Imogen Matthews

“I asked my mother to repeat her stories so I could get them down for posterity. I also had another motive, to write a novel set in Holland in WW2. Since 1990, I’ve been on holiday with my family to the Veluwe, a beautiful national park where we love to cycle through magnificent woods and across expansive heaths. One year, we came across a World War 2 memorial deep in the woods. It had been designated in memory of a group of Jews who hid from the Germans by living in underground huts in a purpose built village. Several of these huts had been reconstructed and I found it hard to believe that whole families could have lived in these gloomy cramped spaces for years on end. The alternative, deportation to a concentration camp, was too awful to contemplate.”
― Imogen Matthews, The Hidden Village

“Jan struggled free and stumbled to his feet. He was off down the path towards the houses at the edge of the wood. The thought of his mother’s pea and ham soup, bread hot from the oven and creamy milk spurred him on. He’d make sure he wouldn’t tell her where he’d been as it would only worry her. Lately, she’d been fretting at the rumours that Germans were patrolling the woods. Not that he’d seen any, and even if he had, he was sure it’d be no different to the games they played. A shiver of excitement snaked through his body at the thought. Calling back to his friends, he said that he’d see them later at the usual meeting spot deep in the woods where few people went.”
― Imogen Matthews, The Hidden Village