Edward Van Halen: A Definitive Biography Read Free

significant portion of her native island ancestry. A reasonable assessment would be likely something approaching one-third European descent.
    Back in Amsterdam, Jan van Halen was born in 1920 shortly after the end of World War I. Jan’s name certainly suited his ancestry without a colonial tint or guesswork; he was a northwest European. Jan was born with the musical gift and was described as a bit of rebel. As a young man, he mastered the saxophone and clarinet so well that he was gigging regularly by eighteen. It’s been said “he worked hard to have fun” playing in a retinue of jazz bands, swing bands, and orchestras across Europe. Jan no doubt enjoyed his pick of opportunities as a young man in the late 1930s, from radio events to a circus troupe, and even political rallies.
    He only had a few brief years to enjoy both his early gigging and his youth. When perpetual bad neighbor Germany invaded Poland in September of 1939, Jan, like any other Dutch male his age, joined the military. Jan’s talents came in handy though, landing him in the Dutch Air Force with the task of playing marches.
    In May 1940, the Nazis took over their neighbor’s homeland. Starting on May 10, the Germans battled their way all the way to Rotterdam which they bombed into submission in just five days. The majority of Dutch operations were left virtually untouched—they were simply German now.
    Hitler’s takeover of the Netherlands was less dramatic than Poland. The Nazis considered the Dutch to be essentially 100% Aryan. The Netherlands was simply to become part of Germany following the war. However, Dutch Jews and Jehovah’s Witnesses were rounded up and sent to the most notorious concentration camps of World War II. Author Linda M. Woolfe Ph.D. wrote:
 
As Nazi oppression slowly took shape, so did Dutch resistance. Hitler underestimated the Dutch people and the Nazis were unprepared to deal with the primarily non militaristic character of Dutch resistance. In many ways, there are some striking similarities between the Dutch resistance and the spiritual resistance on the part of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Much of Dutch resistance can be characterized as either passive resistance or non-violent active resistance. For example, immediately following the Nazi occupation, American and British films were banned from theaters replaced by German movies including German newsreels. Dutch patrons took to walking out or booing during the newsreels. Thus, new laws were passed prohibiting such behavior. Subsequently, attendance at films dropped. Radio broadcasts under Nazi control consisted principally of propaganda. Thus, while it was illegal to listen to British radio, many Dutch began to listen to the BBC and radio broadcasts from the Dutch government in exile. In 1943, over one million radio sets were confiscated by the Nazis in response to these acts of resistance.
 
    Author Ian Christie reported that Jan, a member of the Dutch Air Force, was captured by the Nazis during the five-day invasion. When the Germans realized Jan was a talented musician, he was forced to perform propaganda music. This is how Jan van Halen spent his early twenties: playing propaganda music during the Nazi occupation. A gifted musician, who could truly play, forced ostensibly at gunpoint to perform a mandated set of material with no room for individual expression. It was simply a strictly tailored form of hell for him.
    The Dutch government operated out of Britain during the period of German occupation, and eventually declared war on Japan, in solidarity with the United States, the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Just a few months later, the Dutch East Indies came under the occupation of the Japanese in March 1942. So went Dutch colonial rule of the islands. Japanese occupation through the end of the war in 1945 cannot be described in terms extreme enough to convey the horror and atrocities that occurred. One’s mind need only hear a few—sex slaves, forced labor,