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The Cut Out Girl: A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found
The extraordinary true story of a young Jewish girl in Holland under Nazi occupation who finds refuge in the homes of an underground network of foster families, one of them the author's grandparents
Bart van Es left Holland for England many years ago, but one story from his Dutch childhood never left him. It was a mystery of sorts: a young Jewish girl named Lientje had been taken in during the war by relatives and hidden from the Nazis, handed over by her parents, who understood the danger they were in all too well. The girl had been raised by her foster family as one of their own, but then, well after the war, there was a falling out, and they were no longer in touch. What was the girl's side of the story, Bart wondered? What really happened during the war, and after?
So began an investigation that would consume Bart van Es's life, and change it. After some sleuthing, he learned that Lientje was now in her 80s and living in Amsterdam. Somewhat reluctantly, she agreed to meet him, and eventually they struck up a remarkable friendship, even a partnership. The Cut Out Girl braids together a powerful recreation of that intensely harrowing childhood story of Lientje's with the present-day account of Bart's efforts to piece that story together, including bringing some old ghosts back into the light.
It is a story rich with contradictions. There is great bravery and generosity--first Lientje's parents, giving up their beloved daughter, and then the Dutch families who face great danger from the Nazi occupation for taking Lientje and other Jewish children in. And there are more mundane sacrifices a family under brutal occupation must make to provide for even the family they already have. But tidy Holland also must face a darker truth, namely that it was more cooperative in rounding up its Jews for the Nazis than any other Western European country; that is part of Lientje's story too. Her time in hiding was made much more terrifying by the energetic efforts of the local Dutch authorities, zealous accomplices in the mission of sending every Jew, man, woman and child, East to their extermination. And Lientje was not always particularly well treated, and sometimes, Bart learned, she was very badly treated indeed.
The Cut Out Girl is an astonishment, a deeply moving reckoning with a young girl's struggle for survival during war, a story about the powerful love of foster families but also the powerful challenges, and about the ways our most painful experiences define us but also can be redefined, on a more honest level, even many years after the fact. A triumph of subtlety, decency and unflinching observation, The Cut Out Girl is a triumphant marriage of many keys of writing, ultimately blending them into an extraordinary new harmony, and a deeper truth.
Bart van Es left Holland for England many years ago, but one story from his Dutch childhood never left him. It was a mystery of sorts: a young Jewish girl named Lientje had been taken in during the war by relatives and hidden from the Nazis, handed over by her parents, who understood the danger they were in all too well. The girl had been raised by her foster family as one of their own, but then, well after the war, there was a falling out, and they were no longer in touch. What was the girl's side of the story, Bart wondered? What really happened during the war, and after?
So began an investigation that would consume Bart van Es's life, and change it. After some sleuthing, he learned that Lientje was now in her 80s and living in Amsterdam. Somewhat reluctantly, she agreed to meet him, and eventually they struck up a remarkable friendship, even a partnership. The Cut Out Girl braids together a powerful recreation of that intensely harrowing childhood story of Lientje's with the present-day account of Bart's efforts to piece that story together, including bringing some old ghosts back into the light.
It is a story rich with contradictions. There is great bravery and generosity--first Lientje's parents, giving up their beloved daughter, and then the Dutch families who face great danger from the Nazi occupation for taking Lientje and other Jewish children in. And there are more mundane sacrifices a family under brutal occupation must make to provide for even the family they already have. But tidy Holland also must face a darker truth, namely that it was more cooperative in rounding up its Jews for the Nazis than any other Western European country; that is part of Lientje's story too. Her time in hiding was made much more terrifying by the energetic efforts of the local Dutch authorities, zealous accomplices in the mission of sending every Jew, man, woman and child, East to their extermination. And Lientje was not always particularly well treated, and sometimes, Bart learned, she was very badly treated indeed.
The Cut Out Girl is an astonishment, a deeply moving reckoning with a young girl's struggle for survival during war, a story about the powerful love of foster families but also the powerful challenges, and about the ways our most painful experiences define us but also can be redefined, on a more honest level, even many years after the fact. A triumph of subtlety, decency and unflinching observation, The Cut Out Girl is a triumphant marriage of many keys of writing, ultimately blending them into an extraordinary new harmony, and a deeper truth.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published July 15, 2018
549 people are currently reading
9171 people want to read
About the author
Bart van Es
10 books31 followersBart van Es is a Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St. Catherine’s College. He is the author of Spenser’s Forms of History, Shakespeare in Company, and Shakespeare’s Comedies. He was born in the Netherlands and now lives with his family in England.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 578 reviews
October 1, 2018
4.5 stars
“Without families you don’t get stories.” (Lien, the girl of this title). This sounds like something we might all accept as true, but how profound this really is in relation to this book and what it means for this story is something that I won’t forget. This is about the Holocaust, about the goodness of some Dutch families in helping to save Jewish children, about the opposite of that when thousands were turned in, about the author’s journey to discover the details of his family’s part in saving Lien, who grew up with his grandparents. There is no doubt, though, that this is Lien’s story, but it also reflects the stories of many more Jewish children who were hidden during the war.
How quickly things changed from a happy childhood to being sent away before you are nine years old in order to be saved from being rounded up by the Nazis. It’s impossible to imagine the heart break of sending your children away to save them, when love for your child somehow has to help you through the grief of sending her away. It’s impossible to imagine the fear, not really understanding when your mother says “I must tell you a secret,” she tells her. “You are going to stay somewhere else for a while.” In alternating narratives we are told Lien’s story in the past and the author’s journey to discover his family’s past as well. When he meets her she is in her eighties and the meeting and their ultimate connecting make for many poignant moments. Bart van Es visits the places and people who would remember her and pieces together the times. Lien was moved from home to home - safe from the Nazis but not always living an easy life, and not always safe from other evils, as further unimaginable things happen to her .
A lot is packed into this book: the brutal history of the Holocaust, love of family, the bravery and goodness of people, the trauma of separation, losing the feeling of belonging. Reading Holocaust fiction is heartbreaking and gut wrenching enough when an author is able to bring to the page the horrors that eat at you the reader, but reading biographies and memoirs takes that horror we can only imagine in a novel, to a different level where you find it hard to breathe when these memories are relived. Van Es tells us , “ If I was to do something before these people and their memories disappeared forever, it must be now.” If we as human beings are going to do something meaningful, we have to read their memories so what happened is not forgotten.
(4.5 stars and not a perfect 5 stars because the writing felt a little disjointed at times moving around in time, but totally deserving of being bumped up to 5.)
I received an advanced copy of this book from Penguin Press through NetGalley.
“Without families you don’t get stories.” (Lien, the girl of this title). This sounds like something we might all accept as true, but how profound this really is in relation to this book and what it means for this story is something that I won’t forget. This is about the Holocaust, about the goodness of some Dutch families in helping to save Jewish children, about the opposite of that when thousands were turned in, about the author’s journey to discover the details of his family’s part in saving Lien, who grew up with his grandparents. There is no doubt, though, that this is Lien’s story, but it also reflects the stories of many more Jewish children who were hidden during the war.
How quickly things changed from a happy childhood to being sent away before you are nine years old in order to be saved from being rounded up by the Nazis. It’s impossible to imagine the heart break of sending your children away to save them, when love for your child somehow has to help you through the grief of sending her away. It’s impossible to imagine the fear, not really understanding when your mother says “I must tell you a secret,” she tells her. “You are going to stay somewhere else for a while.” In alternating narratives we are told Lien’s story in the past and the author’s journey to discover his family’s past as well. When he meets her she is in her eighties and the meeting and their ultimate connecting make for many poignant moments. Bart van Es visits the places and people who would remember her and pieces together the times. Lien was moved from home to home - safe from the Nazis but not always living an easy life, and not always safe from other evils, as further unimaginable things happen to her .
A lot is packed into this book: the brutal history of the Holocaust, love of family, the bravery and goodness of people, the trauma of separation, losing the feeling of belonging. Reading Holocaust fiction is heartbreaking and gut wrenching enough when an author is able to bring to the page the horrors that eat at you the reader, but reading biographies and memoirs takes that horror we can only imagine in a novel, to a different level where you find it hard to breathe when these memories are relived. Van Es tells us , “ If I was to do something before these people and their memories disappeared forever, it must be now.” If we as human beings are going to do something meaningful, we have to read their memories so what happened is not forgotten.
(4.5 stars and not a perfect 5 stars because the writing felt a little disjointed at times moving around in time, but totally deserving of being bumped up to 5.)
I received an advanced copy of this book from Penguin Press through NetGalley.
March 20, 2018
The Diary of Anne Frank is the source of most of my knowledge about The Netherlands during WWII which is a narrow point of view. Sure, I knew about Operation Market Garden, the Dutch resistance and that the Nazis nearly succeeded in starving the population but nothing much beyond that. The Cut Out Girl filled in some of the gaps in my knowledge by providing the cultural and political environment of the time which is always a good thing.
The author, Bart van Es, researches and interviews Lien at great length in order to tell Lien’s story of her childhood in hiding from the Nazis. The van Es family and Lien have a connection that fascinates the author and his confusion about what he is planning to write is just as interesting as Lien’s story. Despite disliking the title and being told numerous times what “cut out” means throughout the book, these accounts are somewhat different from those of other survivors and a worthy addition to the genre of WWII biographies.
