WAR-TIME EXPERIENCES OF DUTCH POSTULANT

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27367, 4 June 1954, Page 10

WAR-TIME EXPERIENCES OF DUTCH POSTULANT

Down the main street of Winschoten, Holland, one morning in 1943, marched a file of schoolboys, in goose-stepping derision of German troops occupying theft town. On the steps of the town hall two of their number stood, in stiff-armed salute. Just then, their newly-appointed headmaster, a German and a Nazi party member, turned the corner, glared, and stalked by. . That night two of the boys were taken from their beds; within days all were behind the German border. One of the more fortunate of that number—one who saw only the inside of a German labour camp, and not a more infamous establishment, is now in Christchurch, studying for the Anglican ministry. Hq is Hendrik Jan Takens, a 29-year-old Dutchman who came to farm in New Zealand two years ago.

“I had always wanted to join the ministry, and although I had studied farming in Holland, I found that here it was as if I had never done any farming at all.” said Mr Takens. “The year 1943 was to have been my last at the Gymnasium, which is much like an English grammar school. I studied French, Greek, and Latin, physics, botany, chemistry: there was little time for sport. “We were also taught German by this man who was made headmaster after the Germans came. German lessons then became not studies of the language; they were more the time for giving us Nazi propaganda (we read Mein Kampf).” In Osnabruck, where he was sent after the town hall episode. Mr Takens worked in a railway workshop. “It was often attacked by bombers and fighters. But it was not so bad. We were all mixed up together—French prisoners of war, Russians, and Dutch —to prevent a conspiracy. “I complained a lot about the dirty old workshop, and after a few months I was moved to do teleohone repairs. Once I cut the wrong line, and there were a lot of rumours that I would be sent to a concentration camp for sabotage, but I was not,” Mr Takens said. “Some friends of mine got me papers declaring I was ill. I was sent back to Holland and I went into hiding in a little village. Everyone had his ‘hole-in-the-ground’ where he hid when police made a search. Afterwards you laugh, but it was not so pleasant then.” Osnabruck was a beautiful city; a cathedral containing some wonderful mosaics, the eleventh century town hall, and some other buildings were architectural masterpieces. It was right in the line of aircraft flying from England to Berlin, and many of the city’s beauties were destroyed. “I remember after one raid finding a dentist’s chair in the top of a tree draned with curtains and all sorts of rubbish.” Back 'in his home town after the war. Mr Takens found he could not settle to the concentrated studv required if he was to continue with his ambition to enter the church. He went instead to an agricultural college for three years, visiting it on study excursions from Britain and Switzerland The family farm could not accommodate Hendrik as well as his brother and father. “I chose very carefully the country to which I would go South Africa had a racial problem. Australia was a bit hot, Canada had a

long winter, New Zealand seemed right. “Two years ago I arrived here and went to Southbridge. But I found that the farming here watf different; it was as if I haa not been farming before,

at all. I was again drawn to th® church, and I offered myself Anglican ministry.” Now, living in a small bedroomstudy at College House, with his green, white, and gold agricultural college cap on the wall above a picture of his home in Holland, Hendrik Jan Takens says he is going in the right direction.