Summary of The Sisters of Auschwitz by Roxane by Roxane van Iperen

By Justin Reese

DISCLAIMER

This is NOT the original Roxane van Iperen's book

This is a well-Detailed Summary of The Sisters of Auschwitz by Roxane by Roxane van Iperen

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The story of sisters Janny and Lien Brilleslijper who joined the Dutch Resistance, helped save dozen of lives, were captured by the Nazis, and ultimately survived the Holocaust. As Allied troops close in, the sisters are rushed onto the last train to Auschwitz, along with Anne Frank and her family. The days ahead will test the sisters beyond human imagination as they are stripped of everything but their courage, their resilience, and their love for each other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: jUSTIN REESE
• Release date: Dec 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201013882

Book preview

Part One

War

1

The Battle of Nieuwmarkt

In 1912, Joseph Brilleslijper fought for the hand of Fietje Gerritse in the Battle of the Nieuwmarkt. Their families are perfect opposites; Joseph comes from a circus family of travelling, Yiddish-speaking musicians. The couple lived in the Jewish Quarter, one of the poorest parts of the city. Their daughter Rebekka was born on 13 December 1912, their son Jacob five years later. The Brilleslijper family live in the Amsterdam Jewish Quarter in the early 1920s.

Fietje and Joseph earn their keep in the fruit and vegetable trade. After Opa Jaap's death, Joseph takes over the wholesale business and moves his family into a new house.  When Lien is five years old, her father forbids her to take any more ballet classes. But through Florrie, Lien ends up with the choreographer Lili Green, and secretly starts to take lessons from her. Lili is a pioneer in the world of dance, someone who modernizes the techniques of classical ballet.

In 1936, Janny Brilleslijper is an active member of the resistance in the Spanish Civil War. She smuggles an ambulance across the border and helps find homes for refugees from Germany. Her sister Lien has moved out to escape Joseph's wrath about her dancing activities. When Lientje is bedridden, a new tenant brings her a bunch of hand-picked flowers. Eberhard Rebling is a German musicologist and concert pianist who fled National Socialism and his militarist father in his homeland.

On paper, they could not be more different, and yet they fall deeply in love. Bob Brandes' parents refuse to give their consent to his intended marriage to Janny Brandes, as they think her social background and her Jewish descent are too much of a risk in these turbulent times. In September 1939, almost twenty-three years old, she marries Bob, from her parental home in Amsterdam. In 1938, Alexander de Leeuw is hiding out in his upstairs flat in The Hague. He sleeps in the attic and quietly washes himself in the room of newly born baby Robbie.

In 1939, various cinemas in Amsterdam show Leni Riefenstahl's documentary, commissioned by Adolf Hitler, on the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Days later she runs through the streets of The Hague searching for help when an air raid siren goes off. She spots a familiar façade and gasps for breath as she tries to find friends for refuge.

2

The Brown Plague

They watch as hundreds of people take their own lives after the Dutch capitulate to the Nazis. Their friend Anita is found on her bed, white as chalk, limp, a glass tube by her side. On 29 May 1940, Reich Commissioner Arthur Seyss-Inquart gives his first speech as the highest official of the occupying forces. Janny worries that she, Bob and their friends might already be registered somewhere. But he simply shrugs: 'If we are, we will find out eventually'.

In the commune on Bankastraat there's a sense of optimism that one day soon Hitler will be defeated. But when Lien visits her sister Janny's house for coffee, she is remarkably absent and curt. Lien knows Janny believes each new day with Germans inside the country borders is one too many. 'I am not filling in any declarations and neither are you,' Bob says as he puts the Aryan declaration into the fire. 'I want nothing to do with this, and we'll see what happens when we get there,' Janny replies.

One month later, everyone in the civil service who is known to be