Ninety-two-year old Teddy realized no one knew about his time in the occupied Netherlands during the war and wanted to make it known.

Karyn, a former journalist, is hired to write his story in return for trying to find her sister who was saved from the Nazis by being sent to live with a family different from the one she went with.

A PLACE TO HIDE does not read as a memoir even though Teddy is telling his story of the sacrifices he made for himself and how he saved many Jewish families.

There is a story in between as he’s telling about his life.

Fans of Mr. Balson will be captivated by his amazing research as he has Teddy recalling everything that happened even though it does get a bit heavy with all that was going on.

World War II enthusiasts will have all the information they could ever want about how things progressed.

The book is very detailed as well as frightening as we find out what went on, but also wonderful to hear what the citizens of the Netherlands did to ease some of the horror. 4/5

Thank you to the publisher for a copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

A Place to Hide, Ronald H. Balson, author; Fred Berman, narrator
The story is told through the eyes of Theodore Hartigan, a man in his nineties who has never truly revealed his past to his family, Now, before he “shuffles off this mortal coil, he wants to tell them his story. He tells it to a former journalist, Karyn Sachnoff, one of the rescued children of the Holocaust who is searching for her missing sister. The book she will write about him and his experiences will be in exchange for any help he can provide in her quest.
Born in Washington DC, to a prominent political family, Teddy is anointed with a job in the State Department there. Then, with Hitler’s rise to power and the slow revelation of his draconian policies, he is offered a promotion to head up a division processing visas and is sent to the office in Amsterdam, Holland. It is growing more difficult to fill positions there because of the fear engulfing the nation, especially for Jews, even those who are citizens of America. Germany is on its own death march, but it will take millions with it.
As Teddy, with his photographic memory and feisty personality, tells his story to Karyn, her own sparse memories are awakened, and so as they develop a very warm relationship, and they provide a service to each other. His story begins in DC when he is planning his wedding and continues until he finds his way out of occupied Holland. His isolationist father and the politicians with whom he associates are in sharp contrast to those with whom Teddy becomes involved politically, socially and romantically in Amsterdam. As he becomes more and more involved with the plight of the Jewish people and the resistance movement to help them, he reveals another part of history of which few are aware.
When I closed this novel, there was not a dry eye in the theater of my mind. Using Theodore Hartigan, an American State Department employee who is made up out of whole cloth, as the mechanism to tell the story of what happened to the Jews and other citizens of Holland during World War II, the author has written a well-researched history of the times, that works well, though at times it is a little contrived and even melodramatic in order to make its point. Throughout the entire book, I was challenged with the need to find out which, if any, of the characters were real. I discovered that my knowledge of the Holocaust had deep holes of which I was unaware. I knew about lots of underground fighters, I knew about the kinder transport, but there was so much more that I didn’t know about the situation for the Jews in Holland, about a situation which could have affected me and those I know. Of course, like most everyone, I know about the diaries of Anne Frank, but how many, like me, have never heard of Henrietta Pimental? Whoever heard of Walter Suskind? Does Alice Cohn ring a bell? Yet all of these heroes/heroines, saved hundreds of Jewish children during the war. Parents had a terrible choice to make when they knew they were going to their deaths, but at least there were people and groups that had organized to help them to willingly give up their children, in order to save them.
With the current rise in antisemitism, the disgraceful cries of genocide levied against Israel coupled with other dishonest accusations against the only safe haven Jews have ever had, only established after WWII, this novel is timely and far more important than it would have been at any other time. Hopefully, it will encourage people to learn more, as I did, and will put an end to the hate and the vitriol in the news and social media and to the violence on the streets, that is once again rising against the Jewish people, innocent of any crime except that they are perceived as different and their remarkable success through hard work and ingenuity is resented by those less successful.
The world has seen great progress due to the work and talent of Jews around the world, and the world has been robbed of an untold amount of talent and ingenuity because of The Holocaust. Once again, there are those who want to rob the world of the gifts that the people of the book so willingly share. At times, the book is maudlin, at times it even seems naive, but always, it seems authentic.