Women's Biography, General & Miscellaneous Biography, Historical Biography, Jewish - Biography, Women's Biography, Jewish History

Edith's Story

Name: Edith's Story
Author: Edith Velmans
ISBN: 9781569471784

by Edith Velmans

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Overview

Something was happening, something sinister. Her parents held whispered conversations, comments were made in school, some friends went abroad, everyone worried. But it wasn't until after the Germans actually invaded Holland, not until classes were closed to her and public transportation forbidden, that the yellow star sewn to her coat took on real meaning for Edith Velmans.. "Edith went into hiding with a courageous Protestant family the same month as Anne Frank. She, however, was passed off as a relative and hidden in the open. To deflect suspicion, she was given the chore of looking after a German officer billeted with her hosts in the room next to hers.. "Of those Dutch Jews who were hidden, a third were discovered and murdered. Most of her family perished. Edith lived. This is her remarkable and uplifting story of survival, aided by people of disarming goodness in a sea of annihilating evil.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's 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 Cahners Business Information.