The Assault

Anton’s father is described as a “tall and thin” (22) balding man with dark coloring and features. Mr. Steenwijk is in the story very briefly, as he, along with Mrs. Steenwijk and Anton’s brother, Peter, are murdered very early in the narrative. Mr. Steenwijk is characterized as a scholarly, quiet, thoughtful, and gentle man. He instructs and teaches both of his sons with patience and wisdom. When shots ring out on the street, however, he freezes and withdraws to the point where his wife begs him to rouse and act. It seems as though once Ploeg has been dumped at their doorstep, Mr. Steenwijk knows that he and his family are inescapably doomed, so he resigns himself to their fate. Following his murder, his memory does not seem to exert an especially strong pull on Anton, as much of Anton’s articulated grief and memory concern Peter.

Anton’s mother’s most salient physical descriptor is her long blonde hair. Mrs. Steenwijk is a nurturing individual who is clearly trying to make the best out of her family’s desperate and starved situation, as they toil under Nazi occupation and its attendant poverty. During the assault of Ploeg and its ensuing aftermath, she takes on a much more active role than her husband. She strongly reacts to Peter’s actions, begging him to come back inside, and also begs her husband to join her in trying to handle, react to, or manage the situation. According to Mrs. Beumer, the Steenwijk’s neighbor whom Anton visits some ten years after the murder of his family, Mrs. Steenwijk’s last act was to lunge at a Nazi officer who had detained her. This resulted in her swift execution. In a similar manner to the one in which he remembers his father, Anton does not explicitly speak or think of his mother very often. As a character who is given very little time in the diegetic as an alive person, she is more of a figure that symbolizes Anton’s loss and his trauma.

Peter Steenwijk, who was seventeen at the time of his murder, is the most fleshed-out of all of Anton’s family members. In Chapters 1 and 2 of the First Episode, he shows himself as a restless, somewhat rambunctious, and sarcastic teenager bursting with energy. That energy is sharply tempered by the scarce and repressive conditions that he and his family have been forced to live in under Nazi Occupation. It seems as though some of his aggression is misdirected at his father, as their conversation bespeaks Peter’s sense of resentment and anger toward his father—although his father only addresses him with tolerance and quiet gentleness. When Ploeg is assaulted, Peter is the first one to spring into action. He ascertains what has happened, and once Ploeg is dumped in front of their family home, he is the only one to try to rectify the situation to ensure his own safety and that of his family. His impulsive decision to try to move Ploeg’s body and to take his gun, however, runs up against the swiftness of the Nazi response.

Anton later discovers that Peter ran into the Korteweg home and threatened them with the gun due to their choice to dump Ploeg’s body in front of the Steenwijk home. Anton later soberly reflects that these actions technically make Peter an “armed resistor” (74).Even this designation feels overly political and hollow, as Peter was not necessarily thinking about armed resistance and probably acted in a base desire to save his own life and that of his family members. According to Karin Korteweg, Peter was not even solidly in possession of himself as he raved and pointed the gun at herself and her father—he was simply reacting to the shock and fear that the assault initiated. Nazi soldiers execute him while inside of the Korteweg home, and his death is the one that reverberates most strongly in Anton’s life. Anton names his son after Peter and is figuratively haunted by his brother’s forever-young specter. When Anton learns that Mr. Korteweg killed himself, he feels that Peter’s death, in particular, has been avenged—rather than feeling that the deaths of his mother and father have also been avenged through Korteweg’s suicidal act.

Fake Ploeg Sr. is feared and dreaded Nazi Inspector who lives in Haarlem at the outset of the story, in 1945. His manner is brutal, domineering, and sneering. According to Cor Takes, a Resistance fighter whom Anton meets later in his life, Ploeg brutally tortured and murdered many people as a part of his duties as a Nazi Inspector. In 1945, he has a twelve-year-old son, also named Fake, a wife, and two daughters who are younger than his son. He is assassinated by Cor Takes and Truus Coster as he rides through the street on a bicycle on a winter’s night in 1945. When his body lands in front of the Korteweg home, the Kortewegs drag his body over to the Steenwijk’s doorstep. As a reprisal for Ploeg’s death, Nazi soldiers murder all of the members of the Steenwijk family except for Anton, who is saved essentially by an oversight—the Nazis forget that they have put him inside of the car while they are murdering his family. Although Anton had little to no direct contact with Ploeg, and had nothing to do with Ploeg’s assassination, Anton’s life is profoundly shaped by his murder.

Fake Ploeg Jr. is Fake Ploeg Sr.’s eldest child and only son. He is in the same class as Anton during the winter of 1945. Anton saves Fake Jr. from ostracism and humiliation when a teacher refuses to teach Fake or to even allow other children to enter the classroom when Fake arrives at school in a Nazi Youth uniform. Anton, acting out of compassion for Fake Jr., dives under his teacher’s arm, which had been blocking students from entering. This act diffuses the situation, and class begins as other students follow Anton’s example. Ironically, the murder of Fake’s father results in Anton’s entire family being killed. This string of occurrences serves Mulisch’s aim of depicting the nuanced complexity of humanity, war, and politics.

Anton encounters Fake Jr. about ten years after the murder of Ploeg Sr. During their exchange, Fake Jr. cannot admit any wrongdoing on the part of his Nazi father and places all of the blame for the murder of Anton’s family on the Resistance fighters who assassinated Ploeg Sr.—rationalizing that the Resistance fighters knew there would be reprisals exacted upon innocent parties. He also meets Anton again later because he is a part of an anti-Communist mob that has incidentally assembled outside of Anton’s home. At the time, he is working as a tradesman and shows open resentment for Anton’s higher social station. Overall, he is a character with tunnel vision—unable to see the barbarity of his own father due to his love for him. He is thus a strong foil for Anton, who quickly recognizes Fake’s limited and love-biased vision. On a deeper level, too, Fake’s short-sightedness foils Anton’s ability to carefully see and weigh all aspects of the assault and its aftermath.

Cor Takes was a member of the Underground Resistance in Haarlem during the winter of 1945. He and his lover, Truus Coster, murdered Fake Ploeg Sr. as Ploeg rode a bicycle down Anton’s street. Although Takes was married with children at the time, he was truly in love with Truus. When Truus is shot by Ploeg before Ploeg succumbs to his own gunshot wounds, Takes is forced to abandon her in order to evade capture. Anton and Takes meet, halfway by chance, at the funeral of another Resistance fighter in 1966. Prior to their meeting, Anton did not know who actually killed Ploeg. Through their conversation, too, Anton concludes that the woman he was incarcerated with that night was Truus—one of people responsible for the assassination of Ploeg.

Takes, who has been tortured by Nazis, is portrayed as a grizzled and “surly man” (68)—ruthless in his ways and thoughts. He believes that Fascism must be answered with Fascism—as Fascists only understand their own “language” (142)—of death, brutality, and totalitarianism. Takes openly boasts about his bloodthirst for both the Nazis themselves and any of their collaborators. Ironically, he seems to be an embodiment of what his lover stood against. Truus believed that Resistance fighters must take precautions to not become too much like their enemies, the Nazis, in their thinking and actions. She believed that if Resistance fighters gave in to brutality and Fascism in word and deed, then the Nazis could claim that as a victory for themselves. Takes’s resolute and absolute moral and political stances also foil Anton’s more subtle and nuanced approach.