The author, Bart van Es, researches and interviews Lien at great length in order to tell Lien’s story of her childhood in hiding from the Nazis. The van Es family and Lien have a connection that fascinates the author and his confusion about what he is planning to write is just as interesting as Lien’s story. Despite disliking the title and being told numerous times what “cut out” means throughout the book, these accounts are somewhat different from those of other survivors and a worthy addition to the genre of WWII biographies.
October 16, 2018
Library overdrive:
Audiobook....read by the author: Bart van Es
Problem #1.....
Amazon is selling this kindle book for $14.99.
I didn’t want to pay that much for it. The price ‘is’ too high IMO.
My Library only had this book available ‘as’ an Audiobook.
For over two weeks I’ve been listening to this... ( sometimes sitting down taking notes while the author was speaking to try to keep myself interested.
The author ‘as’ the Audio-narrator didn’t have a talent for the job. It was very hard to stay interested when he had no other skill than simply reading the words he wrote.
Listening to a flat monotone voice for hours is asking a lot of listeners.
He created a drab experience.
I tried and tried to stay engaged.
I even told my good friend Lisi, to read it.
The Choice”, by Edith Eva Egar, is much more emotional engaging memoir.
As far as Holocaust stories go....TRUE stories ....
Stories that need to be told - not forgotten-
this one is important as any other true story.
However...it’s not the best written book....and delivered even worse.
It’s also possible- bless the author’s heart- that he was ‘too close’ to this story to have been objective. I don’t think it was necessary to have his opinions on how he feels society is today.... comparing ‘today’ with the devastations of the Holocaust.
Jewish children felt displaced.....
I’ll always be sad about this.
The Dutch were honorable people taking in Jewish children - hiding them.
These ‘are’ fascinating stories ....
But ‘this book’ was disjointed - with personal opinion commentaries.
Audiobook....read by the author: Bart van Es
Problem #1.....
Amazon is selling this kindle book for $14.99.
I didn’t want to pay that much for it. The price ‘is’ too high IMO.
My Library only had this book available ‘as’ an Audiobook.
For over two weeks I’ve been listening to this... ( sometimes sitting down taking notes while the author was speaking to try to keep myself interested.
The author ‘as’ the Audio-narrator didn’t have a talent for the job. It was very hard to stay interested when he had no other skill than simply reading the words he wrote.
Listening to a flat monotone voice for hours is asking a lot of listeners.
He created a drab experience.
I tried and tried to stay engaged.
I even told my good friend Lisi, to read it.
The Choice”, by Edith Eva Egar, is much more emotional engaging memoir.
As far as Holocaust stories go....TRUE stories ....
Stories that need to be told - not forgotten-
this one is important as any other true story.
However...it’s not the best written book....and delivered even worse.
It’s also possible- bless the author’s heart- that he was ‘too close’ to this story to have been objective. I don’t think it was necessary to have his opinions on how he feels society is today.... comparing ‘today’ with the devastations of the Holocaust.
Jewish children felt displaced.....
I’ll always be sad about this.
The Dutch were honorable people taking in Jewish children - hiding them.
These ‘are’ fascinating stories ....
But ‘this book’ was disjointed - with personal opinion commentaries.
March 18, 2019
In the words of Maria Condo
This one is not bringing me joy
and I have read 50% of the book and that has taken me a week. I think it is time to part company. I struggle with giving up on a book as some books do turn around and am always afraid I will miss out by not finishing the read.
I am not sure what the problem with this book is but I am just plodding along reading and feel I am not retaining any of the information or making any connection with the characters. I asked myself one question half ways through the book what is the names of the main characters in the story and I honestly could not answer so felt it was time to perhaps put this to one side for now.
I have debated about dumping this book as it is someone's life story and its so difficult to be the judge and jury especially when its a true story of a young Jewish girl in Holland under Nazi occupation who finds refuge in the homes of an underground network of foster families, but having read numerous books on the second world war this one just isn't holding my attention.
I am not sure what the problem with this book is but I am just plodding along reading and feel I am not retaining any of the information or making any connection with the characters. I asked myself one question half ways through the book what is the names of the main characters in the story and I honestly could not answer so felt it was time to perhaps put this to one side for now.
I have debated about dumping this book as it is someone's life story and its so difficult to be the judge and jury especially when its a true story of a young Jewish girl in Holland under Nazi occupation who finds refuge in the homes of an underground network of foster families, but having read numerous books on the second world war this one just isn't holding my attention.
January 5, 2020
I knew the 2020 good read vibes wouldn't last, and The Cut Out Girl: A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found is the culprit that has potentially crushed those vibes. I bought this book some time ago, not long after it was released, and after a Waterstones employee told me this book was absolutely wonderful, I thought I was on to something.
Unfortunately, that enthusiasm I did have, was pretty short lived. From the onset, as early as chapter one, in fact, I knew this book was not for me.
The story itself, that centres around Lien, is a remarkable story, but the way this book is written, is absolutely horrendous. I haven't read a book written as badly as this one for quite a while. The entire story felt distant. Bart Van Es went off topic far to often for my liking, and basically rambled about things that were completely irrelevant to Lien and her story. Inevitably, this made me feel even more detached from characters, whose names I haven't remembered, even after just finishing this book this morning.
It it painfully obvious that this is written by an individual with only an outside perspective, and I think that is what makes this such a tedious and dispassionate read.
Unfortunately, that enthusiasm I did have, was pretty short lived. From the onset, as early as chapter one, in fact, I knew this book was not for me.
The story itself, that centres around Lien, is a remarkable story, but the way this book is written, is absolutely horrendous. I haven't read a book written as badly as this one for quite a while. The entire story felt distant. Bart Van Es went off topic far to often for my liking, and basically rambled about things that were completely irrelevant to Lien and her story. Inevitably, this made me feel even more detached from characters, whose names I haven't remembered, even after just finishing this book this morning.
It it painfully obvious that this is written by an individual with only an outside perspective, and I think that is what makes this such a tedious and dispassionate read.
May 17, 2019
Oh my goodness, this book. When I first started reading The Cut Out Girl, I wasn't sure about the writing style: very plan, unliterary, but as Lien's life and Van es's research hooked me, the style became a perfect foil for this fascinating non-fiction story. Lien is a Dutch Jew, at a point during the war her parents hand her over to the Dutch resistance for hiding. She never sees them again. Lien was mostly looked after by Van es's grandmother, but late in her life there was a rift between the two women. Van es tracks down Lien, now 82, and pieces together what happened.
September 2, 2021
Cuando empecé a leer esta novela, no esperaba lo que me he encontrado, porque no es una historia normal, una novela contada sin más, es una historia real, no basada en hechos reales.
Historia que está ambientada en Países Bajos, algo nuevo para mi, ya que la mayoría de las novelas de la Segunda Guerra Mundial están ambientadas en otros países que quizá fueron mas conflictivos.
La novela esta contada por el autor en la mayoría, este sabía que en la época de la Guerra, sus abuelos habían sido parte de esas personas que ayudaron a muchas personas judías, ofreciendo sitio en sus casas y arriesgando mucho por ayudar a muchísima gente, algo que se le da muy poco valor en este tipo de historias. Por ello, el autor empieza a investigar y conoce en persona a quien va a ser la protagonista de este libro.
Lien, una niña judía que con ocho años es separada de sus padres, una de esas niñas que con su historia sacara a la luz todo aquello que vivió, tanto con su familia antes de la Guerra como durante esos años.
Los capítulos se van alternando, unos en presente, donde se narran las conversaciones del autor con Lien, donde vamos averiguando su historia, y otros capítulos en los que reconstruye la historia, y que los va narrando Lien. Ademas, durante la historia veremos fotos del álbum familiar, algo que me ha gustado mucho. Es una historia dura, como todas estas historias, pero a la vez es una historia muy bonita, donde el autor cambia su vida y construye una relación de amistad, con una persona que en cierto modo puede considerarse de su familia.
Un libro diferente, que recomiendo mucho, donde como he dicho se verá mucho el papel de las personas que ayudaron a tantos y tantos judíos refugiándolos en sus hogares.
Historia que está ambientada en Países Bajos, algo nuevo para mi, ya que la mayoría de las novelas de la Segunda Guerra Mundial están ambientadas en otros países que quizá fueron mas conflictivos.
La novela esta contada por el autor en la mayoría, este sabía que en la época de la Guerra, sus abuelos habían sido parte de esas personas que ayudaron a muchas personas judías, ofreciendo sitio en sus casas y arriesgando mucho por ayudar a muchísima gente, algo que se le da muy poco valor en este tipo de historias. Por ello, el autor empieza a investigar y conoce en persona a quien va a ser la protagonista de este libro.
Lien, una niña judía que con ocho años es separada de sus padres, una de esas niñas que con su historia sacara a la luz todo aquello que vivió, tanto con su familia antes de la Guerra como durante esos años.
Los capítulos se van alternando, unos en presente, donde se narran las conversaciones del autor con Lien, donde vamos averiguando su historia, y otros capítulos en los que reconstruye la historia, y que los va narrando Lien. Ademas, durante la historia veremos fotos del álbum familiar, algo que me ha gustado mucho. Es una historia dura, como todas estas historias, pero a la vez es una historia muy bonita, donde el autor cambia su vida y construye una relación de amistad, con una persona que en cierto modo puede considerarse de su familia.
Un libro diferente, que recomiendo mucho, donde como he dicho se verá mucho el papel de las personas que ayudaron a tantos y tantos judíos refugiándolos en sus hogares.
