Lost: the Quest for Jan van Boeckel by Wendy van Eijnatten
Jan van Boeckel, born on the 11th of February, 1923, grew up in the Dutch city of Haarlem just before the onset of the Second World War. By 1944, now a young man and deeply troubled as he watched his country slipping into outright war, Jan left home hoping to join the fight against the enemy. In 2015, seventy years later, his niece Wendy van Eijnatten embarked on a mission to follow her uncle’s footsteps. They lead her through the Netherlands, into Belgium and onwards into the shadows of the Nazi regime in Bavaria, Germany.
The author researched Jan’s story in detail, interviewing family members, acquaintances of Jan and their descendants as well as people who lived through similar experiences and other sources of knowledge. She explored family archives and examined material from Dutch, Belgian and German war institutions. Moreover, she visited all the places where Jan’s footsteps led.
Wendy wove together memories and historical facts enabling her to reconstruct the life, motives and thoughts of an ordinary young man caught up in extraordinary times. As the story unfolds, the reader is repeatedly drawn back to Haarlem, where a close-knit family waits, hopes and searches for their lost son and brother. This book, written in English, makes a piece of Dutch war history accessible to those beyond its borders.
The Quest for Jan van Boeckel is a 463-page paperback book (ISBN: 978-90-828055-0-5) published by mogromo publishers as a limited edition.
Selling the book allows the author to provide free copies to relevant people, libraries and archives.
mogromo 