Cut Out Girl: A Musical Drama Rated R

Gillian Green: I heard the author, Bart van Es, interviewed on the radio about his coming late to the realisation that there was another member of his father's family that he knew nothing about. Having found out basic information, he sought out this woman, Lien, now in her 80s. He introduced himself to her and after some reluctance she accepted him into her home and gradually told her the entire story of her life. Born into a non-observant Jewish family in the Netherlands in the 1930s, she and her parents became caught up in the Final Solution when the Nazi Party invaded. Realising that the times were extremely dangerous, her parents asked a local family to take her and protect her, a not unusual event in the Netherlands at the time when the general reaction among the Dutch was nowhere near so caring. From 1942 until the end of the war, she moved several times to different families who were committed to keeping her out of the hands of the German and Dutch police but not always as caring as one might have hoped. When her life with the van Es family became threatened, she was moved again to a strict Protestant family who certainly kept her alive but treated her as a servant and ignored the fact...

United States on Mar 01, 2020

Pompom: Millions worldwide have read the Diary of Anne Frank who went into hiding with her family in Amsterdam, while this book describes the story of a Jewish girl, Lientje De Jong, whose selfless parents sacrificed and sent their only child to live with unknown foster parents during the Holocaust. While an estimated 80% of Jews in the Netherlands died, there was an underground of foster families in Holland who sheltered some of these Jewish children.
This book written by Bart van Es, is the story of his grandparents who acted as Lientje de Jong's foster parents during the Holocaust, and continued after her parents and extended family are all killed during the war. Bart only meets Lien in December 2014 when he starts to develop a rewarding and warm relationship with her. Prior to this there had been a falling-out between his grandparents and their foster daughter, so he had never got to learn about this hidden story growing up. He goes on a journey to trace his own family history during the war and to tell Lien's extraordinary life story until today.
This book is poignantly written and despite the harrowing story, one wants to read to the end. One can understand why it won the 2018...

United States on Nov 25, 2019

Stephanie Bretherton: It feels strange to say that you found a book with such devastating subject matter to be so enjoyable and ‘easy’ to read (notwithstanding the terrible truths which you suspect, which you hope against, but which hit you in the solar plexus when revealed) and yet this is the skill of honest and masterful writing. The vulnerability of young Lien is heartbreaking, the courage to face her trauma in later life is inspiring. For all the importance of the context and the informative history, this is ultimately a book about family (‘without families, there are no stories’ says the remarkable Lien) and by the time I closed this book I felt that this family was also mine. I already miss them. (This would have been a five star, but for one aspect that I felt the writer needed to address more deeply - even if not directly with Lien, but I won't go into it here to avoid spoilers.)

United Kingdom on Nov 19, 2019

ceecee: 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...

United Kingdom on Jul 27, 2019

Ralph Blumenau: This is the story of Hasseline (“Lien”) de Jong. When the Nazis occupied Holland and began to persecute the Jews, Lien, an eight-year-old Dutch Jewish girl from The Hague, was sent in August 1942 by her parents to live with non-Jewish foster-parents in Dordrecht. It is only a third of the way through the book that these foster-parents are named – until then they are referred to as “Uncle” and “Auntie”. Their names were Henk van Es and Jan (or Jans) van Es-de Jong, and they were the grandparents of the author, Bart. Jan’s maiden name, de Jong, was also the surname of Lien’s parents. It is a common enough Dutch surname, but Bart never comments on the coincidence. Bart had left the Netherlands for England when he was four years old, and eventually became Professor of English Literature at Oxford University.

He knew that at some stage, contact between Lien and Bart’s grandmother had been totally broken off. Though in the beginning he was not sure of his exact motivation, he wanted to know Lien’s story. In 2014, when she was 81, he went to the Netherlands to meet her, and the book is an account of what she told him and of what he discovered in detailed...

United Kingdom on Apr 11, 2019

Lady Fancifull: Bart Van Es’, account of what happened in the Netherlands, during the Second World War, is both a history of Holland which sits rather uneasily with most of our perceptions (certainly mine) of a country which is liberal, tolerant, and moved by notions of fairness, and a personal history of his own family, during that time.

Most of all, it is the history of Hesseline (Lien) de Jong. Lien, a young Jewish girl, was part of a generation of more fortunate Jewish children who were secretly fostered by those involved in the Resistance and otherwise opposed to the occupying Nazi forces.

Lien and others ‘more fortunate’ because, of course, many were swept up and became part of the monstrous death toll of the Holocaust.

I was extremely shocked to discover that, the percentage of Holland’s Jews, who ended their days in the extermination camps, was particularly high, compared to those from other occupied countries. The Netherlands had certainly been a liberal haven, compared to many other European nations, in its attitudes towards its Jewish citizens at a much earlier time in history.

“The Jewish wartime death rate in the Netherlands, at 80%, was almost...

United Kingdom on Mar 01, 2019

Ms. Erica Wildwood: This book had a lot of resonance for me. My parents were in the bombardment of Rotterdam and had a very tough time under German occupation, especially my father. Something happened to him that he never told anyone about but as a child I sometimes heard him screaming in his sleep. My mother was pregnant during the Hunger Winter but the baby, born in March 1945 lived for only ten days, severely disabled through malnutrition in pregnancy.
Like Pa and Ma van Es, my parents were active in the Social Democratic Labour Party. Like Lien, I still have the poesie album from my childhood (I was born aftr the war).
So maybe it's because of these parallels that I found this story somewhat over-familiar. Everybody knows the tragic story of the Dutch Jews - who hasn't read Anne Frank's Diary? - but when I mention the Hunger Winter almost nobody has even heard of it. Non-Jews sufered too.
Having said this, I do admire this book a lot. It's cleverly constructed and beautifully written, and I read it in one sitting.
As for my own family's experiences and their devastating and lasting consequences, well, maybe I should write that book myself... Everybody should read this book. As well as...

United Kingdom on Feb 13, 2019

amachinist: Bart van Es began research on this biography in 2014. He knew that his grandparents hid Dutch-Jewish children during WWII, but they had never discussed it. His father considered one of the children, Lien de Jung, as his sister. After his father's death, van Es set out to find Lien, learn about her life and his grandparents' relationship to her.

When the Nazi occupation began in 1942, Lien's parents saw, "the handwriting on the wall" for Jews in the Netherlands. They contacted the underground and made arrangements for their 8 year old daughter to be placed in hiding with a Christian family. "Although you are unknown to me, " wrote Lien's mother in a note to her daughter's future protectors, "I imagine you for myself as a man and woman who will, as father and mother, care for my only child." It was not just one family, but multiple families who sheltered her for differing periods. Sometimes, she went to school with other children, but other times she was forced to serve as a maid, childcare provider or hidden phantom in a room or cupboard. Lien felt most at home with the van Es family, but even there she was victimized and at times marginalized.

The author uses photos,...

United States on Feb 06, 2019