August 12, 2018
From BBC radio 4 - Book of the week:
The story of a man's search for the truth about his family's past
The last time Hesseline - known as Lien - saw her parents was in The Hague as she was collected at the door by a stranger and taken to a city far away to be hidden from the Nazis. She was raised by her foster family as one of their own but, some years after the war, she became estranged from the family who took her in. What was her side of the story? Bart van Es - a grandson of the couple who looked after Lien - was determined to find out.
Lien was now in her 80s and living in Amsterdam. Reluctantly, she agreed to meet him and eventually they struck up a remarkable friendship. The Cut Out Girl combines a powerful recreation of Lien's intensely harrowing childhood story with the wider picture of life in Holland under the Nazi occupation.
In the first episode, Bart goes to Amsterdam to meet Lien and ask if she might be willing to tell him her story.
Written by Bart Van Es
Read by Daniel Weyman
Abridged by Isobel Creed and Lizzie Davies
Produced by Lizzie Davies
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bd...
The story of a man's search for the truth about his family's past
The last time Hesseline - known as Lien - saw her parents was in The Hague as she was collected at the door by a stranger and taken to a city far away to be hidden from the Nazis. She was raised by her foster family as one of their own but, some years after the war, she became estranged from the family who took her in. What was her side of the story? Bart van Es - a grandson of the couple who looked after Lien - was determined to find out.
Lien was now in her 80s and living in Amsterdam. Reluctantly, she agreed to meet him and eventually they struck up a remarkable friendship. The Cut Out Girl combines a powerful recreation of Lien's intensely harrowing childhood story with the wider picture of life in Holland under the Nazi occupation.
In the first episode, Bart goes to Amsterdam to meet Lien and ask if she might be willing to tell him her story.
Written by Bart Van Es
Read by Daniel Weyman
Abridged by Isobel Creed and Lizzie Davies
Produced by Lizzie Davies
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bd...
September 6, 2018
Many thanks to #NetGalley and Penguin Press for allowing me to read a copy of this book in exchange for an honest opinion.
I have always been fascinated by stories of the Second World War and as my father served with the Canadian Army in Netherlands for quite some time, I have a particular interest in stories of that time. I have also been fortunate enough to visit the Netherlands and see places like the Annex where Anne Frank and her family hid or the hidden cupboard in the home of Corrie Ten Boom where many people would hide for shorter periods of time. In spite of all that, I did not find this book a particularly easy one to read. The author Bart van Es had a very personal reason for writing this book. His family had been involved in helping to hide a young Jewish girl, Lientje during the war and had even fostered her for some years after the war but ultimately there had been a break n the family relationship that vanEs wanted to understand.
The story is told at times through the eyes of young Lientje, who although now a senior is telling her story to vanEs. I was saddened to learn that when she had left her family to go into hiding she had really had very little understanding of what was about to happen or why. I can only imagine what that must have been like for her on an emotional level and it made me think of children who are still being separated from their parents in 2018 (albeit for different reasons) and what the long term ramifications of those separations will be.
On another level this book is a bit of a detective story as vanEs travels to various places in the Netherlands to follow up on what Lientje has shared with him. In some cases there is quite a bit to see and learn and in others the landscape has changed dramatically through time. Some of the contacts he makes as he explores are able to fill in the gaps that are inevitable in Lientje's mind. It was fascinating to see it all come together and a few history lessons interjected along the way were extremely eye opening for me.
Sadly, not all who helped to hide Lientje from the Germans had her best interests at heart. There were those who treated her more as a servant than a family member and even those who sexually abused her. When the war ended there were no parents for her to go home to and throughout her lifetime she struggled to deal with the emotions and self-esteem issues that developed as a result of her experiences. She was like a child cut out of her element struggling to find out where she would fit. She would not have been alone in this experience. I was stunned to read that in early 1944, a resistance leader who had a strong Calvinist background had begun printing leaflets that instructed the members of her resistance group (who had saved about 80 children) to "keep hold of their charges in the event that a mother or father should return to reclaim their child. By handing their children to the resistance, she argued, Jewish parents had renounced their parental rights."
The book includes many wonderful photographs that really helped me to visualize who was who in the story and it was rewarding to see the relationship develop between the author and his subject, to the point where once again "family" connections were established. Even more satisfying was the knowledge that revisiting her past and learning more of things she had not understood as she was living these experiences helped to bring about a healing and wholeness for her.
This is a story which still has much to teach the reader of today and is one would definitely recommend to those wishing to better understand what it was like to lose the story of one's past.
I have always been fascinated by stories of the Second World War and as my father served with the Canadian Army in Netherlands for quite some time, I have a particular interest in stories of that time. I have also been fortunate enough to visit the Netherlands and see places like the Annex where Anne Frank and her family hid or the hidden cupboard in the home of Corrie Ten Boom where many people would hide for shorter periods of time. In spite of all that, I did not find this book a particularly easy one to read. The author Bart van Es had a very personal reason for writing this book. His family had been involved in helping to hide a young Jewish girl, Lientje during the war and had even fostered her for some years after the war but ultimately there had been a break n the family relationship that vanEs wanted to understand.
The story is told at times through the eyes of young Lientje, who although now a senior is telling her story to vanEs. I was saddened to learn that when she had left her family to go into hiding she had really had very little understanding of what was about to happen or why. I can only imagine what that must have been like for her on an emotional level and it made me think of children who are still being separated from their parents in 2018 (albeit for different reasons) and what the long term ramifications of those separations will be.
On another level this book is a bit of a detective story as vanEs travels to various places in the Netherlands to follow up on what Lientje has shared with him. In some cases there is quite a bit to see and learn and in others the landscape has changed dramatically through time. Some of the contacts he makes as he explores are able to fill in the gaps that are inevitable in Lientje's mind. It was fascinating to see it all come together and a few history lessons interjected along the way were extremely eye opening for me.
Sadly, not all who helped to hide Lientje from the Germans had her best interests at heart. There were those who treated her more as a servant than a family member and even those who sexually abused her. When the war ended there were no parents for her to go home to and throughout her lifetime she struggled to deal with the emotions and self-esteem issues that developed as a result of her experiences. She was like a child cut out of her element struggling to find out where she would fit. She would not have been alone in this experience. I was stunned to read that in early 1944, a resistance leader who had a strong Calvinist background had begun printing leaflets that instructed the members of her resistance group (who had saved about 80 children) to "keep hold of their charges in the event that a mother or father should return to reclaim their child. By handing their children to the resistance, she argued, Jewish parents had renounced their parental rights."
The book includes many wonderful photographs that really helped me to visualize who was who in the story and it was rewarding to see the relationship develop between the author and his subject, to the point where once again "family" connections were established. Even more satisfying was the knowledge that revisiting her past and learning more of things she had not understood as she was living these experiences helped to bring about a healing and wholeness for her.
This is a story which still has much to teach the reader of today and is one would definitely recommend to those wishing to better understand what it was like to lose the story of one's past.
January 15, 2020
Queria saber mais sobre esta menina judia mas o autor divagou imenso enquanto contava a sua história. Como gostei da parte que me levou a ouvir o livro não lhe dou 2⭐.
August 13, 2018
BOTW
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bd...Description: a young Jewish girl named Lientje had been taken in during the war by relatives and hidden from the Nazis, handed over by her parents, who understood the danger they were in all too well. The girl had been raised by her foster family as one of their own, but then, well after the war, there was a falling out, and they were no longer in touch. What was the girl's side of the story, Bart wondered? What really happened during the war, and after?
So began an investigation that would consume Bart van Es's life, and change it. After some sleuthing, he learned that Lientje was now in her 80s and living in Amsterdam. Somewhat reluctantly, she agreed to meet him, and eventually they struck up a remarkable friendship, even a partnership. The Cut Out Girl braids together a powerful recreation of that intensely harrowing childhood story of Lientje's with the present-day account of Bart's efforts to piece that story together, including bringing some old ghosts back into the light.
It is a story rich with contradictions. There is great bravery and generosity--first Lientje's parents, giving up their beloved daughter, and then the Dutch families who face great danger from the Nazi occupation for taking Lientje and other Jewish children in. And there are more mundane sacrifices a family under brutal occupation must make to provide for even the family they already have. But tidy Holland also must face a darker truth, namely that it was more cooperative in rounding up its Jews for the Nazis than any other Western European country; that is part of Lientje's story too. Her time in hiding was made much more terrifying by the energetic efforts of the local Dutch authorities, zealous accomplices in the mission of sending every Jew, man, woman and child, East to their extermination. And Lientje was not always particularly well treated, and sometimes, Bart learned, she was very badly treated indeed.
September 3, 2018
I am a huge fan of historical fiction/non-fiction, and particularly stories that involve WWII, and so when I heard about The Cut Out Girl I was very eager to read it. And I must say, it did not disappoint. I was drawn in instantly and could not put it down. Beautifully written. Do not miss this one.
November 15, 2019
Why unearth the past, why drag the dusty skeletons out of the closet?
Bart van Es grew up knowing that his Dutch grandparents had been a part of the Resistance during the war; he knew, vaguely, that they had ‘hidden’ Jewish children, and that there had been one child in particular - Lien, ‘Lientje’ - who had been more like a family member. He also knew that something had gone wrong, that there was sadness and secrecy associated with Lien, and that it was a subject that the family, particularly his grandmother, did not want to talk about. And knowing all this, van Es - who is a professor at Oxford - decided to reach out to Lien. Without knowing her story, he sensed that there was an important story buried under years and family silence, and with an eye on the ticking clock of time, he decided that it was a story worth pursuing.
