From fugitive to healer

In September 1944, my parents, my three brothers and I – ages 2 to 6 – fled our home in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. We hoped to escape the relentless bombing as Allied forces fought to capture the city from German occupation. When the Allies succeeded, Nijmegen suddenly became a frontline post, with German shells battering the city.

To escape the fighting, we walked twenty kilometres to the village of Batenburg and found shelter in the manse of the Old St. Victor Church. We were given a single room with a layer of straw on the floor for bedding. My father, Rev. Wiebe van Dijk, pastor in the Reformed Church of Nijmegen, soon returned home to Nijmegen to support his battered congregation; as a minister, he had permission to travel and visited us occasionally. By January, the bombing in Nijmegen diminished, though it would not cease for another four months. My mother was expecting a baby in February and hoped to be home by then.

Among the thousands of letters and sermons left behind after my parents died, we found a letter headed: Batenburg, Dec. 1944. My mother had written to my father, “There is still a lot of diphtheria here. The Sunday School will be discontinued, and Christmas celebrations will not take place. Dr. Spangenthal will go to Oudenbosch on Monday to work in a hospital for evacuated people, and he is already in uniform. . . .”

Who was Dr. Spangenthal?

This mystery was solved when I found a booklet in the Batenburg local archives entitled “Batenburg. Second World War, 1940–1944. Lest We Forget.” Among its narratives was the account of a Jewish couple, Dr. Isidore Spangenthal and his wife, Dr. Marianne Spangenthal-Pinkhof, who hid in the schoolroom of the Old St. Victor Church from July 1943 until October 1944.

Because the schoolroom had wooden floors, it stayed warmer than the unheated sanctuary. At night, the Spangenthals retrieved pillows from the church sanctuary to the schoolroom, and each morning, they returned them to their exact places. On Sundays, they hid in the attic. The booklet even includes a photograph of the Spangenthals emerging from the church after liberation, smiling with unmistakable relief.

Included in the picture is little Jan, the youngest son of the koster (church custodian) van de Bovenkamp, along with his mother. I wondered whether it was the same Jan I had played with in Batenburg during our time there. I found a “Jan van de Bovenkamp” on the church website and emailed him. He agreed that he was probably the little boy I remembered. In a subsequent phone call, I learned much more about wartime Batenburg, Jan’s family and the Spangenthals. For as long as the Spangenthals were hiding in the church, Jan’s mother brought food daily.

Jan’s mother must have been an amazing person. Caring for the couple hidden in their attic must have been overwhelming and frightening, especially as her husband was confined to bed with tuberculosis. Food was in short supply even without extra guests; the required food stamps were only issued to registered individuals. She must have received assistance from the organized resistance to obtain necessary food and ration coupons. She also had to do their laundry and attend to their other needs, while managing her husband’s church responsibilities and looking after her own family.

Although the photo shows joyful faces, Isidore and Marianne Spangenthal endured great sorrow because of the Holocaust. When they arrived in Batenburg in 1943, they had four children: three daughters and a son – ages 4 to 11 – hidden in different parts of the country. Sadly, one of their daughters was caught and lost her life in Auschwitz, as did most of their other relatives and friends.

Another life saved

In his turn, Jan credits Dr. Spangenthal with saving his life. The year 1944 was a terrible year for diphtheria in all of the Netherlands, likely due to war-related poor nutrition, sanitation issues and overcrowding. As my mother’s letter mentioned, in Batenburg the diphtheria epidemic caused many planned events to be cancelled. Our family returned to Nijmegen soon after this letter was written, without any of us contracting diphtheria. My young friend, Jan, however, caught a severe case of the disease.

At that time, five to 10 percent of children who contracted diphtheria died. Today, diphtheria can be prevented by a vaccine or cured with antibiotics, neither of which were generally available to little Jan. Still, Jan recalls receiving an injection from Dr. Spangenthal which cured his disease. Somehow, Dr. Spangenthal had obtained an effective medication, likely penicillin, which was restricted to military use. It must have been gratifying for Dr. Spangenthal to be able to save Jan’s life, like Jan’s parents had saved his and his wife’s lives.

Caring for refugees

In the January 2, 1945, edition of the newspaper De Gelderlander, I found the following advertisement:

“Expression of gratitude. On his departure from Batenburg, I feel compelled to express my heartfelt thanks to Dr. I. Spangenthal for all that he has done completely selflessly for the benefit of refugees and residents of this municipality. Batenburg, December, 1944, Mayor Zweers.”

A severe diphtheria outbreak had occurred in the fall of 1944, and Dr. Spangenthal evidently worked tirelessly to treat the sick. It appears that, through his military contacts (he became a medical captain in the army soon after liberation), he may have secured enough penicillin to cure all those severely ill – an act that would have earned him the town’s lasting gratitude. The hundreds of refugees in Batenburg likely faced many other health problems: injuries from explosives, malnutrition, heightened vulnerability to disease, and the psychological strain of war. A dedicated doctor would have had a significant workload in this environment. His wife was also a physician, and although less is known about her, I suspect she worked just as tirelessly.

Years after the war, in 1986, the van de Bovenkamp family were honoured as “the righteous among the nations” at Yad Vashem for having risked their lives to save Jewish people. Their names are memorialized in the “Garden of the Righteous among the Nations” on the Mount of Remembrance near Jerusalem.

Emigration

In 1948, the Spangenthal family emigrated to Israel. After his death in 1967, a Dutch medical journal published a eulogy celebrating Dr. Spangenthal’s achievements. It noted that, among his many other achievements, he trained doctors to be family physicians in areas with few specialists. The eulogy described him as a friendly and kind person and concluded with: “God’s word was a lamp to his feet and a light to his path, and it was his deep Jewish piety from which all his beautiful human qualities sprang.”