Liberation Day event features WWII underground worker Eman

CAMBRIDGE, Ontario – Elderly World War II Dutch resistance veteran Diet Eman, whose experiences were published in the book Things We Couldn’t Say, and filmed in the dvd The Reckoning will return to Southwestern Ontario to speak at the Cambridge Liberation Day commemoration on May 10.

The venue of the Cambridge event is Maranatha Christian Reformed Church with tickets available online from ticketwindow.ca. Organizers also hosted a very well received Liberation event last year, featuring a presentation, which was based on interviews Rev. J. Vanderstoep held with a number of congregants about the Nazi occupation years of the Netherlands. Among the postwar immigrants were a significant number of former resistance workers looking for a new start away from Europe’s troubles.

Eman who was imprisoned at the Vught concentration camp awaiting her interrogation by the Germans, was released when they accepted her alibi without ever finding out they held the much wanted helper of Jews needing hiding places. Following her release, she resumed her work on behalf of her persecuted fellow citizens.

In recent decades, Eman has given talks to numerous community groups and schools about the wartime resistance work. During one of these engagements, she was put in touch with well-known Dutch American author James C. Schaap, a literature professor. Schaap also was scriptwriter for the popular dvd The Reckoning which had its Canadian premiere at Redeemer University College, with Eman in attendance.

The proceeds of the event are for CRC project among aboriginal youth in Winnipeg.