This is a detective story of sorts, constructed in such a way that the reader works through the clues (pictures, letters, official documents, personal testimony) along with the author. It begins with an uneasy and cautious meeting between van Es and the woman Lien - now in her 80s - and ends with a hopefulness and healing on both sides. Even though Lien had believed that she had both raked over and come to terms with the past, there were still gaps to fill, questions to answer and old wounds that needed lancing.
It’s also an investigation into the Netherlands during World War II, and van Es does an extremely good job of giving some historical context to the personal story. Like many others, I knew something about the Resistance efforts of the Dutch, but nothing really about the collusion between the Dutch and Germans which existed in the first couple of years of occupation. Apparently the Dutch were ruthlessly efficient at ‘giving up’ their Jewish population - many of whom were longtime and totally assimilated Dutch citizens. I saw van Es give a talk on this book, and in an unforgettable moment, he showed a picture of a large group of young men and women enjoying a day at the beach in Scheveningen (just north of The Hague). Two of that group were Lien’s parents. By the end of the war, only one of those youthful, vibrant people was still alive.
One of the things I particularly valued about this investigative memoir is that doesn’t begin and end with the war. What van Es makes very clear is that Lien’s struggle does not end at the moment she is allowed to come out of hiding. Being turned into a sort of ghost, and losing all of her family, is an experience that has taken a lifetime to process and there is no such thing as total ‘recovery’. A fellow survivor described the persistence of being ‘haunted by the feeling that they did not belong in the world’. There are many interesting revelations in this book, but by far the most important aspect is Lien’s story - and the value of being patched back in (as opposed to ‘cut out’) of the van Es family story.
Bart van Es grew up knowing that his Dutch grandparents had been a part of the Resistance during the war; he knew, vaguely, that they had ‘hidden’ Jewish children, and that there had been one child in particular - Lien, ‘Lientje’ - who had been more like a family member. He also knew that something had gone wrong, that there was sadness and secrecy associated with Lien, and that it was a subject that the family, particularly his grandmother, did not want to talk about. And knowing all this, van Es - who is a professor at Oxford - decided to reach out to Lien. Without knowing her story, he sensed that there was an important story buried under years and family silence, and with an eye on the ticking clock of time, he decided that it was a story worth pursuing.
This is a detective story of sorts, constructed in such a way that the reader works through the clues (pictures, letters, official documents, personal testimony) along with the author. It begins with an uneasy and cautious meeting between van Es and the woman Lien - now in her 80s - and ends with a hopefulness and healing on both sides. Even though Lien had believed that she had both raked over and come to terms with the past, there were still gaps to fill, questions to answer and old wounds that needed lancing.
It’s also an investigation into the Netherlands during World War II, and van Es does an extremely good job of giving some historical context to the personal story. Like many others, I knew something about the Resistance efforts of the Dutch, but nothing really about the collusion between the Dutch and Germans which existed in the first couple of years of occupation. Apparently the Dutch were ruthlessly efficient at ‘giving up’ their Jewish population - many of whom were longtime and totally assimilated Dutch citizens. I saw van Es give a talk on this book, and in an unforgettable moment, he showed a picture of a large group of young men and women enjoying a day at the beach in Scheveningen (just north of The Hague). Two of that group were Lien’s parents. By the end of the war, only one of those youthful, vibrant people was still alive.
One of the things I particularly valued about this investigative memoir is that doesn’t begin and end with the war. What van Es makes very clear is that Lien’s struggle does not end at the moment she is allowed to come out of hiding. Being turned into a sort of ghost, and losing all of her family, is an experience that has taken a lifetime to process and there is no such thing as total ‘recovery’. A fellow survivor described the persistence of being ‘haunted by the feeling that they did not belong in the world’. There are many interesting revelations in this book, but by far the most important aspect is Lien’s story - and the value of being patched back in (as opposed to ‘cut out’) of the van Es family story.
August 3, 2018
Bart van Es tells the story of a young Jewish girl named Lientjie who was taken in during the War by his grandparents. He doesn't know too much about the story but is aware that at one point there was a falling out and they lost touch with her. This book tells the story of him first reaching out to Lientjie and then the process of discovering what had happened to her, his family, and why the falling out happened.
Bart van Es treats this story with the respect and care it deserves even when he discovers things that I am sure would have been easier to hide and or/ignore. I absolutely loved the way he wove Lientjie's story in with the story of his research as well. I enjoyed seeing their friendship grow as the story progressed. The switching between present and past and Bart van Es trips to see many of the location Lientjie tells him about - really made the story come alive for me. I am not ashamed to say that I shed tears reading this book - the subject matter was not always easy to get though.
I am thankful for the Goodreads giveaway that put this book in my hands and even more grateful for Bart van Es for telling this story. A big takeaway from this book for me was that even thought human beings are capable of such horror - there are always those who are willing to fight, to help and to try make a difference. My heart is grateful for the many hero's in this book who helped Jewish people escape, hide and survive the war. My heart aches for those who didn't survive, for those who lost family members and friends and for those who were left with the horrifying emotional scars that come from such events.
You need to read this book.
Bart van Es treats this story with the respect and care it deserves even when he discovers things that I am sure would have been easier to hide and or/ignore. I absolutely loved the way he wove Lientjie's story in with the story of his research as well. I enjoyed seeing their friendship grow as the story progressed. The switching between present and past and Bart van Es trips to see many of the location Lientjie tells him about - really made the story come alive for me. I am not ashamed to say that I shed tears reading this book - the subject matter was not always easy to get though.
I am thankful for the Goodreads giveaway that put this book in my hands and even more grateful for Bart van Es for telling this story. A big takeaway from this book for me was that even thought human beings are capable of such horror - there are always those who are willing to fight, to help and to try make a difference. My heart is grateful for the many hero's in this book who helped Jewish people escape, hide and survive the war. My heart aches for those who didn't survive, for those who lost family members and friends and for those who were left with the horrifying emotional scars that come from such events.
You need to read this book.
February 23, 2019
Just when you think there are no new angles to stories about the Holocaust something comes along that is both desperately tragic but also vital and healing. Lientje’s story is heartbreaking, but it’s related here with compassion and love. It’s about families and surviving. The Dutch don’t come out of this in any great light, but it’s far less about blame than understanding.
March 17, 2019
this book I found very interesting and tell the story of the authors foster aunt who was given away during the German occupation of the Netherlands and had several hiding houses. the book follows interviewers during a period where the story explains her experiences during the second world war as a young girl and finding later that her parents had passed away in a concentration camp.
August 7, 2019
Upgrade to 4.5
Most of us are familiar with the affecting story of Anne Frank and her family's grievous attempts to survive the Nazi invasion in Holland. This author's focus is particularly about the “hidden children” during the Holocaust. In particular, the focus is on a young Jewish girl, Lientje. She was, at the age of eight, entrusted by her parents to be hidden and cared for by others. This heart-rending tale lays bare much of what befell these children. I have often wondered what they thought and felt during and following this time.
Throughout the book the author has pointed out Lientje's existence during this lengthy period of concealment. It is true that the families who chose to participate in sheltering were often unselfish and kind, but clearly many traumatic events occurred along the way. I will not introduce the reason for the title- “The Cut Out Girl”, but one can view how appropriate and moving this is. As an adult Lien said as a result of her isolation she had stopped seeing the world.
"It was being that was just being , and where, and how, and with whom that was all uncertain. "( p. 119)
When Lien was in her eighties she spoke in slightly imperfect English:
When I was eight years old, I went hiding and said good-bye to my father and mother and I thought it was just for a few weeks.
And it went on and on and it did not end and I did not see them anymore.... (p.285)
After naming numerous family members and friends she stated:
And I want to tell you. And I missed them the rest of my life. (p.286)
Parts of this book were somewhat disorganized and fragmented, but for the most part, Van Es's painstaking research through records and interviews were clearly presented. I have read numerous accounts of the Holocaust, both fact and fiction; but I learned much more about Holland's place in this time. In particular, I was further horrified to discover that despite a large scale rescue of children separated from parents, many were sent to orphanages, or released for adoption, even forcing them to leave caring families where they wanted to stay. Many thousands had been saved, but the emotional impact of survival would remain for lifetimes. Also, as in other places in Europe, despite the horrors and the tortures throughout the war, Antisemitism did not end, but continued to
evolve. I learned that Holland's loss of Jewish population was among the highest at 80 %.
It was particularly of interest to me to read this account, written by a Dutchman whose family took an active role in concealing a child in danger and to define the challenges for all.
Most of us are familiar with the affecting story of Anne Frank and her family's grievous attempts to survive the Nazi invasion in Holland. This author's focus is particularly about the “hidden children” during the Holocaust. In particular, the focus is on a young Jewish girl, Lientje. She was, at the age of eight, entrusted by her parents to be hidden and cared for by others. This heart-rending tale lays bare much of what befell these children. I have often wondered what they thought and felt during and following this time.
Throughout the book the author has pointed out Lientje's existence during this lengthy period of concealment. It is true that the families who chose to participate in sheltering were often unselfish and kind, but clearly many traumatic events occurred along the way. I will not introduce the reason for the title- “The Cut Out Girl”, but one can view how appropriate and moving this is. As an adult Lien said as a result of her isolation she had stopped seeing the world.
