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A riveting look at the story of World War II and the Holocaust through the diaries of Dutch citizens, firsthand accounts of ordinary people living through extraordinary times Based on select writings from a collection of more than two thousand Dutch diaries written during World War II in order to record this unparalleled time, and maintained by devoted archivists, The Diary Keepers illuminates a part of history we haven't seen in quite this way before, from the stories of a Nazi sympathizing police officer to a Jewish journalist who documented daily activities at a transport camp. Journalist Nina Siegal, who grew up in a family that had survived the Holocaust in Europe, had always wondered about the experience of regular people during World War II. She had heard stories of the war as a child and Anne Frank's diary, but the tales were either crafted as moral lessons -- to never waste food, to be grateful for all you receive, to hide your silver -- or told with a punch line. The details of the past went untold in an effort to make it easier assimilate into American life. When Siegal moved to Amsterdam as an adult, those questions came up again, as did another horrifying one: Why did seventy five percent of the Dutch Jewish community perish in the war, while in other Western European countries the proportions were significantly lower? How did this square with the narratives of Dutch resistance she had heard so much about and in what way did it relate to the famed tolerance people in the Netherlands were always talking about? Perhaps more importantly, how could she raise a Jewish child in this country without knowing these answers? Searching and singular, The Diary Keepers mines the diaries of ordinary citizens to understand the nature of resistance, the workings of memory, and the ways we reflect on, commemorate, and re-envision the past.… (more)
User reviews
It was interesting (and sometimes horrifying) reading the different perspectives of the same time periods & events.
The reading got a bit tedious at times for me. It might be because even though I keep reading non-fiction I’ve been more in the mood for fiction. Most of it was not at all boring. At times it read like a thriller. The information presented was fascinating and there was a lot about Holland and its Jews during WWII which was previously unknown to me in spite of my having reading hundreds of Holocaust books.
The diary excerpts are put in sections that are in chronological order: Part I: Occupation, May 1940-May 1941; Part II: Persecution and Deportation, April 1942-February 1944; Part III: Toward Liberation, May 1944-May 1945; Part IV: The War in Memory, May 1945-May 2022.
At the start of each section some general history information for that time period is given. I found these parts at least as interesting as the entries from the diaries. In addition to this general current event of the time information included is some of author’s and others’ biographical information and general happenings of that time period and more currently.
This is a superb book. It’s an important book. My only real criticism is its repetitiveness. I also wish there had been even more: more diary writers. It was heartbreaking to read about the lost diaries, the lost stories of people, and I felt greedy to read more knowing that there were thousands more available. The book is already long but perhaps a list of all the known Dutch diaries could have been included. I would have loved that.
The author is the daughter and granddaughter of Holocaust survivors but they were not from the Netherlands. The author and her daughter do live in the Netherlands.
My favorite diarist might be Philip Mechanicus. His portions are really well written. He had been a professional journalist, and I loved how he kept working at Westerbork to report what was going on there. Heartbreaking.
It was disturbing to read about NSB people writing about their relatively posh and normal daily lives when other people are writing about their stressful (to say the very least) daily lives.
The sections at the end that covered a new Memorial and current antisemitism are excellent.
I greatly appreciated the many photos. There is a center section with color photos and each section starts with one black & white photo. The color photo section includes photos of many of the diaries, their outsides and their insides too. In one case illustrations the diary writer made are shown on the pages.
I needed many breaks from this book. I think it’s an exceptionally good book but it was emotionally difficult to read. It felt as though it took me even longer to read than it did.
4-1/2 stars. This is a 5 star book all the way but a half star off for the repetitiveness (even though maybe it wouldn’t have been easy to avoid and even though there wasn’t really that much of it) and because at times I found it hard to read.