09/24/2006

'Life in Shadow' emerges

Story recalls peril of Dutch Jews

By
Record-Eagle staff writer

TRAVERSE CITY — Frieda Roos-van Hessen can recall with startling clarity the day in 1940 when her family's life changed.

Sleeping soundly after having given a concert the night before, she awoke at 2 a.m. to her brother's screaming. German war planes were racing over her family's home in Amsterdam on their way to bomb Schipol, Holland's biggest airport.

"We flew to the basement of the house and from that moment on, we were at war," said Roos-van Hessen, now an American citizen.

A former concert and opera singer, Roos-van Hessen was 25 and at the threshold of a successful career when the Nazis invaded Holland during World War II. At 19, she sang the lead for the Dutch version of Walt Disney's "Snow White." At 24, she was the soloist in a performance of Verdi's "Requiem" for the Dutch royal family.

But when the "razzias" — or roundups of Dutch Jews began — Roos-van Hessen said her father, a Dutch army officer, encouraged her to go into hiding. It was the start of a four-year nightmare that would include long months in cramped rooms, scabies and lice, a diet of sugar beets and imitation bread, and constant fear and betrayals.

"The life that we led, nobody can really imagine," said Roos-van Hessen, who narrowly escaped from the clutches of the Nazis eight times, sometimes by fleeing over rooftops. "For 24 hours a day we were afraid, for 24 hours a day when we talked, we had to whisper."

Though she managed to survive until Dutch liberation by the Canadian army on May 5, 1945, her family wasn't as lucky. Roos-van Hessen said she watched as her father and mother were taken away by the SS at bayonet point to be gassed later at Auschwitz. Her younger brother also was killed.

"We all knew that when you were caught by the Gestapo you were going to be killed," she said. "When I saw them go, I knew that I would never see them again."

Now 91 and living in North Carolina, Roos-van Hessen tells about her hiding, escapes and determination to survive some of the worst horrors the world has seen in her book, "Life in the Shadow of the Swastika" (Harvest Day Books, $15.95).

Expected to be in local bookstores this weekend, the book will be available at Milliken Auditorium when Roos-van Hessen speaks there at 7 p.m. Thursday and 9:30 a.m. Friday. She also will give an abbreviated testimony at First Congregational Church on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. and Oct. 1 at 10 a.m. All events are open to the public free of charge."

The book began as a short story after Roos-van Hessen married a Canadian soldier and moved to Canada, where she performed in concert and recital and on radio. Though she later came to the U.S. and began a successful music ministry career, she said the idea of turning the story into a book was never far from her mind.

"That small beginning was always in the bottom of the drawer somewhere," she said.

A frequent speaker at colleges and universities, Roos-van Hessen warns against anti-Semitism, which she said is the cause of terrorism today.

"It's the hatred of Israel by the Mideast, supported by America, that (is responsible)," she said. "They hate us. They want to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth."

Still, she said she has never lost her faith — not even during the Holocaust.

"Every time we were (hiding) at a certain place it was somehow like I was being informed by a Holy Spirit that I had to move again," she said. "The Nazis would come and either kill the people that were there or ransack the house for me because I was a very well-known performer.

"God is still in control of our lives," she said. "It's His grace that made me survive."