“Behind reality loom larger things, mightier than fact.”
Devastate
d by the surrender of his country just five days after the Nazi invasion, twenty-three-year-old Erik Hazelhoff, decides to resist. A university student in Leyden, Hazelhoff, joined by friends, makes several attempts to get to England so they can fight the Germans, before finally succeeding. Connecting with Francois van ‘t Sant, Private Secretary to Queen Wilhelmina, who is in exile in England, Hazelhoff and three friends agree to help start “Contact Holland,” an Underground communications network between Holland and England. Ferrying spies across the North Sea into Holland proves more difficult than they have imagined, and with winter weather, high seas, and no communications network in place in Holland, their good intentions do not produce the desired results.
In this autobiographical account, Erik Hazelhoff conveys in dramatic detail the many attempts to establish Underground connections through Scheveningen, and in equally dramatic detail the political scheming between Dutch bureaucrats living in London, who simply want to continue the government’s legal existence, and Van ‘t Sant and the Queen, who want real results. When their plans for Resistance are co-opted by other governmental agencies and Van ‘t Sant is demeaned as the “Dutch Rasputin,” Hazelhoff and his fellow “Englandfarers” decide to take direct action, enlisting in Britain’s RAF, so they can fly Mosquito Pathfinder missions over Germany.
Within Hazelhoff’s personal story are the stories of many other young men–his friends–all willing to face extreme odds in order to help their country. It is here that the story achieves its greatest significance. Of the 144 agents dropped into Holland between 1940 – 1944, only 28 survived the war. The statistics regarding RAF pilots are equally grim. Yet Hazelhoff tells story after story of various friends performing incredible deeds. His anecdotes about Queen Wilhelmina, to whom he eventually becomes an aide, show her to be a sensitive sovereign dedicated to saving her people, but also a woman worthy of the tribute paid her by Winston Churchill: “I really fear no man in the world–except Queen Wilhelmina.”
Hazelhoff brings a w
riter’s sensibilities to this story. His attention to detail and ability to arrange details dramatically create a fast pace and clear picture of the action. His innate modesty keeps his revelations from appearing self-serving, and his observations about the Dutch government and Queen Wilhelmina in exile are fascinating. Filled with the kind of excitement one is more accustomed to reading in fiction, this first-person account of the Resistance is a fine contribution to the historical record and a testament to the spirit of Erik Hazelhoff and his friends.
Also reviewed here: IN PURSUIT OF LIFE, Hazelhoff’s complete autobiography, the story of a fascinating man and a true hero.
Notes: The author’s photo appears on http://blogs.rnw.nl on the occasion of his death in 2007 at the age of ninety.
The award-winning film of this book starred Rutger Hauer. It was WINNER of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Foreign Film in 1979 and received world-side accolades.
d exotic are Erik Hazelhoff’s adventures and so strange are some of the coincidences, that if this were fiction, a reader might be excused for finding it “unrealistic.” Yet this is the story of a real Dutch citizen who believed all his life in challenging fate, forging ahead, doing what he had to do, and not looking back. Unwilling to accept “impossibilities,” he constantly challenged the status quo, often in wildly heroic actions.
Throughout this exciting and beautifully written autobiography, Hazelhoff reveals his belief in core values. He defends his country, honors his word, shows genuine respect for those worthy of it, and refuses to take himself seriously. His autobiography reveals him to be one of the genuine heroes of the 20th century, though he would certainly have been embarrassed to be considered one, and his notes on his late years, in which he contemplates his own death, are both poignant and memorable for his revelations of what he has learned and the manner in which he would one day face the Black Cave himself.
When the atomic bomb dropped at 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was a thriving city of two hundred forty-five thousand people. By 8:20, one hundred thousand of those people were dead. Combining the broad perspective of the absolute devastation of the city with the tiniest details of six individual lives, John Hersey provides a powerful closeup of a few survivors of the atomic attack on Hiroshima, giving the carnage a human perspective.
ng-term implications of atomic warfare. Dramatic, powerful, and very personal, this account of six lives, changed forever, is a monument to the human spirit in the face of incredible adversity
ant-Ivory film focuses on the post-Civil War intellectual community of Boston and Cambridge, bringing to life the suffragist movement, which passionately involved many of its women. Verena Tarrant (Madeleine Potter) is a beautiful and charming young woman who draws large, paying crowds to hear her speak about “the just revolution,” which would free women from their second class status. Though Verena describes herself as “only a girl, a simple American girl,” her strength as a speaker quickly brings her to the attention of Olive Chancellor (Vanessa Redgrave), an older woman whose dedication to the movement, and eventually to Verena, is single-minded and all-consuming.
e won an Academy Award nomination for her role as Olive, a woman whose need for the naive and somewhat simple Verena is overwhelming. Her fear of being left alone, her jealousy of the men who court Verena, and her desire to use Verena to advance her own suffragist message are beautifully acted. Madeleine Potter effectively conveys Verena’s innocence, her almost child-like nature, and her growing awareness that she has some freedoms that she has never explored. Reeve, with his southern accent, is a bit difficult to understand at times, and his love scenes with Verena are wooden, lacking the spark which would have made them seem real. A fascinating period piece, the film lacks the philosophical depth of the novel but gains greatly in drama.
nry James’s earliest novellas, Daisy Miller (1878) follows the activities of a wealthy, and brashly confident, young American woman as she audaciously challenges European society in Vevey, Switzerland, and in Rome, having fun, doing what pleases her, and leaving staid European society gasping in her wake. Daisy Miller, whose father is in the US and whose mother is her ineffectual “chaperone,” is a free spirit in a society bound by unstated but rigid “rules,” determined to do whatever she wants, whenever she wants, with whomever she chooses.
between American and European values and the naivete of the Americans and their spontaneity as it contrasts with the old world formality of the Europeans. Daisy, who is often foolishly naïve, is also seen as brash and ego-centric, a young woman whose destiny cannot be avoided (or even predicted) because of the strength of her own, often wrong, willfulness.
bservations about Americans and their differences from Europeans, the novel incorporates significant symbols–the Colosseum (associated with innocent Christian martyrs), malaria (to which Americans are particularly susceptible), Randolph (Daisy’s rude and undisciplined 10-year-old brother, the ugliest of Americans), and Mrs. Cosgrove and Mrs. Walker (converts to the European way of life). Carefully observed and critical of American naivete, Daisy Miller is the “preface” to Portrait of a Lady and many of James’s more fully developed novels.