Ode to Tineke Wibaut-Guilonard | I admire you for your strength to keep going, to keep hoping

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Dear Tineke,

In recent years, I have been studying the texts you wrote about your experiences in World War II. You rolled into the resistance because you were involved with the students and teachers at your secondary school, the Amsterdam Lyceum. The school's motto, 'Potius deficere quam desperare' (translation: rather fall short than despair) or in your words. The memorial book you also contributed to contains the names of 83 students and four teachers who died in World War II. One of them, Ms Hook, was imprisoned with you for a long time, and in your text you yourself pay tribute to your camp mother.

Within the resistance group CS6, you helped where you could: forging baptismal certificates to give someone the right not to be immediately deported to Poland. You even went to Westerbork with some friends to bring one of your teachers a microscope. Eventually, you were betrayed and arrested. You drew on your friends who, like you, ended up in the prison on Amstelveenseweg and in concentration camps. Every year you celebrated Liberation Day on 14 April. That was also a group of women with a shared past, which made it a little more bearable.
I was most moved by a note I found in the Atria archive: an artfully cut note on which you wrote your Christmas wish in 1944... almost 80 years ago. That's why I designed this ode that way.

You wrote "Much here is grey and full of misery, but oh, the scenery. The village and the mountains. I think a lot about Clara Asscher-Pinkhof, where would she be. I wish she knew that her book ‘Voor een schuit met violen’ is of support to me here. We all see now how good it is, to be able to see the beautiful."
That note was never sent, but it was preserved and with it a snippet of individuality and humanity in the dismal environment of the concentration camp.

I admire you for your strength to keep going, to keep hoping. And I admire you for having the courage to write about your experiences and fears. Not so much for heroism, you yourself write that you can go on doing dangerous things for quite a long time if you put your fear away in the fridge, but rather your courage to do what you could: to resist inhumanity.

There is a bridge named after you, but of course you didn't risk your life for that. The situations you found yourself in were so serious and life-threatening (the Bunkerdrama in Camp Vught!) that you suffered for the rest of your life. Even in life after the war, you devoted yourself to themes that touched you: the NVSH and the right to abortion, the problems of children of 'wrong parents' and the legacy of Camp Vught. You married your Lyceum and resistance fellow Frank Wibaut after the war and in 1995 you chose to die together.

I am writing this ode for you because there are probably more people who have already walked across 'your' bridge than there are readers of your book. In these times, the example of courageous people is needed and it is important to keep listening to the stories about courageous people. The stories that highlight the essence of being human, including its complexities.

Thank you!

Adriënne Baars

Meer information:
- Tineke Wibaut-Guilonard, Zo ben je daar; kampervaringen. Amsterdam: Ploegsma, 1983
- G. Boersma, P.A.W. van Cleef-Joachimsthal en V.E. Wibaut-Guilonard (samenst.), Het Amsterdams Lyceum. Herinneringen aan de bezettingsjaren. Amsterdam: Het Amsterdams Lyceum en de Oud Leerlingenorganisatie OLO, 1995
- Marie-Cécile van Hintum, Guilonard, Valentine Elisabeth, in: Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland, https://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/vrouwenlexicon/lemmata/data/Guilonard
- Portret van verzetsheldin Tineke Wibaut-Guilonard, https://historiek.net/tineke-wibaut-guilonard-1922-1996-daadkracht-op-het-juiste-moment/73987/#google_vignette
- Archief van Valentine Wibaut-Guilonard, https://collectie.atria.nl/bibliotheek/item/440841-archief-valentine-elisabeth-wibaut-guilonard-1899-1994?offset=2
- Monument voor de slachtoffers van het Amsterdams Lyceum: https://www.4en5mei.nl/oorlogsmonumenten/zoeken/3471/amsterdam-monument-in-het-amsterdams-lyceum
- Tineke Guilonardbrug: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tineke_Guilonardbrug
- het pdf van mijn boek over o.a. Tineke Wibaut-Guilonard, Schrijven uit zelfbehoud is te vinden via deze link: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Adrienne-Baars en een gedrukte versie kan hier besteld worden: https://www.mijnbestseller.nl/shop/index.php/catalog/product/view/id/802237