This Faithful Book: A Diary from World War Two in the Netherlands

By: Madzy Brender à Brandis

Translated and Edited By: Marianne Brandis

..

..

The cover sets the scene and begins telling the story: this is a diary written in the Netherlands during the darkest and most dangerous years of the Second World War.  The author was a young mother with two small children; the translator/editor is her daughter – and was one of the children.

Madzy was 31 when she began this diary.  That was on the 18^th of May, 1942.  She was lying in bed, having (five days earlier) given birth to a son, Gerard.  She already had a daughter, Marianne, three years old.  Two days after the baby’s birth, her husband, Wim, had been suddenly taken prisoner by the German authorities who occupied the country and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.  Madzy began writing the diary to create a private space where she could express her anxiety and worry and loneliness.  As the years went by, this document became an extremely vivid and moving (and often lively) account of how civilians survive – or not – in wartime.  It came to be a remarkable record of courage under pressure. 

“This faithful book” was Madzy’s own phrase for the diary that she was writing.

                                                                        ..

“History is always about people, and individual people are always part of history.”