Acknowledgements

I owe thanks to a number of people who have helped my write this book.

I am immensely grateful to my cousin, Miente, for his valuable comments and for checking and correcting some of the key facts connected with his father, Dirk, and his uncle, Sjoerd, and a number of other errors elsewhere. He has read the manuscript repeatedly and patiently, advising me on much of the history and events that were happening at the time. He also subsequently put me in touch with Lisette Lewin, which has led to an interesting dialogue.

I also wish to thank the children of the refugees, Bram Hekscher, Ernst van Gelderen and Lisette Lewin, who have all kindly provided me with further information about the events that their parents experienced during the war. Lisette, Bram and Ernst have patiently reviewed earlier versions of this manuscript, corrected the chronology and helped me develop what I hope is a more balanced description of life in the house and events after the war. Ernst kindly sent me an abstract of the book he had written for his children and grandchildren, and Lisette also thoughtfully sent me a number of notes relating to events. I have used these notes to edit the account in the book.

Thanks are due to the Largs & Millport Weekly News and the Scottish Daily Record, whose interest and recognition of my mother’s activities persuaded me to make the final changes to get this electronically recorded and into print.

In May 2015, I received a letter from Dirk van Laman, the son-in-law of Kees’s daughter. He had seen parts of the Scottish Daily Record when he had been tracing the Krijger family history, and he had sought to find Grietje Okma, whom Kees had written about. This opened a new perspective on what had happened, so long ago. He provided an account that told of Kees and Kieks being engaged for a while – something my mother had never mentioned – and revealed that Kees had been to trial in 1949. He also explained Kees’s link with Jan Boone, and their friendship dating back to their school days. Understanding the relationship between Kees and Kieks was particularly important for me because my mother had mostly hidden the relationship from us, leaving me with an impression that she had perhaps been infatuated with him but that he had had less feelings for her. Kees’s trial also put in context some other comments she had made about ‘lots of people being tried for collaboration’. I thank Dirk and his mother-in-law for his valuable insights.

I am very grateful to Lisette for her permission to use photographs of the entrance and the interior of the secret chamber. I am also grateful to Pieter Vuljk who kindly provided photographs of the exterior of the house at Citroenstraat, and of the memorial at Haarlem, and to Dirk Jan Laman, who provided a photograph of Gommert Krijger (Kees).

I also wish to thank Nicky Beele, for her editing of this book, and providing some further background material that helps put it into the context of Dutch history.

I must also thank my brother, David, and my sisters, Ella and Christine, who also heard our mother’s fragmented stories throughout their lives, and for their support in helping me to put this book together. They have told me that putting these stories together has given them a certain sense of peace and perspective on our upbringing.

Finally, I must thank my son, Colin, who made many valuable suggestions and critical sub-edits to help the flow of the book, and my wife, Linda, for her encouragement, advice and IT support.