The Sweet Dell: The True Story of One Family’s Fight to Save Jews in Nazi-Occupied Holland

Winner of the 2016 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Nancy Pearl Award for Best Book–Memoir, The Sweet Dell is a hopeful and captivating true story that transports the reader into the dark years of Nazi-occupied Holland. Arrested on October 6, 1943, Dr. Pieter Schoorl listened to the heavy iron doors of a basement cell in the Gestapo’s Amsterdam headquarters close behind him. It had been easy for him to hide the first Jew-a blonde-haired, blue-eyed three-year-old. And had Dr. Schoorl and his wife Anne helped only the one child, this would be a far simpler story. But the pleas for help never ended. Dutch commandoes met at the Schoorls’ kitchen table, and shot-down Allied pilots shared breakfast with their five children. Jews continually arrived at the Schoorls’ farm unannounced in the dark of night. The couple eventually filled their two homes with guests. When there was no room left, they searched the countryside for more hiding places-addresses as they called them. One hundred forty thousand Jews lived in Holland before the war, fewer than 10,000 would survive. This is the story of how a handful of those survivors endured, a story that invites the reader to consider the price paid to do-in the words of Dr. Schoorl- what any man should do.