Mr. Monday and other tales of Jewish Amsterdam

GENERAL EISENHOWER CALLED HIM 14 7

׳THE GREATEST LIVING EXPERT ON SECURITY׳

in my London club. We had lunch together there, and he asked me if I ever heard of anyone named Jan Gerrit Bronkema who was supposed to come from a village near Utrecht.

"No...the name doesn't ring a bell," I had to admit.

"Are you quite sure? Never heard of a Dutch quisling by that name?"

"Never. But listen, there are some people here in London who come from near Utrecht. Perhaps they know something about him."

"Oh, that's not the problem, the chap comes from that village all right. He isn't lying about that. But he arrived here two months ago and from the first moment I heard his name, I had this funny feeling about him."

"What do you mean?"

Oreste then told me what he knew about this Jan Gerrit Brinkema.

When Dutch people escaped from Nazi-occupied Holland and made their way to Great Britain, they were brought to an old school building in the country. There they were questioned by tough and skilled counter-espionage officers in order to determine whether they were courageous Dutch patriots, or spies, sent by the Germans. Jan Gerrit Bronkema had arrived in a small sailing boat, together with six other men. After all seven had been questioned, the intelligence officers reported that nothing suspicious had caught their attention. None of them looked happier than this Jan Gerrit, the interrogators reported. That Bronkema sang patriotic songs all day. After he had spent two months in the old school building (interrogations usually lasted as long as that) he was still singing the Dutch national anthem and other songs of that kind.