Discover the story of the Smit-Andrews family in Hoek van Holland.
After the war, during a period of severe housing shortage, many residents of Hoek van Holland returned to a village that had largely disappeared. Some found shelter in abandoned bunkers. Among them was the Smit-Andrews family, with five children, who moved into a former bunker.
For Maja Smit, born in 1940, the dunes and the beach of Hoek van Holland formed her entire daily world. Every day she searched for firewood and coal washed ashore for the stove, or looked for coins in the sand. It was a life that was both free and, at the same time, lonely. Far away from her school friends, with only her older brother to play with. Together they explored the abandoned bunkers, jumped off concrete roofs, and played with leftover ammunition—against their parents’ warnings. An accident involving that ammunition, in which a friend was injured, left a deep impression and painfully revealed the dangers of their playground.
The bunker they lived in was maintained but primitive. During storms, the entrance was often filled with sand, literally cutting the family off from the outside world. In 1949, on the day Maja’s mother gave birth to her seventh child, such a storm struck again. That morning, her mother was still shoveling sand away from the doorway. When the doctor arrived, he had to squeeze through the entrance. The next day, everything had drifted shut again, and they could only exit through the escape tunnel.
Not long after, Maja’s mother sought publicity. She described how the family lived like moles underground, cut off from light and air. Her story gained attention, and shortly afterward the family was allocated a house and left the bunker. The contrast with other residents could hardly have been greater. Just behind them lived the Boel couple in a similar bunker. Where the Smit-Andrews family experienced the stay as suffocating and difficult, the Boel family actually felt at home there. They remained as long as possible, only leaving when they truly had no other choice.
Disclaimer & source attribution: These stories were provided by participating locations and volunteers of Bunkerdag and are based on personal memories of those involved. They are subjective and may differ from historical facts or be experienced differently by others. No rights can be derived from this content.