In a Nazi prison camp in Poland, a small group of Dutch officers held secret meetings to learn more about Jesus Christ. Their teacher was Pieter Vlam, a 48-year-old officer in the Royal Dutch Navy and the only Mormon in Stalag 371.
Vlam had joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with his mother and brothers when he was 16. He signed up with the Royal Dutch Navy a year later and married another member of the church, Hanna, in 1929.
In 1933, Hanna joined her husband for his tour of duty at a military installation at Surabaya on the island of Java in Indonesia. She brought her newborn son, Heber, and her 3-year-old girl, Grace.
Grace, who now lives in Salt Lake City, remembers those years from 1933 to 1938 as golden.
"We liked our stay in Indonesia so much," she said. "I recall these as the best years."
But her father kept the truth from his children.
Vlam's superior officer hated Mormons and worked to destroy Vlam and his career. The persecution made it impossible for Vlam to extend his tour of duty in Indonesia. Reluctantly, the family left for home — taking a route with an unusual stop.
"As soon as it was possible in his career, we would move to America and live among the Saints in Salt Lake," Grace said. "That was the plan from the start."
They even gave their children American-sounding first names: Grace, Heber (after President Heber J. Grant), Vera (who was born in Indonesia) and Alvin (who was born in 1939 in the Netherlands). It wasn't possible to move to Salt Lake City at the time, but it was possible to stop there and accomplish an even greater goal.
On June 9, 1938, the Vlam family knelt together around an altar in the Salt Lake Temple and were sealed together. They returned to the Netherlands as an eternal family. Nothing could separate them now.
In 1939, the Nazi threat led the LDS Church to recall all missionaries from Europe. Elder Joseph Fielding Smith called three local leaders to head the Dutch mission: Jacob Schipaanboord as acting president, Arie D. Jongkees as first counselor and Vlam as second counselor. Jongkees was introduced to the church through Vlam.
When the Nazis invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, Vlam had to find a new job and moved the family to Voorburg near The Hague. Most of their new neighbors were also military, but were not happy that a Mormon had moved next door.
An accident changed that.
At age 4, little Vera was hit and killed by a train. The tragedy brought the neighborhood together and opened people's hearts to the Vlams. The temple blessings the family had received in Salt Lake City also comforted them.
Grace remembers being in sixth grade in May 1942 and hearing someone say, "They have taken our military prisoners."
Grace ran home. The front door was locked. She rang the bell. Her mother opened the door. "Is it true?" Grace asked.
Her mother didn't answer. She didn't need to. Grace could tell it was true from looking at her face. Her mother couldn't speak. She just turned around and walked back into the home.
Grace stood there, an 11-year-old girl alone in the entryway of her home. The Nazis had taken her father away.
She tried to take it all in. Then, she said, the Spirit of the Lord spoke to her audibly: "You will see your father again."
Even though 66 years have passed, Grace can still weep when telling about her father's capture and how the Lord blessed the family to know they would be reunited.
"And that, of course, gave us a great deal of consolation," Grace said.
It would be six weeks before they heard from their father.
Vlam was taken with other Dutch military officers to Nuremberg-Langwasser, a prison camp adjacent to the location of the infamous 1939 Nuremberg rally. He wrote a note home and asked for the scriptures — including the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants. "God will bring us together again," he told them. "We trust in him. Live the gospel with the children. … Be courageous and continue a normal life."
But life wasn't normal. Nazis would take revenge on civilians for stolen food coupons and other offenses by randomly shooting people. "I spent many hours praying that I wouldn't even witness that sort of thing," Grace said.
After three months, Vlam was transferred to Stanislau, Poland (now called Ivano Frankivsk, Ukraine). The camp, Stalag 371, was in a large 18th-century monastery surrounded by barbed-wire fences. Many of the prisoners knew Vlam.
"All his life (my father) lived up to the standards of the gospel," Grace said. "And every colleague knew that Vlam didn't smoke, and he didn't drink, and he had no wine at state dinners and so forth and he lived an exemplary life … and was faithful to his wife."
Vlam discovered that many of his fellow officers were asking themselves serious questions about life, wondering why God would abandon them.
"And they went to talk with my dad," Grace said.
The number of people who came to him was so great that he had to organize walking tours around the camp. He would take two men at a time and walk in the cool air along the barbed-wire fence and teach them the gospel of Jesus Christ. Grace estimates that close to 1,000 people heard about the LDS Church this way, and several believed Vlam's words.
Those who believed wanted to meet together even though gatherings were prohibited. They chose an isolated room in the sprawling old monastery/prison. One by one, they would arrive for their underground Sunday school.
