It was a lovely sunny almost dare-I-say warm winter’s day today. We even hit double figures in The Hague, it was 10 degrees. We took a really lovely family walk in the nearby Bieslandse Bos (the same area where we celebrated the Bieslandse Dagen Festival a few months ago).
What great photos!
I now wonder if this area was therefore the “BiesBos” that a lady, known in Sydney’s Dutch-Australian community in the late forties, early fifties, as “Tante Esje” (Esther) told me about when I interviewed her (in her apartment in Bondi Junction, in 1979) about her escape across the “BiesBos”, during the war.
Being Jewish she spoke of being so grateful for being hidden by a priest and others until she was rowed to safety, in the night, “through the ~ Je weet wel, de Biebos” .
I still have that tape on which she tells her story and then says that when they got to the area that had already been liberated she sang……… and she sings the “De gedachten zijn vrij. We kan ons beletten…” etc..
When the Dutch language radio programs first started via 2EA, for the Special Broadcasting Service(s), at first I just visited people and recorded their stories for the programs. This one about the “escape across the BiesBos” was extra memorable!!!
As you know, I left Gouda, with my parents when I was 12. Trips to relatives in The Hague and shopping for ‘good clothes’ in the ‘big department store’ in Rotterdam, and some holidays in the eastern parts, were my experiences away from Gouda.
Dutch Australian 
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