Edith’s Story

by Edith Velmans

Soho Press, 240 pp., $25

Edith Velmans was a teenager in Holland when the Second World War began. When the Germans invaded, their campaign against Jews began with restrictions against Jewish families such as Edith’s, and ended with the transport to camps of even the aged or hospitalized. However, Edith’s Jewishness had not set her apart; she scarcely thought of it. She seemed to be a popular girl. Her family spent time together singing, making up poems, and reading literature aloud. Velmans suceeds in conveying the closeness she felt to her family, though she never transcends the boundaries of a personal memoir by addressing broader historical events. Anne Frank’s diaries were censored by her father before publication — Velmans has censored her own. Despite the poignant separation from her family, who subsequently died with the exception of one brother, the story is curiously flat.

This article appears in January 21 • 2000.

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