Brave Deeds: How One Family Saved Many from the Nazis

Susan Merskey is freelance writer in London, Ontario.

Lieverd was sent to live with Oom Frans (Frans Braal) and his wife in the Dutch countryside during the last months of the Second World War, along with many others being kept in hiding. Conditions were extremely rough and the Nazi danger never very far away, but Oom Frans was the leader of the Dutch resistance, and helped many, including an injured Canadian airman whose plane had crashed nearby, to survive.

The book is based on the stories Mies Braal and her daughters told in interviews with the author. Despite their many talks, the author, who was their neighbour, only “found” her book when she stood by Frans’s deathbed in British Columbia in 2004.

The narrator of Brave Deeds, Lieverd, is a fictional creation representing all children who go through war. No formal records of what this Dutch resistance group did have survived, but these conscientious objectors were true humanitarians, careless for their own safety.

The story is told with immense simplicity and the black and white illustrations, many of which come from the Braal family archives, add both immediacy and realism. The book also contains historical notes, a useful glossary, and suggestions for further reading.

Brave Deeds can be read by individuals or used in classroom history teaching. It would provide a good lead-in to a discussion of both war and resistance—as relevant today as in 1944–45. Recommended.