Behind the Fireplace: Memoirs of a girl working in the Dutch Resistance: by Andrew Scott, Grietje Scott

Most readers are familiar, at least at a minimal level, of The Diary Of Anne Frank. Some of us are familiar with a bit more, with the brave figure that the then teenager - around the same age, and living not too far away - Audrey Hepburn was, in playing her part in the Dutch resistance, and going through horrors personally, despite her family's aristocratic background that made it a voluntary and thereby that much braver an act.

This work fits with those somewhere, in that it's the story of a young girl a few years older than Anne Frank and Audrey Hepburn, living in vicinity of the two - it being after all a small country - and working in resistance, in addition to her family hiding a number of Jews and one resistance member in their home, a highly non trivial act of courage and more, and much, much more. This family was not wealthy as such, had over seven members if thrir own, and at the height of it all sheltered almost as many, hiding them for life and endangering their own. In addition Grietje - called Kieks - aldo delivered nesseges and did much, much more.

As dangerous and as personally sacrificing as it all was, and as traumatic the horrors that she went through, post war years were not a picnic, what with her trauma finding not a whit of sympathy or even recognition in her new homeland, Britain,  when she had married a Brit and was living in Scotland with him and her four children. The psychiatrist whom the husband took her to for help, in fact, decided she was lying and threatened to take her children away, declaring her an unfit mother, if she did not stop insisting her stories of the war years were true. This had a long time devastating effect, of her being forced to shut up, being seen as a liar, and finally breaking up her marriage.

Fortunately her son began to have a clue at some point, and too, authorities in her own country back home recognised her and her family's work in resistance - and most importantly, Israel honoured them. Her son collected and worked through her memories related over time, and managed to write it all into a coherent story after painstakingly working out the timelines.

 One feels the trauma and horror of it all, but more than it all, at the end one feels fortunate in that one could read this and know such brave souls, however much at a distance of time and space.

Unfinished Symphony by Bernard Hellreich Ingram

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Unfinished Symphony 

by Bernard Hellreich Ingram

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The author, a doctor who had qualified from Czechoslovakia and Italy before the war began, and worked as a doctor until the second German occupation of his region - Tarnopol - after Germany went to war against the until then occupying Soviets, survived and lived through holocaust, and was more fortunate than most in thst respect, but saw much that makes a read quite engrossing and worth. 

To quote a summing up of his travails by the author, who lived through holocaust by hiding out with a change of identity - 

""In retrospect, considering the available literature on the monstrous atrocities of the holocaust, my story is one of survival in an idyllic oasis in the midst of a man-made inferno.  To ask for sympathy, or to indulge in self-pity would be an insult to the victims of the concentration camps.  I was, and have been since, immensely lucky, thanks to Providence and to my saviour Kichka, who organised this comparatively melodramatic scenario of comfort, well-being and relative security."" 

At another point, he describes a conversation with a German who discussed with him why Poles were not as friendly with occupying forces as they coukd be, and while the author's identity as a Jew was undisclosed, still, the conversation had to be cautious, yet some things were said that were true enough - 

"Se non e vero e ben trovato.  ("It may not be true but it sounds good.")"

At another point the author describes the jokes that went around, describing the power of humour when a totalitarian regime allows no freedom - here is a good one he quotes - 

"‑ A German Jew escapes from Germany and manages to get to America where he visits his friend Mr Rosenblum in his elegant office.  Behind the desk is a huge picture of Hitler.  "What is that for?" asked the refugee.  "Just in case I get homesick" was the answer." 

And here is an accurate pointing out a wider picture by the author  - 

 

"Hitlerism was born when culture, literature and the arts in Germany were at their peak. Nevertheless, growing unemployment, a progressively deteriorating economy and political chaos, contributed to the creation of a "better", stable Germany, under Hitler's promising National Socialism.  This leads me to believe that in other parts of the world, bad conditions in reactionary, feudal systems when overthrown are usually replaced by modern, pseudo‑civilised, pseudo‑progressive systems which impose harsh, inhuman, repressive sanctions and regulations.

Anarchist and communist inmates of Tsarist gaols, or those in Siberia, were allowed scientific books, had access to good literature which was not anti-Tsarist and enjoyed relative freedom of movement.  In post-revolution years life in Siberian gaols and concentration camps was unbearably barbaric, involving total deprivation of contact with any product of modern culture.  I wonder whether the genocide of the Khmer Rouge in Kampuchea and the attempted destruction of the intellectual, civilised section of their community were intended to take that nation back to the good old days of a primitive and "happy" past."" 

And the post war parts he writes about are just as worth as those during the holocaust years, bringing home the facts about prejudices and unfair practices of other regimes and countries. 

He managed to leave when Poland under a communist regime was getting difficult to say the least, but Australia where he went with his wife was far from easy, and not just because of a difference of language and culture - rather, because of the unfair practices of Australia in particular and British in general that discriminated then as they continue to do pretty much niw, too, against things not quite British, or Australian in case of Australia (although one can bet safely thst Australian prejudices against non Australians do not include British). This unfairness when applied in professional capacity and qualifications is just as devastating to the recipients as those during Nazi regimes against Jews, although Australia covers it by applying the label of "high standards" to justify such prejudices in practice. 

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January 18, 2018. 

Kindle Edition, 191 pages

Published January 3rd 2014 

by Chris Ingram 

(first published December 4th 2012)

ASIN:- B00AHZRESO

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