The cut out girl

Bart van Es

Fig Tree 2018

Penguin 2019

5 stars

This beautifully written book that explores the feelings of being a hidden child during the holocaust and the psychological trauma she lived with.  Bart, an oxford historian, realizes a family member, Lien, does not figure in family histories. His grandmother and Lien had a terrible row and she cut off contact. Bart approaches Lien by email. He befriends her and she tells her story. She was a Jewish child in Amsterdam and is hidden by his family in Central Holland during the second world war. She retells her story and we experience it thorough her eyes. She was 8 when her parents gave her for safe keeping to their friends.  On her 9^th  birthday she heard from them but then silence. He captures the pain she experienced, silence, then tears.  She had forgotten a lot.  It was not easy being a refugee, she had to work almost as a house maid in one home. She and another refugee escaped at one point. She did not understand what was happening, then become silent and withdrawn, then a slow anger built up, initially she was warm but then hot. Feeling unwanted was a major part of her experience. Aged 12 she was raped frequently by a family uncle. After the war she worked in child care and then trained as a social worker.  When she did talk about her rape it was acknowledged by the family but not acted upon.  She had different religions, brought up Jewish, then followed Dutch reform, at university she joined the Jewish student society. She married a Jew Albert and enjoyed the Jewish rituals.  She is now Bhuddist.

She repressed many feelings, it was all too painful.  Later in life she acknowledged her refugee status. She takes Bart to Schouwberg, the departure point for Dutch Jews to the concentration camps and they look at her parents names. She was helped by a conference in Amsterdam for child refugees and the conversations it opened up.  The then mayor of Amsterdam was himself a child refugee. She makes peace at Auschwitz by performing Buddhist rituals there over a week with her Dutch friends.

She was v sensitive to being excluded by the family.  At her wedding she was surprised that people were joking “is the husband Albert good enough for our Lien?”. She was hurt being excluded from the family funeral announcements of Pa Heromas death.  She had a small birthday party that she did to mention to Ma Heroma.  The two then exchanged angry letters, Lein wrote that she felt a second rate person in the family. Ma heroma had no further contact with her. These letters one can write because it an emotional release but one should not send them because they  can hurt so much.

Bart the historian is fascinated by Lein’s story, he backs up his work academically checking on the files of Dutch informers.  Through his interest he gains Lein’s trust. She visits Oxford and meets his family. In her her Amsterdam flat and she introduces him to her friends as “my nephew who will write my story”. The detective work has produced family healing.

Occasionally there is too much background, such as the description of the Dutch informers, it gives useful context. His fluent Dutch makes him at home there.

There are two journeys in this book; Lien’s story of being a child in hiding, and van Esses story of getting Lein to talk, the background research that he did on Dutch informers. It is his journey in writing the book.  Bridges have been rebuilt within the family.  He  describes his visits to Holland, seeing the towns and understanding Dutch history well.

Being half Dutch there were many personal resonances for me in the book. I recognized the grandparents generation and the academic exploring Holland. My mother repressed her PoW experience, she was in Japanese prisoner of war camp aged 18-20. She coped by rarely talking about the experience.  It made her a survivor when she faced problems.

So I admire Bart van Esse in getting his aunt to talk about her experience. My mother kept her story inside.  

Captive Artists the unseen art of British Far East prisoners of war

This beautifully researched and curated book documents the art produced by Far East Prisoner of War (FEPOW) whilst imprisoned during the Second World War. Their life in the tropics, and how they coped with captivity is captured. It highlights the importance of art in documenting war. It arose out of work done with FEPOWS who were looked after by for their tropical diseases by the medical team at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine after the war. The team developed an oral history project contacting families of FEWPOWS and documenting their lives post captivity.  These pieces were produced secretly because their captors forbade doing art.

Meg Parkes, daughter of a FEPOW, has researched FEPOW art and wrote the first section. Eight well known artists including Ronald Searle documented the experience  of captivity, her father was in Japan and nearly died of starvation there. The young men were beautiful and hopeful before they went to war. They returned on repatriation boats to Liverpool and Southampton. Photocopies of artwork by the prisoner AKKI was given to Dion Bell in the 1960’s.  She tracked him down, a Basil Akhurst who trained as a draughtsman before the war and post war worked as a cartoonist in Blackpool and identified his work in the Changi museum in Singapore.  She found 69 more artists who contributed pieces. The beauty of Far East is captured in small pictures and maps and   the tropical flora and fauna. Each artist has a half plate with their art, military rank, birthplace, camps and photos.  The oral histories from families are moving, often their fathers did not talk much about the war. 

Geoff Gill is a physician who looked after the FEPOWS and their tropical diseases with Dr Dion Bell in Liverpool STM. Later their psychological problems were recognised.  The range of medical problems experienced by the FEPOWS included malaria, dysentery and tropical ulcers which are illustrated here. An early aspect of camp life is captured with the cartoon of a VD clinic in Changi in 1942.  One needed humor to cope with the captivity. The prisoners created solutions to the camp problems and created a citizens army that prepared yeasts and had distillation going. This resulted from having men with different skills such as biology and metal working together. The picture of Captain Mackintosh at his microscope is beautiful capturing an expert looking for diseases.

Religion helped people survive. The padres kept services going and supervised many burials. The cemetery picture by padre has a quiet stillness . 

One family have kept a wooden carving of St George their father carved for the chapel, it was used by Japanese as dart board

Jenny Wood is an archivist at the Imperial War Museum, in her chapters she describes how art was used to keep morale up.  It created by men who could easily die. Searle had dreadful experiences especially working on the Thai –Burma railway and was fortunate to be survive. She contributed the oral history project and the final appendices have comments from the families.

The art work has been kept by the children. Many parents did not talk about their experience until they were v old.  They realized that they used art to survive imprisonment.

This book has a resonance for me because my mother and aunt and grandparents were FEPOWS in Java. My grandfather was a colonial water engineer. I wonder how they survived?  She was with her mother and twin sister which must have helped hugely.  My grandfather was in another camp which created anxieties. They passed the time playing games.  It is very boring being a prisoner especially for a teenager.  She spoke little about the experience. She mentioned the chaos in Java after the war.  She described being given English fried breakfast on the boat back to Holland that they could not eat and the boats were followed by hungry seagulls eating the scraps. Her experience made her a survivor, when things went wrong her survival instinct kicked back when experiencing fractures in her late eighties. She was the fastest elderly lady to mobilise after her hip fracture surgery in 2014. She occasionally mentioned the viciousness of the guards.  Mostly she coped by not discussing it.

The absence of women artists is because the British FEPOWS were all male and in the British Army. However as my family history shows women were imprisoned.  Australian women have written about their ordeal. The enquiry would be strengthened by having some female voices or a discussion of how to capture those voices.

This beautiful book is a testament to the human spirit. These men could die at any time but they created pieces of art as a survival strategy.  This book captures their survival then and through the oral history project gives one a link to their post war lives. 

Palatine books 2019

Meg Parkes, Geoff Gill, Jenny Wood