To grow up, as I did, in a country that had been under Nazi occupation less than a decade before I was born, was to be very sure about who had been good and who had been evil. Where I lived, in The Hague, we refused to buy candy from a local tobacconist, because the woman who worked behind the counter once had a boyfriend in the occupying German army. The butcher shop around the corner was out of bounds, because the owner was rumored to have been a Nazi collaborator. Most of our primary school teachers had been on the side of the angels, of course — or so they said. This one had been a brave resister by sending German soldiers, asking for directions, the wrong way. That one had punctured the tires of a German army vehicle.
Staying Decent in an Indecent Society
