REVIEW, April 1 — Discovering and revealing the extent of Nazi Holocaust collaboration 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 loudly convincing voice, The Cut Out Girl by Bart van Es relates an equally gripping narrative about that era, through a personal approach of  conversations and discovery between two generationally separated but soon to be connected souls ― through the passion and forensic efforts that this author undertakes to  share the story. 

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, predictably, a long 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 Es family 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. 

Their collaboration developed a growing friendship and resulted in The Cut Out Girl.

The Cut Out Girl is most 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 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 own experiences researching and writing The Cut Out Girl between 2014 and 2017. 

"Without families you don’t get stories,” Lien told va Es when they first met. He had added to his family.

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 was much higher (at 80 per cent) than that in any other Western nation. It was, moreover, Dutch citizens, not Germans, who traced the Jews to send east. 

Lien’s first photograph shared with van Es was one of herself 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. We see this photo on the book cover. 

A number of points distinguish The Cut Out Girl from other WWII survival memoirs, biographies, and novels ― most notably is that the book’s narrative carries on to the contemporary. 

It deals not simply with a war story but with the lifelong consequences of wartime experience, both for rescued and rescuers. 

Van Es’ serene descriptions of 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 discoveries ― a style that personalises the experience for every reader and makes the historical  content easier to recall.

Ultimately, through revealing and coming to terms with the past, the book’s 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 adviser, 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.