The upstairs room

A Dutch Jewish girl describes the two-and-one-half years she spent in hiding in the upstairs bedroom of a farmer's house during the Second World War. The author writes, "This book is about my life, or rather part of my life, the part that took place in Holland during the Second World War. In this book I have gone back to those years, when I was a child, and Jewish, and therefore undesirable, when I had to hide form the Germans. I have not tried to write a historical book, although it may have some historical value. What I did try to write was a simple, human book, in which my sister and I suffered and complained, and sometimes found fault with the Gentile family that took us in for a few years, in which members of that family were not heroes but people, with strengths and weaknesses." —Preface