Edith Velmans
13th July 1942
Holland
"I crammed until the last possible moment. Hannie and I set off for school together. It was raining. Seeing us walking along in the rain, with our stars on, an out-of-service bus stopped for us. The bus driver said he'd take us wherever we were going. It was really nice of him, but we thought it safer not to accept. We said we couldn't because then we might land in jail, and he said, 'Well, then we'll all go to jail together, that will be a blast.' 'OK', we said, 'but not right now, thanks: we are on our way to our finals . . .' We decided we had better get going. 'Next time perhaps, after the war,' we told him and continued on our way."
From the diary of Edith Velmans
Shortly after this encounter from sixty-nine years ago today, the Nazis tightened their grip on the Jewish community in Holland. Edith Velmans lost her mother, her grandmother and her brother to the gas chambers, and survived the war herself by posing as a Christian with the relatives of a family friend. Her book, Edith's Story, makes for harrowing but inspirational reading.
