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Brave Deeds: How One Family Saved many from the Nazis
Brave Deeds: How One Family Saved many from the Nazis by Ann Alma (Groundwood $17.95) ages 9-12
Ann Alma was born in the small town of Uit-huiz-ermeeden (which translates into English as out-houses in the meadows) in Holland, so she grew up knowing that during the last year of World War II, when the Nazis no longer allowed transportation of food and fuel in Holland, many people died of exposure and starvation. That's the basis for Ann Alma's Brave Deeds: How One Family Saved many from the Nazis.
After moving to Canada, Ann Alma learned that Frans and Mies Braal had hidden, clothed and fed twenty-six people in a vacation home on the island of Voorne during the winter of 1944-45. The group included Jews, a downed Canadian airman named Philip Pochailo and starving children. Twice their place was searched by the Nazis, and on both occasions they managed to hide everyone in time. They dug an underground hideout and made false identity cards.
Frans and Mies Braal survived and immigrated to the USA in 1957. Eventually, in 1969, they moved to the West Kootenays and built a house in the mountain, where Ann Alma met Mies, her neighbour. Every week they talked in Dutch while her husband Frans was in a seniors' home with dementia.
"The story came out little by little,"; says Alma, "and finally, after getting permission from Mies, and sitting by Frans's deathbed to say good-bye, I wrote the whole first draft that night."; Brave Deeds is a true story told from the perspective of a fictional child.
978-0-88899-791-3
[BCBW 2008] "Kidlit"
Ann Alma was born in the small town of Uit-huiz-ermeeden (which translates into English as out-houses in the meadows) in Holland, so she grew up knowing that during the last year of World War II, when the Nazis no longer allowed transportation of food and fuel in Holland, many people died of exposure and starvation. That's the basis for Ann Alma's Brave Deeds: How One Family Saved many from the Nazis.
After moving to Canada, Ann Alma learned that Frans and Mies Braal had hidden, clothed and fed twenty-six people in a vacation home on the island of Voorne during the winter of 1944-45. The group included Jews, a downed Canadian airman named Philip Pochailo and starving children. Twice their place was searched by the Nazis, and on both occasions they managed to hide everyone in time. They dug an underground hideout and made false identity cards.
Frans and Mies Braal survived and immigrated to the USA in 1957. Eventually, in 1969, they moved to the West Kootenays and built a house in the mountain, where Ann Alma met Mies, her neighbour. Every week they talked in Dutch while her husband Frans was in a seniors' home with dementia.
"The story came out little by little,"; says Alma, "and finally, after getting permission from Mies, and sitting by Frans's deathbed to say good-bye, I wrote the whole first draft that night."; Brave Deeds is a true story told from the perspective of a fictional child.
978-0-88899-791-3
[BCBW 2008] "Kidlit"
Submitted on September 5, 2008 in By David.
