Leo: A Hero of the Dutch Resistance

Leo Frijda, a leading member of the Dutch armed resistance, was executed by Nazi firing squad on 1 October 1943 in the sand dunes of the North Sea Coast. He was aged just 20. Precisely because he was an unlikely hero of the resistance - a friend recalls how ‘he must have won a great battle within himself, because by nature he was a rather frightened boy’ - Leo is all the more a hero. He resisted - in word and deed - in a fight to the death. Book Life has praised this ‘engrossing debut biography’ and the ‘excellent job’ that the author does in ‘bringing his subject to life and putting that life in a broader historical context’.