Looking for Uncle Joop A LongLost Story from NaziOccupied Holland eBook Aletta Stevens
Download As PDF : Looking for Uncle Joop A LongLost Story from NaziOccupied Holland eBook Aletta Stevens 
For more than 40 years, Aletta Stevens knew very little about Johannes (Joop) Doedenias Schweitzer, her uncle who died in the Second World War. Starting with a hopeful internet search, she decided to find out what really happened to him. In this book she draws on personal testimonies from people who once knew him, unpublished letters, and official war documentation, as well as revisiting her own upbringing in 1970s Holland. The story builds to a vivid reconstruction of what took place on the fateful night of 4 August 1944 in the Nazi-occupied Dutch countryside. Out of tragic events came an uplifting experience amongst the local people who never forgot Joop Schweitzer. Looking for Uncle Joop is a story about family history, how the truth can be hidden for so long, and the continuing importance of both memoir and remembrance.
'He sees him from the corner of his eye. 'Isn't that Joop Schweitzer?' Cees de Vries thinks to himself, as he watches a young man in fashionable Knickerbocker trousers cycle by. He had bumped into Joop only the other week at Jappie Koopmans's house, where he had popped in for a chat. He knew Joop was often round there in the evening (the only time it was safe for him to go out), helping the Koopmans family with the odd domestic chore, such as sticking down ration stamps. Despite being his contemporary, Joop had not had much to say to him. Now, in a flash, his eyes register the frightened look on Joop's face. What could he be so scared of? 'Joop!' he calls. There is no response. He calls again, this time more emphatically. But Joop is too deep in thought to hear him and Cees is left standing on the pavement, watching, wondering, whilst Joop speeds away into the distance.'
Looking for Uncle Joop A LongLost Story from NaziOccupied Holland eBook Aletta Stevens
Aletta Stevens’ fine book Searching for Uncle Joop: A Long-Lost Story from Nazi-Occupied Holland is worth reading for anyone with even a casual interest in this place and time, or anyone who appreciates serious memoir. The author has the eye and ear of an investigative reporter and an historian as she pursues the unknown story of her uncle, a municipal resistance worker who was executed by the Nazis. Her interest is much more than casual: she caught wisps of the story as a child and young woman, but only in midlife did she pursue the question of who her uncle really was fully. Every detail is sought after and reconstructed with care, as the parallel narratives spiral around each other: the uncle’s in the 1940s in a small town in Holland, and the author’s own in the 2000s as she tries to put together conversations with elders, letters and other documents, and published evidence. She must also come to grips with her own feelings as the story unfolds. An eminently readable and worthwhile addition to the shelf of wartime narratives.Product details
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Looking for Uncle Joop A LongLost Story from NaziOccupied Holland eBook Aletta Stevens Reviews
I have been involved with this book for a considerable time as editor, proofreader and ‘creative consultant’. I know how much Aletta has put into writing it over the period of a decade. As we’ve often discussed, the best way to write is simply to write, and in doing so to find a way through.
To have had an uncle she neither personally knew nor knew anything much about and yet to have created this richly detailed and moving account is, in my opinion, a great piece of work. She has had to work through huge amounts of disparate material personal interviews and reminiscences, phone conversations, letters, official archive material, photographs, objects found only in a house clearing (the evocative mahogany cupboard that starts the book) – and more. The author has also had to work against silence the almost lifelong silence of Joop Schweitzer’s only sibling, the author’s mother.
While many people set out to write such a story according to a genre or ‘label’, this book does not make that mistake – it has its own narrative and tone. Yet it may certainly be read as a memoir, a biography and as a study of local history and of WW2, as it embraces all these aspects. Heartily recommended.
I read this book for my book club and absolutely loved it! I usually read mostly fiction and so was initially resistant to the choice of a non-fiction book. But Looking for Uncle Joop is written in a very narrative, "in the moment" style, so that I really became engrossed in the story. It was very interesting to read a story that takes place during World War II and discusses the acts of resistance of ordinary people during the German occupation. It is about a difficult time in history and deals with a difficult subject matter, but it is not at all harrowing or hard to read. The book reads not just like a novel, but like a mystery as well, because the how, why and by whom of Uncle Joops murder is revealed toward the end. Also interesting is the mix of past and present, with the narrative recounting of his story alternating with more of a memoir recounting the author's search for truth and her family's history. As a former university English major, I am used to analyzing and assessing books, but for me the true mark of a good book is if it makes me look forward to reading it. I was happy to pick up Uncle Joop each night and settle in for a nice visit to another time and place.
Aletta Stevens’ fine book Searching for Uncle Joop A Long-Lost Story from Nazi-Occupied Holland is worth reading for anyone with even a casual interest in this place and time, or anyone who appreciates serious memoir. The author has the eye and ear of an investigative reporter and an historian as she pursues the unknown story of her uncle, a municipal resistance worker who was executed by the Nazis. Her interest is much more than casual she caught wisps of the story as a child and young woman, but only in midlife did she pursue the question of who her uncle really was fully. Every detail is sought after and reconstructed with care, as the parallel narratives spiral around each other the uncle’s in the 1940s in a small town in Holland, and the author’s own in the 2000s as she tries to put together conversations with elders, letters and other documents, and published evidence. She must also come to grips with her own feelings as the story unfolds. An eminently readable and worthwhile addition to the shelf of wartime narratives.
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