Читать книгу The Tulip Eaters - Antoinette Heugten van - Страница 6

PREFACE

We have no milk, no bread, no potatoes—just rotten peels. The boys now have to go far into the fields to pull frozen tulip bulbs from the ground. We grind the pulp and make thin soup and watery porridges from them. They are bitter, practically inedible, but we choke them down because otherwise we will starve.

—Anonymous Dutch housewife, circa 1944

During the Hongerwinter in 1944, a railway strike was ordered by the exiled Dutch government to further Allied liberation efforts. The Germans retaliated by placing an embargo on all food transports. Gas and electricity were cut off during one of the harshest winters in history. Potatoes and vegetables were long gone. There was no meat, milk, butter, coffee or sugar and not enough bread to feed one person, let alone a family. There was only one thing left to them in the barren fields.

Tulips.

Four and a half million people were affected by the famine. Over 20,000 starved to death. This represents the nadir of the war—Dutchmen forced to forage and choke down their national flower to stave off starvation. It is one of the great ironies of the Dutch occupation.