For many children, the game of hide-and-seek is played for fun, but for Betty Nasiell, hiding during part of her childhood was the key to her survival.
When she was 6 years old and living in her native Netherlands, Nasiell saw German soldiers marching past her house singing a song about continuing on to England.
It was May 1940, and the Germans had overrun her country in their bid to dominate Europe and the world during World War II.
“My father told me not to worry, and I was too young to realize the consequences,” Nasiell, 89, said in a recent interview at her home in Laguna Woods, where she has lived for 35 years,
When her mother asked if the family could go to America, her father said it was too late to escape, she recalled.
Soon Nasiell was unable to attend school or play with neighborhood children due to German decrees regarding the treatment of members of the Jewish faith.
“We had to wear a yellow star on our coats, which was sewn on to designate we were Jews,” she said in an account of her life written up by friend and neighbor AJ Lane.
“I had no idea what it was for,” Nasiell said. “I was mad about not playing with my other girlfriends.”
Although they had enough food on the table, her parents, Leo and Sascha van der Horst, had to close the department store they owned in the town of Steenwijk and relinquish their car. Leo was taken away briefly by the Germans but fortunately returned to his family in time for his wife’s birthday.
By 1942, Nasiell’s parents knew it was time to disappear with help from the local underground movement.
“My sister and I were deposited with some former store employees nearby for one night,” Nasiell said in Lane’s account. Strangers from the underground picked her up and took her by herself to the home of a couple named Liefland in Utrecht to go into hiding.
“I wasn’t thinking anything at the time but knew I couldn’t go outside except at night so I wouldn’t be seen,” Nasiell…
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