Why a Booktrail?
1940s: The true story about the missing Dutch children during the war
The Cut Out Girl
What you need to know before your trail
Little Lien wasn’t taken from her Jewish parents in the Hague – she was given away in the hope that she might be saved. Hidden and raised by a foster family in the provinces during the Nazi occupation, she survived the war only to find that her real parents had not. Much later, she fell out with her foster family, and Bart van Es – the grandson of Lien’s foster parents – knew he needed to find out why.
His account of tracing Lien and telling her story is a searing exploration of two lives and two families. It is a story about love and misunderstanding and about the ways that our most painful experiences – so crucial in defining us – can also be redefined.
Travel Guide
Travel through the story of the missing children of the Netherlands
The book tells the true story of Lien de Jong, who as a young Jewish girl was fostered by van Es’s grandparents for safety in the occupied Netherlands in 1942.
When the Germans occupy Holland, a girl starts a new life with the van Es family. She will never see her parents again. They are arrested (by Dutch police, of course) in 1942 and murdered in Auschwitz soon after, something she only learns about after the war.
The house is eventually raided, but Lien escapes and is passed along a network, sometimes staying just a night, till she eventually ends up in a very different family situation to what she first encountered.
What was the girl’s side of the story, Bart wondered? What really happened during the war, and after?
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Cut Out Girl
Destination : Netherlands, Dordrecht, The Hague Author/Guide: Bart Van Es Departure Time: 1940s
Back to ResultsWhere Next?
