Wow. This is awkward. I'm not dead! The past year has been insanely busy for me with finals/dissertations and life in general. So some things, like this, got a little lost along the way. I hate not finishing things, and so the whole time I vowed to finish this. And I will! And by some small measure of apology, please accept these two chapters...

As a side note: the text from the leaflet is virtually lifted from the leaflets the White Rose Movement printed. Their's is an incredible, inspirational and moving story. I'd thoroughly recommend "Sophie Scholl: die letzten Tage" to anyone who wants to know more about them.

Leiden, September 1940

"I'm afraid, if this is the case, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. This boarding house is for members of the university only." Mrs. Grotius had sniffed and looked around the room as if inspecting it. "I'll give you a week to find somewhere else to go. I understand with the current family situation this might be difficult, but regretfully there's not much I can do to help. Good luck finding a boarding house that will take a single woman. At present it's looking doubtful whether you get your deposit back or not. I'll inspect the room again before you leave."

Bitch. Katrien muttered under her breath. Bitch bitch bitch. After everything. She flung open the window to let some fresh air in and the blast of wind blew the newspaper clippings she had pinned to the wall.

Annemarie slouched helplessly in her desk chair. "I don't see why you can't just sign it, Katrien. It's just a piece of paper. Everyone else has." She looked preoccupied with the eraser shavings on her desk.

Katrien jerked round from her wardrobe. "It is not just a piece of paper Annemarie! I can't believe that that just came out of your mouth."

Annemarie glanced sideways at her. "It's only temporary."

She was met with silence from the other side of the room as Katrien grabbed another dress off the hanger and put it in a suitcase.

"Katrien?"

Silence again as Katrien put the last cardigan into her suitcase and shut the empty wardrobe.

"Are you angry at me?"

She started carefully pulling the pins out of the pictures she had above her bed.

"Will you at least speak to me?"

Katrien paused while pulling a pin out of a picture of Clark Gable. "OK, let's talk. What do you want to talk about? The fact that I'm getting kicked out of university for refusing to sign a pledge of allegiance to a fake government, who killed my father? The fact that my world has turned upside down in a matter of months? That this country has gone mad and no one seems to have noticed apart from me?" She could feel the tears pricking her eyes and she stopped and turned away before Annemarie would notice.

"Keep your voice down!" Annemarie hissed. "Do you know how much trouble you could get into for saying something like that?"

"I don't care."

"You should."

There was silence again as Katrien carefully placed the pictures in her satchel. She surveyed the room and remembered when Annemarie was the one who left and she had stayed.

She pulled on her coat. There was already a chill in the air despite it being September.

"Katrien, this isn't worth losing friends over." Annemarie stood imploringly from her desk.

"Really, Annemarie? Then what is. This seems pretty big to me."

"I don't what you want me to do."

Katrien slammed shut the lid of her suitcase and fastened it. "I just don't know how you can sit back and do nothing."

"Oh, do not give me your 'holier than thou' act Katrien. You always overreact. That's always been your problem..."

"MY problem? Oh let's talk about some of your problems, you conceited..."

"...Only temporary and who knows? Maybe the occupation will be OK. I don't know why you have it in your head it's going to be horrendous."

"...Spineless, completely spineless."

"And who even cares about your father anyway? He didn't even try to come and get you or get you home."

Katrien stopped as if you she had been slapped. Annemarie looked defiant. She walked over to the door and took a deep breath.

"Fuck you." She said with venom. "Fuck you and everyone else like you." And she left without a backwards glance.


Annemarie hadn't come back to Leiden in May. No one had, by the time the university hadn't reopened when it was supposed to be the summer vacation. "Staying here with the family until the new academic year, I think. I heard about your father from Lucia. I'm so sorry Katrien, I really am." Annemarie wrote to her in June. "I wish I could be with you right now but I think I'm safer here with everyone else until this whole thing dies down or gets resolved. Let me know where you are. All my love."

She'd refused to cry at her father's funeral. As she'd watched her father's coffin being lowered into the ground, as she clutched the hands of well wishers, as she sat alone in the house after they'd all left she boxed up any kind of emotion or grief she could have felt and locked them away deep in her chest, taking them out only late at night when she was alone and her tears could drench the pillow.

A few days after she left to go to Rotterdam she had returned, grimy with sweat and tears, back off the train to Leiden. And there, amongst the shiny black of the Germans and the dull brown of civilians trying to get to somewhere, anywhere else but here, there was Pieter. She hadn't told him when she was coming back, and realised he must have spent every day at the train station, scanning every train for her. They'd walked in silence for a while before he stopped her by the fountain in the square, looking to all the world like any other couple reunited after an agonising separation.

"I don't want the others to know we're together." He had said, holding her hand in his. "I don't want to give them any excuse to question our loyalty. If they knew about us they'd assume you were my first priority and that you come above the work of the group. This work has to come first. You know that, all those days I didn't tell you what I was up to."

She had nodded.

