Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Flory: Survival in the Valley of Death
    Unavailable
    Flory: Survival in the Valley of Death
    Unavailable
    Flory: Survival in the Valley of Death
    Ebook254 pages3 hours

    Flory: Survival in the Valley of Death

    By Flory Van Beek

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    In 1939, as the Nazi occupation grew from threat to reality, the Jewish population throughout Europe faced heart-wrenching decisions—to flee and lose their homes or to go into hiding, hoping against all odds to avoid the fate of being discovered. Holocaust survivor Flory A. Van Beek faced this terrible choice, and in this poignant testament of hope she takes us on her personal journey into one of history's darkest hours.

    Only a teenage girl when the Nazis invaded her neutral homeland of Holland, Flory watched the only life she had ever known disappear. Tearfully leaving her family, Flory tried to escape on the infamous SS Simon Bolivar passenger ship with Felix, the young Jewish man from Germany who would later become her husband. Their voyage brought not safety but more peril as their ship was blown up by Nazi planted mines, one of the first passenger ships destroyed by the Germans during World War II, sending nearly all of its passengers to a watery end. Miraculously, both Flory and Felix survived.

    After recovering from their injuries in England, they returned to their homeland, overjoyed to be reunited with their families yet shocked to discover their beloved Holland a much-changed place. As the Nazi grip tightened, they were forced into hiding. Sheltered by compassionate strangers in confined quarters, cut off from the outside world and their relatives, they faced hunger and the stress of daily life shadowed by the ever-present threat of certain death. Yet they also discovered, with the remarkable and brave families who sacrificed their own safety to help keep Flory and Felix alive, a set of friends that remain as close as family to this day.

    A tribute to family, faith, and the power of good in the face of disparate evil, this gripping account captures the terror of the Holocaust, the courage of those who risked their lives to protect their fellow compatriots, and the faith of those who, against all odds, managed to survive.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 13, 2009
    ISBN9780061857089
    Unavailable
    Flory: Survival in the Valley of Death

    Related to Flory

    Related ebooks

    Biography & Memoir For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Real Housewives Of The Third Reich: Wealth, Power And Petty Rivalries

      Jan 16, 2021

      WHO among us hasn’t felt that schadenfreudian thrill of wondering, “How on Earth can she be married to him?” (Apologies, Ms Chao!) At once superior and voyeuristic, the question assumes that the woman is perfectly nice, even charming, while her husba

      2 min read

    • Article

      Remains

      Sep 1, 2017

      THIS IS what you think your mother’s remains will look like. The ash will be black, like all that soot in the fireplace. It will be heavy, like wet sand. There will not be too much of it. It will fit in a small urn with intricate designs on the borde

      6 min read

    • Article

      Pitcairn’s Prison Mail

      May 8, 2020

      Pitcairn’s Prison Mail
      5 min read

    • Article

      Voices Of War

      Oct 28, 2021

      Voices Of War
      3 min read

    • Article

      Murder of Three Teens in Mexico Led Police to a Fugitive US Polygamist and His Dark World

      Nov 11, 2017

      Orson Black was arrested after the bodies of three Americans were found near his Mexican ranch – then police and neighbors learned the truth about his life

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Chenogne massacre

      Feb 26, 2020

      The Chenogne massacre
      3 min read

    • Article

      See The Light

      Dec 4, 2019

      My Geiger counter leaps from zero to .003 in a heartbeat. “It’s OK!” our guide, Helen, assures me. “This is a very low level of radiation!”The Geiger counters are handed out to the members of my tour and activated one by one. Helen assures us of the

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Auschwitz Photographer

      Mar 18, 2021

      The Auschwitz Photographer
      1 min read

    • Article

      Ancestry Releases Millions Of Records Of The Holocaust

      Sep 22, 2020

      Millions of records of Holocaust victims are now available to search for free on the family history website ancestry.com. Ancestry has recently completed its digitisation of records from the Arolsen Archives, adding nine million records made in the

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Saboteur Of Auschwitz

      Sep 12, 2019

      Author Colin Rushton Publisher Summersdale Publishers Price £8.99 Released Out now When soldier Arthur Dodd returned to England following VE Day on 8 May 1945, he was carrying a heavy burden that extended beyond the hardships of serving in World Wa

      1 min read

    • Article

      Seasonal Sentiments

      Aug 7, 2020

      Seasonal Sentiments
      1 min read

    • Article

      Nobody’s At The Playground

      Mar 1, 2022

      Nobody’s At The Playground
      1 min read

    • Article

      The Fifth Season

      Oct 5, 2021

      The Fifth Season
      3 min read

    • Article

      Commentary: Can The World Agree Upon A 'Common Memory' Of The Holocaust?

      Feb 16, 2018

      My mother and father were survivors of Auschwitz, Dachau and Buchenwald. All that remained of our family tree were a few yellowed photographs tucked away in a drawer. I can't pinpoint exactly when I first learned that, aside from my parents, every cl

      4 min read

    • Article

      Cold Case Closed

      Sep 23, 2022

      Cold Case Closed
      4 min read

    • Article

      It’s Not the Holocaust

      Jun 22, 2018

      It’s Not the Holocaust
      3 min read

    • Article

      Once Upon A Time...

      Sep 1, 2022

      Back in 1992, folklorist, writer and poet Neil Philip published a book called The Penguin Book of English Folktales. Meticulously researched, it was a treasure trove of English folk stories, featuring versions of more than 100 folktales told as they

      1 min read

    Reviews for Flory

    3.5/5

    9 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      Short read; seems full of weeping crying as far as women's roles are concerned; seems only the men had any significance which I know at this historic place and time just was not true. Not too inspiring (for me at least)?
    • 4/5
      The holocaust through the eyes of a Dutch survivor. Another great historical count of the resilience of the human spirit. Heroic Dutch people hid Jewish families in their homes despite the risk to their own lives. Although the author lost a multitude of friends and relatives to the gas chambers, lots of miracles happened through various people who helped them survive. It is estimated that of the 140,000 Dutch Jews, only 6,000 survived.
    • 5/5
      I have to agree with the critic. Hearing this read, I felt she was right here beside me. I started this book late at night when I could not go to sleep. I then found myself fighting sleep to hear her story. It is not just about what happened to her and her family but about the people around her, the good, the bad and the ugly. Like my worn copy of Ann Frank, this will be a story I will want to hear again and again. The human will is amazing
    • 4/5
      This is the story of Flory van Beek's experience during World War II. Born and raised in Holland, she tried to leave when Hitler started his evil actions. She and her future husband survive the sinking of the Dutch passenger ship Simon Bolivar in late 1939. After six months of recuperation in England they go back to Holland where endure German occupation and war for six years. They are put into hiding by the Dutch resistance in the homes of good patriots. They survive the war but many of their friends and family do not. One incident that sticks with me - when Flory's mother is deported, she wrote a letter of goodbye to her children on the train taking her to Sobibor extermination camp. She threw that letter off the train. Someone found that letter and delivered it to Flory.I found this book intriguing. It is written by Flory -- her story in her words. It is not literature or prose; it is Flory telling you what happened to her. I feel it was more powerful written this way than if it had a ghost writer changing her words. It is a story of bravery and courage, not only by Flory and her husband but of everyone who helped them survive the war. I highly recommend it.