Author(s): Hetty Verolme

Biography

Hetty Werkendam, oldest of three children of a Jewish family in Amsterdam, was thirteen years old when in 1943 she was was transported with her parents and brothers to the repatriation camp at Westerbork. From there the family was sent to Belsen, where Hetty was separated from her parents to live in the 'Children's House', a barrack room which directly overlooked one of the open mass graves, and from where she witnessed at first hand the horrors of the Holocaust. Her account of life in the Children's House - where the awfulness of Belsen was countered by the inspirational figure of the children's mentor Sister Luba - provides a painfully poignant, ultimately uplifting and highly unusual Holocaust story.