"Joost, obviously knows about us, he's a good friend and has seen us together a lot but the others will not know you at all. I hardly knew them when I started with Joost. I've spoken to him and he agrees, and he's promised not to say anything."

"I understand." And she had, she really had. Although it was difficult to pretend not to be together. Pieter had introduced her to Magdalena and Paul in a bored manner as the friend of a friend who was determined to fight the Nazis after she had lost her father and in doing so had erased the entire year they had been together.

And through the summer that was that. She stayed at Mrs. Grotius's with a couple of other students and studied. For what, she didn't know. Pieter stayed too, not making the long journey back to the Dutch East Indies where his parents now lived. And in the evenings, they resisted.


"What's the difference between a German and this table?" Joost de Vries lent back in his chair and knocked the large oak table with his fist.

Paul de Groot looked up from the envelope he was addressing. "Is this completely necessary?"

"Come on, guess. I bet you won't get it." He looked really please with himself.

"And I bet we won't get this done if you keep behaving like this all night." Paul shot him another look.

"All work and no play makes Paul a very dull boy." Magdalena van Rijn said licking closed an envelope, not looking at either of them.

Over by the stove where the kettle had just boiled, Katrien smirked slightly. She heard the door to the dingy basement swing open and shut again and Pieter greet the group sitting at the table. She heard him cross the room and stand beside her. His hair was sticking up slightly and he shivered slightly in the chill, damp basement.

"Hello." He said.

"Hello." She said casting a small smile at him.

"Here." He handed her a cloth which she wrapped around the handle of the kettle and picked it up. Pieter cast a look over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching and then kissed her hurriedly, misjudging the distance so it landed somewhere between her mouth and cheek. She smiled at him as he grinned back before she brushed past him with the kettle towards the table where Joost was still baiting Paul.

"The table has a mind of its own." She told him as she poured the hot water into his mug. Joost's mouth fell open.

"How did you know that? Not fair, I only hear it today."

She shrugged. "Well, I heard it yesterday. Sorry."

"You're really going to encourage his amateur comedic aspirations?" Paul asked angrily.

"No harm done." Magdalena held up her mug, gratefully accepting the hot water in her tea. "Very nicely done Ms. Maartens." She pushed her gold rimmed glasses up her button nose. "But, now we're finally all here. What's been happening?"

"I've been kicked out of lodgings because I refused to 'pledge allegiance to the German military administration in Holland, which was a requirement if I wished to continue my studies at the university.'" Katrien spoke in an exaggerated German voice, aping the posters and leaflets they had received since term restarted.

"Where are you staying now?" Magdalena looked concerned.

"Oh, I've found a place on the other side of town. Everything's OK." She looked at Pieter who glanced away and she felt herself blush. "And," she continued speaking so people wouldn't notice the blush creeping up her cheeks. "I think I have a job as well. Working behind the bar at Henk's. He's always had a soft spot for me. He seems to be getting a lot of Germans in now, which could prove useful."

"Obviously we've had to move out as well." Joost gulped from his mug, wincing as the hot tea burned his throat. "The whole lodging house has been taken over by Germans for billets. Pieter and I have split up though. Thought it was safer that way." Katrien flushed again as she fingered the curtain ring she wore as a fake wedding ring in her dress pocket. For the past few months her and Pieter had been living together in a tiny flat on the far edge of town as husband and wife.

"They're bastards the lot of them."

"Joost, I've spoken to you before about your language." She fingered the small gold cross which hung around her neck, the faith that had driven her to oppose the German occupation.

"Sorry. Very horrible people."

"Apology accepted." She took a small sip from her cup of tea and Katrien had to stifle a laugh at the incongruity of her sipping tea in a peach cardigan in a dingy basement while plotting the downfall of the Germans.

"The Nazis are continuing to confiscate all radios, but I think we can probably hide one down here behind the fireplace or something." Pieter said. Katrien thought of their own radio carefully hidden underneath a loose floorboard which they huddled behind to listen to broadcasts from London on Radio Oranje.

Paul licked an envelope. "Everything here is under control."

Magdalena nodded. "Good. Let's do it. Tomorrow morning because," She looked at her wristwatch. "It's time for mass and I can't face seeing the look on Father Vogel as I arrive late again. I'm this close to having to confess it." She stood up and grabbed her bag. "Goodnight!" And then she was out the door, heels knocking on the stone stairs.

Meanwhile Paul had placed the letters carefully in piles in his briefcase and was standing up. "I must go too. Can I walk you?" He asked Katrien. She felt Pieter shoot her a look from across the table.

"Oh, no thank you Paul." She smiled. "Maybe another time."

He shook hands with Joost and Pieter and then kissed her on both cheeks, his hand resting on her forearm as she felt him linger a little too long. Then he was gone too, leaving the three of them gathered around the table.

Joost lit a cigarette. "You two need to be a little more careful. Don't think I didn't see your little kiss over by the kettle."

Pieter's mouth fell open and Joost shook a finger at him. "Oh yes, Joost de Vries misses nothing." Katrien felt herself blushing. "Look, it was your idea to keep you two a secret, so I suggest you make more of an effort."

