Dimensions
144 x 224 x 27mm
Edith van Hessen began her first diary at the age of 13 in 1938. A carefree Dutch teenager, she lived in The Hague with her loving, artistic and musical family. Even the German invasion of Holland in May 1940 did not immediately threaten her happy-go-lucky existence. But Edith's family was Jewish, and although at first she just shrugged it off when public transport, beaches and even school were declared off-limits, by the summer of 1942 it became clear that they were all in increasing danger. Edith was sent into hiding with a Christian family in a small town in the south of Holland. She saw the months turn into years, and the letters from her parents via an underground network brought increasingly depressing news. Based on her diaries and her parents' letters, Edith's Book tells how one young girl, was saved by the courage of those who believed, in the words of the woman she calls her foster-mother, that 'it was the only decent thing to do'; and how she was given resilience and strength to survive by the memory of a childhood filled with love.
