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Chapter 1

Early Childhood (1933-1939)

I was born on January 21, 1933, and as my parents told me many years later, around 11:00 PM. My arrival startled both the doctors on duty and my parents because the predicted birth date was January 22. I was not expected for another nine or ten hours. Clearly, I wanted to get on with my life right away. This habit of arriving early stayed with me for the rest of my life.

My father, Alfred R. H. Klein, was born on May 31, 1900, in Munich, Germany, where his family lived before moving to Vienna, Austria. On completing high school, he went to a one-year business college, and then immigrated to The Netherlands where he started his career with the Mepel Company. He lived frugally, and saved his money.

Mepel was in the import-export business focusing mostly on waste materials from manufacturing high quality paper. Together with one of his co-workers who he befriended, they bought the business. They sold their product throughout Europe and the USA, including sisal discarded from paper manufacturing. It was used as insulation in automobiles between the carpeting and the floor boards. My dad made several marketing trips to the USA and established a wide network of contacts in New York, Detroit, Chicago and Roanoke, VA. It provided a good income and although the depression caused a downturn, Mepel survived.

My mother, Doris deVries, was born in Krefeld, Germany on April 15, 1906. That location was an accident because of her father’s business. He owned a wall-paper manufacturing company in The Netherlands, with a branch factory in Krefeld, Germany. Her family spent time in both the Netherlands and Krefeld while grandfather supervised operations. When my grandmother was due with my mother, they were in Krefeld.

My parents met each other through mutual friends and married in 1928. When they met, she was in university studying psychology but never finished. When both my sister and I left to attend university, she learned ceramics and became a world-recognized potter. She displayed her pieces at art museums in New York, London, and Tokyo. My father built a studio for her in the basement of the last home they owned together.

My birthplace was s’Gravenhage, Netherlands, commonly known as “Den Haag” (The Hague), the seat of the Dutch government. We lived in an upscale suburb, Wassenaar, at 16 Zuidwerfplein. The house was a two-story town row-house built during the early 1920’s at the end of the row on a street corner. I also had a sister, Marianne, who was four years older. My grandparents passed away before I was born.

I don’t recall much about the house or my life there. Five things I remember. First, I apparently was interested in gravity experiments. We owned a cat (Franci) and I used to pick it up, carry it up the stairs to the second floor, and let the cat fall to the first floor to watch it land on its four feet. Eventually, my parents discovered this and immediately ordered me to stop or ELSE!!

The second thing I recall was at age three, I didn’t like vegetables. My parents insisted I eat them. I kept them in my cheeks and after dinner, went to the toilet, spat the veggies out, and flushed them down the drain. Once my parents discovered this habit, it also came to a stop.

I recall an unhappy incident involving my sister. We never enjoyed the most comfortable or filial relationship and one day I provoked her too much while we were playing in a sandbox in the backyard. She hit me over my left eyebrow with a kiddy shovel. My mother witnessed this, rescued me, and provided first aid. No bones were broken and I still have the scar today. But, in time she was forgiven.

Fourth, when I wasn’t attending the local Montessori School, I spent my time at a nearby gasoline station. The attraction wasn’t the late model automobiles. The owner had two daughters and they were not only attractive, but were much nicer to me than my sister. My parents tolerated my time with the “benzene miesieje’s” (gasoline girls) but were less than approving of it.

Then there were the trips to Scheveningen’s beach, the Christmas pastries, trips to Alkmaar, a trip to Switzerland, outings to The Feivre, a famous pond in The Hague, and learning ice skating on local canals. In short, I experienced a reasonably pleasant childhood.

Near my fifth birthday, we had visitors. They were relatives, all on my father’s side. First to arrive were my aunt Gretel, her husband and two sons. They lived in Vienna and decided to leave. My father arranged immigration visas to Australia and they settled in Sydney, Australia.

Next to arrive was my aunt Olga and her husband Willie. They too left Austria and my father, through one of his US business contacts, obtained their immigration visas to the USA. They settled in Yonkers, NY.

I did not know then, but realized later, that these events were to change my life. My pleasant childhood was also about to change. I discovered at an early age that world events do that.

My father, and to some extent, also my mother, had that rare ability to see consequences of their actions and the actions of people and events around them. It was something that I slowly learned much later in life. During one of his business trips to Germany, my father observed the reality of the Nazi consolidation of power.

He read a famous sermon by the Reverend Reinhold Niebuhr in which Niebuhr said about the Nazis “First they’ll come for the Jews, then they’ll come for the Slavs, and then they’ll come for me.” This quote made an impression on my father as he told me later. He and my mother decided it was time to leave Europe. He sold his share of Mepel to his partner and explored the family options.

