{"id":31770,"date":"2019-02-01T03:59:40","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T11:59:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=31770"},"modified":"2019-01-29T16:53:36","modified_gmt":"2019-01-30T00:53:36","slug":"saved-by-dutch-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2019\/02\/01\/saved-by-dutch-resistance\/","title":{"rendered":"Saved by Dutch Resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Janet Wees at a book signing for her\nnovel When We Were Shadows<\/em>, which\nshe\u2019ll be bringing to the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival on Feb. 10. (photo\nby Jack Cohen)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ze\u2019ev Bar was 5 years old in 1937, when his\nfamily fled Germany to the Netherlands, where they lived in safety for a few\nyears. But, in 1940, as the Nazis extended their hold on Europe, the family had\nto go into hiding, managing to survive the Holocaust with the help of members\nof the Dutch Resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Calgary-based educator and writer Janet Wees\ntells Bar\u2019s story of survival in the book When We Were Shadows<\/em>. She will\npresent the novel for younger readers (ages 9-13) on Feb. 10, 10 a.m., at the\nJewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver as part of the Cherie Smith JCC\nJewish Book Festival, which runs Feb. 9-14. Wees and five other authors \u2013 Leo\nBurstyn, Miriam Clavir, Arnold Grossman, David Kirkpatrick and Helen Wilkes \u2013\nwill briefly introduce their works at the event A Literary Quickie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy reasons for writing this book were\ntwofold,\u201d Wees told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cOne, to help relieve Ze\u2019ev from\nhaving to repeat his story over and over to schoolchildren because it was so\nupsetting for him, yet he felt it needed to be told so they would know what\nhappened during the Second World War in their country. Hopefully, having had\nthe book translated into Dutch in Holland, that might be happening. I have had\nletters from mothers of children who are reading the book in Dutch for book\nreports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy other reason was to expose North American\nchildren to the plight of children during war, to the bravery of the people who\nhelped save lives at risks to their own.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the real-life members of the resistance featured in the novel are Opa Bakker, Tante Cor, and Edouard and Jacoba von Baumhauer, all of whom have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. Wees said, \u201cI made a promise to von Baumhauer\u2019s son that I would honour the people who risked their lives helping to build the Hidden Village [near Vierhouten] and hide, assist and feed the people who were fleeing the Nazis.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wees visited the memorial site of the Hidden\nVillage in 2005, and again in 2007. She interviewed Bar in Amsterdam in 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe spent three to four days in his dining\nroom, talking, crying, laughing; I taped and wrote,\u201d she said. \u201cOnce home, I\npoured it all out on computer and began to sort and edit and change, and\nwatched it take shape. Of course, life interfered, and sometimes it was so\nintense, hearing his wavering voice on tape, that I would have to take a break.\nBy 2011, it felt ready for an editor. After that, I submitted it, naively\ngiving myself 12 rejections \u2013 apparently J.K. Rowling had 12 rejections before\nHarry Potter was accepted \u2013 before I reconsidered my direction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A change in direction did occur. In 2014, Wees\nwas accepted into a mentorship program and, with that guidance, realized that\nthe novel \u201cneeded a boy\u2019s voice and an empathetic setting, where children could\nidentify with the protagonist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over some four months, Wees said, \u201cI\nessentially rewrote the book using a different format and incorporating a boy\u2019s\nvoice. At the end, there was a reading and the book was so enthusiastically\nreceived that I knew I was on the right track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt felt like I had kind of lost perspective,\nas I was so close to the story and, even though I would have times of \u2018Wow! Did\nI write that?\u2019 seeing it through others\u2019 eyes really gave me a boost. I began\nsubmitting again and, this time, the 11th publisher contacted was the one!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book was accepted by Second Story Press in\n2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI always wanted Second Story Press to be my\npublisher because of their Holocaust Remembrance Series for Young Readers. I\nread other books in that series and felt this was a good fit,\u201d said Wees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While When We Were Shadows<\/em> is Wees\u2019\nfirst book, she has published articles in educational journals and in news\nmagazines. In addition to other literary projects, she has written drafts for\ntwo children\u2019s books, she said, \u201cbased on something I did growing up in\nSaskatchewan, and one based on my pen pal\u2019s granddaughter\u2019s activity with her\nOma in Holland.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 60-something Wees first started writing her\npen pal when she was 12 years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy pen pal Henk had to find a pen pal in an\nEnglish-speaking country for his English class in school. He put an ad for a\npen pal in the Regina Leader-Post<\/em> and I saw it and responded,\u201d she\nexplained. \u201cHe told me, on my first visit, as we were looking over all my\nletters he\u2019d saved, that my letter was the funniest so he chose me as his pen\npal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe wrote constantly but lost contact for a few\nyears during which we both got married and started families. I reconnected, in\n1972 or thereabouts, and, knowing how families in Europe usually stay in their\nfamily homes, I wrote to the old address. Lo and behold! There they were! After\nthat, it was letters with Henk\u2019s wife because she was better at that point with\nwritten English, but we telephoned and, upon the onset of computers, we emailed\nand then FaceTimed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI went to visit them for the first time in\n1991, and have been back 10 times since\u2026. On one of the trips where I stayed\none month on the island (Terschelling), Hennie (Henk\u2019s nickname) and Loes took\nme to see the memorial site of the Hidden Village and the urge to learn more\nabout this site was palpable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTwo years later,\u201d said Wees, \u201cwe went again,\nand I sat for longer in the replica huts and tried to imagine what went on. It\nsmelled like our dirt basement in Togo, Sask., and just thinking about living\nin that basement for 18 months gave me a bit of an idea of the sense of being\nconfined; the smells, the dark, the cold. And I decided that I had to write a\nbook, if not for my former students who were now in university, for their\nchildren. Sadly, Hennie passed away this past April without seeing the\npublished book, but I used his name (with his permission) for one of my\ncharacters, so he lives on through the book. If not for him, this book may\nnever have existed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In their first discussions about the novel,\nWees said she and Bar had \u201ctalked about making it an \u2018adventure\u2019 of a boy\nduring wartime.