Book Description

The heartbreaking true story of how a sheltered, small-town family sacrificed everything to join the Netherlands’ fiercest resistance fighters of World War II. SPRING 1940. The German Army occupies the Netherlands. No longer a theoretical conflict heard only on radio broadcasts, the war has now reached Apeldoorn. For eleven-year-old Rei Hulstein and his friends and siblings, their innocent childhoods abruptly end. When Gestapo soldiers begin to round up Dutch Jews, Rei’s father, Hendrikus, a humble furniture-maker, joins with his cohorts to form a resistance group known as The Underground. In the Hulsteins' tiny home, Rei's closet transforms into a hidden sanctuary—a secret room-between-rooms. This concealed space becomes a lifeline, providing refuge to Jewish families fleeing their occupiers during the tumultuous times of war. D-Day comes and goes, but the Second World War rages on. Will the atrocities yet to come shake Rei’s faith in his family's noble cause? A thought-provoking novel based on the author’s great-uncle Rei’s memoir, The Quiet Man, and interweaving other firsthand accounts he has gathered over the years, The Jews in Our Closet teaches the value of doing what is right and loving your neighbour, even when it costs you everything.