If you have ever seen the national frenzy when the Dutch soccer team is doing well in the World Cup or when Dutch speed skaters reign at the Olympics, you would put some serious questions marks around the notion that the Dutch are a sober people. To borrow from Paul Simon, "still crazy after all these years" seems to be a better description.

It is an irony that Fred Spiegel's recollections are so firmly embedded in that original concept of those sober and modest Dutch. He was not born in the Netherlands but in Germany. He only spent a few years in the Netherlands in freedom before his imprisonment as a Jew and before his deportation to Germany--now part of that horrible torrent known as the Holocaust, the vast landscape of the destruction of European Jewry.

In the most popular memoirs of those who survived, we are confronted with a universe of almost unbelievable horror (and we know that some American officials did not, could not believe, the early reports that a genocide of extraordinary scope was underway). Their memoirs also focus very much on the "auto" part of autobiography, on the anguish and the pain of the inner self in dealing with the incomprehensible fate that has come its way. They are mirrors of the soul, dealing with sheer survival, every hour, every day.

Fred Spiegel's recollections are, in essence, quite different. When the war surrounded him, he was a child and, on occasion, he tells us about his fright--it will chill your bones. But, more often than not, Fred's recollections are a reportage on what is happening not in him, not in his heart and soul, but around him. For someone to be so free of self-absorption is remarkable; for the memories of an interrupted childhood it is astonishing, and I believe rather unique--though Helen Colijn's Song of Survival (and the movie Paradise Road based on her experiences in a Japanese concentration camp) comes close. The beauty of Fred's recollection is in the power of his straight, unadorned eyewitness reporting.

Those among us who regularly deal with Holocaust survivors--psychologists, social workers, or scholars--cannot help but develop a deep and abiding empathy toward them: many are scarred by life-long trauma, anguish, and pain. For many, dealing with the shadows of history is a daily battle with a sledgehammer.

Fred is not free of such assaults. But Fred's eye witnessing is different. After you read this book, you do not feel hopeless. He is not a prisoner of hatred against those who planned and engineered the Holocaust against him and his people, as understandable as such hatred would be. He has no bias against the Germans--in fact he rarely uses that the. He bears no ill will against post-war German generations: the chapters in which he writes about his friendships with high school students in his native town who are studying his story are among the most moving in the memoir.

"From Despair, Hope" is the motto at my college's Holocaust Resource Center. Fred's life after the war exemplifies that hope and that is why his work--and this book--is so successful.

Perhaps the most powerful Nazi propaganda movie was Triumph of the Will. Instead of that, you have in your hands a Triumph of the Spirit. It is an extraordinary tale of one man's indomitable drive to live, and to live in grace despite what happened to him. May it inspire you, as does Fred's presence among those privileged to be his friends.
G. Jan Colijn, Ph.D., Dean of General Studies
The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey