A profoundly moving and beautifully written memoir by Edith Velmans, a Dutch woman who as a fifteen year old went into hiding with friends of friends during the German occupation of Holland in the 1940s. A bright light of hope shines through the growing darkness of persecution as her happy family life changes forever. A poignant memoir with excerpts from her diary and from family letters that makes you feel each loss and yet also never gives in to despair. A book I would reread, and which deserves to be read alongside Anne Frank’s more famous account.

A powerful memoir of living through the Holocaust, told through the diaries, letters and recollections of Jewish teenager Edith Van Hessen, who is hidden from the Nazis by a Gentile family during war-occupied Holland, under the false name of Nettie. The book follows Edith from being a confident and somewhat self-absorbed teenager, living a happy and privileged life, to having to facing the horror of being wrenched from her loving family for her own protection, as the Nazis increasingly rounded up and persecuted the Jewish population.

A harrowing and courageous account of one of the darkest periods in history, Edith’s account of her life through these terrible years also offers the reader some hope, as her strength of spirit, resilience, and determination shine through.

Books such as this are never easy reads, but they are important, and I did enjoy following Edith’s story. A 5 star read for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Little Brown Book Group UK for the ARC.

#EdithsStory #NetGalley

Lest we forget…..4

It seems more than ever crucial in these dark days, watching the rise of the far right, and particularly its escalation and normalisation post the re-election of Trump, to remind ourselves of the potential slippery slope which history can reveal, showing how easily our worst selves can be duped, mobilised and encouraged.

We might think that WE would not be the ones to allow freedoms to be eroded, to turn a blind eye or deny that our worst selves could stand by and watch evil be done, or even to participate in it ourselves.

So, I think these kind of accounts as Velmans gives here, is, for readers, a kind of continuing ‘bearing witness’

Velmans who died in 2023, aged 97, was known as the ‘Anne Frank who lived’ Like Frank, she was a young Jewish girl when Germany invaded Holland. That she survived, when the rest of her family – bar her oldest brother, Guus, who had gone to America before the invasion – didn’t was due to a Dutch Christian family who arranged to hide the young girl, with a fake identity, passing her off as their own daughter’s best friend who had come to stay because her parents were in hospital.

Young Edith kept hidden diaries, and hidden letters from her parents who pretended not to be her parents, but family friends of the couple who took her in. Edith seemed to be extraordinarily in denial, for a long long time, that things could get as bad as they did, believing that ‘it couldn’t happen here’ She seemed to have an almost pathological ability to maintain optimism, in the face of the most despairing evidence of the direness of the time, and the brutality of some.

I always find it hard to summarise a survival story; the book is un-put-downable, I can't call it enjoyable but it's a compulsive read. Edith's story is one of complete normality, until it wasn't. As a young girl, in her liberal Jewish Family, she lived a sheltered life - full of fun, frivolity and boys! But slowly, her world began to change until eventually, 'Edith' went into hiding and she lived as Nettie, to survive the remainder of the war.

Told through the authors diary entries and then through letters written by her loved ones interspersed with her thoughts, this is a heartbreaking tale and an important one. It's shocking really, how slowly the world changed initially and this is the first story of its kind that I have read. I've read other holocaust survivors accounts and Anne Frank's diary but this is the first instance of someone hiding 'in plain sight'. It's crippling; you feel her loneliness and experiences first hand. There's a quote in particular from Edith's Father about poison that really resonates.

We must remember history, so that it isn't repeated.

'One can live without pleasure, but one can not live without hope.'

This is the story of Edith Van Hessen, a Jewish girl from The Hague, sent to live in hiding in Breda during the Second World War.

Filled with joy, sorrow, and strength that knows no bounds, this book was a thought-provoking and heart-breaking read.
We get to know Edith before the war in the Netherlands begins through diary entries, which show us a popular and rambunctious girl with her whole life ahead of her. But soon, this changes, and through letters sent to and from family members, we learn of the hardships faced by both Edith and immediate members of her family.

Re-publishing on 27th February 2025 by Little, Brown books, UK.

Thank you to the publisher for allowing me to receive a copy of this book via Netgalley.