Customer Reviews

Flory: A Miraculous Story of Survival

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a gripping true life memoir of a young Dutch girl named Flory and her life in German occupied-Netherlands. I listened to the unabridged audio edition of this novel, and it was very compelling. I found Flory to be a remarkably resilient and likeable woman. Her observations were insightful and pertinent. The Dutch Christians who hid her and tended her and her family through the war were quite brave.

The only thing missing was more about the relationship between Flory and her husband. I admit I am curious how their relationship fared under such harsh circumstances, especially after such a quick marriage.. I understand why the author did not include details, but I admit, that I am curious a bit about their situation, especially since they both seemed so young and married under duress.

I would recommend this to persons who are interested in educating themselves about wartime events and life in occupied Europe.

Flory A. Van Beek has written this memoir of the time she spent hidden from the Nazis. It is inspiring to read of her survival during World War II. I also am amazed by all the help various people gave her even though they were risking their own lives by helping her. After reading the book I saw on the internet that there may or may not be a television mini-series based on the book. I do so hope someone will make sure this story is told as widely as possible. A TV mini-series would be one way to do it. There are others. I just would like to see it done and the sooner the better while the author is still alive. Brenda Foust.

Flory is a very powerful memoir of a young couple who survived persecution during Holland's occupation by the Nazis. Out of the over 140000 Dutch Jews who lived in the Netherlands at the start of World War II, only about 6000 survived, Flory being one of them.

Flory was only a teen-ager when the Nazis invaded Holland. She tried to escape on the infamous SS Simon Bolivar passenger ship with Felix,her boyfriend, whom she would marry later. Their ship was blown up by a mine, but miraculously both Flory and Felix survived. They recovered from their injuries in England, then returned to the Netherlands only to find that when the Nazi's control increased, they had to go into hiding. They were hidden by compassionate strangers who sacrificed their own safety to keep Flory and Felix alive.

Flory came to America after the war with a suitcase full of papers that she buried while in hiding during the war. These papers are now one of the largest collections from the Netherlands in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

This book was very meaningful to me, as I spent my childhood in the Netherlands, was there during the war and knew on a first hand basis the terror, hunger and experiences from my parents. I think that each story from the Holocaust during World War II is a tribute to family and the power of good in the face of so much evil and Flory's story is no exception. A must read if you love history and are interested in World War II

This is the harrowing odyssey of a Dutch Jewish family fleeing Holland as the Nazi descended upon them in 1940-41. Young, vibrant and with a zest for life, Flory and her boyfriend Felix, saw the handwriting on the wall, and together, they tried to make a "run for it." But fate continued to play cruel tricks on them, as the getaway ship (the S.S. Simon Bolivar) they escaped on, hit a Nazi mine and was blown to pieces before they could get out Scandinavian waters.

Flory and her boyfriend Felix were among the few survivors picked up by a British rescue craft. After nearly a year of hospitalization in England, they returned to Holland where Nazi terror against both the Dutch and the Jews was in full force. There they went into hiding and eventually joined the "resistance," as the process of the full Nazification of Holland got played out through daily Nazi terror: first of Jews and then of the Dutch more generally. What shocked them most was that Germany was such a cultured nation, with the finest universities; it produced famous writers, composers, painters... you name it. How could it be that people with doctorate degrees, people who generally are so intelligent had turned into murderers?

Hitler's approach to the Jews in Holland was clear, systematic and final: It was first to make their lives abnormal and arbitrary, by driving a wedge between normal Dutch gentiles and Dutch Jews. They did this through increasingly constricting rules that demeaned and choked-off Jewish freedom and social access, while at the same time making it a penalty for gentiles to assist them. Then it was to confiscate Jewish property and corral them into areas where they more easily could be shipped off to concentration camps further East. Then it was to send every Jew in Holland to those camps. After Flory and Felix joined the resistance, for a brief spell they were successful. That is until most of the group was rounded up in a raid. Somehow again they were spared.

To their credit, Hitler's attempt to drive a wedge between Jews and Gentiles did not work nearly as well in Holland as it had in other parts of Europe. Fiercely independent and stubborn, the Dutch repeatedly refused to bow to Nazi edicts and heavy-handed pressure against Jews. They willingly harbored Jews, and in many other not entirely symbolic ways, continued to express solidarity with Jews.

Flory was lucky in this respect as she and her family, for a time were, through the help of Dutch gentile friends, able to leap frog their way just a jump ahead of their Nazi pursuers. However, these stories never have a happy ending and such was the case here too. Most of her family members ended up "gassed" in German concentration camps never to be heard from again.

The good news however is that Flory was able to recover after the war a suitcase full of memorabilia which allowed her to "bear witness" to the Holland version of the holocaust tragedy, and in the process, she alone was able to maintain and restore a modicum of her family's history and pride. The documents she recovered can be seen on display at the Holocaust Museum here in Washington, D.C. Three stars

This was a good book to read. It was interesting and I couldn't put it down.

In 1939 as Nazi forces became a reality, the Jewish population through Europe faced options to flee and lose all or go into hiding. The author, a Holocaust survivor, faced this choice and her story follows her dark journey as she relates her teen years spent in terror when the Nazis invaded her neutral homeland of Holland. Any library strong in first-person Holocaust memoirs needs this.