"It was being that was just being , and where, and how, and with whom that was all uncertain. "( p. 119)
When Lien was in her eighties she spoke in slightly imperfect English:
When I was eight years old, I went hiding and said good-bye to my father and mother and I thought it was just for a few weeks.
And it went on and on and it did not end and I did not see them anymore.... (p.285)
After naming numerous family members and friends she stated:
And I want to tell you. And I missed them the rest of my life. (p.286)
Parts of this book were somewhat disorganized and fragmented, but for the most part, Van Es's painstaking research through records and interviews were clearly presented. I have read numerous accounts of the Holocaust, both fact and fiction; but I learned much more about Holland's place in this time. In particular, I was further horrified to discover that despite a large scale rescue of children separated from parents, many were sent to orphanages, or released for adoption, even forcing them to leave caring families where they wanted to stay. Many thousands had been saved, but the emotional impact of survival would remain for lifetimes. Also, as in other places in Europe, despite the horrors and the tortures throughout the war, Antisemitism did not end, but continued to
evolve. I learned that Holland's loss of Jewish population was among the highest at 80 %.
It was particularly of interest to me to read this account, written by a Dutchman whose family took an active role in concealing a child in danger and to define the challenges for all.
July 5, 2020
Recibí este libro y desde entonces no he podido dejar de leerlo, pese a ser una de las muchas historias sobre la segunda guerra mundial, está contada de una manera diferente y nos amplia la información hasta el presente por lo que me ha parecido una forma de narrarlo muy original y especial.
Es una historia real relacionada con la familia del autor, esto la hace mas especial si cabe, nos habla sobre lo difícil que lo tuvieron los niños judíos cuando los nazis los atacaban duramente, y lo mejor sin duda ha sido conocer la red de familias que se prestaron a ayudar a estos niños aun a riesgo de ponerse en peligro ellos mismos.
Lo que este libro nos transmite es la generosidad de esas familias y el amor que les dieron a esos niños a los que escondieron.
Es una historia dura, pero también preciosa... como muchas que se fraguaron en aquella época.
La protagonista Lien y su evolución ha sido para mi lo mejor del libro. Ella fue una de las niñas que tuvo que buscar refugio y gracias a ella conoceremos lo que vivió durante esos años.
Si te gustan este tipo de historias no puedes perdértela.
Es una historia real relacionada con la familia del autor, esto la hace mas especial si cabe, nos habla sobre lo difícil que lo tuvieron los niños judíos cuando los nazis los atacaban duramente, y lo mejor sin duda ha sido conocer la red de familias que se prestaron a ayudar a estos niños aun a riesgo de ponerse en peligro ellos mismos.
Lo que este libro nos transmite es la generosidad de esas familias y el amor que les dieron a esos niños a los que escondieron.
Es una historia dura, pero también preciosa... como muchas que se fraguaron en aquella época.
La protagonista Lien y su evolución ha sido para mi lo mejor del libro. Ella fue una de las niñas que tuvo que buscar refugio y gracias a ella conoceremos lo que vivió durante esos años.
Si te gustan este tipo de historias no puedes perdértela.
May 20, 2023
A sensitively told family story, which also paints a good picture of the Dutch political scene during the German occupation. Reading it, I learned a lot about the Netherlands during WWII, and I admired Van Es’s skill in manoeuvring what must have been something of a minefield, given that his grandparents were hiding and caring for the young Jewish girl at the centre of the account. I was deeply saddened to read of her abuse by those who were later entrusted with her care.
September 3, 2018
I didn’t care for the writing style, he gets off the focus of the book too many times for me.
July 10, 2019
A very impressive read. I thought I knew all there was to know about the Netherlands at the time of World War II, but the book still had some new insights for me. I didn't know that we had the highest percentage of Jewish people being taken and murdered, even higher than in Germany! Due amongst others to the registration of all Jewish citizens and the cooperation of the Jewish Council and Dutch officials. If only all registrations had been destroyed early on... And apparently the resistance began to take a serious form when Dutch men were taken to work in Germany. That moved the people more than Jewish neighbours being taken... The Catholic priests asked for help way earlier than the protestant Church did. And, according to the book, such requests for help from the pulpit were very meaningful to enlist actual help.
Besides interesting facts it's also an interesting read because the story is told from the perspective of a young girl given up for safety by her parents and spending the years of war in hiding in several different families. She feels very much at home and at ease in the first one, but has to leave because of a knock at the door by nazi sided policemen. Her other addresses are merely to keep her out of the hands of the nazis, but there's no real family life and she even suffers from abuse.
After the war she is welcomed back in the family where she spent the first period of hiding. From then on the book is about her growing up and interactions with her chosen family that come to an abrupt ending in the eighties.
From start to finish this was an interesting read about war, about growing up, about a family. It is non fiction, the author (a nephew of Lien, the girl) also tells about his conversations with Lien, his spending time in the Netherlands visiting all the places she mentions and his visits to various libraries to do research.
Highly recommendable!
Besides interesting facts it's also an interesting read because the story is told from the perspective of a young girl given up for safety by her parents and spending the years of war in hiding in several different families. She feels very much at home and at ease in the first one, but has to leave because of a knock at the door by nazi sided policemen. Her other addresses are merely to keep her out of the hands of the nazis, but there's no real family life and she even suffers from abuse.
After the war she is welcomed back in the family where she spent the first period of hiding. From then on the book is about her growing up and interactions with her chosen family that come to an abrupt ending in the eighties.
From start to finish this was an interesting read about war, about growing up, about a family. It is non fiction, the author (a nephew of Lien, the girl) also tells about his conversations with Lien, his spending time in the Netherlands visiting all the places she mentions and his visits to various libraries to do research.
Highly recommendable!
March 7, 2019
I just finished reading the graphic novel version of Anne Frank's Diary, so I guess this was natural progression. Another young girl in the Netherlands hidden to save her life. The author included quite a bit of history about the Dutch underground that I did not know. It was a bit shocking to learn that of all the countries with Jewish populations, the Netherlands lost the most during WW2. 80%. 80%!!! I had heard so many stories about how the Dutch protected and hid Jews, that it hardly seemed possible. Apparently, though, early on, the Germans created programs to be run by Dutch Police and others to gather information on the Jewish population, and the programs were devastatingly efficient. The Dutch were, like everyone else, on both sides of the question. Many many people risked their lives to help the Jews, but many others did the opposite, and for a multitude of reasons. At one point, van Es discovers that one street he went to visit had during the war 3 households that were hiding Jews (they did not know of each other - as Jews, that is) AND one with a Dutch collaborator watching the neighbourhood who eventually discovered and betrayed one of the families. So, both sides. Which makes a lot of sense. My father, who grew up in the Netherlands during the war, was just as scared of the Dutch Police (not that all of them were working for the Germans, but some were) as of the Germans. Who to trust? That was the question.
A difficult story to tell. One moment that stood out to me in particular was when Lien had received letters from her parents and the longing for them nearly broke her. She could not stop crying. For days. Her foster mother didn't know what to do, how to help, so she ended up just taking her outside where they walked and walked, both of them crying.
A difficult story to tell. One moment that stood out to me in particular was when Lien had received letters from her parents and the longing for them nearly broke her. She could not stop crying. For days. Her foster mother didn't know what to do, how to help, so she ended up just taking her outside where they walked and walked, both of them crying.
Read
October 13, 2021Ich hab jetzt so lange keine Zeit mehr gefunden, das Buch zu lesen, dass ich jetzt komplett raus bin und auch keine Lust hab es noch mal von vorne zu beginnen, außerdem langweilt mich der biografische Schreibstil derzeit. Deswegen breche ich es jetzt ab 😐
July 27, 2019
This book is about a Jewish Dutch girl Lien and the various families who saved her following the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands, in particular the van Es family. The ‘the cut out girl’ represents Lien but the title comes from a picture in a ‘poesie’ album she kept which was a scrapbook of poetry that people wrote in for her and about her - these were popular with girls at that time. Lien’s family were not especially religious and the author pointed out that it is really Hitler who made Lien Jewish following the invasion in May 1940. From 1941 similar rules to those implemented in Germany from 1935 (Nuremberg Laws) were enforced such as wearing the yellow star and Lien had to go to Jewish school. Prior to this her childhood had consisted of mixing happily with other children surrounded by a happy extended family and caring neighbours. There are some lovely pictures to illustrate this life that was to end so disastrously.
As well as an explanation of Lien’s early life the book explained the background to the arrival of Jews in the Netherlands from early Middle Ages escaping pograms and harsh laws elsewhere. It portrayed the area as very tolerant so it’s a shock to learn that of the 18,000 Jews in The Hague where Lien spent her early years only 200 survived and in fact the country lost over 80% of its Jewish population. I knew it was a high statistic but I hadn’t realised it was that dramatic. Often they were betrayed by the Dutch themselves who were paid 7.5 guilder and by very enthusiastic police hunters who received precious little punishment post war for their actions. Lien was one of the lucky ones - if you count surviving and losing virtually all your family.