Joost was standing up now and picking up his sweater and bag. "I'll see you both tomorrow then?" He paused in the doorway and surveyed the room, winking at Pieter before he left.

Katrien leant back against the table and sighed as Pieter ran his hands through his hair. She smiled. "That's your fault."

He came closer to her and leant his forehead against hers. "Oh yeah? Maybe if someone wasn't quite as beautiful I wouldn't be drawn to do this every time I saw her." He kissed her slowly, still smiling.

"We can't." Katrien said but she didn't pull away, only put her arms around his neck.

"Why not?" He asked. She had many answers. It was disgusting here. Magdalena would have a fit if she caught them, more probably because of their amorous activities than their lies. Joost wouldn't be able to contain his laughter. And Paul. Paul. She thought them all, but none seemed to come out. He deepened the kiss and Katrien closed her eyes so that she was no longer in the dank basement in wartime, but somewhere else entirely. But the steady drip of a leaky pipe in the corner jerked her out of her reverie just as Pieter placed a hand on her thigh, pushing her blue dress up slightly. She pushed him away.

"Come on, let's get out of here and then maybe we can continue. But I wouldn't fancy my chances very much unless you get me something to eat first." She told him as she picked up her bag. Pieter smoothed down his hair and made an exaggerated gesture of annoyance.

"Katrien!" He whined childishly.

"Come on." She grabbed his hand and they headed up the stairs together and out the back door into the small alleyway. Despite it being the end of the day, it was still warm and Katrien turned her face up into the sun, enjoying the bright warmth of the end of the day without fear if only for a while.


"Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes - crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure - reach the light of day? Students of Leiden, the time to resist is now! Join with us in refusing to sign the pledge of allegiance the Nazi overlords impose upon us and preserve the integrity of our country for future generations."

The leaflets had appeared in a steady stream across the university campus. As Katrien hurried to Henk's on a chill autumn morning she had to suppress a smile when she passed students reading them or heard discussion of the very words she had chosen in hushed tones. She bowed her head as she passed the graffiti which bodly declared "FREEDOM" and "DOWN WITH HITLER" on buildings and hoped to God that she had managed to wash away all the flecks of paint from her hands. She thrust them in her coat pocket just in case.

She was not smiling so much when the Nazis' distributed similar leaflets denouncing them and calling for the arrest of those responsible.

She was not smiling at all when Joost told them he had been stopped and his apartment searched.

"It's pure luck that we'd moved all the paper and stamps over here. A day earlier and..." He tailed off and gazed into the middle distance. "And now my luck has been used up, I doubt I'll get a second chance." He muttered darkly. Magdalena crossed herself.

Katrien crossed the room and rubbed his arm. "The response has been amazing though. I saw so many people with the leaflets and looking at the graffiti – and talking about it! Isn't that the most important thing, that people talk about them, dissect the issues? We've sparked so much debate!"

"A spark which these have extinguished." Hissed Paul angrily, thrusting a pile of the Nazis' leaflets into her face. "So what have we done? Written some letters, printed leaflets, painted graffiti. Good for us." He stopped and rubbed his eyes wearily. "The time has come for something more real. Something more concrete than 'debate'." He said mocking Katrien.

"And what are you suggesting?" Asked Magdalena.

Paul glanced quickly at Joost who looked away just as quickly. "Sabotage."

"No." Katrien said immediately, her mouth fixed in a firm line. "No. Two wrongs will never make a right. The Nazis can behave as abominably as they like, I will never stoop to that level. The right way is intelligent discussion..."

"Fuck the right way." Paul interrupted. "And fuck the Nazis and fuck you if you think that poetry and words will ever change anything."

"Don't you dare speak to her like that." Pieter practically yelled. "Don't you dare even think about saying something like that to her again, you hear me."

The two men stared each other down, the room completely silent.

Magdalena was the first to speak. "I agree with Katrien." She said softly "Meeting violence and hatred with violence and hatred just doesn't seem right to me."

"Have you opened your eyes lately, Magdalena?" Paul asked, his voice still raised. "Of course not, you're still too busy thinking prayer will save us. Prayer won't do a damn thing." Magdalena crossed herself again. "They've introduced forced labour along the coastline to build an Atlantic Wall; they've demolished entire villages, whole communities in order to do that. They're conscripting young men to go and work back in Germany. They're forcing Jews to register themselves with various authorities." Katrien looked at Pieter who avoided her gaze.

Joost spoke up. "It's maybe time to do something beyond listening to covert radio broadcasts and printing pamphlets."

Katrien stood her ground. "It's not right." Magdalena nodded in agreement.

"Pieter?" Paul asked as all eyes in the room swung towards him. He chewed a rough bit of skin at the end of his thumb and avoided eye contact with everyone.

"Pieter." Paul said again, an edge beginning to appear in his voice. Pieter looked up at Katrien, holding her glance as he opened his mouth to speak. She knew what his answer was long before he said it.