Edith's Story

Something was changing. Parents worried, friends went abroad. But it wasn't until after the Germans actually invaded Holland, not until school was closed to her and public transportation forbidden, that the yellow star sewn to her coat took on real meaning for Edith Velmans. She had been a popular teenager. Suddenly she was a nonperson. Edith went into hiding in a Protestant household the same month as Anne Frank. To deflect suspicion, Edith was given the chore of looking after a German officer billeted with her hosts, sleeping in the room next to hers. Forty years later, using her own diaries and letters, she reconstructed the story of her family's near annihilation by the Nazis in World War II.

Black-and-White Photographs/Map