Family And Fortitude

Author helmi wolff talks to clare gladstone about growing up during world war two and her inspirational mother.

- Helmi Wolff

GROWING up in Nazi occupied Holland, her family torn apart by the war, Helmi Wolff experienced hardship firsthand.

But at just four years old and the youngest of seven children, her early life was cossetted and only in later years would she find out the true dangers the family faced.

Now she has written a book dedicated to her family and to all those who did what they could to help others in times of need.

Helmi, 81, was encouraged to write the book by her three children but there was also a much more profound reason she wanted to pen her memoirs.

“It’s really with the unsung heroes in mind,” explains Helmi, who lives in Bridgwater. “It’s for all those people who helped us during the war so much and put their lives on the line, never for their own gain. Some did lose their lives and they really should be mentioned.

“One hero I was closest to was my own mother. I didn’t know she was in the resistance or that she was an underground worker. She was instrumental in saving a lot of Jewish lives. She knew the Rotterdam docks very well and she helped take Jewish people to the ships that would take them to the submarines and then on to England or America.”

But Helmi had no idea about any of this while she was growing up and her book, entitled Mientje, details the war experiences from 1939 to 1945 through a child’s eyes.

“The book is grounded in fact but it has to be remembered that I was four when the war started so the beginning of the book is quite tame and it’s about my cosy life in Apeldoorn,” says Helmi, who changed her name from Mientje to Helmi when she moved to England at the age of 17 to work as an au pair and then train as a nurse.