WITNESS

About the Book

This non-fiction book follows the author from his earliest memories in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, before World War II broke out, to the end of his active career in the United States when the new millenium was around the corner. This sixty-year period undoubtedly saw more changes in the way most of us have lived than in the previous centuries of the Christian era.

This first-time author took the decision to write this book spurred on by a number of people who knew bits and pieces of his life and who thought he should share the entire story with the public, because his life had been so adventurous. As is the case with so many other people, sometimes life turns out quite different from one´s own expectations and Herman Beuk´s life is a case in point.

The occupation by Nazi Germany began in May 1940 and ended with the enemy´s surrender in May 1945. The author´s father was then a man in his early thirties who was eventually picked up by the occupiers to work for them in Germany. German men had all been drafted into their armed forces so many foreigners of the occupied territories were sent to work in German factories. This was forced labor because the men were imprisoned and very poorly fed. When the tide turned against Germany the prisoners could no longer send or receive mail and this fact led to completely unplanned developments for the Beuk family. The time was summer of 1944 and it was probably some time after the allied landings in Normandy because the Germans were on the run. One day a man presented himself to Herman´s mother and told her that he had been imprisoned with her husband but had managed to get out. He told her the location where he had been at that time but also said that he and the other prisoners had been transported several times due to allied bombing of the industrial area where the factories were located. This was not far from the Dutch border, in the general area of the rivers Rhine and Ruhr.

Meanwhile, life in Holland had become miserable. The Jewish population of Amsterdam, more than 10% of the inhabitants, had been rounded up. The Beuks had Jewish neighbors and had witnessed this firsthand. There was no reliable news about the course of the war, only rumors. Herman´s mother, who was not in any way especially brave under normal conditions, then took the decision that she and her son would go and try to find her husband. She had nothing to lose. Surprisingly there was no problem to buy a train ticket, even though they were crossing the border but the Germans seemingly did not consider the Dutch as enemies, just conquered subjects. The book describes the next period until the end of the war when mother and son were driven through much of Germany as if on the crest of a wave, all because of the advance of the allied troops and the retreat of the German army. At age 8 Herman Beuk would never forget this experience.

The postwar years in the Netherlands and in the rest of Western Europe were rough. The country had to rebuild its infrastructure and its entire economy. True to type, the Dutch were the first to ask the Americans to discontinue their share of the Marshall Plan, the gigantic U.S. aid project for Europe that also helped defeated Germany. But without economic help and with the country involved in defense of its colony in the East Indies, later Indonesia, life was very frugal and most food was still rationed. Not many people know that the Netherlands was, and still is, one of the most populated countries in the world. Therefore the Dutch continue to create land out of the sea. In the late Forties and early Fifties the Dutch government had signed emigration agreements with Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Those countries needed skilled people and Holland was interested in relieving the pressure. Young people in particular saw no future in Holland and many were willing to make a new beginning overseas. In reality, historically

About the Author

Herman Beuk was born in Amsterdam, Holland just before World War II broke out and his early memories go back to his country’s occupation by Nazi Germany. From that moment onward his life has been dominated by events that took place on four continents for he has lived and worked in Latin America, South and Southeast Asia, Switzerland and the United States of America. During four decades, as an expatriate, he has witnessed first hand the transformation that has taken place in the world and this is what he wants to share with his readers.