“In the winter of 1944 me and my brother had to leave Amsterdam because of the Hunger winter. My mother wasn’t able to provide food for us so we were send by boat to a family in the north of the country. The worst thing was that we didn’t know if we were going to be reunited ever again. We lived on a big farm with a very wealthy family. They were very good people but I remember being incredibly homesick. We were too young to really understand, but old enough to know there was a terrible war going on. In may our country was liberated from the German occupation and we returned back home to our parents in Amsterdam. Even though I was young I remember it very well. On the 8th of May 1945 the American and Canadian tanks we riding through the city of Amsterdam and the feeling was indescribable. We were finally free.”