A point of reference

In her memoir Elsa M. van der Laaken relives the WWII years in The Hague, Holland where she was born in 1936. She was almost four years old when Hitler's war machines attacked the neutral country like "thieves in the night" and the Nazi High Command decided to settle in her city. The act of war shattered the stability of the van der Laaken household. Her Dutch father, in Queen Wilhelmina's service, had his job put on hold when a German lawyer took charge of all the Royal properties. Her German mother became suddenly "the enemy" in the eyes of the angry Dutch in the neighborhood. The family lived in a house that came with her father's job at the Royal stables. Her father agreed to be the driver for the German lawyer while both parents secretly helped the Dutch resistance. They continued to live in the Royal Stables' house under Nazi scrutiny. 236 p. ; 22 cm.