The book described how she was taken from her family in late summer of 1942 by Mrs Heroma, known as Took (she and her husband were central to Nazi resistance) to live with Jans and Henk van Es who were the authors grandparents. A lot of Dutch families sheltered children as it was relatively easy to absorb them into their families. The van Esses were very kind to her and she felt happy there. There are some lovely letters she received from her family on her 9th birthday before they were put on the trains to the death camps. Sadly Lien had to be moved several times and not all of them happy such as the final place she stayed in Gelderland. Although they were not especially kind they did at least protect her and they didn’t give her up. It was at this time aged 11/12 she was repeated raped by the seemingly jolly uncle of the family. After the war Lien returned to the van Es family although in later years they became estranged. One of the most profound sections was where Lien had the courage to go to Auschwitz and there she had the bravery to read out a letter in English detailing what happened to her family members.
I found a lot of the book interesting especially the historical background and I greatly admired Lien and the people who risked a great deal to save her. However, it is quite dispassionate at times but perhaps that was a deliberate tactic as I guess the facts spoke for themselves. I found a lot of the pictures very moving too - there’s a little picture of a bewildered and sad little 9 year chap called Hansje and part of the picture at the bottom is missing as someone removed his prominent yellow star. There were sections of the book which go off on tangents and they irritated me as it stopped the flow of the story. Overall, an interesting book but definitely not the best one I’ve read about this period.
As well as an explanation of Lien’s early life the book explained the background to the arrival of Jews in the Netherlands from early Middle Ages escaping pograms and harsh laws elsewhere. It portrayed the area as very tolerant so it’s a shock to learn that of the 18,000 Jews in The Hague where Lien spent her early years only 200 survived and in fact the country lost over 80% of its Jewish population. I knew it was a high statistic but I hadn’t realised it was that dramatic. Often they were betrayed by the Dutch themselves who were paid 7.5 guilder and by very enthusiastic police hunters who received precious little punishment post war for their actions. Lien was one of the lucky ones - if you count surviving and losing virtually all your family.
The book described how she was taken from her family in late summer of 1942 by Mrs Heroma, known as Took (she and her husband were central to Nazi resistance) to live with Jans and Henk van Es who were the authors grandparents. A lot of Dutch families sheltered children as it was relatively easy to absorb them into their families. The van Esses were very kind to her and she felt happy there. There are some lovely letters she received from her family on her 9th birthday before they were put on the trains to the death camps. Sadly Lien had to be moved several times and not all of them happy such as the final place she stayed in Gelderland. Although they were not especially kind they did at least protect her and they didn’t give her up. It was at this time aged 11/12 she was repeated raped by the seemingly jolly uncle of the family. After the war Lien returned to the van Es family although in later years they became estranged. One of the most profound sections was where Lien had the courage to go to Auschwitz and there she had the bravery to read out a letter in English detailing what happened to her family members.
I found a lot of the book interesting especially the historical background and I greatly admired Lien and the people who risked a great deal to save her. However, it is quite dispassionate at times but perhaps that was a deliberate tactic as I guess the facts spoke for themselves. I found a lot of the pictures very moving too - there’s a little picture of a bewildered and sad little 9 year chap called Hansje and part of the picture at the bottom is missing as someone removed his prominent yellow star. There were sections of the book which go off on tangents and they irritated me as it stopped the flow of the story. Overall, an interesting book but definitely not the best one I’ve read about this period.
June 21, 2019
Bart van Es' detailed, painstaking and thorough investigation of the life of his 'aunt' Lien is a truly moving, often heart-breaking account of a Jewish child's struggle for survival in wartime Holland and her life after the war.
Lien was sent by her parents in 1942 to live with a foster family, the van Eses, who bravely took her in and treated her as one of their own children at the time when the witch-hunt to round up all Dutch Jews and deport them to the concentration camps was beginning. Lien lived happily with the van Es family for months, gradually forgetting her parents as Ma and Pa Es started to replace them in her heart and her new sisters and brothers and school friends became her family. It would be years before Lien knew anything of the deaths of her parents and most of her extended family in Auschwitz.
The period of stability and happiness with the van Es family came to an abrupt end when the special police charged with hunting down all 'hidden' Jewish children appeared about to catch Lien. Moved by the underground resistance movement from home to home in an effort to keep her safe, Lien's story evolves as a series of traumatic events in which her whole being is undermined and she becomes the hollowed out cut out girl of the title.
Finally reunited with the van Es family at the end of the war, Lien's life should have run on happily but, years later, an event that leads to her being cut out of the family brings new pain and isolation.
Bart van Es, in close collaboration with Lien, (and through detailed research of other sources), brings us an amazing, enlightening and often chilling tale of courage, ingenuity, love and survival. A truly superb and thought-provoking read.
Lien was sent by her parents in 1942 to live with a foster family, the van Eses, who bravely took her in and treated her as one of their own children at the time when the witch-hunt to round up all Dutch Jews and deport them to the concentration camps was beginning. Lien lived happily with the van Es family for months, gradually forgetting her parents as Ma and Pa Es started to replace them in her heart and her new sisters and brothers and school friends became her family. It would be years before Lien knew anything of the deaths of her parents and most of her extended family in Auschwitz.
The period of stability and happiness with the van Es family came to an abrupt end when the special police charged with hunting down all 'hidden' Jewish children appeared about to catch Lien. Moved by the underground resistance movement from home to home in an effort to keep her safe, Lien's story evolves as a series of traumatic events in which her whole being is undermined and she becomes the hollowed out cut out girl of the title.
Finally reunited with the van Es family at the end of the war, Lien's life should have run on happily but, years later, an event that leads to her being cut out of the family brings new pain and isolation.
Bart van Es, in close collaboration with Lien, (and through detailed research of other sources), brings us an amazing, enlightening and often chilling tale of courage, ingenuity, love and survival. A truly superb and thought-provoking read.
August 21, 2018
The Cut Out Girl was an interesting story about World War II and the Holocaust. I don't want to give too much away about the story, but I do believe anyone who is interested in this time period will enjoy this book.
This book has two interconnected stories, the author, Bart Van Es's family hid a Jewish girl named Lientje, during World War II. He decides to rack Lientje down so he can understand the full story behind her life and what is was life in the Netherlands when it was occupied by the Nazi's. I found this to be a very interesting story and certainly recommend it to anyone who is interested in this time period.
Thank you to the publisher, Random House, for sending me an ARC of this book.
This book has two interconnected stories, the author, Bart Van Es's family hid a Jewish girl named Lientje, during World War II. He decides to rack Lientje down so he can understand the full story behind her life and what is was life in the Netherlands when it was occupied by the Nazi's. I found this to be a very interesting story and certainly recommend it to anyone who is interested in this time period.
Thank you to the publisher, Random House, for sending me an ARC of this book.
June 10, 2019
Lien's story itself is remarkable, heartbreaking, and healing. I wanted to know so much more.
Sadly the book is very poorly written with long passages that have little to do with the story. The parts were you want to go deeper, learn more, understand more are left largely untouched. Aside from Lien's story not being truly told, as a Dutch Canadian I had very little sense of Holland then or now.
Lien's story is one worth telling. The author wasn't the best one to tell it.
Sadly the book is very poorly written with long passages that have little to do with the story. The parts were you want to go deeper, learn more, understand more are left largely untouched. Aside from Lien's story not being truly told, as a Dutch Canadian I had very little sense of Holland then or now.
Lien's story is one worth telling. The author wasn't the best one to tell it.
June 27, 2020
This was recommended to be what a story ,i cried a lot and feared for the main character throughout. Such incredibly scary times and so violent and to be child alone passed around like furniture to whomever was available,or had the heart to take her in. Heartbreaking and yet how very brave she was though this life must have left her also fragile and wary for the rest of her life.A true story.
June 10, 2019
Didn’t understand why we had the voice of the author in this book when I just wanted to know about Lien not Bart. Was dissatisfied
November 23, 2021
For my full review: https://girlwithherheadinabook.co.uk/...
I had vaguely heard of The Cut Out Girl winning the Costa prize a few years ago, something which surprised me as it defeated Normal People, a book that I absolutely adored. Author Bart van Es lives in England but spent his childhood in Holland. He recalled hearing that his late grandparents had hidden Jews during the Second World War and that one of the children they protected continued to live with them after the war, but then many years later there was a falling out and they lost touch. Wondering what the other side of the story was, van Es set out to investigate. He tracked down Lien de Jong, now in her 80s and living in Amsterdam. Although she was reluctant to see him, she finally did so and they struck up a cautious friendship. She agreed to let him write her memoir and so the rest of the book weaves together both van Es retelling Lientje's life story with the two of them in the present day piecing it back together and confronting old ghosts. If van Es had written a simple biography of Hesseline 'Lien' de Jong-Spiero, it would have been an incredible story in its own right, but The Cut Out Girl is more than that. It is an exploration of trauma, memory and family, of the ties that bind us together and how easily they can be broken.
Long lauded as a place of refuge, Holland had been receiving Jewish refugees for centuries. Even when the Nazis came to power, 35,000 Jews fled to Holland from Germany. At the time of the Holland invasion, there were 18,000 Jews living in The Hague. Only 2000 would survive by the end of the war. Lien's parents were not observant and 'it is really Hitler who makes Lien Jewish'. She is seven when she starts having to attend a Jewish school and eight when her mother has to sew yellow stars on all her clothes. Then comes the day when her mother has to tell her a secret, that she will be going somewhere else for a while. It would be heartbreaking enough if van Es had simply stated the order of events but far worse as he describes them via the surviving accounts. The woman who smuggled Lien to her new home heard her mother sobbing after she closed the door behind them.
