Word: steenwijk
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Based on Dutch author Harry Mulisch's novel, The Assault is the story of a Dutch man's coming to grips with history and his own past. As a 12-year-old boy in early 1945, Anton Steenwijk (Marc van Uchelen) lives under the shadow of the Nazi occupation of Haarlem. Despite the food and fuel shortages, the almost-defeated Nazis have a minimal effect on the lives of the Steenwijk family, who try to evade history by translating Homer, reading Spinoza, and playing board games...
...Anton's illusions are shattered when a Nazi collaborator is assassinated in front of the house next door, and the neighbors move the body in front of the Steenwijk house to avoid the Nazis' wrath. Within the hour, in fact, the Nazis have burned down Anton's house, slaughtered his family, and thrown him in jail...
...Steenwijk family plays board games, reads Spinoza and believes that a sound classical education constitutes an excellent preparation for life. Outside, in January 1945, the war is still going on. But aside from a shortage of food and fuel, it has not troubled this serenely bourgeois Dutch family. And with the Germans obviously headed for defeat, they may perhaps be forgiven the slightly smug aura that hovers about them. It seems as if their faith in the eternal values of liberal humanism has triumphed over the hurly-burly of modern history...
...have been meeting in Vienna to talk about decreasing their conventional military strengths in Europe. Last week the little-known 19-nation talks on Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions (MBFR) came to an ambiguous halt. As the 31st round of the discussions dissolved, Dutch Representative Willem de Vos van Steenwijk announced that NATO representatives had called for further talks to start in January 1984. But, he added, the Warsaw Pact delegation, headed by the Soviet Union, "has neither accepted this proposal nor proposed an alternative date nor provided any explanation for this procedure...
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