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The Truth Was Different: One Woman's Journey Through Occupied Holland
Paperback
Series: WWII, Book 3
Historical FiguresHolocaustWorld War II
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ISBN13: 9781957970349
Publisher: Rambling Ruminations
Published: Nov 16 2026
Pages: 424
Weight: 1.24
Height: 0.86 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
When Rita was born in Amsterdam in 1908, no one could have predicted the events that would shape her life-or the decisions for which she would later be judged.
Highly intelligent, analytical, and resilient, Rita's narcissistic and quarrelsome parents, not to mention the strange circumstances under which she married, left their mark long before the Netherlands surrendered to German in May of 1940. By then, Rita was a wife and a mother responsible for her two sons.
Occupation impacted every facet of her existence. Food and fuel first became scarce and then disappeared. Jewish friends and relatives faced harsh restrictions and, eventually, Rita made decisions that might even put her own life at risk. As she experienced almost every kind of traumatic event, Rita found that the difference between right and wrong wasn't always obvious.
She made choices: Some courageous, some desperate, some illegal, and some very difficult for even her loved ones to understand. After the war, Rita was judged to be cold, selfish, and even cruel. The unanswered question was, Why?
Long after Rita's death, her granddaughter, Dr. Caroline Crocker, set out to discover the truth.
Drawing upon Rita's own out-of-print books, family documents, archival records, historical sources, interviews, and extensive historical research, Dr. Crocker began checking into how much truth the rather unpleasant family stories held. Simple explanations became complex. Events and actions placed in their original context looked very different, sometimes even reasonable.
The Truth Was Different was written in Rita's own voice. She never claims to be a heroine, nor does she conceal the painful, embarrassing, and sometimes illegal parts of her life. Instead, the reader is ushered into the experience of an ordinary woman trying to survive extraordinary circumstances.
Part family history, part historical investigation, and part intimate portrait of a complicated woman, The Truth Was Different asks whether it is fair or even possible to judge a person's actions when the circumstances surrounding their choices have been forgotten.
A story of war and survival, but also trauma, resilience, love, loss, moral compromise, and unimaginable pain, this book asks a question that reaches far beyond occupied Holland:
How well can we understand another person if we don't know the whole story?
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