Overview

The Jewish Holocaust orphan Jay's life story is linked to tales of deep hatreds, profound love, and paralyzing fears. The storyteller is Harold. He had been Jay's boyhood friend and only discovered late in life that Jay was one of a small number of Dutch Jews who had not been killed by Hitler and his murderous goons. The hatred in this story is projected through the character of a Dutch Nazi who first raped Jay's mom and later killed her. The love is presented through the story of the three-way friendship between Jay's adoptive mom, his natural mom, and Harold's uncle. The paralyzing fears in the story are portrayed through the character of Jay's adoptive dad who, even after the war, was still too afraid to tell Jay about his birth mom. The ongoing drama in this three-family story is repeatedly brought to the fore through the actions of Harold's dad who had the bravado of a storm chaser but the attention span of a two-year-old. Jay's story is a parable in the sense that Hitler's henchmen usually, but not always, used violence and fear as tools to suppress the spirit of love in the Netherlands during WWII and afterwards.

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""Never again, the world agreed. Never again would we fall for the promises of a strongman to 'fix this country, ' or listen to his frenzied followers declaring him God's appointed ruler while methodically papering over truth with lies. That is, as Richard Reitsma deftly shows, what led to World War II, though not everyone saw it at the time. And it is the climate we're living in now, though not everyone sees it that way. What other lessons might be found in Forgetfulness for today? Read Reitsma's book to find out."" --Angela Reitsma Bick, editor-in-chief, Christian Courier ""This novel uses a unique family story to describe strong social tensions in Christian communities and to show how moral conflicts play out in real life. It immerses the reader in the drama of confronting the Nazis during World War II and how that even affected Dutch immigrants and their children in their later years. It also explores the experiential struggle with guilt in an authentic way. The novel complements the historical accounts of trauma caused by antisemitism. It's an excellent guide to understanding how antisemites assault human integrity and how that impacts future generations."" --Johan Hegeman, author of The Call of Conscience: Protestant Clergy and Jews in the Netherlands, 1935-1945

Author Information

Richard Reitsma is a retired library director who was born in the Netherlands and came to Canada in 1955. He went back to the Netherlands and finished a PhD in Dutch history in 1982. He heard many stories from his parents' generation about the five years of German occupation but little about the Holocaust. This, his first historical novel, is a fictional portrayal about the sources of that mysterious ""forgetfulness,"" on the part of his parents' generation.

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