Saving the children : history of the organized effort to rescue Jewish children in the Netherlands, 1942 - 1945

"The shadow of death hung over the first (and last) public end-of-year ceremony of the Jewish lyceum. Fifteen-year-old girls had received written orders from the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung (Bureau for Jewish Emigration) to be at Central Station at one o'clock in the morning for a transport. To where? No one knew. The parents understood that they had to send their daughters as defenseless victims into the street in the middle of the night and would never see them again. They were not allowed to accompany the girls to the station. The daughters went, often after harrowing domestic scenes, in order "not to endanger their parents." As if the parents would be spared! I witnessed desperate discussions in the homes of several girls and then left crushed because I had no solution. "Don't go!" was my urgent advice. "And then what?" was the desperate reply from desperate parents. Most of them did go, only a few had sense enough to go into hiding."--Book cover