From Publishers Weekly
Since Velmans was a Jew hidden by a Dutch Christian family during the Holocaust, this memoir, which was first published in Europe and won the U.K.'s 1998 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Literary Award, has been compared with The Diary of Anne Frank. However, Velmans's powerful account stands on its own, piercingly conveying the disbelief and horror she experienced as the Nazis clamped down. Through excerpts from her teenage diary, the author shows how her life changed over a period of years as Jews were forced out of schools, then prohibited from visiting public parks and, finally, were thrown out of jobs, rounded up and arrested. In 1942, Velmans went to live under an assumed name with a Protestant family who deceived their neighbors by claiming that she was a relative. While her parents were hospitalized with serious illnesses, they wrote letters to her, reproduced here, that express their love, their belief in her courage and the heartbreaking realization that they might not survive. For her part, Velmans channeled her energy into working hard for the family that was shielding her, in order not to let the isolation and anxiety about her family's fate destroy her. Velmans's father died in the hospital, and her mother, grandmother and one brother were killed in concentration camps (the author was reunited with her surviving brother after the war). Velmans's candid portrayal of herself as a feisty, loving, sometimes self-absorbed teenager is thoroughly engaging, and her story throws a new light on the plight of Jews who survived the war hidden in plain sight. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour; rights sold in Germany, Spain, Italy and Japan. (Dec.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
This significant Holocaust memoir of a girl hiding in Holland will be compared to Anne Frank's diary, though it is very different. Yes, Edith went into hiding in the same city and same month as Anne Frank, and her mother even met Miep Gies, who hid the Franks. But while the Frank diary took decades to get recognized, this book (largely in diary format) was condensed by Reader's Digest, won a literary award in England, and will be published in four other languages. Anne was also a precocious preteen, but more famous for diary entries on her family's psychology and philosophical musings. Edith isn't analytical, but her description is superior. In the 1940 invasion of neutral and safe Holland, for example, anti-aircraft fire is ``heavy dark smoke clouds and little gray puffs, like bubbles,'' and German paratroopers arrive in ``hundreds of little black balloons.'' Because she was, at 14, an ordinary teenager, she talks about boys, skating, school, and clothes. A very secular person with a Jewish grandmother, Edith sees herself as Jewish when Nazi laws forbid her from attending school or riding her bike. She wears the ``ugly'' yellow star of David as a ``badge of honor'' that prompts the sympathetic Dutch to say, ``Keep your chin up.'' As the situation deteriorates, her ailing mother and grandmother are caught by the Germans, one older brother escapes to America, and her non-Jewish father wastes away. Once the coddled baby, Edith has to spend her late teens posing as a gentile with the zur Kleinmiedes familywho already had to board Nazi officers. She can only shout her real name to the wind, thinking about deprivations like their one-egg-a-month ration and waiting for liberation. In another major difference from Anne Frank, Edith survives to double her diary's content with adult comments. A valuable opportunity to see the situation just outside Anne's attic. --
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