How this Project Came About

Alida, or Oma as I called her, died in the October of 1998 of ovarian cancer. She had been ill for several years, and as her illness advanced, people persuaded her to write down the memories of her time during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. She and my grandfather, Dirk Bijl, had never talked about this within the family, although I believe Oma had given talks about it publicly while campaigning on matters such as the regime in Burma and other occupations.

Having finally written down the memoirs, it took some time to persuade her that she should have them typed up and available at the very least to her descendants. She was adamant that they should not be published for money, but she was at last persuaded, once she had been admitted to hospital for the last time, to allow me to type them up and make copies for the immediate family. I was an undergraduate at the time, living some 80 miles or so away from Oma and Opa.

I typed the memoirs up, and in fact, most of the immediate family read them gathered about the deathbed after Oma had slid into a coma.

Some time passed, with both myself and my mother occassionally lending them to interested friends, and me thinking that they really should be more on public view, but we took no action, not being sure how Opa would feel. Then came the attack on the World Trade Center on the 11th September 2001, and the subsequent horrific attacks on Asians in the UK and the US. I re-read Oma's Memoirs and became convinced that the world order Oma had wanted, with tolerance for all, was being threatened as never before. So I talked to Opa and offered to put these memoirs online for him. I explained that I believed Oma would have wished it, and I made it clear that if he didn't want me to do it I would make it as easy as I could for someone else to, and so on and so forth. And in due course, he came to agree, and gave me permission.

He has also written some memoirs of these times, and his son Martin is going to be putting these online. When he has done so, I will of course link to them from here.

Now read Alida's introdution, or go back to the index

Throughout these pages, text like this is my writing and text like this is Alida's.

Please Mail Me if you have any questions at all about the site, or if I can help you in any way.