Edith's Story: The True Story of How One Young Girl Survived World War II - Softcover

Velmans, Edith; Velmans, Hester

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0983550565 ISBN 13: 9780983550563

Publisher: van Horton Books, 2014

Synopsis

FOR READERS WHO WERE MOVED BY ANNE FRANK'S DIARY, THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ, and THE CHOICE. When Hitler invaded Holland in 1939, Edith van Hessen was a popular Dutch high school student. She also happened to be Jewish. In the same month that Anne Frank's family went into hiding, Edith was sent to live with a courageous Protestant family, took a new name, and survived by posing as a gentile. Ultimately one-third of the hidden Dutch Jews were discovered and murdered; most of Edith's family perished. Velmans's memoir is based on her teenage diaries, wartime letters, and reflections as an adult survivor. In recounting wartime events and the details of her feelings as the war runs its course, Edith's Story ultimately affirms life, love, and extraordinary courage. "The most vivid evocation of the experience of Nazi Occupation that I have ever read." - The Independent (London)

About this title

About the Author

Edith Velmans became a psychologist after the war and eventually settled with her husband Loet in the United States. In 1996 she was knighted by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. Edith's Story is published in ten languages and won the 1998 Jewish Quarterly's Wingate Prize for nonfiction. She passed away in 2023 aged 97.

From the Back Cover

"I never realized that there could be such suffering in the world, and that anyone could live through it."
-- from Edith's diary, July 1, 1945

"It holds you with the same intensity as The Diary of Anne Frank and leaves you heart-broken, illuminated, and amazed at the capacity for courage."
-- Esther Freud, The Guardian (London)

"Edith's Story, the memoir of an Anne Frank who lived, reminds us of the old horror all the more effectively bu not being a horror story. Evil and grief, without being scanted, are outshone by sweetness, freshness, and pluck."
-- Roy Blount Jr.

"One of the best and most moving memoirs I have ever read." -- Ruth Rendell, Sunday Times

Edition details

• Publisher: van Horton Books
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0983550565
• ISBN 13: 9780983550563
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 4
• Number of pages: 276