The extraordinary true story of a young Jewish girl in Holland during World War II, who hides from the Nazis in the homes of an underground network of foster families, one of them the author's grandparents Cuando empecé a leer esta novela, no esperaba lo que me he encontrado, porque no es una historia normal, una novela contada sin más, es una historia real, no basada en hechos reales. stars and not a perfect 5 stars because the writing felt a little disjointed at times moving around in time, but totally deserving of being bumped up to 5.) Bart van Es treats this story with the respect and care it deserves even when he discovers things that I am sure would have been easier to hide and or/ignore. I absolutely loved the way he wove Lientjie's story in with the story of his research as well. I enjoyed seeing their friendship grow as the story progressed. The switching between present and past and Bart van Es trips to see many of the location Lientjie tells him about - really made the story come alive for me. I am not ashamed to say that I shed tears reading this book - the subject matter was not always easy to get though.

Why was the Netherlands so compliant with the Nazis, so that 80% of the country’s Jews were killed, a far higher percentage than elsewhere in the West? Finally reunited with the van Es family at the end of the war, Lien's life should have run on happily but, years later, an event that leads to her being cut out of the family brings new pain and isolation.Bart van Es' detailed, painstaking and thorough investigation of the life of his 'aunt' Lien is a truly moving, often heart-breaking account of a Jewish child's struggle for survival in wartime Holland and her life after the war. One day her mother sat beside her on the bed. “I must tell you a secret,” she said. “You are going to stay somewhere else for a while.” A woman took Lien to a family in Dordrecht. Unknown to Lien, they were arrested within months and sent to their deaths in Auschwitz. The family she stayed with are the author’s grandparents, Jans and Henk van Es. But just as shestarted to feel at home, the police arrived and she had to run. Lien spent the rest of the war with a strict Protestant family in the village of Bennekom. There she was treated as a servant rather than one of the family, and sexually abused by one of their relations: “The rapes are a secret, hard and poisonous, that she swaddles within.” Writing with simplicity, Van Es weaves together history and Lien’s recollections to capture the trauma of her childhood

And, most pressingly as far as The Cut Out Girl story is concerned, how could my grandmother (who rescued Lien and brought her up as her own daughter after the war) have ended up quarrelling with the person she saved from the Holocaust? How could she have sent her a letter, in July 1988, that cut Lien out of her life? Description: a young Jewish girl named Lientje had been taken in during the war by relatives and hidden from the Nazis, handed over by her parents, who understood the danger they were in all too well. The girl had been raised by her foster family as one of their own, but then, well after the war, there was a falling out, and they were no longer in touch. What was the girl's side of the story, Bart wondered? What really happened during the war, and after?It is a story rich with contradictions. There is great bravery and generosity--first Lientje's parents, giving up their beloved daughter, and then the Dutch families who face great danger from the Nazi occupation for taking Lientje and other Jewish children in. And there are more mundane sacrifices a family under brutal occupation must make to provide for even the family they already have. But tidy Holland also must face a darker truth, namely that it was more cooperative in rounding up its Jews for the Nazis than any other Western European country; that is part of Lientje's story too. Her time in hiding was made much more terrifying by the energetic efforts of the local Dutch authorities, zealous accomplices in the mission of sending every Jew, man, woman and child, East to their extermination. And Lientje was not always particularly well treated, and sometimes, Bart learned, she was very badly treated indeed.

The book includes many wonderful photographs that really helped me to visualize who was who in the story and it was rewarding to see the relationship develop between the author and his subject, to the point where once again "family" connections were established. Even more satisfying was the knowledge that revisiting her past and learning more of things she had not understood as she was living these experiences helped to bring about a healing and wholeness for her.Bart van Es tells the story of a young Jewish girl named Lientjie who was taken in during the War by his grandparents. He doesn't know too much about the story but is aware that at one point there was a falling out and they lost touch with her. This book tells the story of him first reaching out to Lientjie and then the process of discovering what had happened to her, his family, and why the falling out happened.

This is a detective story of sorts, constructed in such a way that the reader works through the clues (pictures, letters, official documents, personal testimony) along with the author. It begins with an uneasy and cautious meeting between van Es and the woman Lien - now in her 80s - and ends with a hopefulness and healing on both sides. Even though Lien had believed that she had both raked over and come to terms with the past, there were still gaps to fill, questions to answer and old wounds that needed lancing.The last time Lien de Jong saw her parents was in the Hague, where she was collected at the door by a stranger and taken away to be hidden from the Nazis. She was raised by her foster family as one of their own, but a falling out after the war put an end to their relationship. What was her side of the story, wondered Oxford University's Professor Bart van Es, a grandson of the couple who looked after Lien. It was being that was just being , and where, and how, and with whom that was all uncertain. "( p. 119) The story is told at times through the eyes of young Lientje, who although now a senior is telling her story to vanEs. I was saddened to learn that when she had left her family to go into hiding she had really had very little understanding of what was about to happen or why. I can only imagine what that must have been like for her on an emotional level and it made me think of children who are still being separated from their parents in 2018 (albeit for different reasons) and what the long term ramifications of those separations will be.