They applied for immigration status to the USA. However, the application was delayed about four years because in those days, immigrants were admitted according to a quota system based on country of birth. Because my parents were born in Germany, the line ahead of them was long. They concluded that if they waited, Germany would invade the Netherlands before their projected departure date. Consequently, we travelled briefly to London in 1938, and my father applied for and eventually was given an immigration visa to Australia.

My parents sold the house in Wassenaar to a family named Vles, packed our belongings, and shipped them to Australia. In 1939, we flew to London, went to Southampton and boarded a Union Castle company liner to immigrate to Australia. Fortunately, our immigration visa application to the USA remained active and we were able to go to the USA much later.

My father returned to the Netherlands on a business trip in 1947 and visited at 16 Zuidwerfplein. He discovered the Vles family sold the house to a new owner. My father went to the front door and explained who he was but the new owner immediately ran him off the property. My sister visited the Netherlands in 1950 and viewed the house from outside. She did not tempt fate by going further. She was the last family member to visit that house until I visited the Netherlands in 1988.

During 1988, while visiting the Netherlands to do research at the University of Utrecht, I visited a consulting geologist by the name of Steen in The Hague. Late in the afternoon, Mrs. Steen asked if I remembered where I lived in Den Haag, and I told her we lived Wassenaar. I remembered the street name but not the number.

My parents took a photograph of the house and transferred it to a Delft plate which hung in a prominent place in every home they owned. I recalled the house was located on a street corner and its appearance. Mrs. Steen offered to drive me to see if we could find it. On arrival, I could not remember on which street corner the house was located, and nothing jogged my memory.

While standing there, a Volvo drove by, parked in one of the driveways, and the owner stepped out. He asked what we were doing in the neighborhood. Mrs. Steen explained I was from the USA and had grown up in one of the corner houses as a child. Being fluent in English, he told us the history of ownership of every house. When he gave the history of 16 Zuidwerfplein, he mentioned the Vles family who bought the home from my parents and then sold it. That buyer eventually passed away and his son took ownership. The house was now occupied by that son’s widow who lived alone. The Volvo owner did not remember my parents’ ownership of 16 Zuidwerfplein but suggested we should go and introduce ourselves.

When Mrs. Steen and I entered the property, I noticed a prominent sign from a security company and a system of wires from the sign. We rang the door bell and Mrs. Steen explained to the owner who I was. I gave her my University of Illinois business card, and the owner let us enter.

My first reaction was it was smaller than I remembered. The kitchen still had the same bluish-green Dutch tile on the walls. The staircase seemed less high. But the most surprising thing I noticed was that the house displayed at least 15 original Dutch Master Paintings. That explained the security system. I then realized that many original Dutch Master Paintings were still in private hands.

Although leaving 49 years before, I was the only family member able to gain access to the inside of that home.

I mentioned this visit to Dr. Sierd Cloetingh, then at the University of Utrecht. He explained that when the Nazis occupied The Netherlands, they expropriated people’s homes. After the war, people returned to claim their homes, but there were numerous bogus and contentious claims. Cloetingh inferred that when my father visited in 1947, the home owner suspected he was trying to claim the property and therefore ran him off.

LESSONS LEARNED:

1. World or other events with which one may not have any connection will influence one’s life and one should pay attention to them. The Nazi rise to power, Pearl Harbor, the atomic bomb, and 9/11, are good examples.

2. It is difficult for a child to hide anything from one’s parents.

POSTSCRIPT #1. Dr. Cloetingh also explained to me an aspect of Dutch history I did not know. Before Napoleon’s invasion of the Netherlands in the early 19^th century, the only people with surnames were aristocrats. The remaining population only used first names. For instance, the famous artist Rembrandt is known only by his first name and signed his paintings accordingly. He was often referred to as ‘Rembrandt van Rijn” to indicate he came from somewhere along the Rhine River.

Napoleon was appalled when discovering this practice and required every Dutch citizen to register at the town hall, adopt a last name of their choice, and disclose their address, birth date, religion, parents, and other personal facts. In fact, Napoleon established such registries in every country he invaded and where no registries existed. When the Nazis invaded the Netherlands in 1940 and other countries, they immediately went to the local town halls, confiscated the registries, and rounded up the “untermenschen” for extermination. In short, Napoleon’s registration system made possible the mass exterminations by the Nazis in Europe during World War II.

During trips back to the Netherlands, people noticed my middle name and asked if I knew, or was related to their relatives. Clearly, the surname means nothing for genealogy when randomly chosen in a forced registration process. Thus I have no knowledge about mine beyond my grandparents, and what little I know about them came through word-of-mouth.