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Sixty years ago, between October 1944 and May 1945, parts of the Netherlands were suffering a severe famine, which became known as the Dutch Hunger Winter.
The food and fuel shortage was the result of a blockade imposed by the Nazi occupiers, who were fighting a losing battle against the Allied Forces. As most foodstuffs had already been rationed since early in the war, the situation quickly became desperate.
In that final war year, 22,000 people succumbed to famine and cold. The War and Resistance Museum in Rotterdam is publishing a book with wartime recipes and people's accounts of what they had to eat to survive, from animal blood to tulip bulbs.
Dien van der Burgh (1928) was lucky. She and her family were living in Lisse during the hunger winter, close to the now famous tulip fields in the hunger-stricken province of South-Holland.
"We worked out later," she says, "that our family had eaten a good-size field of the little red tulips," adding that they really liked the bulbs. Ms Van der Burgh is one of the contributors to the book with wartime recipes the War and Resistance Museum in Rotterdam is intent on publishing.
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Never quite enough
Tulip bulbs were nutritious and easy to prepare, says Ms van der Burgh:
"You had to peel them first, and then you sliced them like onions. The centre had to be taken out, because that was poisonous. When cooked, it was sort of a glassy substance you could mash and bake like a bread or mix through the food you got from the communal kitchen."
People were handed coupons with which they could get food from the soup kitchen, but that was never quite enough, says Dien van der Burgh, "If there were six in your family, you got six big spoons of soup or stew or something, and if you added the mashed bulbs it was a little bit more."
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Ms van der Burgh goes on by explaining how raw ingredients were prepared on an improvised cooker:
"We had a small stove we called our high hat, because it was just like one of these old fashioned black top hats. It had a tiny little door and you had to cut the wood in exactly the right size. On that high hat you did everything, you had warm water for washing, and also the warmth in the room had to come from it. You sat round it, especially in wintertime. It was essential."Being creative
Ms van der Burgh recalls how her mother would cook anything remotely edible, from tame chestnuts and beechnuts to beans, peas and the versatile sugar beet. People learned how to be creative, though salt was greatly missed in '44-'45. "That was very hard. Without salt, things taste bland, gooey."
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When it wasn't safe to go to school any longer, young Dien spent the whole day helping her mother by collecting food.
"I went to the communal kitchen and would stand in queues to get food. And I collected wood and water as well. There was no more water in the tap. One time I had queued up for 2.5 hours in the cold and when it was my turn the meat was finished. And then I know I cried. Well, there was just no more meat. You could be cross but that didn't help."
The smell of poverty
What Dien remembers most of the last war year is the smell of poverty in every house.
"You couldn't wash what you wanted and your clothes looked greyish."
She also recalls the family becoming very close.
"You couldn't go out at night so you stayed home. The rooms were blackened out, no light shone out. Then you sat around the table, you sang and you told stories. We exchanged many recipes from everything we were going to cook after the war. Beautiful puddings and apple cakes. That was a favourite pastime during the war."
Tags: The War and Resistance Museum Rotterdam hunger winter World War Two