I thought I’d say a little more about why it’s so appropriately symbolic that The Escape Line was officially released on May 5, the anniversary of the Liberation of the Netherlands. It would have been even more appropriate if the book had been released on May 4 because that’s the day that the Dutch commemorate their losses during the war. Dutch-Paris, of course, was part of the Dutch (and French and Belgian) resistance to the German occupation and so belongs in any victory celebration. But Dutch-Paris would not have existed if the Dutch (and Belgians and French) did not suffer the losses that are commemorated on May 4.

The list of victims of the war in the Netherlands is tragically long and varied. Dutch-Paris had a hand in trying to rescue people from almost every category. They began by helping Jews who were fleeing the deportations to Auschwitz. Then they helped young men who were trying to avoid forced labor in the Third Reich. And they helped many resisters, some of whom were being chased by the Gestapo. They did not help civilian casualties of battle or bombing in the Netherlands, but they did help downed Allied aviators and Allied soldiers who escaped from POW camps and were part of those battles.

So every inspirational story of the ordinary men and women in Dutch-Paris rescuing a Jew or a resister or an aviator comes out of a dark shadow of the terrible situation in the Netherlands. The Jews would not have needed help if they were not being hunted to death. The resisters would not have run afoul of the law if the occupation laws had not been so foul. The aviators would not be evading capture if the war had not been raging over the heads of civilians throughout Europe.

The only part of the catastrophe that the Dutch people suffered during the Second World War that Dutch-Paris does not reflect is the famine that the German occupation authorities imposed on the northern part of the country during the Hunger Winter of 1944/45.