The new family lived in Dordrecht, they were the van Eses, the author's own grandparents. They were kind and despite her homesickness, Lien started to feel at home. After a bare few months however, the police arrived and she had to flee in the company of a teenaged boy who protected her. For the rest of the war, Lien lived in semi-servitude with a strict Protestant family. While the elderly Lien tries to make excuses for the family and to acknowledge her own wilful behaviour, she is clearly pleased when van Es interviews someone who knew her foster parents and confirms that they did treat Lien unkindly. There is something very healing in having one's own memories confirmed. Even worse than being treated as a servant though is the sexual abuse which she suffers at the hands of one of their relations. With nobody at all to confide in and no vocabulary with which to vocalise the experience, Lien is lost.
Memory slips away from us like sand and as Lien's trauma grew more intense, so too did her recollections grow cloudier. The Cut Out Girl poses the question of how we can ever clearly know our own story. Lien reads the letter written by the boy who helped her flee from the van Eses and has little memory of him. Despite the note's obvious strong feeling, she never replied. There is an added tragedy in how she tries to resolve her own pain at the circumstances of her second 'hiding family' by making excuses for them. Reading the book, I got a powerful sense of a child alone without a protector. Lien observes to van Es that 'without families, you don't get stories' and for me, this quotation was key. The memories that I have held on to most have been the ones that have been affirmed and retold through family discussions. It is striking to me that I can remember events from my aunt's wedding when I was three years old far more than I do my primary school years. But then, I left my primary school when I was ten years old and I never saw those people again. About ten years ago, I was on a train that sped through my old primary school playing field and past the house we lived in at the time. The memories blasted out. It made me realise that those years of my life are not so faded as I thought,, they are simply inaccessible because in my daily life, I have no connection to those events. There is something so utterly bleak in the realisation that nobody cared enough about Lien to talk to her, to listen to her, to help her form connections. They kept her alive but that was all. Is it any wonder that her memories shrivelled on the vine?
In that respect, The Cut Out Girl is a curious memoir. Van Es acknowledges that as time goes on Lien 'lived just in herself, living that was just living; she suddenly starts having these enormous gaps where she remembers absolutely nothing', but then flips to recounting events in intimate detail. During the mass exodus in 1944, he writes that Lien 'felt sticky' under the three dresses she wore for ease of transport. Then he admits later that, 'Of the journey to Ede … she can picture nothing at all'. It is as if van Es is reconstructing Lien's memories. He is an academic, he knows how to do research. He has carried out interviews, read the historical accounts and looked into the history. Short of travelling back in time, van Es has done his best to find out for Lien what happened. So many years after his grandparents cut off contact with her, it feels like an act of atonement. Van Es' affirmation of Lien's feelings on the second foster family echoes this. Later, when culpability shifts towards his own grandparents, van Es again supports Lien's recollection of events even though we can see that Lien's narration is unreliable. His belief in her encourages the reader to give her account credence too - the van Es family who shut the door on her so many years ago are publicly affirming their faith in her word. But The Cut Out Girl is not a book that apportions blame, but rather seeks to promote understanding.
I have read stories set around the Holocaust before. I have cried over them. But I have also struggled with how writers have tried to structure their story around some form of redemption. In Schindler's List, the list is life. Anne Frank's diary is shared and known around the world, giving her a kind of immortality. Even Irene Nemirovsky's daughter's comment that their mother's posthumous success has been a victory over the Nazis. The Cut Out Girl is more muted. We can see how these people who sheltered Lien and others like her may have shown courage, but they were not angels. Indeed, the wider Dutch nation does not come out of van Es' book looking particularly rosy. He charts how they were the most 'cooperative' nation in how they obeyed the Nazis in rounding up their Jews. There are horror stories around Dutch collaborators. Even post-war, the Dutch government hardly covered themselves in glory. Many Jewish survivors of the concentration camps found themselves hit with tax demands for their time in activity. Lien's mother wrote a letter as she gave her up, asking her foster parents to be as a mother and father to her. The Cut Out Girl spells out how Lien and those other lost children like her, given up by their loving parents in the hope of saving their lives, were not loved as they ought to have been. All they did was survive.
Lien was ultimately reunited with the van Eses, returning to live with them after the war. After a time, she stopped calling Mr and Mrs van Es 'Auntie and 'Uncle' and switched to 'Ma' and 'Pa'. This should have been the happy ending. Indeed, Bart van Es comments how the best possible conclusion for the story would have been at the point of Lien's wedding. She marries at the Portuguese synagogue and at the reception, she has a whole family around her. In a speech from one of her van Es family members, one of them jokes whether her new husband is good enough for 'our Lien'. Lien is theirs. And even one of her biological cousins, another Holocaust survivor, manages to be present. But this is not the end. While she may have shone with happiness that day, Lien struggled with depression and survivor's guilt. She was not alone in this; the cousin who attended her wedding later killed himself. Her loving new husband had also lived through the war in hiding but he had done so in the midst of his family so could not understand why Lien would dwell in the past. He could not fathom her trauma.
It is a strange thing for a bookworm to admit but the older I get, the less I believe in stories. Back in my teaching days, I had to teach the story mountain arc; orientation, complicating action, resolution. There is the protagonist who is the hero and the antagonist who must be overcome. It works for novels. But real life is messier. More loose ends. Fewer paragons of virtue. In soap operas, the character can have a cancer storyline and heroically overcome their illness and then carry on unaffected. In real life, everyone I know who has survived cancer has to live with life-altering consequences. Real people who go through suffering find it difficult to walk on to their happy ending unscarred. It would make a better story if Lien de Jong had been truly embraced by her foster parents as a daughter, if they could have loved her hard enough to heal all of the horror she had lived through. But perhaps no amount of love could have overcome Lien's grief and the situation was far from simple. Unfortunately, The Cut Out Girl also exposes the fault-lines in families.
I think about how until I had my son, I too have had my moments of feeling an island. As a child, I felt intensely jealous of classmates with siblings, or even of those who had cousins who lived close enough to attend the same school. I never liked being a de facto only child. I tried to form proto-sibling connections throughout my childhood and indeed all the way into my early adulthood but nothing ever really took. Being the only person in my family with my last name reinforced my sense of being set apart. It is a hard thing to feel on the outside, to sense your presence as an unwanted extra. There is also the conundrum of my paternal line. My biological father stepped out of my life before I was born and reconnection has been cordial rather than warm. But I was startled when I first heard tories about his wider clan. A whole cluster of relatives of whom I know nothing. In truth, that branch of my family tree had always seemed a frizzled stump, yet suddenly I recognised it as a loss. Without families, you don't get stories.
I acknowledge these feelings now not because my own past experiences can ever compare to those of Lien De Jong but rather because The Cut Out Girl is more than a memoir, but more a book that inspires self-reflection. Van Es considers the final estrangement between Lien and the van Eses, a disagreement which spiralled from a misunderstanding around a birthday party, and he remembers his own bumpy relationship with his stepdaughter Josie and feels how close he came to losing her. De Jong's experience of being unwanted helped van Es to see how important it is to remind a person, be they eight years old or eighty, that they are wanted and they are important. Nothing can ever heal Lien de Jong's grief and indeed one of the closing sections of the book details Lien's testimony to the Shoah foundation, giving a powerful description of her loss. Lien described each of the relatives she lost, her parents, all her grandparents, her aunt, her uncle, her two cousins, another uncle and another, two other cousins and then the one who survived but killed himself later, another aunt. All of them lost to the Holocaust. And then Lien's final sentence, 'And I want to tell you. And I missed them the rest of my life'.
Lien de Jong was cut out from so much. From her parents who gave her up because they loved her, from the van Eses who sent her away to save her life and then again decades later cast her out again. In writing her memoir, Bart van Es assuages some of the hurt. After one of his final research trips, Bart van Es passes by Lien at her Buddhist discussion group and she introduces him as 'my nephew, he is going to write my book'. To van Es too, Lien is reclaimed as his aunt. There is courage in how he acknowledges his grandparents' fallibility, risks their reputations in order to acknowledge Lien's experiences, but yet the story never feels like recrimination. There is something very lovely about the photos of the two of them having a fine time at the Costa awards. In interviews, van Es observes in several places that he sees the book as a collaboration between the two. To speak of closure is ridiculous in a story as complex as this. The whole point of the story is that these experiences can never be tied off with a neat little bow. Lien de Jong found her peace independently, yet working with van Es on The Cut Out Girl seems to have lifted some of her burden. It is more than a book, it is an act of kindness. The Cut Out Girl made me cry and also hold on tighter to my own little boy - an unforgettable read and deserved prize-winner.
I had vaguely heard of The Cut Out Girl winning the Costa prize a few years ago, something which surprised me as it defeated Normal People, a book that I absolutely adored. Author Bart van Es lives in England but spent his childhood in Holland. He recalled hearing that his late grandparents had hidden Jews during the Second World War and that one of the children they protected continued to live with them after the war, but then many years later there was a falling out and they lost touch. Wondering what the other side of the story was, van Es set out to investigate. He tracked down Lien de Jong, now in her 80s and living in Amsterdam. Although she was reluctant to see him, she finally did so and they struck up a cautious friendship. She agreed to let him write her memoir and so the rest of the book weaves together both van Es retelling Lientje's life story with the two of them in the present day piecing it back together and confronting old ghosts. If van Es had written a simple biography of Hesseline 'Lien' de Jong-Spiero, it would have been an incredible story in its own right, but The Cut Out Girl is more than that. It is an exploration of trauma, memory and family, of the ties that bind us together and how easily they can be broken.
