השקט שנשבר

Memoirs of two sisters, presented intermittently throughout the book. They were born to the Polak family in Amsterdam, Betty in 1919 and Elisheva (Lies) in 1922. Their parents, older sister, and brother were deported to Westerbork in early 1943. Elisheva arrived there in September 1943, but her parents had already been deported to Auschwitz and killed. As a student nurse, she worked at the camp infirmary. In January 1944 she was sent with a group of Jews to Bergen-Belsen. She was part of a group who were exchanged for Templers living in Palestine, where she arrived in July 1944. Betty married Philippe de Leeuw in 1939, and lived in Deventer and Apeldoorn. In January 1943 Philippe went into hiding and Betty posed as a non-Jew, working in various towns. In the summer of 1944 they went into hiding together, and Philippe joined a Dutch resistance group. In November they were caught and arrested; Philippe was executed, but Betty was released as a non-Jew and lived in a village near The Hague until the end of the war. Betty's and Elisheva's brother survived, but their older sister died soon after the liberation. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)