The first to come swept the room. The second covered the window with a cloth. When all had arrived, about 12 people, they would start by quietly reading, not singing, a hymn. They discussed a scripture passage. Then they read and pondered the sacrament prayers without performing the ordinance.
Letters were allowed between the prisoners and their families but were censored by the Germans. It wasn't uncommon for Vlam's family to receive a letter full of holes where the offending words and sentences had been literally cut out. Censorship was so heavy that Grace considers it a miracle that her father was allowed to receive copies of the scriptures.
Vlam's last employer continued to pay his salary to the family even though he had been taken prisoner. But food was scarce and the family had to take trains into the country, where prices were cheaper. On one crowded train ride, a man suddenly ran into the car and jumped under Hanna Vlam's seat. The Nazis were after him. Grace was terrified as the Nazis asked if anyone had seen the man.
"If he had been found under (my mother's) bench we would have been shot right there on the spot," Grace said.
But nobody spoke.
In Stalag 371, Vlam's activities had come to the attention of a Dutch Reformed Church volunteer chaplain. He met with each person in Vlam's circle of followers. He warned them to stay away from Vlam; that although Vlam meant well, he was misguided and deceived by his church. The chaplain gave them anti-Mormon materials.
Some stopped walking with Vlam, but the core group compared the materials with what they knew and with the scriptures. The chaplain's actions had the unintended effect of strengthening their testimonies. Eventually, their meetings were held openly — either having been approved or at least tolerated. They fasted monthly and gave their food to weak or ill prisoners who did not belong to their group.
Vlam warned his group that they had not yet been tested. Accepting the truth in a prison camp far from family and acquaintances was not the same as being faithful in normal circumstances. There would come a time when they had to make a choice.
In January 1944, Stalag 371 was evacuated and the prisoners moved to a camp in Neubrandenburg, north of Berlin. The end of the war was near.
The last winter of the war in the Netherlands was hard on Vlam's family. The Germans had taken everything.
"There was nothing," Grace said. "There was no wood, there was no fire, there was no electricity. There was water only a couple hours a day. There was light only a few hours a day. You had to find your own fuel."
On April 28, 1945, only a few guards remained at the camp as the Russians advanced on Berlin. One Russian tank lumbered by. A few Russian prisoners shouted to the tank. The tank then turned and ran down the fence. They were free.
It was on June 5, 1945, a Sunday, when a large military truck pulled up in front of the Vlam home. Neighbors rang the doorbell, but Hanna and Grace waited inside. They stood near the door where Grace, now 14, had heard the spirit tell her she would see her father again. Now he was walking in that very door.
"There was a big, big reunion with hugging and kissing," she said.
A farmer had given Vlam 50 eggs and a pound of butter to take to his family. Grace said it was the first time they had seen eggs and butter in two years.
Vlam's "mission" had been successful. Many of those he had taught joined the church with their families: Jan Schuitema and his wife, Ingrid; Jan den Butter, his wife, Johanne, and son, Peter; Humphrey Poolman, his wife, Lonkie, their children, Poolman's sister-in-law Addy and his aunt; Rob Kirschbaum and his wife, Hens; Kurt Kirschbaum; Ger Olie; and J. Paul Jongkees, his wife, Gwen, and their children.
J. Paul Jongkees was the son of Vlam's earlier convert and acting mission president, Arie Jongkees. J. Paul Jongkees eventually became the president of the first Dutch stake and president of the London Temple.
There were others in Vlam's group, but because of family pressure or other reasons, never joined the LDS Church.
Grace believes that had her family remained in Indonesia, they would have been captured and died in the Japanese prison camps. They also would not have been sealed as a family in the temple.
Vlam and his family came to the United States in 1949 and lived in Salt Lake City. Grace is the last living child of Pieter and Hanna Vlam. Most of his converts have also died, but their legacy of faith continues.
When Vlam was still in prison, his group wrote a hymn in his honor titled "Faith":
O Faith, thou cause of all beginning
Creation's moving breath
To lose all else while thy power winning
Redeems us from eternal death
Grace remembers that whenever the subject of the war was mentioned to her father's converts, they would exclaim, "Blessed prisoner of war camp time!"
For it was there, walking captive along the barbed-wire fences and guard towers of Stalag 371, that they learned the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the truth set them free.
E-mail: mdegroote@desnews.com
'Faith'
Hymn written by a group of worshippers at a Nazi prison camp Stalag 371:
O Faith, thou cause of all beginning
Creation's moving breath
To lose all else while thy power winning
Redeems us from eternal death