Long lauded as a place of refuge, Holland had been receiving Jewish refugees for centuries. Even when the Nazis came to power, 35,000 Jews fled to Holland from Germany. At the time of the Holland invasion, there were 18,000 Jews living in The Hague. Only 2000 would survive by the end of the war. Lien's parents were not observant and 'it is really Hitler who makes Lien Jewish'. She is seven when she starts having to attend a Jewish school and eight when her mother has to sew yellow stars on all her clothes. Then comes the day when her mother has to tell her a secret, that she will be going somewhere else for a while. It would be heartbreaking enough if van Es had simply stated the order of events but far worse as he describes them via the surviving accounts. The woman who smuggled Lien to her new home heard her mother sobbing after she closed the door behind them.
The new family lived in Dordrecht, they were the van Eses, the author's own grandparents. They were kind and despite her homesickness, Lien started to feel at home. After a bare few months however, the police arrived and she had to flee in the company of a teenaged boy who protected her. For the rest of the war, Lien lived in semi-servitude with a strict Protestant family. While the elderly Lien tries to make excuses for the family and to acknowledge her own wilful behaviour, she is clearly pleased when van Es interviews someone who knew her foster parents and confirms that they did treat Lien unkindly. There is something very healing in having one's own memories confirmed. Even worse than being treated as a servant though is the sexual abuse which she suffers at the hands of one of their relations. With nobody at all to confide in and no vocabulary with which to vocalise the experience, Lien is lost.
Memory slips away from us like sand and as Lien's trauma grew more intense, so too did her recollections grow cloudier. The Cut Out Girl poses the question of how we can ever clearly know our own story. Lien reads the letter written by the boy who helped her flee from the van Eses and has little memory of him. Despite the note's obvious strong feeling, she never replied. There is an added tragedy in how she tries to resolve her own pain at the circumstances of her second 'hiding family' by making excuses for them. Reading the book, I got a powerful sense of a child alone without a protector. Lien observes to van Es that 'without families, you don't get stories' and for me, this quotation was key. The memories that I have held on to most have been the ones that have been affirmed and retold through family discussions. It is striking to me that I can remember events from my aunt's wedding when I was three years old far more than I do my primary school years. But then, I left my primary school when I was ten years old and I never saw those people again. About ten years ago, I was on a train that sped through my old primary school playing field and past the house we lived in at the time. The memories blasted out. It made me realise that those years of my life are not so faded as I thought,, they are simply inaccessible because in my daily life, I have no connection to those events. There is something so utterly bleak in the realisation that nobody cared enough about Lien to talk to her, to listen to her, to help her form connections. They kept her alive but that was all. Is it any wonder that her memories shrivelled on the vine?
In that respect, The Cut Out Girl is a curious memoir. Van Es acknowledges that as time goes on Lien 'lived just in herself, living that was just living; she suddenly starts having these enormous gaps where she remembers absolutely nothing', but then flips to recounting events in intimate detail. During the mass exodus in 1944, he writes that Lien 'felt sticky' under the three dresses she wore for ease of transport. Then he admits later that, 'Of the journey to Ede … she can picture nothing at all'. It is as if van Es is reconstructing Lien's memories. He is an academic, he knows how to do research. He has carried out interviews, read the historical accounts and looked into the history. Short of travelling back in time, van Es has done his best to find out for Lien what happened. So many years after his grandparents cut off contact with her, it feels like an act of atonement. Van Es' affirmation of Lien's feelings on the second foster family echoes this. Later, when culpability shifts towards his own grandparents, van Es again supports Lien's recollection of events even though we can see that Lien's narration is unreliable. His belief in her encourages the reader to give her account credence too - the van Es family who shut the door on her so many years ago are publicly affirming their faith in her word. But The Cut Out Girl is not a book that apportions blame, but rather seeks to promote understanding.
I have read stories set around the Holocaust before. I have cried over them. But I have also struggled with how writers have tried to structure their story around some form of redemption. In Schindler's List, the list is life. Anne Frank's diary is shared and known around the world, giving her a kind of immortality. Even Irene Nemirovsky's daughter's comment that their mother's posthumous success has been a victory over the Nazis. The Cut Out Girl is more muted. We can see how these people who sheltered Lien and others like her may have shown courage, but they were not angels. Indeed, the wider Dutch nation does not come out of van Es' book looking particularly rosy. He charts how they were the most 'cooperative' nation in how they obeyed the Nazis in rounding up their Jews. There are horror stories around Dutch collaborators. Even post-war, the Dutch government hardly covered themselves in glory. Many Jewish survivors of the concentration camps found themselves hit with tax demands for their time in activity. Lien's mother wrote a letter as she gave her up, asking her foster parents to be as a mother and father to her. The Cut Out Girl spells out how Lien and those other lost children like her, given up by their loving parents in the hope of saving their lives, were not loved as they ought to have been. All they did was survive.
Lien was ultimately reunited with the van Eses, returning to live with them after the war. After a time, she stopped calling Mr and Mrs van Es 'Auntie and 'Uncle' and switched to 'Ma' and 'Pa'. This should have been the happy ending. Indeed, Bart van Es comments how the best possible conclusion for the story would have been at the point of Lien's wedding. She marries at the Portuguese synagogue and at the reception, she has a whole family around her. In a speech from one of her van Es family members, one of them jokes whether her new husband is good enough for 'our Lien'. Lien is theirs. And even one of her biological cousins, another Holocaust survivor, manages to be present. But this is not the end. While she may have shone with happiness that day, Lien struggled with depression and survivor's guilt. She was not alone in this; the cousin who attended her wedding later killed himself. Her loving new husband had also lived through the war in hiding but he had done so in the midst of his family so could not understand why Lien would dwell in the past. He could not fathom her trauma.
It is a strange thing for a bookworm to admit but the older I get, the less I believe in stories. Back in my teaching days, I had to teach the story mountain arc; orientation, complicating action, resolution. There is the protagonist who is the hero and the antagonist who must be overcome. It works for novels. But real life is messier. More loose ends. Fewer paragons of virtue. In soap operas, the character can have a cancer storyline and heroically overcome their illness and then carry on unaffected. In real life, everyone I know who has survived cancer has to live with life-altering consequences. Real people who go through suffering find it difficult to walk on to their happy ending unscarred. It would make a better story if Lien de Jong had been truly embraced by her foster parents as a daughter, if they could have loved her hard enough to heal all of the horror she had lived through. But perhaps no amount of love could have overcome Lien's grief and the situation was far from simple. Unfortunately, The Cut Out Girl also exposes the fault-lines in families.
I think about how until I had my son, I too have had my moments of feeling an island. As a child, I felt intensely jealous of classmates with siblings, or even of those who had cousins who lived close enough to attend the same school. I never liked being a de facto only child. I tried to form proto-sibling connections throughout my childhood and indeed all the way into my early adulthood but nothing ever really took. Being the only person in my family with my last name reinforced my sense of being set apart. It is a hard thing to feel on the outside, to sense your presence as an unwanted extra. There is also the conundrum of my paternal line. My biological father stepped out of my life before I was born and reconnection has been cordial rather than warm. But I was startled when I first heard tories about his wider clan. A whole cluster of relatives of whom I know nothing. In truth, that branch of my family tree had always seemed a frizzled stump, yet suddenly I recognised it as a loss. Without families, you don't get stories.
I acknowledge these feelings now not because my own past experiences can ever compare to those of Lien De Jong but rather because The Cut Out Girl is more than a memoir, but more a book that inspires self-reflection. Van Es considers the final estrangement between Lien and the van Eses, a disagreement which spiralled from a misunderstanding around a birthday party, and he remembers his own bumpy relationship with his stepdaughter Josie and feels how close he came to losing her. De Jong's experience of being unwanted helped van Es to see how important it is to remind a person, be they eight years old or eighty, that they are wanted and they are important. Nothing can ever heal Lien de Jong's grief and indeed one of the closing sections of the book details Lien's testimony to the Shoah foundation, giving a powerful description of her loss. Lien described each of the relatives she lost, her parents, all her grandparents, her aunt, her uncle, her two cousins, another uncle and another, two other cousins and then the one who survived but killed himself later, another aunt. All of them lost to the Holocaust. And then Lien's final sentence, 'And I want to tell you. And I missed them the rest of my life'.
Lien de Jong was cut out from so much. From her parents who gave her up because they loved her, from the van Eses who sent her away to save her life and then again decades later cast her out again. In writing her memoir, Bart van Es assuages some of the hurt. After one of his final research trips, Bart van Es passes by Lien at her Buddhist discussion group and she introduces him as 'my nephew, he is going to write my book'. To van Es too, Lien is reclaimed as his aunt. There is courage in how he acknowledges his grandparents' fallibility, risks their reputations in order to acknowledge Lien's experiences, but yet the story never feels like recrimination. There is something very lovely about the photos of the two of them having a fine time at the Costa awards. In interviews, van Es observes in several places that he sees the book as a collaboration between the two. To speak of closure is ridiculous in a story as complex as this. The whole point of the story is that these experiences can never be tied off with a neat little bow. Lien de Jong found her peace independently, yet working with van Es on The Cut Out Girl seems to have lifted some of her burden. It is more than a book, it is an act of kindness. The Cut Out Girl made me cry and also hold on tighter to my own little boy - an unforgettable read and deserved prize-winner.
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