Chocolate, The Taste of Freedom: The Holocaust Memoir of a Hidden Dutch Child

by Maud Peper Dahme, Maryann McLoughlin

Of the 1.6 million Jewish children who lived in Europe before WWII, only 100,000 survived the Holocaust. Most were hidden children. Dahme was one of those hidden children, hidden from the Nazis by righteous gentiles in the Netherlands. In July of 1942, six-year-old Maud and her four-year-old sister, Rita, were taken to the Spronk farm in Oldebroek and later to a fishing village, Elburg, where they were hidden with the Westerinks for the rest of the war. In 2014, in The Netherlands, Jo (Frederica von Gulik-Westerink) and her parents, Jacob and Henriette Westerink, were honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum. The Spronks were honored at a ceremony in November at the Hague. Chocolate, The Taste of Freedom chronicles not only the wartime adventures of Dahme but also her post-war experiences—reunion with parents, immigration, U.S. schools, marriage, and Holocaust education advocate. In 2014, Maud Dahme was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame as one of the state’s “Unsung Heroes.” Dahme’s memoir, her story of courage, hope, and bravery, will inspire generations of young and old. She will no longer be an unsung hero.

"This is story of a terrible evil and of those who at the risk of their own lives decided that evil must not triumph. It is a story of endurance and hope. It is the story of a gentle and courageous woman who emerged from the desperation of the European Holocaust to become a leader in her community in the new world.”

—Former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean

Genres: Holocaust

192 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2015

Reviews

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a story! -Love the work Maud is doing!! -Ashley E.