@workingclasshistory May I interest you in @loops or @peertube so we can also enjoy your video content here in the free web?

@workingclasshistory Paging @BlippyTheWonderSlug 🙂

(I never knew about her war-time work, so I learned something new - hurrah!)

@workingclasshistory

I think I'm right in saying that much of what one sees on the internet about Audrey Hepburn in WWII derives from Robert Matzen's 2019 book "Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II".

I have not yet read Matzen's book, but one review suggests that Hepburn’s story might be a tale more complex, less edifying, but perhaps more thought provoking than a simple history of resistance.

I should repeat that I haven’t read Matzen’s book and that I am not sure of the source for the reviewer’s claim that “Hepburn was selective with details” of her and her family’s wartime history. It’s perfectly possible that the video’s depiction of her resistance is accurate.

I do know, however, that the history of resistance, collaboration, and everything in between in Nazi occupied Europe presents challenges for the historian, arising not only from the complexity of events and allegiances during the war but also from the decades of shame, concealment, and myth making that followed.

>>Ella van Heem­stra, Hepburn’s moth­er, wrote news­pa­per columns in the spring of 1935 prais­ing fas­cism; she par­tied with the Mit­ford sis­ters, flirt­ed with Herr Hitler. Even after the Nazis had sent Dutch Jews to death camps and installed fas­cists in key pub­lic offices, Heem­stra was still angling for work with the occu­piers. It wasn’t until mid-1942 that Heem­stra switched sides, when the Nazis took hostage a beloved fam­i­ly mem­ber and shot him in a reprisal against sabo­teurs. After the war, when her col­lab­o­ra­tion was ques­tioned, she edit­ed her his­to­ry, and made sure that Hep­burn was selec­tive with details as well. <<

https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/dutch-girl-audrey-hepburn-and-world-war-ii