The CV of Chris Sengers

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The Start of working life.


During the war years of the 1940's I went to the HBS at the Bergsingel in Rotterdam. This was quite a walk from were we lived. On walking to school (no other transport and/or money available) I most often walked through a street were there was a bakery. As I liked the smell of what they were baking there I often stopped there and tried to have a look in. During this period I got to know all the people at the Rijssemus bakery and sometimes I could help for an half hour or so with the dirty jobs.

As I was a school student whose parents were of limited means, I could never take part of any of the activities that the other students of my class enjoyed, they were mainly children of parents with substantial means and most of them were living in and around Hillegersberg.

Maybe because of all the previous it was that on the 1st of February 1943, at the ripe old age of just over 14 years, I took up a position of apprentice cook-pastry cook with the firm of Rijssemus. I was employed there until August 1945 at which date I left to work for Maison Beukers.

However during the war (WWII), my years with Rijssemus was underbroken by what you could call, a stint of forced labour in Germany. Here I escaped out of a well guarded work camp and almost found my way back to Holland. Because of the chaos at the final stages of the war things went terribly wrong and I was imprisoned and put in a camp far worse than I had escaped from. By the end of the war, from the group of about 150 men so I was told, only 25 survived. But that is a story I still have not been able to tell much about to any one and maybe one day I will find the courage to relive all those months again and put that story to paper.



You will find more of my work history on the following pages




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