Children's House At Belsen

Hetty Werkendam, oldest of three children of a Jewish family in Amsterdam, was thirteen when in 1943 she was transported with her parents and brothers to the repatriation camp at Westerbork, and from there to the concentration camp at Belsen. When their father and then their mother were taken away, Hetty, Max and Jacky had to fend for themselves. Initially separated from her brothers, Hetty later joined them in the 'Children's House', a barrack room which directly overlooked one of the open mass graves. Under the inspirational figure of the children's mentor Sister Luba - 'The Angel of Belsen' - it came to form an oasis of hope and humanity amid the horrors. The children were finally liberated by the British in April 1945 - just too late for Anne Frank, who had died in the same camp the previous month. Told with a child's immediacy, The Children's House of Belsen provides a painfully poignant, ultimately uplifting and highly unusual Holocaust story.