Occupation as recorded by the victims—an often depressing yet useful historical document.
A collection of firsthand accounts of wartime experiences in the Netherlands.
After the 1945 liberation, Dutch officials, anxious to document what happened during the war, pled publicly for writing, which resulted in an avalanche of several thousand journals and letters now housed at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam. With few exceptions, such as Anne Frank’s diary, they possess little literary value, but journalist Siegal’s excerpts provide a vivid portrait of the daily lives of “victims and collaborators, bystanders and participants.” Three of her leading diarists were Jews, two enthusiastic Dutch Nazis, one a member of the resistance, and one a teenager with no political views. She also includes shorter dispatches from a dozen others. Hitler considered Holland a quasi-Nordic nation, so, after the bloody 1940 conquest, Nazi occupation was relatively benign. During the first year, there were anti-German demonstrations and strikes to protest German exactions, and when local antisemitic gangs began their attacks, many young Christian men fought alongside Jews. Matters settled down once the Nazi grip tightened, whereupon, although there was a modest resistance, most citizens and police cooperated in handing over Jews. When it became clear that the Nazis intended to kill them, about 15% went into hiding. Ultimately, 75% of the 140,000 Dutch Jews were killed in five years. Nazi policy deteriorated in the fall of 1944, when the Dutch welcomed the failed Allied invasion. Food deliveries were stopped, and a famine followed; thousands died of starvation. Siegal’s emphasis on the Holocaust makes for painful reading, but these are private writings, so much of the text records repetitious, day-to-day concerns, some of which readers may skim. Fortunately, the author steps in frequently to summarize events and describe her own life (she is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors), and she concludes with an insightful account of how postwar Holland recalled the experience, a section that includes a surprising number of interviews with survivors and their descendants.
Occupation as recorded by the victims—an often depressing yet useful historical document.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780063070653
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
A rousing, suspenseful adventure tale.
A harrowing expedition to Antarctica, recounted by Departures senior features editor Sancton, who has reported from every continent on the planet.
On Aug. 16, 1897, the steam whaler Belgica set off from Belgium with young Adrien de Gerlache as commandant. Thus begins Sancton’s riveting history of exploration, ingenuity, and survival. The commandant’s inexperienced, often unruly crew, half non-Belgian, included scientists, a rookie engineer, and first mate Roald Amundsen, who would later become a celebrated polar explorer. After loading a half ton of explosive tonite, the ship set sail with 23 crew members and two cats. In Rio de Janeiro, they were joined by Dr. Frederick Cook, a young, shameless huckster who had accompanied Robert Peary as a surgeon and ethnologist on an expedition to northern Greenland. In Punta Arenas, four seamen were removed for insubordination, and rats snuck onboard. In Tierra del Fuego, the ship ran aground for a while. Sancton evokes a calm anxiety as he chronicles the ship’s journey south. On Jan. 19, 1898, near the South Shetland Islands, the crew spotted the first icebergs. Rough waves swept someone overboard. Days later, they saw Antarctica in the distance. Glory was “finally within reach.” The author describes the discovery and naming of new lands and the work of the scientists gathering specimens. The ship continued through a perilous, ice-littered sea, as the commandant was anxious to reach a record-setting latitude. On March 6, the Belgica became icebound. The crew did everything they could to prepare for a dark, below-freezing winter, but they were wracked with despair, suffering headaches, insomnia, dizziness, and later, madness—all vividly capture by Sancton. The sun returned on July 22, and by March 1899, they were able to escape the ice. With a cast of intriguing characters and drama galore, this history reads like fiction and will thrill fans of Endurance and In the Kingdom of Ice.
A rousing, suspenseful adventure tale.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984824-33-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
A valuable contribution to our understanding of one of history’s most vital figures.
An epistolary memoir of Nelson Mandela’s prison years.
From August 1962 to February 1990, Mandela (1918-2013) was imprisoned by the apartheid state of South Africa. During his more than 27 years in prison, the bulk of which he served on the notorious Robben Island prison off the shores of Cape Town, he wrote thousands of letters to family and friends, lawyers and fellow African National Congress members, prison officials, and members of the government. Heavily censored for both content and length, letters from Robben Island and South Africa’s other political prisons did not always reach their intended targets; when they did, the censorship could make them virtually unintelligible. To assemble this vitally important collection, Venter (A Free Mind: Ahmed Kathrada's Notebook from Robben Island, 2006, etc.), a longtime Johannesburg-based editor and journalist, pored through these letters in various public and private archives across South Africa and beyond as well as Mandela’s own notebooks, in which he transcribed versions of these letters. The result is a necessary, intimate portrait of the great leader. The man who emerges is warm and intelligent and a savvy, persuasive, and strategic thinker. During his life, Mandela was a loving husband and father, a devotee of the ANC’s struggle, and capable of interacting with prominent statesmen and the ANC’s rank and file. He was not above flattery or hard-nosed steeliness toward his captors as suited his needs, and he was always yearning for freedom, not only—or even primarily—for himself, but rather for his people, a goal that is the constant theme of this collection and was the consuming vision of his entire time as a prisoner. Venter adds tremendous value with his annotations and introductions to the work as a whole and to the book’s various sections.
A valuable contribution to our understanding of one of history’s most vital figures.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63149-117-7
Page Count: 640
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
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