Micro Reviews - connected books (10 & 11)

 

Changing the way we think about the Dutch experiences of World War Two

A few years ago I read and reviewed Bart van Es's book The Cut Out Girl which opened my eyes to another side of the Dutch experience in WW2, as I said then the prevailing feeling is that the Dutch had a good war, protected the Jews and stood up for the Nazis but this really isn't the case.

Nina Siegal's The Diary Keepers (William Collins) uses the extensive archives of WW2 Diaries held in Amsterdam to tell a rounded story of WW2 as people recorded at the time.

The book includes many voices but concentrates on diaries from a Nazi-sympathising Dutch policeman, an ardent  female Nazi party supporter, an ordinary factory worker, a Jewish woman working for the Jewish Council, a Jewish journalist held in Westerbork Concentration Camp for well over a year, and a Christian woman at the heart of a resistance ring who protected dozens of Jewish people.

With Siegal's commentary framing entries a much fuller picture of Holland between 1940 and 1945 this was eye opening, even for me who has read so much around the Holocaust. There's lots of balancing views given but the reader is left to draw their own conclusions overall - and who knows how any of us would actually act if we were in the same situation.

After finishing this book I was approved for a book on NetGalley called My Friend Anne Frank by Hannah Pick-Goslar (Ebury Publishing). Pick-Goslar was, like Anne Frank, a German Jewish girl who's family had moved to Amsterdam in the 1930s. She was good friends with Frank and lived next door to them- she is mentioned in several times in Anne's diary.

However this book is so much more than someone tagging on to Frank's fame. While Pick-Goslar did survive the war, and Belsen-Bergen, her account of her experiences is one of the most moving Holocaust accounts I've read and I think that it does the incredible story a disservice to market it in terms of being about Anne Frank.

It tied in so nicely with The Diary Keepers  as many of the people Pick-Goslar talks about in Amsterdam are also featured in depth is Siegal's book and both narratives help build a full picture of the choices people had to make and of how life was at the time.

Pick-Goslar's account of liberation from the camps and her physical recuperation was as gripping as her actual wartime life, and filled in more of the "what came next" narrative for me. I really hope that this book does become as important in the Holocaust memoir cannon as Anne Frank's Diary.