Aug. 11 CSRC Meeting: Jack Prins Speaks on His Adventures in WWII and Graham Paull Wins a Paul Harris Award
Graham Paull receives his Paul Harris Award. L to R: CSRC President Walter Thornton, Past President Sheila Paull, Graham Paull and former Rotary Foundation Chair Barb Wilson.
Barb Wilson, as our former Rotary Foundation Chair, presented a Paul Harris award (earned last year) to Graham Paull for his dedicated service and our appreciation for all he has done to support our 2015-16 President Sheila Paull as well as his financial contributions to the club and to Rotary.
Speaker – Jack Prins
Blair Ferguson introduced our speaker, Jack Prins, who has written a book (with Pia Aitkens) about his life in the Netherlands during WWII. Jack’s father was a professional trumpet player in Germany and his mother a ballet dancer who also worked for a radio station in Holland. While living in a suburb of Rotterdam, his first memories of the war were seeing “mushrooms” – parachutists – falling from the sky. On landing, they walked into the city and his life changed forever.
Later, when the city was bombed out, he went in search of his parents, finding them in a bomb shelter. His father found work in a restaurant in Amsterdam, but the Germans then issued a decree that no Jew could perform in the entertainment business. Then one which said that Jews could not use public transportation. Soon, his father was arrested and placed in a concentration camp – he escaped on a doctor visit outside the camp. Meanwhile, Jack was kicked out of one school because he was a Jew, and he realized that friends were disappearing in alphabetical order based on their last names. He decided to run away, and lived secretly in a home with other Jewish children, but that was also very dangerous for them and the host family. His father had been arrested several more times, and was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. When he was liberated at the War’s end he weighed 68 pounds and had TB.
Jack was living in the south of Holland by 1944, and they had very little food – only brussel sprouts and beets, so he took part in a bold scheme where the children stole fresh bread from a local bakery truck while the Nazi drivers were in a restaurant having breakfast. Finally, very near the end of the war, he was sent to the North of the country where food was more available.
In all, quite a tale of adventure and suffering for a little boy caught up in a global conflict.