Customer Reviews

Lest We Forget

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When I was a young boy I read the Diary of Ann Frank and, much like other boys, did not really enjoy it. As an adult man I prefer technical reading material. So, I was not enthusiastic when the author, my mother-in-law Mandy Evans, asked me to read her book, and I did so only out of a sense of filial obligation. I was very much surprised by what I read. You will be, too.

In this her first book, Mandy has masterfully captured the sights, sounds, and emotions of her experiences as a 7-year old "enemy of the state" as she was shuffled from one hiding place to another in a seemingly endless swirl of intrigue and ever-present danger. Her story is told with simple narration and engaging dialog between the real people who risked their lives in a complex series of schemes to save Mandy and her family.

Moving from house to house, assuming a new identity with each "family," sometimes enjoying a lengthy stay in relative safety, at other times escaping Nazi pursuers by mere seconds, Mandys true story reveals the paradoxical depravity and heroism within human nature. A friendly neighborhood cop-on-the-beat who becomes a vicious anti-Semitic Nazi-sympathizer literally over night, a man who finds it easier to turn his Jewish wife into the Nazi occupiers rather than divorce her, a pretty young woman who takes her "daughter" to see her grandmother while concealing Dutch Resistance handguns in her travel bag, and the brazenly canny courage of a young Dutchman in the Resistance who saves countless lives only to lose his own life in a freak accident with an American truck shortly after Dutch liberation are all portrayed with affecting and remarkable detail. And in the midst of it all, Mandy finds safety, seclusion and a hero on a houseboat aptly named "The Swan".

In addition to the story of her own struggle to survive, Mandy tells the wider story of her family: a father whose pre-war fame as "Der Schwaze Teufel" (the Black Devil) on Germanys championship soccer team buys him one night of delay in which to save his family; a mother who reunites with her lice-ridden son by the innocent use of a kerchief; a brother whose courage and ingenuity engineer an escape from a train bound for Auschwitz that saves himself and his mother; and two sisters, one older and one younger, each of whom also must hide and deal with the realities of being hunted.

And, in the final unexpected twist to this remarkable tale, Mandys story ends in the Oval Office as she introduces an elderly Dutch woman to the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan.

I highly recommend this book, not because Mandy is my mother-in-law but because this story will leave you with the sure conviction that in the darkest of hours hope can inspire unyielding endurance, that ordinary human beings can rise to unthought-of heights of heroism, that in the face of worldwide destruction miracles still do happen, and that little girls with ribbons in their hair can defeat historys worst monsters.

"Lest We Forget" is a book you will read and remember.