The Borrowed House

Description

During World War II a young German girl, who has been indoctrinated into the Hitler Youth, travels to occupied Amsterdam to rejoin her parents then comes to realize the truth about the war. New introduction by the author's son, John Tepper Marlin.

"So, you're falsifying papers?" said Janna. "You belong to the Dutch Resistance." She looked at him curiously.

The boy shrugged his shoulders. "You could call it that. I'm just helping the van Arkels rescue innocent people from certain death. They need these identification papers and food cards to keep alive. If you betray me, all these people will either starve or be forced to give themselves up to be sent to the gas chambers of a concentration camp."

"Gas chambers?" Janna looked at the boy with horror. "You mean ... they are killed?"

The book looked sternly at her. "Do you think," he said, "that Germany is sending Jews to a nice vacation spa, or to pretty villages with geraniums in the windows? That's what they told us at first, though in Holland we never believed it."

This book is based on a true story, and even though it deals with some hard issues brought about by the German occupation of Amsterdam, it provides an opportunity to discuss World War II from a unique perspective.