\u201d The original title was Boy of the Forest<\/em>. \u201cBut,\u201d she\nsaid, \u201cas I was writing, I realized this was not an \u2018adventure\u2019 as we perceive\nadventure, and he concurred, so I changed my title to Whatever It Takes<\/em>.\nMy publisher chose the final title, When We Were Shadows<\/em>, and I love<\/em>\nit because it personifies the whole concept of living in the shadows \u2013 unseen,\nand unable to see.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In revising the original manuscript to be from\na young boy\u2019s perspective, she said her focus was on \u201cthe emotional being of\nWalter [Ze\u2019ev changed his name as an adult] and how he perceived what was\nhappening, being sheltered and wanting desperately to know and to do something,\nand about the selflessness of others. I wanted it to be about the people in his\nworld, what was happening inside his head and heart, more than what was\nhappening outside.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wees said the character of Walter took over\n\u201cand his voice flowed through so eloquently and so quickly that there were many\ndays I never budged from my computer for hours, missing lunch and working until\ndark. I \u2018heard\u2019 him in my head. I could \u2018see\u2019 what was happening. Until I\nactually was writing, I always thought that was bunk when I heard other authors\nsay that their characters take them on their own journey. But now I know it\nhappens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI also discovered that what I\u2019d taught my\nstudents about editing, I had to follow as well, so I did most of my editing by\nreading the book aloud. I found errors that way in facts, such as tents not\nhaving zippers in the 1940s but pegs instead. I was able to find correct\nweather for dates in the letters by searching online.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This diligence no doubt contributed to When\nWe Were Shadows<\/em> being nominated for the Forest of Reading Red Maple\nnon-fiction award of the Ontario Library Association, which describes the award\nprogram\u2019s aim as getting young readers (ages 12 to 13) to engage \u201cin\nconversation around the books and \u2026 to use critical thinking while reading.\u201d\nThe awards will be presented in May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the writing of When We Were Shadows<\/em>,\nWees said, \u201cI have become friends with von Baumhauer\u2019s grandson and wife. While\nwriting this book, I also found out that my grandmother lost sisters-in-law to\nthe death camps and her brother was killed on the Russian front. Until then, I\nhad no idea how our family was affected by the Holocaust, as I was unaware of\nfamily still living overseas. I am now in touch with the great-granddaughter of\none of those women.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the full book festival schedule and tickets, visit jewishbookfestival.ca<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friendship\ninterrupted<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Princess Dolls <\/em>by Ellen Schwartz,\nwith illustrations by Mariko Ando, takes place in Vancouver in 1942. Esther and\nMichiko are best friends. They dream that one day they will be princesses\ntogether; in games, Esther is Princess Elizabeth and Michi is Princess\nMargaret. When they spy dolls fashioned after the real-life princesses in the\ntoy store window, the girls dare to hope that they\u2019ll each get their favourite for\ntheir birthday, something else they shared, both having been born on the same\nday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, when Esther gets her royal doll as a\ngift, but Michi doesn\u2019t, the girls\u2019 friendship is strained. Before they have a\nchance to patch it up, Michi and her family \u2013 ultimately along with more than\n21,000 other Japanese-Canadians \u2013 are forced to leave the West Coast, losing\ntheir home, business and possessions. Michi ends up in Kaslo, B.C.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A story thread throughout The Princess Dolls<\/em>\nis Esther\u2019s family\u2019s worry over family members in Europe, as the Nazis round up\nJews and send them to transit camps, about which Esther\u2019s parents and\ngrandmother know little.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Princess Dolls<\/em> is kind of a companion novel to Schwartz\u2019s Heart of a Champion<\/em>, in which 10-year-old Kenny Sakamoto dreams of being as good at baseball as his older brother, who is the Asahi team\u2019s star player. Also set in Vancouver in 1942, the Sakamoto family\u2019s neighbours and good friends, the Bernsteins, are Jewish. As she told the Independent<\/em> when that book was released, \u201cI wanted to point out that the treatment of Japanese-Canadians, although obviously not nearly as lethal or horrific, was comparable to that of Jews in Europe,\u201d said Schwartz. \u201cIn both cases, a minority was being persecuted simply because of their religion or nationality. Giving Kenny a Jewish best friend would make both characters sympathetic about this issue.\u201d (See jewishindependent.ca\/uniquely-b-c-baseball-story<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schwartz will talk about The Princess Dolls<\/em> on Feb. 10, 11 a.m., at Richmond Public Library, as well as at Vancouver Talmud Torah later that week as part of the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival. For the festival schedule and tickets, visit jewishbookfestival.ca<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Janet Wees at a book signing for her novel When We Were Shadows, which she\u2019ll be bringing to the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival on Feb. 10. (photo by Jack Cohen) Ze\u2019ev Bar was 5 years old in 1937, when his family fled Germany to the Netherlands, where they lived in safety for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[4041,8674,4242,8672,53,1122,8673,7536],"class_list":["post-31770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-cherie-smith-jcc-jewish-book-festival","tag-ellen-schwartz","tag-history","tag-holland","tag-holocaust","tag-human-rights","tag-janet-wees","tag-netherlands"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}