User:Bryncav/Things We Couldn't Say

Lead
Things We Couldn't is the true story of Diet Eman, a young Dutch woman, who, with her fiance, Hein Sietsma, risked everything to rescue imperiled Jews in Nazi-occupied Holland during World War II. Throughout the years that Diet and Hein aided the Resistance--work that would cost Diet her freedom and Hein his life--their courageous effort ultimately saved hundreds of Dutch Jews.

Article body
After the War, Diet "wanted to forget" she moved to Venezuela, became a nurse, learned Spanish, and worked for Shell Oil. She has married an American engineer named Egon Erlich. Later, she divorced him and moved to Michigan, where she worked for an export company. In 1978, after she heard a fellow Dutch Resistance fighter, Corrie ten Boom, speak in Grand Rapids Michigan, she began to think that she had an obligation to reveal her story about saving Jews, ferrying Allied pilots to safety and escaping the Gestapo. Her friend, along with her son, suggested that recounting her experiences would be therapeutic. Finally, in 1990, a professor at Dordt College (now Dordt University), a Christian Reformed Church institution in Sioux Center, Iowa, persuaded her to write a memoir about what had gone unexpressed for so long. The book “Things We Couldn’t Say” was written with Professor James C. Schaap, and it was published in 1994.

Genre
Things We Couldn't is a memoir written by Diet Eman and James C. Schaap.

Publication
The book was published in November 1994 by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan. The book is 390 pages. The book is published in English and produced as Paperback.

Reception
Jewish Book World

"This powerfully written book gives the viewpoint of the Christian person who basically sacrificed a comfortable, 'safe,' and somewhat secure living in order to help the Jewish people during WWII. Reading this book, one cannot help but think of the 'Righteous Gentiles,' people who literally gave of themselves so that at least some of our people could live."

Jewish Chronicle

"Hers is a splendidly uplifting account of heroism against the odds. Extracts from her diary and letters written at the time add to a sense of immediacy. We are caught up in her fears, hopes and dilemmas as she experienced them."