Author Description

On a warm morning in early September 1939, Jan Schoumans set off on his bicycle for a camping holiday in the Dutch countryside with his younger brother, Jacob. Within twenty-four hours, Jan was back in Amsterdam, reporting for duty at his nearest barracks. Europe was at war and life over the next five years, for those lucky enough to come through, would be a never-ending struggle for survival. The Lost Years is the true story of everyday life in Nazi-occupied Holland during the Second World War. Once a manager of a vegetarian restaurant, Jan takes care of two Jewish women, the frail Rose, who spends three years in hiding, frequently under the floorboards, and the more robust and courageous Tema, with whom he pretends to live as man and wife. Daily life consists of finding enough sugar beet and black oil to make a meal, with a candle to eat by, listening for covert signals at the door but dreading the crashing of a Nazi raid, running home to be off the streets by the eight o'clock curfew and learning to sense an imminent raid two streets away.