How to Flee the Gestapo

I am pleased to announce that Boom uitgevers Amsterdam will publish the Dutch translation of my book this November. Gewone Helden: de Dutch-Paris ontsnappingslijn 1942-1945 (ISBN 978 90 5875 5568) will be available at book sellers or as an e-book starting on 5 November 2016. Oxford University Press will publish the English edition in early 2018. And, yes, I do use everyone’s real name in the book and there are photographs of some of the resisters and the people they helped.

To celebrate the release of the book, we invite you to a mini-symposium on Dutch-Paris to be held at the Amsterdam Hilton on the afternoon of Thursday, 10 November 2016. I will tell the short version of the story of Dutch-Paris. Then we will have a lively discussion with a panel of experts and the audience. The experts include Hans Blom, historian and former director of NIOD; Ad van Liempt, author, journalist and tv producer; Onno Sinke, historian and advisor at Arq Psychotrauma Expert Groep, and Max van Weezel, political scientist, journalist and radio anchor. The symposium will be held in English.

The mini-symposium is, of course, free of charge. But we ask anyone who intends to join us to please register so that we have enough chairs and coffee cups for everyone. You can register very easily by clicking on the blue “symposium” tab above or clicking on this link. They both take you to the same place. Please register as soon as possible, but certainly before 20 October.

If you have a family connection to Dutch-Paris because, for example, your mother or grandfather worked in the line or was helped by it, please let us know by sending a message to the symposium’s host, Maarten Eliasar, at amsterdam@dutchparis.com.

For those of you who enjoy quality documentaries, the Dutch tv program ‘Andere Tijden ’ will feature Dutch-Paris in the episode “Ontsnappingsroute in de oorlog” at about 21.10 hours on 5 November 2016 on Dutch public network NPO2. No one is more curious to see this than I am, because although it is based on my book, I’ve had very little to do with it. I do know that they have interviewed individuals who were involved with the line in one way or another.

That will be an exciting week for me and everyone who has been involved in the book. We hope to see you at the mini-symposium on 10 November.