Word: hollander
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TRIFFIN: They did work in Holland-spectacularly...
...remarkable book, Soul of Wood, Jakov Lind fixed the grayed and monstrous mindscape of wartime Germany more vividly than any other writer except Günter Grass. It is surprising, therefore, to realize that Lind, who was born in Vienna and lived out the war in Holland and Germany, is not a German author at all and now does not even write in German, his first language. He is, in fact, a 42-year-old Londoner (by adoption) who writes in English. His past still troubles him so that he refuses, for instance, to read the writing of most Germans...
...list begins with his parents-Viennese Jews who managed to ship him to Holland in 1938-and includes language, religion, several nationalities and identities. "To be schizophrenic is to be normal," Lind writes. The war followed him to Holland. Successive Nazi raids emptied Amsterdam's Jewish quarter, and Lind bought a new Aryan identity. His forged papers proved him to be Jan Overbeek, a 17-year-old Dutch laborer with an Austrian mother. At first, he recalls, "I spent most of my time studying my face in the mirror. I was Jan Overbeek, yes. But I didn...
Eventually, anyone young and healthy in Holland was likely to be questioned by the Nazis. Boldly, Lind-Overbeek escaped to Germany. He worked, drank, survived bombardment, whored and eventually landed a surreal job carrying reports from an industrialist's factory, which did metallurgical research, to the German Air Ministry. When the war ended, he set off, walking, for Holland. At the border, he molted another skin, persuading British officials that he was really Jakov Chaklan, born in Palestine. With a new identity card, he journeyed to Marseille and smuggled himself aboard a ship loaded with refugees bound for Israel...
Underneath some trees nearby, Mrs. Holland sat in her car. She had been kicked out earlier and now sat silently weeping. Her old gray car had a faded and curling sticker in the back window which said "Support Your Local Police...