The Heart Has Reasons by Mark Klempner

poster child to show that there really was sickness in the house.
    The onderduikers had to stay inside all the time, except, once a day, one of them could go down to the cellar to listen to the broadcast of Radio Orange from England. They could never, ever, go out on the street.
    It was forbidden to have a radio, and you could get into even more trouble if you were caught listening to the BBC. So we kept the radio in the cellar, and each afternoon at four o’clock one of the onderduikers would open the trapdoor and climb down there. The ten-minute Radio Orange broadcast was all crackly, but it meant a lot to us to be able to get news from the outside world.
    Once, the neighbor’s child was ill and a doctor had come over to make a house call. When he was finished, he left from the back, and just as he was walking along the side of our house, one of the onderduikers raised the trap door, and climbed out of the cellar! I saw the doctor take a look at him, and then stride away. What should I do?
    I went running after that doctor. I didn’t know what to say, because by saying anything I’d already be taking a dreadful risk. But if I didn’t speak to him, I’d never know whether he could be trusted. He turned around, gripping his black leather bag, and fixed me with his deep-set eyes. “My, my, what a doctor sees. I see so much.” Then he walked away. It was horrible.
    We had a few sleepless nights, but, in the end, nothing happened. Ilater realized he was trying to reassure me, but he couldn’t say anything either. Those unexpected crises were the most trying, and they would happen quite often.
    A few months after we had taken in the couple with the straw in their hair, we decided to take in another couple. We had learned so much about the plight of the Jews from this first family that we felt that we had to do more. This time my husband went by train to meet our new arrivals at the Amsterdam Central Station. Again, he expected two, but he found they had a son and daughter. He said, “We only have room for two adults.” The mother started to cry so hard that Wopke said, “Don’t worry. We’ll start out with you and your daughter, and your husband and son can come later.” And that’s what happened.
    Occasionally we thought that perhaps we were taking in too many, but everything went fairly well. Their daughter Ellis called this the “chewing gum house,” because you could always stretch more people into it. So eventually we had two families, plus the first man, plus myself and my husband. And our three children—but they never knew.
    Even Hetty Voûte doesn’t understand how we could have kept the onderduikers a secret from our daughters. Part of it was the precautions we took. No matter what room they were in, the onderduikers always kept the doors latched from the inside with hooks and eyebolts. And, of course, they had to keep very, very quiet.
    The children were never supposed to see the onderduikers, and they didn’t know about them for three years. I think our eldest daughter saw someone on the stairwell once, and she may have heard things in the house. But she wasn’t eager to solve the mystery—I think she liked to fantasize about what was going on.
    Some people have suggested that my girls knew but must have understood that it was not something they could speak about. Or that maybe they thought that if we knew they knew, it would worry us, and then we might ask the onderduikers to leave. Well, that may have been true in some households, but not in ours. Only by living here could you fully understand what our arrangement was like.
    I must admit that it wasn’t very good for my girls. For instance, they all had to sleep in one small room on one mattress. At night, we would put a chamber pot in the room, and lock them in. If one of them needed us, she would have to bang on the door, and then I would get up and unlock it—after I made sure that the hallway was clear.
    At six in the morning, the