Page 1 of The Righteous
After seven weeks on their European tour, Julia lost interest in Spencer.
The band members were an unsavory bunch, ill-mannered, and unsociable, not to mention their offensive hygiene.
In two of the cities, they didn’t even have a hotel room, and they stayed all night at a bar.
Add to that: Spencer was unfaithful. Julia left the tour in Amsterdam.
As the years passed, she was promoted up the ladder from receptionist/clerk to foreign service officer.
She worked directly with Consul General Frank Lee.
Being bright and personable, it was easy for Julia to blend into Amsterdam’s social scene.
With her blond hair pulled back, her big brown eyes that twinkled, and her captivating smile, it didn’t take long before Julia found herself involved again, this time with Willem, whose family owned a hotel in downtown Amsterdam.
The two of them took advantage of the joys that Amsterdam had to offer, and Willem even had a boat.
Life couldn’t have been more agreeable. She formed several close friendships at the consulate, including Melissa Mitchell and Theodore “Teddy” Hartigan, who worked in different roles: Melissa in secretarial and Teddy as administrative assistant to Consul General Lee.
The press releases from the US State Department were generally silent about Hitler and Germany.
His cruel measures to isolate and harm Jewish people barely made official reports.
As news of Nazi oppression became better known in Holland, mostly from reporters, it was hard for Julia to understand how it served US interests to bury the news back home.
Her communications with friends and family revealed how little they knew about the German persecution in Europe.
But Julia knew. She heard about it every day at the consulate. Immigration was her job.
Since Julia and Teddy were to be the last US consulate employees left in the Netherlands, and because they were knowledgeable about US politics, and because they were adept in operating the consulate’s radio communication equipment, Frank Lee offered them a dangerous job.
They could live in Amsterdam as undercover intelligence agents with the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services.
They would be given a safe house and a reasonably sufficient salary.
In that role, over the next eighteen months, Julia and Teddy supplied invaluable information to the OSS, and also to England’s MI6.
It was the most dangerous, stress-filled time of Julia’s life, but rewarding.
She and Teddy both became involved in trying to rescue the lives of Jewish families who otherwise would have been arrested and transported to death camps.
In 1943, the Nazis ordered the arrest and transport of every single Jew, not only in the Netherlands but in other occupied countries as well.
Julia and Teddy met and joined with some extraordinary individuals who had dedicated their lives to making a difference.
Julia was proud to have played a part in the rescue of hundreds, if not thousands, of Dutch Jews, including almost a thousand babies and toddlers rescued from the Amsterdam nursery known as “the crèche.”
By the summer of 1943, other than the ones who had managed to escape or find a hiding place, the entire Jewish population of the Netherlands had been arrested and deported to concentration camps.
Over one hundred thousand Dutch Jews. Hitler and Seyss-Inquart smugly declared that the Netherlands was now Judenfrei .
The SS then sharpened its claws and went on a hunt to find those who had assisted the Jews.
Julia spent her days and nights working for the OSS underground and trying to stay alive. By late fall, pictures of Julia and Teddy had been circulated and posted in police stations, SS offices, and other public places. It was only a matter of time.
Julia, along with Teddy, his wife, Sara, and their two adopted Jewish children were hiding in the home of Sara’s parents in a wooded area outside Utrecht when they learned of a miraculous escape opportunity.
With the SS closing in, they came into contact with a British undercover agent who had plans to pilot a rebuilt Fokker G.
1, painted to resemble a German Luftwaffe Messerschmitt, across the North Sea into England.
The hopes were that the Nazis would be fooled into believing the plane was one of their own and not shoot it down.
The disguise worked. Julia, Teddy, and his new family climbed into the Fokker and took off for England.
Julia witnessed several SS soldiers wave to them as they flew overhead.
The Fokker crossed the Holland coast and landed safely at an RAF airfield in Bradwell Bay, England.
From there, they were shuttled to London.
After several days assisting OSS and MI6, Undersecretary Sumner Welles arranged to fly them from London to Washington, DC, in a military aircraft.
Though Julia was physically and mentally exhausted, and though she wanted nothing more than to go home to her family in Detroit and collapse, she was forced to undergo three weeks of State Department debriefing in Washington.
Who were her contacts? How many Wehrmacht divisions were stationed in northern Holland?
What was the strength of the Nazi force on the Belgium border?
What were their North Sea defenses? What SS transmissions had she intercepted regarding troop movements?
It seemed odd to Julia that none of the State Department questions concerned the welfare of European citizens.
On her last night in Washington, she and Teddy were honored with a celebratory dinner, where they were each awarded a Distinguished Service Medal from Sumner Welles.
It was enclosed in a frame with a certificate that read, “In Defense of Liberty.” During the dinner, Undersecretary Welles took Julia and Teddy aside.
The war was far from over, he said, and they had no obligation to continue their service for OSS, but they did have invaluable experience and the US would always benefit from their service.
Welles understood Julia’s desire to go home to her family and her familiar surroundings, but should she decide to come back, there would always be a place for her in the State Department, and he would make sure it was on this side of the Atlantic.
Julia smiled warmly, took his hand, and said goodbye.
She was confident it was a final handshake. She was wrong.