The Cut Out Girl: A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found: The Costa Book of the Year 2018

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Professor van Es, of St Catherine's College and Oxford's English Faculty, talks to Arts Blog about the journey that led to the publication of his new book, The Cut Out Girl: A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found . The two are now good friends. “We are both quite straight people. We like to say things as they are,” said Van Es. “I feel I have never known anyone as well as I know Lien ... Lien just had that total trust of saying, I will give you my life.”

For over two weeks I’ve been listening to this... ( sometimes sitting down taking notes while the author was speaking to try to keep myself interested.

It’s also an investigation into the Netherlands during World War II, and van Es does an extremely good job of giving some historical context to the personal story. Like many others, I knew something about the Resistance efforts of the Dutch, but nothing really about the collusion between the Dutch and Germans which existed in the first couple of years of occupation. Apparently the Dutch were ruthlessly efficient at ‘giving up’ their Jewish population - many of whom were longtime and totally assimilated Dutch citizens. I saw van Es give a talk on this book, and in an unforgettable moment, he showed a picture of a large group of young men and women enjoying a day at the beach in Scheveningen (just north of The Hague). Two of that group were Lien’s parents. By the end of the war, only one of those youthful, vibrant people was still alive. She said she was surprised the story of her life had won the Costa award, which was judged by a panel made up of Raworth, Prue Leith, Kate Humble and Simon Williams. “I loved the book but I didn’t expect it,” said De Jong. “We were in hiding, but after the war, nobody spoke about it. It was not an issue, it was not a subject. So nobody spoke about it during the war or after the war. I once said that I’d been born after the war. My feeling is, I just started after the war. The time before that, I had no words ... I never thought I had a story, but Bart wrote it down and it was a story.” The Cut Out Girl is Van Es’s piecing together of De Jong’s difficult youth; after she left the Van Eses she lived with another family who treated her as a servant and sexually abused her. It is also an exploration of Dutch cooperation in rounding up Jews for the Nazis. Raworth said that of around 140,000 Jews living in the Netherlands in 1940, 105,000 were dead by May 1945. Bart van Es treats this story with the respect and care it deserves even when he discovers things that I am sure would have been easier to hide and or/ignore. I absolutely loved the way he wove Lientjie's story in with the story of his research as well. I enjoyed seeing their friendship grow as the story progressed. The switching between present and past and Bart van Es trips to see many of the location Lientjie tells him about - really made the story come alive for me. I am not ashamed to say that I shed tears reading this book - the subject matter was not always easy to get though.

This book is about a Jewish Dutch girl Lien and the various families who saved her following the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands, in particular the van Es family. The ‘the cut out girl’ represents Lien but the title comes from a picture in a ‘poesie’ album she kept which was a scrapbook of poetry that people wrote in for her and about her - these were popular with girls at that time. Lien’s family were not especially religious and the author pointed out that it is really Hitler who made Lien Jewish following the invasion in May 1940. From 1941 similar rules to those implemented in Germany from 1935 (Nuremberg Laws) were enforced such as wearing the yellow star and Lien had to go to Jewish school. Prior to this her childhood had consisted of mixing happily with other children surrounded by a happy extended family and caring neighbours. There are some lovely pictures to illustrate this life that was to end so disastrously. In the words of Maria Condo This one is not bringing me joy and I have read 50% of the book and that has taken me a week. I think it is time to part company. I struggle with giving up on a book as some books do turn around and am always afraid I will miss out by not finishing the read. Lien was sent by her parents in 1942 to live with a foster family, the van Eses, who bravely took her in and treated her as one of their own children at the time when the witch-hunt to round up all Dutch Jews and deport them to the concentration camps was beginning. Lien lived happily with the van Es family for months, gradually forgetting her parents as Ma and Pa Es started to replace them in her heart and her new sisters and brothers and school friends became her family. It would be years before Lien knew anything of the deaths of her parents and most of her extended family in Auschwitz.When I was eight years old, I went hiding and said good-bye to my father and mother and I thought it was just for a few weeks. It’s also possible- bless the author’s heart- that he was ‘too close’ to this story to have been objective. I don’t think it was necessary to have his opinions on how he feels society is today.... comparing ‘today’ with the devastations of the Holocaust.

The last time Hesseline - known as Lien - saw her parents was in The Hague as she was collected at the door by a stranger and taken to a city far away to be hidden from the Nazis. She was raised by her foster family as one of their own but, some years after the war, she became estranged from the family who took her in. What was her side of the story? Bart van Es - a grandson of the couple who looked after Lien - was determined to find out. The book includes many wonderful photographs that really helped me to visualize who was who in the story and it was rewarding to see the relationship develop between the author and his subject, to the point where once again "family" connections were established. Even more satisfying was the knowledge that revisiting her past and learning more of things she had not understood as she was living these experiences helped to bring about a healing and wholeness for her. The Cut Out Girl by Oxford English professor Bart van Es has been named Costa Book of the Year, after previously winning the biography category of the awards. Professor van Es triumphed ahead of literary figures including novelist Sally Rooney. Read our Q&A below with Professor van Es, whose book tells the story of Lien de Jong, a young Dutch girl hidden from the Nazis during World War II.

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Most of us are familiar with the affecting story of Anne Frank and her family's grievous attempts to survive the Nazi invasion in Holland. This author's focus is particularly about the “hidden children” during the Holocaust. In particular, the focus is on a young Jewish girl, Lientje. She was, at the age of eight, entrusted by her parents to be hidden and cared for by others. This heart-rending tale lays bare much of what befell these children. I have often wondered what they thought and felt during and following this time. The extraordinary true story of a young Jewish girl in Holland during World War II, who hides from the Nazis in the homes of an underground network of foster families, one of them the author's grandparents