. The woman told her to meet Piet in the square in front of the
Protestant Church at nine a.m. he will wear a brown wool hat and a gray raincoat. She told her to introduce herself as Ellie. Her first assignment was to bring some identification
papers and food coupons to a Jewish family hiding in a house in the town of Haarlem. He also gave her an ID; her new name was Ellie Van Dyk. Ippisch worked escorting people in hiding to different locations and bringing them
clothing, papers, and supplies. Ippisch can remember a Jewish family of eight who were hidden in a house in Haarlem. They had constructed a hiding place under the floor. When
Ippisch was ordered to deliver food and supplies to them she noticed one curtain was half open, that was a sign of trouble. Later, she was told Germans had temporarily moved into
the house. The family of Jews could not make a single sound while the Germans were there, they were completely silent for an entire week. One member of the family had even
died, very quietly. After the week when they came out, they were very thin, and very weak. During Ippisch's career in the resistance, not a single person she was transporting was ever captured.
Ippisch decided that she needed a job, so she inquired for one within the resistance. A man she knew, Mr. Buys, heard and led her to a beautiful old Dutch home. There she was
introduced to a man named Mr. Van Tuyl, who was really Walraven van Hall, the leader of the Dutch resistance. She was given a job as his personal courier; Ippisch was to find a
meeting place every Friday morning for the resistance group leaders. She always managed to find a safe place for them to meet, until one morning, when they were caught. She
entered the building and was caught by a German soldier, forced upstairs with a gun at her back. Upstairs the resistance leaders were lying face down with their hands behind their
heads. All of them, including Ippisch, were escorted to the political prison. Ippisch was placed in a small, cold, damp cell with a few other women. Breakfast for the
women consisted of one-cup imitation coffee, and one piece of bread. For lunch and dinner the women were given thin, watery soup, which occasionally had a slice of carrot or
potato. The food had an odd taste, but the women did not find out why until they were released. The food always contained a small portion of camphor, which, if one was
exposed to for a year or longer, would become totally sterile. The women in the cell were constantly hungry, and always bitterly cold. After six weeks in the prison, Ippisch found a
way to communicate with her family, she etched letters into pieces of toilet paper with her fingernail. After they were done she would sew them into her laundry labels, then when
the laundry was delivered to her parents they could open them and read them. After awhile Ippisch was to be interrogated, the Germans ushered her into a small room
with thick iron doors. They asked her questions and tried to convince her that her friends had already told them the truth and they just wanted to hear about her involvement. The
interrogation lasted for four hours; Ippisch was forced to watch the guard eat a large lunch with Swedish bread, cheese, and real coffee. Eventually after they realized she would not speak they let her go back to her cell.
A week before the war had officially ended, Germans signed papers promising they had to release the political prisoners in Holland. Ippisch was finally free, later in her life she
accepted a job in Sweden. After everything, she moved to America, and came to Montana. II. Literary Works Ippisch has written two books, Sky, her autobiography, and Spotted Bear
a children's story. She has two books to be published soon; one is a second part to her autobiography about her life in Sweden. The other book is a collection of short stories. Ippisch has
spoken at about three hundred and fifty schools across Montana and the U.S about her story. She says some of her success has to do with the release of the movie Schindler's List.
Ippisch and her husband run a bed and breakfast is Huson, Montana, near Missoula. It is a renovated schoolhouse in which they sell wooden toys during the Christmas season.
Ippisch says her inspirations to write are: her children, the fact that hardly anything is written about the Holland resistance, and to seek out White Supremacist children in order to educate them. Ippisch has won awards for
Sky and her children's book, Spotted Bear. This essay was submitted by a student of Steve Gardiner, a teacher at Billings Senior High School in Billings, Montana.