Muristek
'The Cut Out Girl' tells the story of a Jewish child who survived World War II in the Netherlands.
Follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our Telegram channel for the latest updates.
REVIEW, April 1 — Discovering and revealing the extent of collaboration with the Nazi Holocaust movement continues on academic, popular and personal levels, with a recent example being new speculation over the betrayal of famed Anne Frank.
In a quieter but convincing voice, The Cut Out Girl by Bart van Es relates an equally gripping narrative about that era, through a personal approach that offers a conversation between two generationally separated but then inextricably connected souls through the passion and forensic efforts that the author exercised to share the story.
Author van Es was born in the Netherlands and grew up in Norway, Indonesia, and Dubai.
Since 1999 he has worked at the University of Oxford, where he is now Professor of English Literature.
He has, as one would expect, a heavy repertoire of academic publishing. This book, part historical narrative and part novel with its sometimes imagined retelling of events, offers a delightful departure from academic rhythms, with simple language and emotional charge.
In 2014, van Es began to look into his family’s wartime history, knowing that his grandparents had been part of the Dutch Resistance.
He made contact with Lien, a Jewish woman now in her eighties, who had lived in hiding with the van Eses when she was a child.
However, a mysterious row in the 1980s had cut her off from the family, which meant that the young van Es and Lien had never met before this writing project.
Their work together and growing friendship resulted in The Cut Out Girl.
The Cut Out Girl is quite simply the story of a Jewish child who survived World War II in the Netherlands.
Handed over to a member of the Resistance by her parents, she was moved across a network of families, sometimes hidden in secret places, at other times living out in the open under a false identity, suffering great hardships, and narrowly escaping capture several times.
By interviewing Lien and by using hundreds of documents (including surviving letters, poems, official forms, and photographs) van Es has written a novelised account of her experience, both during and after the War.
Intercut with this factual novel, the book gives a first person account of the author’s experiences researching and writing The Cut Out Girl between 2014 and 2017.
“Without families you don’t get stories,” Lien told van Es when they first met.
In addition to being a personal account, the book is a reckoning with Dutch history. It tries to explain why a country that had little record of anti-Semitism should have proved so compliant with Nazi wishes.
He confronts the stark fact that the wartime death rate of Jews in the Netherlands (at 80 per cent) was much higher than that in any other Western nation.
It was, moreover, Dutch citizens, not Germans, who did the work tracking them down and sending them east.
Lien’s first photograph shared with van Es was the photo of her in a pinafore on a school bench aged seven, with a description of a little farewell party when she, aged eight, said farewell to her aunties, uncles, grandparents, and parents.
It was the last time she saw any of them.
A number of points distinguish The Cut Out Girl from other WWII survival memoirs, biographies, and novels — most notably that the book’s narrative carries on to the present.
It deals not simply with a war story but with the lifelong consequences of wartime experience, both for the rescued and for rescuers.
Van Es’ serene writing of often difficult scenes presents a twin narrative that interlaces a novelised account of Lien’s life with a first person narration of the author’s own research — a style that personalises the experience for every reader and makes the historical content event more easy to recall.
Ultimately, though the book is about revealing and coming to terms with the past, its message promises hope — for personal revival and rejuvenation through reconciliation.
Importantly, the writing reminds us also of the wonderful bonds that can develop through the sharing of personal memories and stories.
Highly recommended. An easy and engaging read, with weighty content.
Deservedly, in 2018, ‘The Cut Out Girl’ won overall Costa Book of the Year Prize and the Biographers Club First Biography Prize. The book is now out in 17 languages and available at Kinokunya Book Store.
* Datin Shalini A. Ganendra is a cultural advisor, independent scholar and Academic Associate, History of Art, Oxford University. She resides in Malaysia with her family and is an avid reader of good writings.