The power of these first-hand and well-illustrated recollections about a
boyhood in occupied Holland lies in their extraordinary ordinariness. /
As the fourth child of a large Catholic family in The Hague, Jan was
spared the horrors of true persecution by the Nazis. Yet his detailed
memories of deprivation and dread vividly conjure up the harshness of
Dutch life under Hitler's cruel rule. / Young Jan was roughly Anne
Frank's age during the war. Published here for the first time, his
wartime memories preserve yet another child witness to adult injustice.
Touching and surprisingly witty, his stories demonstrate how danger and
domesticity go hand-in-hand during wartime. / Jan was fortunate to
survive the war. Born in 1931, he only died in 2019. / As a boy, he was
able to slip past the Nazi occupiers unnoticed and unharmed, often
running errands for adults who dare not show themselves, joining a
hidden resistance. This is how Jan comes into brief contact with some of
the war's heroes and villains. By chance, his after-school job as an
apprentice-baker placed him at the side of a prominent member of the
Resistance--while a random schoolyard spat with a bully brings him to
the headmaster's office to face the boy's Nazi father, the Dutch leader
of Germany's largest counter-intelligence programme. / For students of
this important moment in history, each nail-biting recollection
introduces features of the occupation with a disarming
matter-of-factness: food coupons, bombardments, people forced to go into
hiding, the constant search for food, the lack of electric light,
curfews, coats sewn from blankets, and secret radio programs.
